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7 March
NO 1274
Failing boys
The question all the various commentators are asking, explicitly or implicitly, is 'Why are boys now underachieving?' This question solicits a wide variety of analyses, all suggesting a 'cause' for the new problem: these causes include the lack of male role models for boys at school; schools 'abdicating their responsibilities' and frustrating boys 'to the point of frenzy by a perverse refusal to give them clear goals' (Daily Telegraph, 19 November 1996); economic changes affecting boys (especially working-class boys) more markedly than girls; and finally, the 'crisis of masculinity'. Despite the confusion, two interlinked strands can be discerned. The first is that girls' achievement since the 1980s has something to do with boys' failure, as if a 'backlash period' has sprung forth 'as a result of a decade of equal opportunities policy making deliberately aimed at girls and young women' (Weiner et al.1997). The second strand, less frequently articulated – perhaps because it seems an obvious implication of the first – is that, until recently, boys were doing better than girls, boys were best. What boys used to think about was 'beating the other chaps for top prizes ... passing the scholarship, coming top of the class, getting the apprenticeship: whatever the most esteemed feats were in their particular social milieu' (Daily Telegraph, 19 November 1996). Similarly, one young unemployed man, interviewed about his and his male classmates' attitude to the school he left only 5 years before, said to the interviewer 'the boys worked only if pushed whereas the girls all had wanted to work and tried harder.' 'But', he added, 'it used to be the other way round' (BBC1,1995).
Stories about a 'Golden Age' of boys' achievement are particularly interesting for an historical perspective on boys' underachievement, for my main argument in this chapter is that over the period I have been researching – from the late seventeenth century to the present – boys have always 'underachieved', and more importantly, this underachievement has never been seriously addressed. What I mean is that though it has been of concern, underachievement has never been treated as a problem of boys. The main reason for this is the way the discourse on achievement has been organized and deployed. Boys' achievement has been attributed to something within – the nature of their intellect – but their failure has been attributed to something external – a pedagogy, methods, texts, teachers. The full significance of this becomes clear when the subject of the discourse is girls, for in their case it is their failure which is attributed to something within – usually the nature of their intellect – and their success to something external: methods, teachers or particular conditions. Attributing boys' failure to a method has made it possible to explain away their poor results without implicating boys themselves. Attributing girls' success to the method has had different effects (Cohen, 1996), the most important one for this discussion being that . their performance holds the promise for boys' achievement.
MICHELE COHEN
Cohen, Michele. (1998). 'A habit
of healthy idleness': Boys' underachievement in historical perspective.
Epstein, E.; Elwood, J; Hey, V. and Maw, J. (Eds.). Failing Boys?:
Issues in gender and achievement. Philadelphia. Open University
Press. pp. 19-20.
REFERENCES
BBC1, (1995). Men aren't working. Panorama. 16 October.
Cohen, M. (1996) Is there space for the achieving girl? In Murhpy, P. and Gipps, C.V. (Eds.). Equity in the classroom: Towards effective pedagogy for girls and boys. London/Paris. Falmer Press/UNESCO.
Weiner, G.M., Arnot, M. and David, M. (1997). Is the future female? Female success, male disadvantage and changing gender patterns in education. In Halsey, A.H.; Brown, P.; Lauder, H. and Stuart-Wells, A. (Eds). Education: Culture, Economy and Society. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
