Boys' Underachievement Flashcards
Boys’ an Achievement
ARE achieving in school
- at a much slower rate to girls
At age 6 – boys are behind girls in reading and writing
Boys are behind girls at GCSE
More likely to be excluded from school than girls
Poor literacy skills
EXTERNAL
Boys have poorer literacy and language skills than girls.
Affects their achievement across a wide range of subjects.
Studies show that most of the reading to children at home is done by mothers so the activity becomes associated with femininity. Boys reject it.
Parents spend less time reading to their sons.
Leisure
EXTERNAL
Boys’ leisure pursuits [EX. football and console games] don’t contribute to developing literacy skills.
Girls have a bedroom culture [staying in and talking to friends]. This develops communication skills [listening and speaking] which helps girls do well at school as these skills are crucial for educational success.
Decline in traditional men’s jobs 1
Since the 1980s there has been a decline in industries which traditionally employed men [EX. iron and steel, ship building, mining, engineering].
Lack of traditional male jobs makes boys believe they will not be able to get a job which leads to a lack of motivation so they give up on trying to get qualifications.
Decline in traditional men’s jobs 2
Mitsos and Browne
led to a crisis of masculinity – men are unsure of what it is to ‘be a man’ as they now have fewer opportunities to be breadwinners for their families which undermines their sense of masculinity.
Criticism - Decline in traditional men’s jobs
These jobs are manual, they don’t need qualifications. Wrong to say that boys in the past were motivated to do well as there were jobs out there for them, when those jobs didn’t need qualifications.
New quaternary sector tends to employ men so there are jobs out there for boys now once again. Has not motivated them to work hard at school to gain qualifications, they’re still underachieving.
Feminisation of education
INTERNAL
Sewell
Education has become feminised - schools don’t encourage masculine characteristics [competitiveness and leadership]
They encourage traits associated with femininity such as methodical work and attentiveness.
Puts boys off learning as they associate it with femininity.
Coursework is a major reason for boys’ underachievement as they tend to lack organisational skills.
Criticism - Feminisation of education 1
Ringrose
Sociologists like Sewell have created a moral panic about boys’ underachievement. The fear in society that underachieving boys will grow up to be a dangerous, unemployed underclass.
Detract from the problems faced by girls at school [sexual harassment, gendered subject choices, bullying and low self-esteem].
The focus on boys’ underachievement is leading to the neglect of w/c girls and some e/m who are also underachieving in education.
Criticism - Feminisation of education 2
Osler
Focus on boys has led to a neglect of girls. Partly because girls disengage from edu quietly, while disengaged boys come to the attention of authorities because of their public displays of laddish masculinity. [EX. mentoring schemes focus on helping reduce the number of boys who are excluded from school, ignore the girls who are also increasingly being excluded from school].
Lack of positive role models
INTERNAL + EXTERNAL
At home [large numbers of boys are brought up in the 1.5 million female-headed lone parent families in the UK] and at school [only 16% of primary school teachers are male].
Boys have no male role models to look up to and whose example they can follow. Some argue that female teachers can’t control boys’ behaviour and male teachers are needed to impose discipline and concentration needed for learning.
Criticism - Lack of positive role models
Read
studied primary schools and the way in which both female and male teachers discipline students. Both female and male teachers use the masculine, disciplinarian discourse [explicit discipline] to ensure students behave. Schools have not become feminised. Shows that both female and male teachers can be authority figures.
Most Head Teachers are male so boys do have positive role models.
‘Laddish’ counter-school subcultures 1
Epstein
anti-school subcultures contribute to boys underachievement by discouraging educational success. EX. high achieving w/c boys are labelled as ‘swots’ (nerds) by their peers and tend to be harassed and subjected to homophobic abuse simply because they are doing well at school.
‘Laddish’ counter-school subcultures 2
Francis
being labelled as a ‘swot’ is a threat to boys’ masculinity so boys try to avoid it in order to assert their masculinity in front of their peers. Educational achievement is seen as feminine so they do little or no schoolwork and mess about in lessons which leads to underachievement.
