Abstract
Within literature relating to the broad field of boys’ education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of “the boy problem” and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are ‘really’ like and, by extension, what they ‘really’ need. While these deterministic interventions have been widely critiqued in academic literature they nevertheless continue to dominate school and media based discussions about how to best support alienated, disengaged and at risk boys. This raises questions about the extent to which anti-essentialist approaches can be made more accessible and meaningful to teachers in schools. It further suggests the value of develo** detailed accounts of real world interventions that have had a demonstrably positive impact upon the boys involved without reinforcing essentialist notions of masculinity. Adopting an attitude of “educated hope” (Giroux, http://www.units.muohio.edu/eduleadership/anthology/OA/OA03001.html, 2003) and drawing upon the resources of (Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987), this paper examines one such case of anti-essentialist reform involving three Australian schools. It explores one particular boy’s experience of an intervention known as Boys with Books and argues that Ryan’s journey can be conceptualised as a line of flight away from traditional forms of masculinity: a journey in progress that has impacted positively upon his relationships with peers and teachers and changed his beliefs about his possible future options. The paper, therefore, illustrates the capacity for teachers and schools to display anti-essentialist understandings about masculinity while responding in practical and ‘do-able’ ways to the needs of at risk, alienated and underperforming boys in schools.
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Acknowledgments
The research would not have been possible without the generous support of the staff who worked on the Boys with Books initiative and the inspiration of the project leader. We thank them for their time and enthusiasm and for trusting us enough to allow us into their worlds for such a sustained amount of time. Most of all we thank all of the participants who took part in the research, particularly the boys and their families. Without their generosity, openness and willingness to talk the research would clearly not have been possible.
We would also like to thank Chris Bigum and Catherine Beavis for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Their advice and support was, as always, insightful, generous and fundamentally enabling.
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Rogers, M., Rowan, L. & Walker, R. Becoming Ryan: lines of flight from majoritarian understandings of masculinity through a high school reading and mentoring program. A story of possibility. Aust. Educ. Res. 41, 541–563 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-014-0148-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-014-0148-x