Failing Boys?

Part one: Boys' underachievement in context

Schoolboy frictions
feminism and failing boys
"A habit of healthy idleness"
boys' underachievement in historical perspective

Part two: Different constructions of the debate and its under-currents

Girls will be girls and boys will be first
'Zero tolerance', gender performance and school failure
Breaking out of the binary trap
boys' underachievement, schooling and gender relations
Real boys don't work
masculinities, 'underachievement' and the harassment of sissies

Part three: Boys, which boys?

Loose canons
exploding the myth of the 'black macho' lad
Boys underachievement, special needs practices and equity

Curriculum, assessment and the debate

Language and gender
who, if anyone, is disadvantaged by what?
Gendered learning outside and inside school
influences on achievement
Index.

Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement challenges the widespread perception that all boys are underachieving at school. It raises the more important and critical questions of which boys? At what stage of education? And according to what criteria?

The issues surrounding boys' 'underachievement' have been at the centre of public debate about education and the raising of standards in recent years. Media and political responses to the 'problem of boys' have tended to be simplistic, partial, and owe more to 'quick fixes' than investigation and research. Failing Boys? provides a detailed and nuanced 'case study' of the issues in the UK, which will be of international relevance as the moral panic is a globalised one, taking place in diverse countries. The contributors to this book take seriously the issues of boys' 'underachievement' inside and outside school from a critical perspective which draws on the insights of previous feminist studies of education to illuminate the problems associated with the education of boys.

This will be a key text for educators, policy makers, students and teachers of education, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies and others interested in gender and achievement.