Learning the hard way
Subtitle: masculinity, place, and the "gender gap" in education
By: Edward W. Morris
Series: Rutgers series in childhood studies
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9780813553689; 9780813553696; 9780813553702
Subjects: Blacks; Race identity; Academic achievement; Men; High school boys; Sex differences in education; Case studies; Social conditions; Identity
Description: An avalanche of recent newspapers, weekly news magazines, scholarly journals, and academic books has helped to spark a heated debate by publishing warnings of a "boy crisis" in which male students at all academic levels have begun falling behind their female peers. In this book the author explores and analyzes detailed ethnographic data on this purported gender gap between boys and girls in educational achievement at two low-income high schools, one rural and predominantly white, the other urban and mostly African American. Crucial questions arose from his study of gender at these two schools. Why did boys tend to show less interest in and more defiance toward school? Why did girls significantly outperform boys at both schools? Why did people at the schools still describe boys as especially "smart"? The author examines these questions and, in the process, illuminates connections of gender to race, class, and place. This book is not simply about the educational troubles of boys, but the troubled and complex experience of gender in school. It reveals how particular race, class, and geographical experiences shape masculinity and femininity in ways that affect academic performance. His findings add a new perspective to the "gender gap" in achievement.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Respect and respectability; title: The "hidden injuries" of gender; title: Too cool for school: masculinity and the contradictions of achievement; title: "Rednecks" and "rutters": rural masculinity and class anxiety; title: "Clownin'" and "riffin'": urban masculinity and the complexity of race; title: "Girls just care about it more": femininity and achievement as resistance; title: Friday night fights.