Mariah

Besplug
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Response to Professional Literature

Social Context of Schooling

Mariah Besplug

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February 7, 2017

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I found this article interesting because in my own experiences as a student and

teacher, I have been able to see the anti-school culture of boys. During my PS1 practicum,

my teacher often expressed the master narrative that the boys were too cool for school. This

articulated itself in boys apathy towards reading and writing as well as in their results.

However, though it was apparent in many boys, I found that their was also a counter-

narrative, where boys who worked hard in school and put in a lot of effort were also seen as

cool because of their leadership abilities.

Rickard Jonnson points out that current educational policy in Sweden has assumed

that boys anti-school culture is the result of the feminization of schools and the lack of male

teacher role models. This has suggested that all boys fit into this master narrative and that

it is the reason for boys lower test scores. Mats Bjornsson, a Swedish official claimed that it

is easier for a girl to be both popular and a swot in school while the Agency for Education

in 2006 described [boys] in the report as having more relaxed and less ambitious attitudes

towards schoolwork (Jonsson, 2014, pp. 277-278). In school policy, there is a general

convergence that an anti-school culture exists. This anti-school culture was originally

theorized by Paul Willis in 1977 and proposed that to make serious effort to do well at

school is simply not consistent with performing cool or other normative forms of

masculinity (Jonsson, 2014, p. 277). Jonnson suggests that an alternative way to look at

this is that anti-school cultures in boys is a grand narrative that is both contradicted and

reproduced in schools. He argues that the rowdy boy stereotype is being taken for granted

and needs to be deconstructed. Jonnson defines a master narrative as a sociological form of

interpretation, which both precedes and provides a way to make sense of experiences,

practices, and identities within school (Jonsson, 2014, p. 278). This involves the basic
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structure of a narrative that includes narrators, characters, plot, setting, crisis, temporality,

and tellability. For an anti-school culture, the narrators are those who make reports, the

characters are the cool and relaxed boys, the crisis is the gender gap in schools, the setting

is the school, the temporality unfolds in their stories of past and present, and it is tellable

because there are a number of texts written on it.

Jonnson uses ethnographic data from two Swedish secondary schools in multi-ethnic

suburbs to support his claims. His fieldwork took place over one year where he used tape

recordings, participant observation, field notes, group interviews, and individual interviews

during breaks and lessons. He uses three examples to demonstrate his thesis. The first, We

have to focus describes an incident where a group of rowdy boys play with a ball in a

workroom when they are supposed to be working on a project. During this time, the boys

are living out the narrative of an anti-school culture. Later on, however, the boys start to

contradict this narrative when they begin to think aloud about who should initiate the

classwork (283). In this instance, the boys are performing a balancing act between

performing hegemonic masculinity and being successful students (Jonsson, 2014, p. 283).

This example suggests one of the ways that boys both reproduce and contradict the

stereotype of rowdy boys. In the second example, I dont care, Jonnson demonstrates

how one student appears to be performing anti-school culture to preserve his masculinity

when in reality he is doing it as a way to escape the accusation that he is a failing student

(Jonsson, 2014, p. 285). This shows that the performing cool masculinity is not always the

reason for a students anti-school behaviour. The third case, You shouldnt be a doormat,

discusses the prevalence of the noisy boy and quiet girl stereotype. In the example, the

boys express that being quiet and being a girl is rewarded with high grades in the
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schools hidden curriculum (Jonsson, 2014, p. 287). The girls however, suggested that

being the passive students is evaluated against the girls future positions as adults in the

labor market and thus they do not see silence and good behaviour as beneficial in the real

world (Jonsson, 2014, p. 288). Together these cases make the argument that when the

concept of boys anti-school culture is used as both a master narrative and the

unquestioned point of departure in explaining boys attitudes and behaviours in schools,

this neglects to see the intricacies and complexities of boys identities, strategies, and

cultures in schools. As well, he demonstrates that situations of protest within a classroom

are not always expressions of cool masculinity.

Throughout the article, Jonnson is trying to unpack the binary view of boys and girls

in favour of a more complex and intricate view of students. Ironically, he uses the terms

winners and losers throughout the article to describe the low scores of boys compared

to girls. For example, he writes that women appear to be winners throughout the

educational system and that reports publish grades that show a picture of the winners

and losers of schools, (Jonsson, 2014, p. 276/280). Though this might be the way it is

expressed in policy, it painted a picture of students as being binary entities with a

homogenous girl group that is successful in school and a homogenous boy group that is not

successful. Because this is the exact idea that he is trying to unravel in his paper, it might

have been more powerful for him to avoid the terms winners and losers throughout his

paper.

When performing ethnography and participant observation, the researcher is seen

as someone who is involved in the creation of narratives and conversations that come up.

Because of this, it is essential for a researcher to be explicit about who they are and how
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they may have biases that affect the information they gather. Though Jonnson explained

that he was doing a commissioned research project and that he was a white male in his mid

thirties, I wish that he had included more information about his time in school. For example,

when he was a student if he related to the anti-school culture or if he was breaking the idea

of the homogenous group of rowdy boys.

One of the major strengths of this article is that it attempts to make changes to real

world problems. Jonnson acknowledges that current educational policy in Sweden has

assumed that boys anti-school culture is the reason for all of them to be doing worse in

school than girls. He argues that educational policy has a duty to change its starting point

and to view all students as having different backgrounds and contexts that shape the way

they learn. His focus on not homogenizing all boys is a concrete way that policies can

improve their strategies for all students, including boys. I really liked the real world

relevance of his work.

Part of Jonnsons methods was to include both boys and girls in his interviews and

observations. It might have been easy for him to focus solely on boys perspectives and

ideas, but I think that his argument was greatly improved by including both genders in his

approach. This is because he would have been missing the ideas and perspectives of half the

school population.

Before reading this article, it would have been easy to associate all boys with an anti-

school culture. Having explored Jonnsons argument, I can now see that boys are a very

divergent group who all have unique identities and ways of being in school. Though this

culture may be present in schools, not all boys will fit into it and not all girls will be outside

of it. As a teacher, it will be important for me not to homogenize boys into categories but
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instead to build strong relationships with all of them in order to get to know the intricacies

of their identities, their strengths, and their struggles. For example, rather than assuming

that all of the boys in my class play Minecraft and giving all of them a math assignment

about it, I might give students a survey to find out their hobbies and interests in order to

tailor my teaching to them. Further, this article demonstrated to me that students peer

relationships play a large role in the way that they exist within a classroom. When dealing

with students who are struggling academically and behaviourally, I will always want to

consider how my choices as a teacher will play out between the student and their peers. For

example, when differentiating for students, I would not want to put them in a position

where they are teased by their peers or meant to feel like there masculinity, femininity, or

identity is being challenged.

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References:

Jonsson, R. (2014). Boys' AntiSchool Culture? Narratives and School Practices.
Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 45(3), 276-292.