Masculinities and the Schooling of Middle-School Boys

Their faces stare glumly from the cover of Newsweek, four young White males from Boulder, Colorado, a banner headline imposed over their bodies proclaims a “boy crisis” where “at every level of education” boys are “falling behind” (Tyre, 2006). Just one of a number of offerings in the popular media, these accounts make the case that “boys are wired differently from girls, learn in different ways and may just need their own schools. Boys, they say, are at a disadvantage in the many classrooms headed by female teachers” (Barnett & Rivers, 2006, p. 1).