Learning the Hard Way: Masculinity, Place, and the Gender Gap in Education

by Edward W. Morris

Overview

An avalanche of recent newspapers, weekly newsmagazines, 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 Learning the Hard Way, Edward W. Morris 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”?

Morris 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813553702
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2012
Series:	Series in Childhood Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	485 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

EDWARD W. MORRIS is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky and the author of An Unexpected Minority: White Kids in an Urban School (Rutgers University Press).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction
2. Respect and Respectability
3. The Hidden Injuries of Gender
4. Too Cool for School: Masculinity and the Contradictions of Achievement
5. Rednecks and Rutters: Rural Masculinity and Class Anxiety
6. Clownin' and Riffin': Urban Masculinity and the Complexity of Race
7. "Girls Just Care about It More": Femininity and Achievement As Resistance
8. Friday Night Fights
9. Conclusion

Appendix. Research Methods: Process and Representation
Notes
References
Index