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| 141 9 Conclusion Masculinities analysis has much to add to feminist analysis. By focusing on boys we begin to reexamine the dynamics of gender socialization and how it reproduces gender inequality. The psychological data expose fundamental similarities between girls and boys and how those similarities are affected by concepts of gender role that are not limited to families but are also strongly reinforced in the structure of education. In the ecology of childhood , education is one of the most influential systems, along with family, peers, and community. As chapter 5 demonstrates, for both boys and girls, education remains a highly gendered structure and culture that perpetuates gender inequality rather than achieving gender justice. The example of education is one in which a historically male-only structure evolved into a structure embedded with gender hierarchy and difference and then was challenged to remove artificial barriers and reexamine its assumptions and thus to reorient its culture and structure to accommodate girls as formally equal students. To some degree that challenge has been successful. What the masculinities perspective uncovers, in the guise of examining the place of boys and education, is that the system remains gendered in ways that disserve boys as well as continuing to disserve girls. Thus although the gender-bias tilt has equalized to a certain degree, because the examination of the system has approached the bias issue only from a limited perspective, much work remains to be done. It requires simultaneous attention to boys and girls, gender specific and gender connected without reinforcing a binary, heterosexual norm. A central premise of prior gender analysis, it seems, has been that the education system serves boys while disserving girls. Masculinities analysis exposes that education does not, in several respects, serve boys. It disserves boys in relation to their academic goals because it remains limited to learning styles and developmental assumptions that serve only a narrow class of learners which may disproportionately clash with boys’ socialization and development. It also reinforces a culture of gender assumptions that are 142 | Conclusion based in gender hierarchies, between boys and girls and between some boys and other boys. Masculinities analysis also suggests that boys come to school differently socialized with respect to school and as gendered beings. School is not a neutral structure or culture with respect to the boys and girls that come to its doors, nor are boys and girls ungendered subjects, simply “children.” By ignoring the complex ways that gender functions at school, education tends to reinforce traditional socialization. If socialization tends toward limits and restrictions on both boys and girls, then schools act either to open up the limits or to reaffirm them. Masculinities analysis of the “hidden curriculum” of school exposes how school tends to reinforce the gender hierarchy that for boys means hierarchy over all girls and hierarchy among boys. It exposes how as children grow older, and particularly as they reach adolescence, the hidden curriculum reinforces the most traditional gender norms. The education example challenges gender analysis to think of boys and girls simultaneously, rather than approach gender equity in education from the perspective of one group or the other. It also points to how easily discourse can become confrontational and either/or. The claim of a “crisis” regarding boys and education reads largely as a backlash to feminist gains. While it might lead in the direction of a more inclusive look at gender bias, in gender-specific ways that stay connected to the ultimate goal of justice, it has the tendency to displace gains for girls. The potential for patriarchy to reassert itself is very obvious in this example, where the concern for boys is a thin façade over resistance and reaction against gains for girls. The education example is one in which it is essential that feminists remain vigilant but not resistant, opening the analysis to a richer, more complex approach to equity in education. One of the other benefits to exposing the issue of boys’ development as it relates to education is to question how the caring, empathetic side of boys and men can be nurtured instead of being repressed. This is an issue that is not limited to education, but it is one that is very evident in this area. The education example, then, suggests that equity requires asking the other question, the man question. Doing so takes us away from gender or feminism “unmodified” to the intersection of gender with other critical characteristics . It reminds us that in considering justice, gender cannot...

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