Two very interesting reads this week:

Boys Don’t Try: Rethinking Masculinity in Schools

by Mark Roberts and Matt Pinkett

And

The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society

by James Marriott

Lots to think about in both books, which are, I feel, linked in both obvious and less obvious ways.

I love the concepts of Tender and Non-Tender masculinity offered by Mark and Matt to reframe deficit narratives about boys and men. I also love that Matt, in later interviews on the topic, re-evaluates his rejection of the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ and normalises something that should be accepted as normal! Namely, listening to other people’s opinions and changing your mind.

I get why people reject the phrase toxic masculinity. Because, if misunderstood or misrepresented, it can sound as though we are saying masculinity is a toxic trait in and of itself.

However, toxic is actually the perfect phrase for what is actually being described. The infiltration of a philosophy into the hearts and minds of boys and men, that poisons them and inflicts real harm and trauma. Just as a toxin does.

Masculinity in all its complexity, nuance and intricate varied forms is a beautiful thing. Our job is to stop the toxin from entering the systems of our magnificent young men so that they can be free to flourish.

The explanations of the Pygmalion and Golem effects are really effective. The data certainly helps to support my arguments about the use of relational pedagogy and the impact of systemic and individual biases on the progress and destinations of our students.

---

There is a lot of stuff to get your teeth into in Marriott’s book. It’s interesting to read something that is not an academic text and note that, while he does cite quite generously, it is very much an opinion piece. Something I might not have noticed quite so starkly this time last year.

My increased ability to recognise argument, evidence and opinion is itself an example of precisely the sophisticated literacy he fears may be diminishing. It also somewhat undermines his idea that there is no “knowledge gatekeeping” in the digital age.

The interesting connection between the two books is the way they both made me think about deficit narratives.

Roberts and Pinkett make important observations about what happens when boys are understood through particular expectations and labels that effectively pathologise their existence.

Marriott’s points about the impact of literacy, knowledge and critical thinking on cultural change feel like they might be the balm with which to soothe the wounds we inflict on our young men through our continued and persistent deficit narratives about them.

All this being said, it’s important to note that, while Marriott goes to great lengths to say he is not undermining any one set of cultural capital, nor is he saying that reading is a panacea, this isn’t entirely how the book leaves you feeling.

(Presumably, he feels Socrates’ ideas are of weight even though they were not written down.)

He even goes so far as to state that ‘nothing is uglier than sneering at those who don’t read’. He does, however, go on to make clear that he believes that not all culture is created equal.

Which opens up a much bigger question than whether reading is disappearing, and that is: who gets to decide which culture has greater value?

This loops nicely back to Boys Don’t Try.

If particular boys’ language, interests, cultural practices or ways of knowing are already treated through deficit assumptions, the answer isn’t simply to validate what is already familiar to them.

It is also to resist allowing those assumptions to limit what they are offered.

The difficult balance, perhaps, is respecting and valuing lived experience while keeping cultural and intellectual horizons open, without assuming that particular ideas, texts or experiences are beyond them or simply not for them.

It’s a precarious line to walk between ensuring democratic access to vast and varied knowledge in conditions which enable learners to recognise themselves as legitimate participants in that knowledge and ensuring lived experience and culture are both valued and celebrated.

But that is the job of teachers

Either way, both books are very interesting and worthwhile reads. Not least of all for the article Marriott quotes, which tells us that nearly half of teenagers report that they wish TikTok had never been invented.

It would be interesting to see those figures for Gen Xers and millennials, as, like a smoker who has just one more before retiring to bed, here we find our addiction quenched by just one more reel as we squint into our black mirrors at 2am.

Or perhaps the better analogy is with the smoker who drifts off with the cigarette in hand and the hot ash beginning to smoulder on the duvet.

Are we going to jolt awake and have a lucky escape? Or is this addiction to our screens going to set in motion a chain of events that will accelerate at a speed we can’t rein in … and burn it all down?