ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the experiences of and attitudes towards schooling held by the young working class boys at North Parade Primary School. It examines the young boys' peer group relations and the dominant form of working class masculinity that tends to underpin these. The chapter assesses how this form of masculinity tends to exacerbate the boys' overall dispositions towards schooling. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the implications of all this for understanding the nature of working class boys' underachievement. The relationships between parents and the school in South Park tend therefore to be relatively harmonious and built upon a shared commitment to academic attainment and a correspondence between the routines and practices of the home and the school. More fundamental change is required that can successfully address their more underlying and deeply-engrained dispositions towards education.
