ABSTRACT
Education departments around Australia are seriously examining the need for special gender-based strategies for boys. This chapter outlines some of the factors that are essential to an understanding of boys' experiences at school. It seems that many of the claims currently being aired in the media are based on analyses that fail to place schools in a larger social context, and treat gender as the only factor influencing boys' behaviour. Issues concerning power, class and ethnicity are being ignored, and the nature of schooling itself. The chapter examines some of the current claims and proposals in the light of these factors, and offers some ideas as to how they might inform practical programs in schools. There is an important place for gender-based programs for boys in schools, but such programs have little chance of success unless they are part of a broadly based attempt to deal with the realities of students' lives and the society in which they find themselves.
