ABSTRACT
Schools have often been seen as masculinity-making devices. Dr Arnold saw his renovated Rugby as a means of forming a Christian gentleman. Other reformers in the years since have given other schools the task of forming a sober and industrious working man, a technocratic competitor, and the New Soviet Man. Research in the 1970s and 80s inspired by a new agenda, that of feminism, suggests that Dr Arnold was right. Schools do not simply adapt to a natural masculinity among boys or femininity among girls. They are agents in the matter, constructing particular forms of gender and negotiating relations between them.
