ABSTRACT
This chapter stems from a recent study of the gender structures and processes in two Australian primary schools. It considers briefly the teachers and parents as distinct from one another and having separate powerful presences in the children's lives. However, all school communities have contexts in which teachers and parents encounter one another and, as was found at Linfield and Tordale, gender is prevalent amongst these encounters. The children at Tordale and Linfield experience their parents' lives as forms of curricula for understanding how their adult lives will take shape. The chapter attempts to challenge critically the forms of living curricula portrayed to children at schools it is important, both theoretically and practically, to recognise the complex, intertwined nature of gender relations. To effect a change to any one element of adults' gender relations in school communities will have ramifications on others and, therefore, almost certainly meet with resistance, especially from men.
