ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the conditions under which boys’ comparative failure in literacy has become visible over the last decade, and considers feminist reactions to this turn of events in the broader context of the feminist struggle for gender equality in education. It asks how far a gender politics predicated on girls’ relative failure within the education system can be used to understand boys’ underachievement in literacy and whether the time has come to reflect more broadly on the role the social organisation of literacy in school plays in creating distinctions between readers and writers. At a time when homogeneity in measurable outcomes from the education system is increasingly seen as a desirable political goal, what is at stake for both girls and boys as they navigate their way through the literacy curriculum?
