ABSTRACT
From the beginning of the social interaction that comes with full-time schooling, girls and boys in the same classroom have been shown to create quite different educational experiences for themselves (Arnot and Weiner, 1987; Walkerdine, 1989; Delamont, 1990). Research data reported in the past twenty years have shown that boys occasion more discipline problems for their teachers (Clarricoates, 1978; Brophy 1985; Swann and Graddol, 1988) and that attempts by teachers to give girls an equal share of classroom attention are actively opposed by boys (Goodenough, 1987; D’Arcy, 1991; Jordan, 1995). In mixed group settings, for example, it has been shown that boys claim more teacher time, even when teachers are making a conscious effort to be even-handed (Clarricoates, 1978). Boys learn at an early age to control both the girls in their class and the women who teach them by adopting a ‘male’ discourse which emphasizes negative aspects of female sexuality, and embodies ‘direct sexual insult’. This has been characterized by researchers as ‘slagging off’ (Lees, 1986; Walkerdine, 1981). Boys act as if the very fact of working with girls will demean them. For example, D’Arcy (1991) has described how a boy in primary school, who had been asked to share a table with a girl, pushed her things away with a ruler so as not to be in contact
even with her belongings and then refused to sit on a chair previously occupied by other girls in the class.
