ABSTRACT
Since the late 1990s the educational world has started to take the issue of boys’ underachievement very seriously. A number of articles have commented on boys’ attitudes to learning at school. These have reminded us of what we already suspected, that self-styled hard, macho images do not help boys to learn. Laddism has stopped them getting on with their studies and meant they were more inclined to lark about in class. Many pieces of research during the 1990s identified boys’ laddish behaviour in front of their mates as spoiling their concentration in lessons.
