ABSTRACT
The author had romantic notions of teaching literature to eager, engaged high-school students who shared his love of a good story. The power of the dominant and accepted definitions of literacy and what it means to be literate constructs individual identities. Social constructionist theory shows that individuals are deemed to be literate or illiterate according to the dominant definitions of literacy in a society. Challenging dominant forms of masculinity, which lead some boys to reject literacy practices in schools, is seen as an essential part of breaking the pattern of boys' underachievement. Discussions about boys' underachievement in literacy are relational; that is, such concepts rely on gender binaries which construct boys' literacy development in opposition to girls' achievement. Becky Francis's suggestion might come as something of a relief for educators who wish to make gender binaries in texts explicit to students, yet who might not be quite sure about teaching post-structuralist concepts to children.
