EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD SOCIETY - Support

1 Angela McRobbie, The Aftermathof Feminism: Gender, Culture andSocial Change, Sage, 2008; JaneKenway and Elizabeth Bullen,Consuming Children, OpenUniversity Press, 2001; andBecky Francis, ‘Gender, toysand learning’, Oxford Review ofEducation, 36(3), 2010, p.325.2 David Gillborn and DeborahYoudell, Rationing Education:Policy, Practice, Reform and Equity,Routledge, 2000.3 This marketised, competitivecontext has resulted in an acuteawareness (and often increasedanxiety) concerning pupils’ relativeeducational ‘achievement’, amongpolicy-makers, practitioners,parents and young peoplethemselves. See also Diane Reayand Helen Lucey, ‘The limits ofchoice: children and inner-cityschooling’, Sociology, 37, 2003,p.121, for an analysis of theeducation system’s production of‘success’ and ‘failure’.4. Education and genderBecky FrancisGender equality is a fundamental aspect ofthe Good Society. Yet as with other aspects ofsocial distinction wherein inequalities currentlyabound, such as social class and ‘race’, our currenteducation system exacerbates gender inequality,rather than reducing it.Second-wave feminism mounted a devastatingcritique of the education system, identifying themultiple ways in which it perpetuated genderdistinction and inequality. These included thecurriculum, which reflected masculinist agendasand preoccupations, and which appeared toconceive a male recipient; institutional andclassroom organisational and disciplinarypractices in which boys and girls were treatedas distinct groups; teacher perceptions andprejudices, including the classic construction ofboys as ‘naturally brilliant but lazy’ and girls asdiligent plodders; channelling of girls and boysdown different career routes; peer expectationsand pressure; and a culture of sexual andhomophobic harassment applied to teach girlstheir place and police ‘different’ expressions ofgender and sexuality.As we shall see, things have changed relativelylittle in schools in the intervening decades.Outside schooling, more women enter highereducation and engage paid work than in the1970s and 1980s, and middle-class womenhave certainly taken up diverse career routes(albeit gender distinctions remain concerningoccupational sector and remuneration).Nevertheless, women remain overwhelminglyresponsible for childcare and domesticwork. And patterns of gendered marketingand consumption have meant that genderdistinction is culturally more entrenched thanever. 1 However, crucially, public perception haschanged. There is a tendency to believe thatequality has been achieved. Indeed, if anything,it is perceived that boys are educationallydisadvantaged, having been ‘overtaken’ bygirls. The overwhelming preoccupation withattainment and the consequent moral panicaround boys’ ‘underachievement’ have ratherput feminist work in education on the backfoot. It is, therefore, worthwhile to spend sometime unpicking the context for this moral panic,before I go on to justify my claim that thestatus quo remains with the education systemcontinuing to perpetuate inequality.Gender and achievementAs discussed elsewhere in this collection, andin the Compass statement ‘Education for theGood Society’, neo-liberalism has positionedthe role of education as supplying humancapital in a competitive global market place. Tothis end, neoliberal faith in markets as driversof quality has underpinned the developmenteducational quasi markets; and the exclusivelyinstrumental view of education has beenmanifested in contemporary policy obsessionswith ‘standards’ as indicated by educationcredentials, and competition at all levels(between pupils, schools, areas and nations) inan increasingly segregated system. Perceptionsof policy success and the success of individualschools within the market rely on the drivingup of educational achievement, with a resultingfocus on underachieving pupils. ‘Teaching tothe test’ is rampant and a widely acknowledgedproblem, and forms of ‘educational triage’ 2 havebecome the norm, with resources focused onyoung people on ‘grade borderlines’. In thisenvironment, underachievement becomes aliability, while simultaneously (and ironically)unavoidable – in any competition there mustalways be losers as well as winners. 3One unanticipated outcome of the publicationof school league tables in England – the keymechanism supposedly informing parentconsumers in the education ‘market’ – was themoral panic about boys’ underachievement. Theleague tables published exam results for eachschool, and for the first time included a genderbreakdown. Media commentators were surprisedto see that boys were not outperforming girls tothe extent that had apparently been supposed(we surmise from the shocked response): girlswere catching up with boys in the traditionallymasculine subjects of maths and science, whereasboys had made no similar gains in the traditionallyfeminine fields of English and languages. Henceit appeared that girls were outperforming boys22 | www.compassonline.org.uk