Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of educationVol. 25, No. 2, June 2004

Boy Trouble: Rhetorical framing ofboys’ underachievement1

Jordan J. Titus*University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA

This article examines discourse in the United States used to socially construct an“underachieving boys” moral panic. Employing discourse analysis I examine the adversarialrhetoric of claims-makers and the frames they deploy to undermine alternative andconflicting accounts (of females as disadvantaged) and to forestall any challenges to thescientific authority of their own (biological essentialist) account of crisis. I illustrate how thisdiscourse adapts the rhetorical frame of gender equity from the discourse it politicallyopposes, and uses it to legitimate its own goals. I find that the framing of innocentvictimized boys as scientific “truth” is aligned with a broader masculinity politics thatblames certain “folk devils”, and a synchronic moral panic about fearsome (black) maleyouth. I conclude by considering the success of this moral panic as evidenced by changesin educational policies and practices in the United States.

Introduction

When statistics showing current female success in schools were reported, aflurry of popular press articles expressed increasing anxiety over “boys’ under-achievement”. A sense of crisis was amplified by headlines such as “How boyslost out to girl power” (Lewin, 1998), “Boys under siege” (Eberstadt, 2000),and “Little boys lost” (Levine, 1999). A number of writers have described thisdiscourse in the United Kingdom and Australia as a “moral panic” (e.g.Epstein et al., 1998; Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998; Weiner, Arnot, & David, 1997),one that has “reached epidemic proportions when viewed from an internationalperspective” (Mahony, 1997, p. 1). The concept of moral panic originated inthe work of Jock Young (1971) and Stanley Cohen (1972), and in its morecommon usage describes a process of inciting public anxiety about a socialproblem by means of media hyperbole. In moral panic theory, the concern isabout a perceived threat to values or interests held sacred by society or “athreat to the social order itself” (Thompson, 1998, p. 8). My interest in thesocial construction of this moral panic is focused on how the discourse

*Department of Sociology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, PO Box 756480, Fairbanks, AK99775-6480, USA. Email: ffjjt@uaf.edu

ISSN 0159-6306 (print)/ISSN 1469-3739 (online)/04/020145-25 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/01596300410001692120

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participants legitimate their accounts of crisis. Rather than considering howtheir (or any) account relates to the real world, my concern is with howdescriptions are assembled as factual accounts, and how one belief becomesauthorized as scientific knowledge while another is treated with suspicion anddisqualified as false propaganda.

Analytic Approach

For Foucault, the concept of “discourse” refers not simply to talk or texts, butto “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Fou-cault, 1972, p. 49) with powerful formations able to constitute a “regime oftruth” (Foucault, 1980, p. 131). My approach to talk and text originatedwithin social constructivism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), and developed out ofvarious perspectives including critical discourse analysis (e.g. Fairclough, 1995;Parker, 1992), ethnomethodologically informed sociology of scientific knowl-edge (e.g. Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Latour & Woolgar, 1979), and analyses ofthe textually mediated character of social life (Smith, 1990). Discourse here ismore than a mode of expression that shapes what can be said and thought;discourse is a mode of reflexive, interpretive, collaborative social practice ofacting upon the world. Seen dialectically, a discourse is a “representationalpractice” (Woolgar, 1988, p. 93) or set of meanings that constitutes objects,while also being the vehicle through which participants in the discourse enactand negotiate social identities, relationships, and institutions. The dilemmaticcharacter of discourses highlights how they offer mutually coexistent andpotentially contradictory versions of reality (Billig et al., 1988). My focus is onthe various configurations of discursive practices and the range of rhetoricaldevices used to manage accountability within a discourse and in the shiftingsynchronic and diachronic relations of socially related (aligned or conflicting)ones.

I borrow the term ‘frame(work)’ from Goffman (1974, p. 21) and adapt it todenote conventional presuppositions and ways of conferring, articulating, andelaborating meaning.2 As viewed here, frames are always versions organized inparticular interactive contexts, and they involve the use of interpretative proce-dures and devices studied in the conversation analytic tradition (e.g. Pomer-antz, 1986) as well as the “witcraft” studied in rhetoric analysis (Billig, 1996,pp. 112–117). Because contexts are always framed in one way or another, it isnot simply a matter of the situation being interpreted in terms of some frame,but that a framework—in its use and deployment—is reflexively constitutive of,and justification for, a context.

The contribution of frame and discourse analysis to understanding thismoral panic lies in viewing controversies about gender and schooling as powerstruggles over moral regulation. Society contains a profusion of discoursesabout gender, each with its own moral implications, and frequently these are inconflict which is amplified by the media. The availability of a discourse caneither enhance or constrain social practice, while a dominant one can silence

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alternatives. My interest here is in the mobilization of frames and strategies thatresult in an adversarial claim effectively orchestrating public consensus.

The data consist of more than 160 items focusing on boys’ education,appearing between 1998 and 2001 primarily in US news print media. Iretrieved all relevant accessible articles by employing keyword searches ofarchives and electronic full-text databases (primarily NEXIS and EBSCOhost).The prominence of two academics, Christina Hoff Sommers (cited in morethan two-thirds of the articles) and Judith Kleinfeld (cited in over one-third),resulted in their writings (books, monographs, articles), along with the mediaaccounts that reference them, comprising the bulk of my data. The assembledcollection is not exhaustive; it is limited to the US context and some relevantarticles may have been missed. My analysis attended to both the content andform of the academic texts, the media attention to those texts, and policyengagements with the popularized findings. Initial manifest coding allowed forsorting data by major themes derived from the materials themselves, and inemergent coding I inductively explored regularities and peculiarities across thedetails of the items within themes. Subsequent analysis across themes allowedfor the retrospective identification of linked frames and aligned discourses.

In the social construction of a social problem (Spector & Kitsuse, 1987),rhetoric plays a central role (Best, 1987); rhetoric is used to assert the existenceof some condition, define it as problematic, publicize a version of the problem,persuade audiences, and mobilize support for ratifying the claim. Best’s (1987)analysis of claims-making rhetoric provides a useful distinction between“grounds”, or the basic statements about what the problem is and illustrationsof its severity; “conclusions”, or the calls for changes in public awareness andpolicy to deal with the problem; and “warrants”, the statements that justifydrawing the conclusions from the grounds. I will show how the grounds for thisunderachievement discourse describe male children as innocent victims ofpernicious agents. The claims-makers’ conclusions appeal for gender equity forboys through pedagogical practices and curriculum deemed to be meet boys’special needs. The warrants employ a language of gender equity to opposediscrimination against males; yet paradoxically, in a language of biologicalessentialism, posit innate inequities of human nature as a basis for socialdifferences that favor males.

Framing Grounds for Claims

Rhetoric in the US states that “the epidemic of underachievement amongboys … [is] now so widespread that it is taking on the proportions of a nationalcrisis” (Daley, 1999, p. 26). The thrust of Kleinfeld’s report is that “schoolsfavor girls”, while “males are far more apt to end up at the bottom of the barrelin school” (Kleinfeld, 1998a, pp. 1–2). Sommers (2000, p. 14) concurs that“boys, not girls, [are] on the weak side of an educational gender gap”.Columnists report that “the educational status of boys, not girls, is the realproblem in our educational system” (Leo, 1999, p. 24).

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The story of underachieving boys seems to have arisen recently (Kenway &Willis, 1998), even though many of these patterns were known decades ago(Cohen, 1998; Murphy & Elwood, 1998). While in the past male students wereviewed as personifying the ideal of the educated person (Martin, 1981) and “allthat was seen as right and proper in a learner” (Francis, 2000, p. 120),according to the claims-makers, now “boys … are learning what it is to be the‘second sex’” (Sommers, 2000, p. 207). Using the power of novelty, thediscourse attracts media attention by claiming to identify a new phenomenon,situated between an idealized past and a predicted future calamity: “it’s a badtime to be a boy in America” (Sommers, 2000, p. 13; also in Leo, 2000, p. 17).The prevalent war metaphor of the “gender wars” (e.g. “war against” and“battle over boys”, boys “under siege” and “underfire”) suggests the use ofboth offensive and defensive discursive tactics; that is, rhetoric constructed toundermine alternative descriptions and designed to resist its own discounting(Billig et al., 1988). This discourse arose in the US as a denial of a prioraccount of girls (and women) as disadvantaged, and constituted boys as the“new disadvantaged” (Epstein et al., 1998; Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998; Lingard &Douglas, 1999; Teese et al., 1995). As I will show, the discourse was built withthe same rhetorical frames of gender equity and entitlement used in theaccount it contradicts, thereby legitimating its own appeal for responsiveremedies.3 Scientific authority is rhetorically invoked as contrastive warrantagainst “junk science”, forestalling challenges to the truth of their claims ofcrisis.

The Gender Discrimination Frame

Feminist accounts of schooling in the US in the early 1990s detailed genderinequality in schooling that impeded girls and women both academically andeconomically. Carol Gilligan and her colleagues (Brown & Gilligan, 1992;Gilligan, Lyons, & Hanmer, 1990), the How Schools Shortchange Girls report bythe American Association of University Women (AAUW, 1990), and work byMyra and David Sadker (1993) concluded that gender bias against girls,together with certain social factors and institutional arrangements,“shortchanged girls”. Clinical psychologist Mary Pipher (1994), in her best-selling Reviving Ophelia, and popular ethnographies by Peggy Orenstein (1994)and Judy Mann (1994) presented aspects of this view that American societydisadvantaged girls. Almost immediately, dissenters (e.g. Sommers, 1994)argued that any imbalance that might have existed had shifted and it was boys,not girls, who were the victims of gender discrimination in schools and society.

The discourse on boys assumes that the feminist reform agenda achieved itsgoals (Yates, 1997).4 Two observations are proffered: first, it is boys who arenow losing out at school, while until recently boys were doing better than girls(Kenway & Willis, 1998); and, second, a mistakenly presumed correlationbetween boys’ failure and girls’ achievement (Weiner, Arnot, & David, 1997).Claims-makers cite studies, particularly statistics from governmental agencies,

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to claim the stronger performance of all girls across all areas of the curriculum,including subjects traditionally considered masculine areas (e.g. Kleinfeld,1998a, p. 1; Sommers, 2000, p. 26). The problem as they see it is not justwidespread; it is ubiquitous.

Challenges to claims of boys’ underachievement (e.g. AAUW, 2001; Epsteinet al., 1998; Weiner, Arnot, & David, 1997) have not been widely covered inthe media. According to a counter-discourse, disaggregating data on schoolperformance reveals that girls or boys are not homogeneous populations whouniformly achieve or fail (e.g. Foster, 1994; Gorard, Rees, & Salisbury, 1999;King, 2000). When complexities are considered, not all boys are doing worsethan before, nor worse than all girls (Murphy & Elwood, 1998); indeed, “thereis more overlap between the attainment of boys and girls than there isdifference” (Epstein et al., 1998, p. 10). Gillborn and Gipps (1996, p. 17)provide evidence that (in Britain) the pattern of girls outperforming boys mayhold only for white pupils across social classes. Teese et al. (1995, p. 109)argue that (in Australia) the gender gap narrows as the social economic statusincreases and students possess greater material advantages, while gender differ-ences “become sharper the more socially disadvantaged their parents”.Achievement is a complicated phenomenon where race, social class, andgender intersect (Gilbert & Gilbert, 1998, p. 5). In the US, there is wideconsensus that social class remains an important determinant of school per-formance and that there are damaging consequences of being raised in poverty(Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). Social class has been ignored by the claims-makers, even though in higher education in the US “the gender gap is dwarfedby the educational chasms related to race/ethnicity and social class” (King,2000, p. 17). In the US, as well as elsewhere, “the real question is not whethergirls as a group or boys as a group are more disadvantaged, but which girls andwhich boys” (Teese et al., 1995, p. 109).

Aligned Frames: Troubled boys and boys as trouble

While a counter-discourse reports on the persistent privileging of male voicesin schools and the problems faced by young girls,5 media attention is capturedin headlines such as “If anyone needs help, it is the boys” (Jacoby, 1996, p.A4). Accusing feminism of exalting female victimization (e.g. Kleinfeld, 1998a,p. 1; Sommers, 1994), claims-makers ironically present males as injured per-sons unjustly harmed and damaged, thereby rendered worthy of our concernand assistance (Holstein & Miller, 1990). Headlines dramatize boys’ innocenceand malaise by labelling them “at risk”, “behind”, “lost”, “hurting”, and“victims” of schools that are said to be “stifling”, “neglecting”, and “failing”them. Faludi (1999) popularized the idea that men are being “stiffed” byAmerican culture, and men’s rights politics (especially Bly, 1990; Farrell,1993) have garnered sympathetic media attention for their attempts to reassertmale privilege or emphasize an essentialist masculinity (cf. analyses by Con-nell, 1995; Kimmel & Kaufman, 1995; Schwalbe, 1996). The self-

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identification of white American men as oppressed victims of discriminationand “reverse racism”, despite no significant decline in their economic orpolitical authority (e.g. Cose, 1993; Gates, 1993; Goldstein, 1995; Jacobs,1992; Roberts, 1996; Stein, H., 1995), has been critiqued as “backlash”.6

Critics contend that American culture is filled with representations of thisfictional new persecuted majority, wounded and vulnerable with their“manufactured traumas, and metaphorical pains” (Robinson, 2000, p. 6) thatserve to negotiate a critique of their own power.

Within a “rhetoric of endangerment” (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993) a sense ofmoral urgency is invoked to safeguard boys’ mental and physical well-being.Certain psychological and physiological syndromes are said to affect boys andtheir behaviours in greater numbers than girls. “Male vulnerability to disor-ders” including “virtually every neuro-developmental and psychiatric disorderof childhood” (Kleinfeld, 1998a, p. 23) is said to make boys, not girls, themore “fragile sex” (Dalton, 1999; D’Antonio, 1994).

Claims-makers posit a fundamental boyishness that involves robust, some-times obnoxious, behaviour and aggression, then argue that the nature ofboyhood has been pathologized in schools (D’Antonio, 1994; Gurian, 1997;Gurian, Henley & Trueman, 2001; Sowell, 2000). Boys are said to be inher-ently more active than girls and slower to gain control of impulses (Dalton,1999; Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001; Kindlon & Thompson, 1999;Levine, 1999). Stifling those “impulses”, we are warned, leads to boys who are“either murderous or suicidal” (D’Antonio, 1994). Reductions in daily timeand space for discharging physical energy in schools (recess, physical edu-cation, etc.) are claimed to be “almost criminal … It’s ignoring who boys are”(Newcomb, 2000, p. 13; see also Kessler, 1999; Young, 2001).

A “rhetoric of entitlement” (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993) connects the egalitarianideal of equal access to education with boys’ rights to exercise choice inself-expression. Presumed to be controlled by testosterone, those “naturallyrambunctious” boys who are forced to conform to institutional demands forclassroom decorum are four times as likely as girls to be diagnosed withattention deficit hyperactivity disorder and placed on Ritalin (Kleinfeld, 1998a,p. 6; also see Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001; Knickerbocker, 1999; Leo,2000; Rosenfeld, 1998). Boys “mature more slowly” and “late-maturing boyscan be stigmatized as poor learners and assigned to ‘low ability groups in theprimary grades’” (Kleinfeld, 1998a, p. 6; also see Dalton, 1999). It is in thiserroneous way, they argue, that males become over-represented in specialeducation classes (Kleinfeld, 1998a, p. 20; Rosenfeld, 1998), where they are“three times as likely as girls to be enrolled” (Sommers, 2000, pp. 25–26; alsosee Hart, 2000; Kessler, 1999; Levine, 1999). It is the feminist teacher’scritique of boys’ natural masculinity that is held to blame for boys dominatingthe “dropout lists, the failure lists, and the learning disability lists” (Sommers,2000, pp. 26, 32–33; also see Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001; Hart, 2000;Kessler, 1999; Knickerbocker, 1999; Levine, 1999).

Concern escalates when the claims about schooling also tap into a correlative

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public fervour about boys’ problematic social behaviours (Raphael Reed,1999), expanding the issue’s domain (Best, 1987) and exacerbating the level ofpanic through a public discourse of fear (Altheide, 1997). The general public’sconsensus about the decaying morality of American youth has been built upthrough media framings of adolescents as dangerous, threatening, uncontrol-lable, violent, and equated with criminality (Males, 1999; Schissel, 1997). Assome writers have observed, most media coverage of the recent killings byyoung offenders in American schools focused on “youth violence” and “kidskilling kids” as gender- and race-neutral occurrences, although invariably theperpetrators were middle-class white adolescent heterosexual males (Katz &Jhally, 1999; Kimmel, 2001; Klein & Chancer, 2000; Steinem, 1999; Wise,2001). When gender was noted, the crisis was framed in terms of boys’emotional difficulties, thereby effectively obscuring the social construction ofviolent masculinity as an American cultural norm. The current flood of popularpsychology books on the so-called “hidden culture of girls’ relational ag-gression” (e.g. Lamb, 2002; Simmons, 2002; Wiseman, 2002) also serves todeflect attention from American society’s equating masculinity with the ca-pacity for violence,7 what a counter-discourse has termed the “real boy crisis inAmerica” (e.g. Kimmel, 2000, p. 7; also Garbarino, 1999).

Popular book subtitles by psychologists advise us to “rescue”, “protect”, and“save” boys (Kindlon & Thompson, 1999; Pollack, 1998) whom they describeas alienated, with high levels of depression, suicide, and risk-taking behaviours(Jacoby, 1996; Leo, 1999; Ravich, 1999; Sommers, 2000).8 Claiming a biolog-ically based male fascination with guns (given their “hunter’s brain”) (Downey,2001, p. E01, quoting Gurian), these claims-makers predict deadly violence byostracized outcasts, reasoning that “boys who can’t shed tears shoot guns”(Levine, 1999, quoting Pollack; also see Cafazzo, 2001; Duffy & Pollack, 1998;Garbarino, 1999; Kantrowitz & Kalb, 1998; Pollack, 1998). Kleinfeld suggeststhat “the Columbine killings have been a wake-up call” that “boys also havetheir problems” (quoted in Psychology Today, 1999). While the vast majority ofjuvenile arrests in the US are of males, a counter-discourse points out that“girls are the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice population”(American Bar Association [ABA] & National Bar Association [NBA], 2001;also Children’s Defense Fund, 2000; Snyder & Sickmund, 1999; US Depart-ment of Justice, 2000). Despite reports of a recent overall drop in juvenilecrime in the US, professionals declare that American society has “the mostviolent population of male children in the entire world” (Levine, 1999, quotingGurian) and their “incredible” numbers pose “a danger to the rest of us”(Broude, 1999).

Fearsome Race Frame

Deeply woven into this discourse on troublesome (male) youth is a one-dimen-sional image of youth of colour, often depicted as gang members, inherentlycriminal and incapable of rehabilitation (Chan et al., 2001). “The kids people

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are scared of are kids of color” (quoted in Males, 1999, p. 8). With predationlocated within, their misdeeds are characterized as sinister and lacking (child-like) innocence (Ferguson, 2000, pp. 82–83). Stuart Hall et al. (1978) arguethat the media tend to racialize and dramatize crime, presenting stereotypedimages of black youth and providing disproportionate amounts of attention tocertain forms of crime perpetration and a lack of attention to black males ascasualties of crime.9 The discourse identifies black males as constituting “thegroup that scores lowest on virtually every educational measure” (Kleinfeld,1998a, p. 2) and as the ones who are “dropping out in alarming numbers intoa nihilistic, outlaw street culture … mak[ing] their chief preoccupations hooli-ganism, petty crime, and sexual predation” (Daley, 1999, p. 30; also Rosen-feld, 1998). The increasing chances for adolescent black males to attend andgraduate from college are contrasted with their rates of imprisonment (e.g.Koerner & Hardigg, 1999; Mortenson, 1996; School Reform News, 1998). Inthis way, claims-makers align race with concepts of immorality and violence,and racial minorities become reconceived from people who lack privilege topeople who are dangerous.10

Feminists as Folk Devils Frame

Conferring victim status on males also makes it obligatory to designate theperpetrator(s) of harm. All moral panics identify and denounce those agentsdeemed responsible and the press infuses accounts with danger and blame inits juxtaposed depictions of good (heroes) and evil (“folk devils”) (Cohen,1972, pp. 11–12). Since the advent of mass schooling in the 19th century,there have been charges that by merely being female, women teachers harmtheir male students (see accounts in Biklen, 1995; Grumet, 1988; Sadker &Sadker, 1993). Connell (1996, p. 206) points out that there was “minor panic”in the US in the 1960s over feminized schools denying boys their “readingrights”. The complaint now is that boys are victims of female teachers whoallegedly dominate the profession, create a feminized culture in the school,design curriculum for the female’s learning style, and cater to and rewardfemale patterns of behaviour (e.g. Coeyman, 2001; Gurian, Henley, & True-man, 2001; Sommers, 2000; Sowell, 2000; Zinsmeister, 2000). Feministteachers are demonized as “reckless zealots” responsible for miseducatingchildren (Sowell, 2000).

Claims-makers report that male students experience a hostile school climate(Kleinfeld, 1998a, p. 2); indeed, “school is a terrible place for boys [where]they are trapped by ‘The Matriarchy’” (quoted in Mahony, 1998, p. 44). Boysare “disillusioned” by the nature and extent of the teacher attention they feelthey receive, becoming less engaged in school than girls (Kleinfeld 1998a,pp. 48–49; Sommers, 2000, pp. 26–38). These claims run counter to a largevolume of early (e.g. Kelly, 1988) and more recent (e.g. Howe, 1997) observa-tional evidence. A counter-discourse argues that schools actually reinforcenormative conceptions of masculinity through their structure, pedagogy, and

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curriculum, and such conceptions are often in conflict with the ethos of theschool (e.g. Connell, 1996; Kenway, 1995; Mac an Ghaill, 1994). Martino(1994) reports that it is not “feminizing” school experiences but a traditionalmasculinity ideology devoid of self-expression and emotions that keeps boysfrom succeeding.11

The low number of male teachers in primary schools is linked in thediscourse to a concern with the increase in families headed by a single female,suggesting an absence of male role models in the primary areas of boys’ lives(Bly, 1990; D’Antonio, 1994; Gurian, 1997; Neal, 2000; Ryan, 1998). In thisway, the domain of the constructed problem is expanded beyond the contextof schooling into the sphere of the family, thereby connecting with anothermoral discourse in contemporary politics. In Fatherless America, DavidBlankenhorn (1995, p. 30) blatantly declares that “fatherless boys commitcrimes”, while media reports charge that “the most dangerous boys in Americaare those raised in inner city matriarchies” (Zinsmeister, 2000, p. A21). Suchsimplistic conceptions of social role rely on “unproblematized notions ofmasculinity” (Raphael Read, 1998, p. 63) and attribute nurturing to biologicalrather than cultural roles. While most researchers agree that father absence isassociated with adverse outcomes for children, the specific causes of theoutcomes are disputed (McLanahan, 2002; Silverstein & Auerbach, 1999).

Framing Warrants for Claims

Biological Destiny Frame

Kleinfeld (1998a) and Sommers (2000, p. 87) posit a natural physiologicalbasis for social differences to explain sexual inequalities in displays of certainintellectual skills. They reify the notion that males, by nature, are more variablein intellectual domains, as evidenced by the “spread phenomenon” of malescores disproportionately represented at both high and low extremes on intelli-gence tests (statistically, their larger variance) (Charen, 1998; Guyot, 2001;Kleinfeld, 1998b, pp. 51–52; Maugh, 1995; Sommers, 2000, p. 32). Suchhypotheses about variability have oscillated over time to conform to changingtheories and empirical observations (Fausto-Sterling, 1992; Hyde, 1997; Nod-dings, 1992).12 While tests designed to measure abilities on cognitive taskssometimes do reveal gender differences, the validity of those findings (Gould,1996; Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin, 1984) and their genesis as environmental orbiological are matters of much dispute (e.g. Caplan & Caplan, 1997; Crawford& Chaffin, 1997; Feingold, 1992).

Questioning the meaning (and reality) of sex differences has long been thesubject of much academic debate and recurring media cover stories.13 Formerlythe concern was with relative skull and brain size while presuming a positivecorrelation of size with intelligence (Gould, 1996; Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin,1984).14 Current popular wisdom is that men and women have different brainsin terms of size, shape, and function (e.g. Begley & Murr, 1995; Blum, 1999;

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Gorman, 1992; Phillips, 1990; Wright, 1994), specifically that women have a“larger” or “thicker” corpus callosum (Begley & Murr, 1995; Cafazzo, 2001;D’Antonio, 1994; Gorman, 1992; Peterson, 1995), presumably grantingwomen stronger verbal skills and men stronger visual-spatial ones. The meta-phor of mind as computer, such that these brain differences are “hard-wired”(e.g. Hales, 1998; Kessler, 1999; Kolata, 1995; Peterson, 1991; Richardson,1995), serves to reinforce the contentious idea that the organization of thebrain is the sole effect of genetics (Bing, 1999).

John Gray’s (1992) bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venusmade popular the belief that the sexes use their brains differently; specifically,men make use almost exclusively of the left hemisphere (or are more lateral-ized) when processing visual-spatial information while women use both hemi-spheres. This “differently wired” claim is treated as scientific “fact” (e.g.Sommers, 2000, p. 87) and is connected to another (disputed) claim, thatgreater lateralization (also referred to as “specialization”) implies greater skillcapacity (e.g. D’Antonio, 1994; Hales, 1998). Men perform better on stan-dardized spatial tasks and this explains their performance in science andmathematics—male superiority allegedly is “innate” (e.g. Leo, 1995). Thebrain hemisphere differentiation explanation of cognitive differences has be-come so familiar that it is featured in fashion magazines (e.g. Black, 1992),despite a substantial body of evidence that renders the supposition untenable(e.g. Bryden, McManus, & Bulman-Fleming, 1994; Efron, 1990; Tavris,1993).

Sommers (2000, p. 76) and Kleinfeld (1998a, p. 24; 1998b, pp. 51–52)argue that the male brain is structured and operates differently than the femalebrain due to hormonal differences that, in turn, lead to different patterns incognitive ability. Presuming that spatial-rotational skills are fundamental tomathematical reasoning,15 Kleinfeld (1998a, p. 24) speculates, based on con-tentious evidence,16 that sex differences in mathematics may trace to biologicaldifferences in testosterone levels, since adult hormones have been claimed to belinked to cognitive performance on visual-spatial tests.17 Popularized in thebook and television series Brain Sex (Moir & Jessel, 1991), the idea has beenwidely circulated in science and news magazines (e.g. Leo, 1995; Phillips,1990) even though invalidated by many scientists (e.g. Bleier, 1984; Bryden,McManus, & Bulman-Fleming, 1994; Foss, 1996). If the differences in math-ematical skills could plausibly be attributed to differences in brain structure,they might have as their source early learning experiences rather than hor-mones (Foss, 1996; Halpern, 1997; Hyde, 1997).

While the claims-makers employ an equal rights rhetoric to argue that boysare shortchanged, they also deny inequality as a social problem when theycontend that gender disparities favouring males do not reflect social injustice.Social roles are said to follow from inherent sex differences in interests andmotivation, independent of societal influences (e.g. Goldberg, 1993; Kleinfeld,1999; Parker, 1999). Gender inequality in wealth, power, and status is ratio-nalized as personal choice and innate inequitable human nature, thereby

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creating “the ‘no problem’ problem” (see Rhode, 1997, pp. 1–20). Boys’“innate” math superiority is used to foreclose girls from disciplines such asphysics and engineering (e.g. Wade, 1994; Moir & Jessel, 1991, p. 6). Acounter-discourse argues that “one of the fallacies of sexual science has beenthe belief that nature—bodies and brains—is less mutable than culture”(Schiebinger, 1991, p. 116), because behaviour with a biological componentcan be affected by culture, while some learned behaviour can be deeplyingrained and difficult to modify.

Because claims-makers believe boys and girls are inherently different byvirtue of their brain structure, they are assumed to possess different learningstyles (Cafazzo, 2001; D’Antonio, 1994; Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001;Kessler, 1999). Popular writers suggest that while it may not be physicallyharmful,18 it is wasteful to train women to think “like men” (skilled in abstractmathematics) because ability “is set in the womb” (Moir & Moir, 1998, p. 123;also Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001; Gurian, 2002). One reason girls are“catching up in math and science” while “boys continue to lag behind inreading and writing” (Sommers, 2000, p. 33; also Kleinfeld, 1998b, pp. 55–57)19 is because, as the argument goes, current classroom practices favour alanguage-rich approach to learning (left brain hemisphere, where girls are saidto be stronger), which seriously disadvantages boys, who are thought to benaturally more oriented to the spatial and physical right hemisphere (e.g.Cafazzo, 2001; National Review, 1998; Rosenfeld, 1998).20 This claim relatesto another argument on gendered forms of literacy practices that describes boysas “differently literate” in terms of how and what they read and write (e.g.Millard, 1997).21

Scientific Authority Frame

Claims-makers charge that political investments impair feminists’ ability toimpartially evaluate a literature (e.g. Young, 1999, p. 10; also see Halpern,1998, p. 331; Kleinfeld, 2000), while claims-makers profess to reveal truthsabout the inexorable natural world—namely, a biological basis for socialdifference (Antonucci, 1995; Faludi, 1995; Kaminer, 1996). A “contrastiverhetoric” (Hargreaves, 1981) is employed wherein claims-makers’ practicesand values are legitimated and justified by means of comparison with a rivaldiscourse claims-makers deem “junk science” and “propaganda” (Billups,2000; Kleinfeld, 1998a; Moir & Moir, 1998, p. 21; Sommers, 2000, p. 87).This “boundary-work rhetoric” (Gieryn, 1983) attributes the certain “truth” ofscientific knowledge (in a positivist tradition) as the means to avoid ideologicaldistortion of the way things “really” are (Sommers, quoted by Billups, 2000).Claims-makers accuse advocacy groups (e.g. AAUW) and feminist researchersof having been hysterically seeking evidence of inequalities that were eliminateda generation ago, thereby implying that their moral judgment is under theinfluence of irrational or emotional factors rather than based in sound assess-ment of the condition. This rhetoric of hysteria is combined with “telling

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anecdotes” (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993) that dramatically characterize the largerabstract problem in terms of an individual’s experience, thereby linking it to aspecific image. These “atrocity tales” help shape perceptions about the natureand magnitude of the problem (Best, 1987): the six-year-old boy punished asa harasser for kissing a female classmate on the cheek (Sommers, 2000, p. 54);the four kindergartener boys suspended from school for recess play of pointingtheir fingers at one another and pretending to shoot (Leo, 2000; Young, 2001).In a “rhetoric of unreason” (Ibarra & Kitsuse, 1993) feminists are accused ofhaving “distorted” the research (Kleinfeld, 1998a, p. 63) or having relied onresearch “riddled with errors … or missing altogether” (Sommers, quoted inCharen, 2000; also see Kleinfeld 1998a, p. 47; Sommers, 1994, pp. 141–142).Images of conspiracy and manipulation are evoked when claims-makers chargefeminist researchers with deceptive practices, intellectual fraud, and ethicalimpropriety (Kleinfeld, 1998a; see also Sommers, 1994; 2000).

Further boundary-work is accomplished when a scientific frame is deployedthat identifies claims-makers’ work as disinterested science (albeit also theheroic rescue of boys) while accusing gender equity advocates of bias andpoliticizing their research (e.g. Kleinfeld, 1998a; 2000). Research by feministsis described as “not based on such hard and comprehensive measures” butinstead on “soft”, “weak”, and “highly subjective” ones (Kleinfeld, 1998a,p. 40; 1998b, p. 59). A tacit assumption here is that knowledge is meagre (not“hard science”) when not expressed in numbers. In the discourse, numbers areequated with facts, not only implying that such facts are indisputable, but alsoserving to give the appearance of fairness and objectivity (see e.g. Kleinfeld,1998a, pp. 43–51). Quantitative methods are invoked as a form of “mechanicalobjectivity” (Daston & Galison, 1992) grounded in socially neutral proceduresas “technologies of trust” (Porter, 1995) rather than in the “technologies ofsocial management” from which they evolved (see Fausto-Sterling, 2000,pp. 135–140). When the actual interpretive practices of scientists are ignored inthe discourse, science becomes misconstrued as distinct from any subjectivespeculation, allowing the deployment of statistical data as rhetorical tools todefend epistemic authority, thereby absolving claims-makers of responsibilityfor any injustice.

Asymmetrical analysis of research results and contested findings are pre-sented as “undisputed fact” in the headlines (e.g. Charen, 1998; Leo, 1995).Popular authors proclaim “the nature and cause of [gendered] brain differ-ences are now known beyond speculation, beyond prejudice, and beyondreasonable doubt” (Moir & Jessel, 1991, p. 11). Accounts generated by univer-sity laboratories and policy think tanks are gathered, transformed, and trans-mitted as “news”. Because news is “manufactured” by news writers’ choicesabout what makes sense and what matters (Romano, 1986), scientific uncer-tainty and contingency are mutated into journalistic conviction and dramaticsimplicity (Murray, Schwartz, & Lichter, 2001). The caveats and complexitiesthat describe boys’ education are parsed by the press into the appearance of

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unequivocal certainty to reinforce prevailing ideologies, along with a certaininsinuation that some folk devil is to blame.

Framing Conclusions for Claims

Back-to-Basics and Boy-Friendly Frames

American claims-makers have relied on the effects of a boys’ underachievementdiscourse abroad to validate their own efforts. Sommers (2000, 15–16, 38–40,160–164) juxtaposes a “British concern” with an “American neglect” of theproblem of “male underperformance”. Boys’ underachievement became thelanguage of educational policy in the UK when it was presented as part of thelarger problem of “failing schools” (that fail boys) (Epstein et al., 1998;Weiner, Arnot, & David, 1997). Sommers (2000) traces boys’ underachieve-ment to “progressive” and “child-centered” educational theories in Americanschools and calls for more didactic and structured teaching in a competitiveenvironment. Kleinfeld advocates a return to traditional teaching, a back-to-basics approach with individualized work and competition (quoted in Ward,2000). The media concur that “the real culprit [for boys’ underachievement]is the radical shift in teaching methods and in the content of the schoolcurriculum that progressive education has wrought” (Daley, 1999, p. 26; alsosee Attarian, 2000; Charen, 2000; Ward, 2000). Although the claims thatprogressive teaching and assessment favour girls and traditional methods aremore congenial to boys have been disputed (Boaler, 1998), the discoursecontinues to frame boys’ failure—and girls’ success—as in part an artifact ofteaching methods.

Appeals to gender equity rights include the claim that meeting boys’ specialneeds requires specialized services, programmes, or instruction that suit theirpreferred modes of interacting and learning that they bring to the classroom.Proposals for single-sex (all-male) schools and programmes for boys (Eber-stadt, 2000; Leo, 2000; Zinsmeister, 2000) and calls for alterations to curricu-lum and teaching practices (Cafazzo, 2001; Charen, 2000; Coeyman, 2001;Frazier, 2000; Kersten, 2000; Sommers, 2000; Sowell, 2000; Young, 2001) areclosely tied to the warrant theories about boys’ natural aptitudes and prefer-ences. Because boys are thought to have been adversely affected by cooperativelearning, an emphasis on rote learning, drill and practice, tests, and measurableachievement and competition in a teacher-centered pedagogy is advocated asremedy (Moir & Jessel, 1991, p. 152; Sommers, 2000, pp. 167–170). Claims-makers advocate back-to-basics literacy programmes that are phonics centred,whole class, and teacher led; that emphasize grammar and punctuation; andthat include “boy-friendly” reading materials such as adventure, sports, andhorror stories (e.g. Sommers, 2000, p. 163).

Claims-makers hold educators morally and professionally responsible forreforming education. The teacher is seen as responsible for accommodating theindividual learner’s needs, embodied in their gendered brains. Any reform,

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then, begins with pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes thatought to include brain research on learning differences (Sylwester, 1993). Thediscourse’s proposed solution includes reshaping institutional norms in termsof behavioural expectations, a masculinization of teaching methods (e.g. phon-ics) that favor boys and “guy-ify” schools (Pollack, 1998, p. 250), and acurriculum that is more interesting to them and “boy-friendly” (e.g. fantasyand adventure stories) (e.g. Churnin, 2001; Coeyman, 2001; Eberstadt, 2000).

Conclusion: The social construction of boys’ underachievement

The moral panic about underachieving boys has a profound effect on publicopinions and views of educational professionals. Educators and administratorsaccept the dominant oversimplified account of girls outperforming boys andexpress concern that the balance has now tipped in girls’ favour and opportu-nities are being denied to boys (Kenway, 1995; Kleinfeld, 1998a, pp. 63–66;Mills, 1997). Journals that can influence educational policies publish articleslinking biological essentialist research to domains of intelligence and teachingpractices (e.g. Sylwester, 1993). Pop psychology instructs teachers how toaccommodate innate gender differences (Cafazzo, 2001; Gurian, Henley, &Trueman, 2001). School districts offer workshops on male issues and boys’learning and listening styles, and the media call for special programmes andsingle-sex schools targeting “boys’ needs” (e.g. Hetzner, 2001; Kessler, 1999).When boys are constructed as the new disadvantaged, ameliorative action canmean sweeping reform measures such as those enacted throughout the UK (seeSalisbury & Riddell, 2000).

Organizations that can command financial resources and access to media orinfluential political figures can impact upon the success of defining a phenom-enon as a social problem. Work by both Kleinfeld and Sommers has beensponsored by two groups that actively oppose feminism and feminist issues, theWomen’s Freedom Network (WFN) and the Independent Women’s Forum(IWF).22 Supported by a conservative philanthropy (Antonucci, 1995; Cokori-nos, 2000; Gilman, 2000), these relatively small groups provide their primarilyyoung affluent white professional women members a strong media presence(Cokorinos, 2000; Kaminer, 1996; Gilman, 2000). Their trained spokesper-sons present gender issues as public drama and build credibility throughrepetitive good press (Gilman, 2000), which in turn contributes to theireffectiveness in influencing media coverage and shaping public opinion andpolicy (Faludi, 1995). Their rhetorical framing of victimized boys as scientifictruth, together with dramatic anecdotes personalizing their experiences, suc-cessfully constructs public concern about the existence of educational andsocial inequities for boys.

The success of a moral panic relies not on its ability to reflect complicatednuanced effects but in its ability to oversimplify highly complex situations,forecast danger, and attribute blame. The discourse about boys’ underachieve-ment draws on existing public perceptions of dropouts as a moral problem and

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reinforces these beliefs with fears about increasingly dangerous youth activities.Despite contradictory evidence, the general consensus reached is that boys arefailing, minority adolescent males who fail are becoming violent criminals, andyouth crime is expanding at an alarming rate. The complex interrelationshipsof race, social class, gender, and achievement are obscured in sound-bite newsaccounts. “The success of one panic lends credibility to another” (Schissel,1997, p. 16), and where the politics of fear are also the politics of stratificationthe prevailing social order is maintained.

Notes

1. This article draws on ideas presented at the American Educational Research Associ-ation Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 2000.

2. See Tannen (1979), who traces various uses of the term “frame” as well as the closelyrelated terms “schema” and “script.” Similar concepts used in critical discourseanalysis include “repertoires” (Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984; Potter & Wetherell, 1990)and “discourses” (Parker, 1990).

3. See Williams and Williams (1995) for a detailed illustration of a similar paradox ofrhetorically linked discourses that are politically opposed.

4. Other reports suggest that educational gains for some females have not converted intoenhanced benefits such as careers and income (Bae et al., 2000).

5. The media report little on a discourse that presents females as disproportionatelyvictims of rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, domestic violence, eating disorders,and self-mutilation (e.g. AAUW, 1993; Phillips, 1998; Sadker, 1999; Stein, N.,1995).

6. Faludi’s (1991) concept of “backlash” has been used to describe resistance towomen’s claims for equality and the problematization of female achievement. Forcritical discussions of the concept see Cudd (2002), and Roman and Eyre (1997).

7. Chesney-Lind (1999) observed a similar trend shortly after release of the AAUWreport, when there was a surge in journalistic coverage about girls engaged innon-traditional violent behaviour. Girls’ violent behaviour was largely ignored orsexualized in the past (Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 1998); the “discovery” of girls’violent and aggressive behaviour is said to be a product of social reconceptions of andresponses to girls’ behaviours rather than any increase in occurrence (ABA & NBA,2001). The current focus on girls’ violence also overshadows other arguments aboutdramatically rising female (and decreasing male) rates of violent victimization in theUS (Craven, 1996; 1997).

8. A counter-discourse argues that adolescent girls are twice as likely as boys to bedepressed (Phillips, 1998); they attempt suicide at higher rates (US Department ofHealth and Human Services, 2000), but males are 12 times more likely to choosehighly lethal firearms as their means (Children’s Defense Fund, 2000, p. 114).

9. The dramatic effects of gun violence on young black males (particularly high firearmhomicide rates) are widely circulated statistics. Media do not report on counter-claimsthat race, in isolation from other circumstances (such as poverty and disadvantage),cannot predict propensity for violence (Reiss & Roth, 1993, p. 130; US Departmentof Heath and Human Services, 2001).

10. Juxtaposed against this image is the success of minority women in higher education,yet framed in the discourse as another social problem: college-educated black womenwho cannot find college-educated black males to marry (e.g. Koerner & Hardigg,1999; Mortenson, 2001).

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11. Others, such as Kindlon and Thompson (1999), describe a “culture of cruelty” thatforces boys to deny their emotions and disguise their feelings; Pollack (1998) refersto the “boy code” and “mask of masculinity” boys adopt to hide their fears, suppressdependency and vulnerability, and posture a false bravado of risk taking and violence.

12. When variability was considered a biological liability, women were thought to be themore variable sex; when it was later seen as a benefit (after Darwin), greater variabilitywas attributed to males (see Fausto-Sterling, 1992, pp. 13–24).

13. Genetically based explanations for social phenomena have become so popular thatHerrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve was a bestseller even though de-nounced by scientists as unsound (e.g. Fischer et al., 1996; Kincheloe, Steinberg, &Gresson, 1996).

14. The contemporary physiological questions have moved on to such things as therelative number of brain cells (e.g. Vazsonyi, 1997), although there are exceptions(e.g. Rushton, 1995).

15. No conclusive evidence establishes a biological basis for gender-related differences invisual-spatial and problem-solving abilities (Caplan & Caplan, 1997); any correlationof these abilities with mathematical performance remains contentious (see Fausto-Sterling, 1992, pp. 260–270).

16. The theory that male and female brains (and bodies) develop differently due toprenatal testosterone relies on studies of rats and rhesus monkeys; scientists ve-hemently disagree on whether human parallels can be drawn (cf. Bleier, 1984;Goldfoot & Neff, 1987; Halpern, 1998).

17. Over two decades ago a media blitz about a later discredited study (namely, Benbow& Stanley, 1980) trumpeted a male “math gene” that supposedly controlled spatialthinking (e.g. Begley, 1988; Williams & King, 1980). The original theory (seeGeschwind & Behan, 1982) was that exposure to high levels of testosterone prenatallyenhances functioning of the right hemisphere, which is generally thought to beresponsible for processing spatial problems.

18. In 1873, Edward Clark (and others) used the conservation-of-energy principle tonaturalize the belief that academic study was physiologically harmful to women. Hethought the human nervous system had a fixed amount of “vital force”, and energyspent in developing a female’s brain would be diverted from her reproductive organs,endangering her ability to bear children. Schooling was not thought to threaten boys’health. Gurian’s (2002) popular modern rendition is that nature intends girls primar-ily for having and nurturing children and, given the structure of their brains, if theyfocus instead on academic achievement and careers they will suffer lifelong misery.

19. The modes of literacy in which girls outperform boys have been identified by otherresearchers as “dated ones” with less practical application than the computer andtechnological literacies in which boys excel (e.g. Alloway & Gilbert, 1997; Millard,1997, p. 154).

20. Originally, women were thought to be passionate and irrational, and hence rightbrained (while men operated in the left hemisphere of intellect and reason). Laterwhen genius and creativity were suspected to be located in the right hemisphere,women were deemed left brained (see Tavris, 1993).

21. Contrary to the popular press, though, while the major theories on learning stylesdelineate preferences as influenced by a range of factors, their approaches do notrepresent gender differences in the distribution of styles (Dusek & Hammer, 1995).

22. The IWF termed feminism on campus a “cult” and aims to counter women’s studiesdepartments through its new webzine project, “SheThinks.Org” (Mulhauser, 2001, p.A38). Critics describe the IWF as having “a tenacious attachment to traditionalnotions of gender difference” (Kaminer, 1996) and being “the premier antifeministwomen’s groups in Washington” (Cokorinos, 2000, p. 13).

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