Cultivating new male role models in Literature

It’s a tired Tuesday afternoon. My GCSE English Literature class sit expectedly in front of me, propped up on tables and ready to retrieve some vital piece of knowledge from their soaked sponges for brains. We are looking at Macbeth and his relationship with Lady Macbeth.

“What does it mean to be a man in Shakespeare’s time?” I ask to my thoughtful top set.

“Macbeth kills the king to prove his masculinity,” says a student, “Lady Macbeth has effectively told him to man up!”

Here in lies the problem. The curriculum offered at KS4 and beyond explores this binary interpretation of gender; women are weak, subservient, and objectified – men are domineering, aggressive and violent. The boys in front of me have no positive role model; by KS4 they have a choice of anarchic boys in ‘Lord of the Flies’, a lonely misanthropist in ‘A Christmas Carol’ or a repressed civilised gentleman whose demons become the embodiment of evil in ‘Jekyll & Hyde’.

This led me to question the culture of masculinity I witness day in and day out within the classroom. Within the UK we know that girls consistently outperform boys in GCSE results. Indeed, according to the GOV.UK 2022 statistics, 76.7% of girls compared to 69.8% of boys achieved a grade 5 or above in their English and Maths GCSEs. So why are boys falling behind and how does this link to gender roles?

There is a myriad of answers to this question. However, the idea that continuously unsettled me was the language and behaviour of the boys I witnessed day in and day out within the classroom.

Boys societally are subjected to different expectations growing up; our language of “boys will be boys” and “boys don’t cry” can have detrimental results. Ben Hurst’s TED talk summarized this best when he said, “Boys won’t be boys – boys will be what we teach them to be”. So, has our language and expectations led to an environment where it is not ‘safe’ for boys to be vulnerable or emotional?

In the classroom, I see boys laughing off ‘banter’ for fear that they should showcase that a comment has stung, and, at its extreme, boys who internalise their emotions and frustrations to such an extent that they feel unable to open up to anyone. Between the ages of 15-24 in the UK, male suicides are three times more common than female suicides (ONS 2018 survey). So, what can we be doing as practitioners to change this culture and close the gap between boys and girls in education?

Taking my observations further, I decided it was time to cultivate and carve out a new image of what it meant to be a ‘strong’ boy in the 21^st century. How can we simply push the idea of masculinity being domineering and violent within Literature, when the reality is far more complex? Writing the story, ‘The Tale of Dif the Dragon’ allowed me to explore a male protagonist whose power did not come from aggression or violence, but compassion.

Upon publication, I conducted a survey with my Year 7 students. They unanimously identified Dif – the protagonist who finds power in his tears not aggression – as the strongest character in the story. This was in contrast to Dif’s foil ‘The Stone Dragon’ who represses his emotional struggles, resulting in anger and destruction. One of the boys surveyed observed how easy it was to be angry but how difficult it was to be kind. Their words made me think – what does it say about boys today if expressing emotions is seen to be the strongest and hardest thing of all?

1. Practitioner awareness – as teachers we need to be educating ourselves on gender roles and stereotypes within society. Our language has a detrimental impact. No more “dust yourself down” or “man up” – instead we can create that safe environment every day within our corridors and classroom; challenging ‘banter’ and calling out gender stereotyping when we see it – for boys and girls.
2. Exploring a diverse range of male characters within English classes. There is currently a lack of mainstream texts that explore men as vulnerable and emotionally intelligent – we need to be choosing texts with a conscious awareness to explore beyond traditionally ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ figures.
3. Promote emotionally intelligent traits within the classroom. As Lemov says, we have experienced a “pandemic in an epidemic” (Reconnect, Doug Lemov); long periods of isolation have diminished social skills and left students unable to manage everyday challenges. We can address this within curriculum building by incorporating key emotional intelligence tools and opportunities for reflection within every lesson.

A culture doesn’t change overnight, but we can be taking small steps everyday within our classrooms to explore masculinity and femininity with the complexity and diversity that the topic deserves.

So, returning to my Y10 Macbeth class: with more self-awareness from both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, maybe the entire Shakespearean tragedy could have been avoided!

 

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