Last week I attended a conference about boys' engagement in school. The big buzz these days is fixing the formula for boy's achievement with better literacy test scores, lower suspension rates, and just overall positive connections between schools and males.

The crisis usually gets bent on what's wrong our boys and how either the boy code, the guy code, or the tough guise is shaping anti-social and anti-educational males.

But what's that old saying between crisis and opportunity? It seems to me that yes, traditional codes of masculinity mangle positive male development and that these codes are written far beyond the chalkboards of public school. In fact these codes make up the fabric of our culture: food and clothing to name just 2.

If dropouts are pushouts, disengagement is critique, French class is femine, and education is obediance, maybe we can take a second look at public school.

My last post looked at male mentoring and rites of passage -- the ritiuals that guide us from childhood to aduldhood. I'd like to propose we look to schools and schooling for some of this guidance.

Many have already talked about schooling as a process of 'becoming' where our identity is 'under construction' but what about as a rite of passage?

Mentors: While some students learn better from people who look like them (race, gender, etc) or have similar backgrounds, boys report that their best teachers are not necessarily male, but the adults who care and offer support. One quote I heard at the boys conference was "I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care." Well put. Schools are full of mentors who are male and female, teacher and student, principals in the office, and heroes in the curriculum. How would teacher’s qualifications or the school day differ if mentoring were a prized role?

Individual Development: There are differences between brain and body developments for boys and girls that affect their learning. But we can't mentor averages. I heard a radio interview recently with Barry MacDonald (mentoring boys expert) who said knowing that 175 cm is the average height of an adult male gives us little guidance for predicting a man's height. If public education is to give an equal opportunity for all students, then how can we take all we know about students (their differences and similarities) and offer lessons and levels that fit with their success?

What about gender development? Public schools are prime spaces for boys and girls to practice, perform, and play with gender codes and thus we should explicitly see these experiences as teachable and mentoring moments. Many more girls are now playing sports and experimenting with science than a generation ago, but where are the guys in French classes, family studies, drama, and environmental clubs?

One of the big issues driving these discussions on boys and schooling is the push for all-male classes and schools. But based on what I've seen so far, the thinking is built on a foundation of 'boys will be boys' and accommodating social codes of narrow male experiences (and I would add anti-female), rather than exploring and challenging them. To reference Barry MacDonald again "biology is not destiny". Thus for every boy who might benefit from same-sex classes, some other boy might loose out and at this stage in the research there’s no telling what the benefits are or what specifically caused them. Join a great discussion here.

Social Vision: Gender codes, rites of passage and mentoring are rooted in a vision of the future. My heart needs schools to be incubators of a better world, rather than a filter and accommodator for lowered expectations for the world that is here today. If and when schools do teach about the harsh economic and ecological realities, what trust (never mind skills and knowledge) exists that promises students real opportunity?

The story of Jane Elliot's 1968 class is a chilling tale of how difference and segregation reproduces hierarchies and even hate (on all sides). Now this might seem an extreme example, but unless the evidence is conclusive about single-sex schools, why would we separate boys and girls in schools? Is being in a ‘publicly funded’ (let’s be clear to make this distinction here) boy’s school a marker of a boy’s failed biology or privileged accommodation?

Researchers and educators are continuously improving educational philosophies and practices that are differentiated to the needs of each student and confirm the benefits of project and inquiry-based curriculum and collaborative learning. My fear at this point in the debate is that single-sex spaces lead to single-sex thinking, and rather than using gender as a lens into individual/social/educational success, we're using gender to avoid (just forgetting about money and budgets altogether for now) asking important political questions such as:

• is there a double standard (or sexist/homophobic judgment) at work when we accept and promote girls doing, feeling, and wanting traditionally boy things, but not the other way around?
• since gender and sexuality are so closely linked, how does a unified gender classroom explore and support a fluidity of sexualities?
• do single-sex schools address or distract us from the problem of which boys (overwhelmingly racialized and poor) are disengaging from school?

Belonging: At the boy’s conference I also watched a documentary called Boys to Men, which mirrored (in name and beyond) not only the mentor organization I wrote about last post, but a Toronto District School Board project. The power of belonging is central in my opinion to discussions on schooling and mentoring, since it can be both the disease and the cure for healthy manhood. Drug abuse, risky behaviour, invulnerability, violent entertainment and outbursts, emotional denial, performance stress, fear of failure, homophobia, and over-entitlement are just some of the conditions many males live with, while trying to conform to and belong to a circle of boys-to-men. I think schools (along with many other social structures) need to offer competing and irresistible options for boy-to-men to consider and experience.

A more radical gesture would be to re-visit curriculum, teaching practices, and the credit system to celebrate and elevate the hidden diversity of boys’ interests and skills to participate in the mentoring, development, social vision, and belonging ideas above. How do we do this? I’d start with ending the binary stated above: boys are neither a problem to be fixed nor a difference to be separated. My points and questions about mentoring hopefully keep us going in the right direction.