The resources and strategies that 10-11 year old boys use to construct masculinities in the school setting

we go, ‘Just hit him,’ and he goes, ‘I will if he hits me or pushes
me’ and he started pushing him around and he didn’t do nothing;
he got pushed into a bush and he walked off and he was crying
Chris:        Eric and all us said we wouldn’t join in, just you two have the fight

but he wouldn't, but if that was someone else, if someone pushes
you or punches you, you’d just hit them back wouldn’t you?

JS:           So you’ve got to be quite a good fighter and look after yourself,

stand up for yourself?

Robert:       Some people like Simon go, ‘Oh I’ll get my sister’s boyfriend on

you and Tim O’Neil’ [an unknown person] but he won’t touch me
‘cos my brother’s older than him and my brother’s left school and
my brother/

Chris:       That’s what Dan used to do, Dan used to get his brother but when

you get your brother, that shows that you’re really not that strong,
you have to get someone fighting [...] you can’t fight for yourself

Humour, including the use of cussing.

Another resource the boys drew on was humour which was an integral and indispensable
part of everyday school life, and its practice was a particularly prevalent part of the peer
group culture at Petersfield and Westmoor Abbey. Although it took different forms in
each school, humour played an important part in affirming and reaffirming the collective
identities of the boys’ (and girls’) peer groups and the relations between them: indeed, in
many ways, humour was actually ‘constitutive’ of identities (Kehily & Nayak 1997, p.
70). Woods (1976) emphasises the therapeutic qualities of laugher, and describes it as an
‘antidote to schooling’, which is used by the boys as a form of coping with, and escaping
from, the daily realities of the repeated routines, regulations and demands of authority.
Sometimes humour was employed by pupils as a confrontational device against teachers,
for misbehaviour in the classroom (and around the school) could also enhance status.

Indeed, challenging and testing the boundaries of school’s (and in particular, the specific
teacher’s) authority by trying to generate a laugh was a key constituent of the pupils’ peer
culture, and was used as a strategy to foster and confirm camaraderie (Francis, 1998,

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