Jungen als Verlierer? Die Diskussion um die Benachteiligung von Jungen in der Schule

Abstract

In the public discussions about the relatively poor school achievements of boys as compared to girls, the female gender of the pedagogical specialists is often blamed. Most of the boys’ social performance and attitude toward achievement is, however, conditioned through images of men and women in their immediate social surroundings. Boys often find themselves in conflict at school when these images are oriented toward hegemonic conceptions of masculinity, in particular when found in the socially powerless underclass. This conflict is heightened when the boys are abused at home, statistically more likely to happen than in the case of girls. Another factor for the boys’ greater distancing from schools is their higher consumption of media forms that glorify violence. The trivializing assumption that the poorer achievements of boys are directly related to the female gender of the teachers thus ignores the true problems.