The Missing Link: Addressing Boys’ Disengagement from Education

By Andrew Reiner

During a speaking tour of six boys’ schools in New Zealand last summer I also facilitated workshops for boys in middle and high school. These workshops were a gamble. Everything depended on whether or not the boys would be willing to write on plastic white masks, or on pieces of paper, words they rarely, if ever, uttered aloud. Most boys everywhere know these words should never see light of day.

On the front of the masks I asked boys to write words that described the “face” they showed the world. I expected to see the commonly evoked adjectives they shared: “upbeat,” “happy,” “confident,” “funny,” “sporty,” “got it together.”

On the back side I asked them to write words which described the parts of themselves they didn’t feel safe showing the world. This, of course, was the thorny part. Yet the boys didn’t hold back. These were the most common responses: “lonely,” “sad,” “lost,” “confused,” “scared,” “angry.”

Andrew Reiner

Andrew Reiner teaches at Towson University in the U.S., is author of the book Better Boys, Better Men: The New Masculinity That Creates Greater Courage and Emotional Resiliency and the upcoming book Boys Re-Connected: The Growing Epidemic of Alienation and How To Stop It (Johns Hopkins University Press).