Do Boys’ Voices Break?
© Next Gen Men 2019
By Jonathon Reed
Last week, I had boys in our program who were preparing for their school’s winter concert, boys who had just found out their parts in their school’s rendition of High School Musical; as well as a conversation with a boy who said he tries not to show how much he enjoys singing in music class. So I’ve been thinking about boys singing.
I was looking into this and came across the work of Martin Ashley, who received funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council to research boys’ voices and music education. His work led me to the stages of adolescent voice change developed by John Cooksey in 1993. You can see a summary of Cooksey’s framework below.
Martin Ashley, “Broken voices or a broken curriculum? The impact of research on UK school choral practice with boys,” British Journal of Music Education
As interesting as it was to glimpse at the intersection of masculinity, physiology and music academia, what intrigued me the most was the title of Ashley’s article itself: Broken voices or a broken curriculum?
You can see that there’s no mention of boys voices ‘breaking’ in Cooksey’s model. Boys’ ‘loss of vocal agility,’ for example, happens at the same stage as a ‘uniquely beautiful and rich’ voice. It’s a strengths-based approach to boys’ development. To quote Ashley: “Cooksey’s views amount to the proposition that a deficit model which positions boys as being in possession of a broken or defective vocal apparatus at a time when they are hypersensitive to their voices is about the worst thing possible.”
I found this particularly intriguing because I’ve never heard someone critique the term ‘breaking’ in the context of boys’ pubertal development. It makes me wonder what other notions about boyhood and masculinity continue to go unquestioned even today—even by an educator immersed in boys work like me—and it makes me wonder about the potential impact of challenging the ways boys are viewed as ‘broken,’ both in the education system and the movement for gender justice and violence prevention.
ICYMI This Week
Gender-neutral toys aren’t enough to beat toxic masculinity—but they’re a start (Quartz)
Kumail Nanjiani Wrote A Refreshingly Honest Caption About How He Got Jacked (BuzzFeed News)
The Miseducation of the American Boy (The Atlantic)
Written by Next Gen Men Program Manager Jonathon Reed as part of Learnings & Unlearnings, a weekly newsletter reflecting on our experiences working with boys and young men. Subscribe to get Learnings & Unlearnings delivered to your email inbox.