Why Relationship is the Key to Boys Succeeding at School
“I’m doing homework,” seventh-grader Kieran texted me late on a weekday night.
“Homework at 10:30 PM?” I wrote back.
“I have ten pages to do,” he said. “I didn’t get it done today because I’m too slow and retarded.”
For decades, there has been no shortage of articles, news segments, research studies and books on the so-called ‘boy crisis’ in education. There are a thousand proposed reasons that ‘boys are falling behind’ in schools, and just as many solutions.
American pundits like Michael Gurian have long called for ‘boy-friendly’ classrooms based on boys’-brains-are-wired-differently pseudoscience. Brookings scholar Richard Reeves just hit the shelves with a longform reflection on modern masculinity in which he proposes starting boys in school a year later than girls because of differences in brain maturation. Elsewhere the problem is identified as boys falling behind in literacy, or schools not hiring enough male teachers.
There’s something missing here.
Kieran’s school has several skilled male teachers. He can read just fine. Though small for his age, he is still one of the most emotionally mature eleven-year-olds I know. And while I’m sure he’d love changes in the classroom, that’s not why he texted me late at night on a weekday.
What he’s looking for is connection.
Boys are skilled with emotions and interested in connection.
The reason that boys’ responsiveness to relational learning remains overlooked has to do with an enduring myth of boys’ lack of emotional capability.
The ‘boys will be boys’ culture that we’re familiar with today originated in the early 1900s. Only in the late 1990s did psychologists start discussing the consequences of this narrow societal definition of manhood for boys themselves.
For example, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson described a culture of cruelty that “imposes a code of silence on boys, requiring them to suffer without speaking of it and to be silent witnesses to acts of cruelty to others.”
“The power of this code is so strong, and it is such a pervasive part of the masculine identity, that boys take it for granted. They have learned their lessons well. To remain silent is strong and masculine, and to speak out is not.”
While this perspective on boyhood in many ways laid the foundation for the way we think about boys’ experiences with ‘toxic’ masculinity today, it was only one step in the right direction.
If we’re not careful, the ‘boys don’t cry’ rhetoric turns into the idea that boys can’t cry, even if they wanted to.
In response to this narrative of boys in crisis, researchers Matthew Oransky and Jeanne Maracek studied boys’ experiences with friendship and emotion. In particular, how boys themselves understand and respond to mental health struggles and vulnerability. It turns out that boys challenge the claim that they’re incapable of understanding and communicating emotions.
“The boys we spoke to appeared quite skilled in reading others’ feelings: They knew when others were upset, hurt, or afraid, just as they could recount their own moments of terror, strain, or worry. Rather than having an impoverished emotional life or a deficiency in comprehending or empathizing with others’ feelings, boys made use of complex strategies regarding the display of their own feelings and shutting down unwanted or taboo communications from others.”
Put more simply: Contrary to the stereotype, adolescent boys possess a breadth and depth of emotional and relational abilities.
So in order to discuss how to help boys succeed in school, we have to first understand them as deeply emotional, effortlessly observant, highly aware and inherently relational people—even when they sometimes appear to be the exact opposite.
Read more: Past Voice Male article, How to Support Boys Emotionally.
Relationships are at the centre of boys’ experiences in school.
Every educator has struggled with the devil-may-care student who is indifferent in the classroom at best, and at worst finds ways to be actively disruptive or flagrantly disrespectful. But let’s be clear: what we see in those moments is not really a ‘problematic’ boy or ‘toxic’ masculinity. It’s relational disengagement.
Relational disengagement is at the heart of why boys fail in school.
Take for example Carola Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Baolian Qin-Hilliard’s study on why immigrant girls consistently outperform immigrant boys. What they found was that boys’ lower academic achievement isn’t related to less interest, capacity for learning, or effort put towards schoolwork. Rather, it has to do with a “combination of low social support, hostile experiences in school and negative teacher expectations.”
In other words, boys—and particularly boys of colour—are far less likely to have high-quality supportive relationships at school. And supportive relationships lay the foundation for boys’ academic engagement.
In the late 2000s, the International Boys’ Schools Coalition tasked Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley with a research study on why and how boys succeed in school. The researchers asked thousands of boys and their teachers to map out their most impactful pedagogies (method and practice of teaching). By and large, teachers responded by talking about the craft of their lessons. Boys, however, focused again and again on the qualities and personalities of the teachers themselves. As they shared their findings, Reichert and Hawley concluded: “Relationship is the very medium through which successful teaching and learning is performed.”
“Boys sustain their engagement in the classroom when they feel held in a positive, trusting relationship to their teacher. The establishment of this relationship precedes their engagement and subsequent achievement.”
The question became, then, less how a boy learns but for whom he will learn.
Like all young people, boys want to be known and loved. They respond to educators who listen to them, who demonstrate their care, who express interest, practice patience and attend to resistance with capability and respect.
As Reichert and Hawley put it: teachers who can honestly and affirmatively answer two basic student questions:
Do you know me?
Are you interested in me?”
While there is warmth within this connection, Reichert and Hawley stress that rather than an affectionate friendship, what they are talking about is an effective ‘working alliance’—a triadic exchange between the teacher, the student, and the subject between them.
Supportive learning relationships are the blueprint for ending cycles of violence.
The importance of relationships has been widely acknowledged in psychological theory since the mid-20th century. As Judy Chu emphasizes in an article on adolescent boys’ identities, human development occurs not in isolation with the option of having relationships, but primarily through and within our relationships with others.
If we consider the positive development of boys within a culture of violence, relational learning is suddenly about much more than just academic success.
“Relationships can crucially influence whether a boy internalizes or resists societal expectations and assumptions. Boys’ experiences of being validated and valued in relationships appear to be key to boys’ resistance and resilience.”
Take for example Louis, the 11-year-old bully-turned-leader who recorded a podcast series with me in the winter of 2021.
One of the most impactful things I learned from him was the impact of seeing himself reflected in my eyes: he didn’t believe he could change until I showed him that I did. He was transformed through my steadfast belief in the best parts of himself.
The ‘boy crisis’ in education is often centred on post-secondary enrolment.
Forgive me, but I think that school should be less about standardized testing and more about a fundamental opportunity to be deeply known, challenged to grow and empowered to make a difference.
So sure, let’s develop strategies to better engage boys in school.
And let’s not forget that what we’re really talking about is a sea change in the positive development of boys—a blueprint for ending cycles of violence by connecting deeply and effectively with the next generation of men.
On that weekday night, I told Kieran he wasn’t slow or retarded. I let him know I could help him with homework the next day, and I meant it.
The real message wasn’t about math homework. What I was really telling him was that he was worth my time. A boy who believes he is good enough for a caring adult’s time and attention is a boy who will engage in the classroom.
And when all is said and done, a young man who sees the best in himself. Just like we did.