We asked The Irish Times for the chance to respond to recent criticisms of the personal and social education programme for teenage boys, Exploring Masculinities, which has been developed by the Department of Education.
Although we have had no involvement in either the design, planning or implementation of the programme, we think it is necessary to reply to journalists' remarks, as much of the published commentary is both educationally ill-informed and factually inaccurate.
First, it is important to place the Exploring Masculinities programme in the wider educational context. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Department of Education, with the support of the EU, funded a number of educational research projects on gender issues. While policy initiatives undertaken on foot of this research focused on both genders, they were more strongly oriented to girls and young women than to boys; these included the Futures (Girls into Technology) project (1992), Gender Matters (1996) and Balance (1997).
By the mid-1990s, many educationalists believed that it was necessary to devote more attention to boys. As research had indicated that the personal and social education of boys often received little attention in schools, it was decided to develop an initiative in this area. The first step was to develop a set of curriculum materials for teachers and students, as there had been little or no curriculum development in this area within Ireland. Hence the development of Exploring Masculinities.
As Yvonne Healy observed in her account of the programme in EL, this personal and social development programme for boys has taken five years to prepare. It was designed in consultation with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the ASTI and a range of educational experts in the field from both at home and abroad.
It was piloted and tested with the co-operation of the principals, staff and students of 19 schools in 10 different counties. These included all types of boys' schools, including diocesan colleges and schools run by different religious orders. A team of seven educationalists, four men and three women, led by Peadar King, did most of the work in preparing the materials for the project, and a team from the University of Limerick evaluated the programme prior to its publication. Given the contribution of both men and women to the drafting, piloting and evaluation of the project, it is both factually incorrect and politically mischievous to suggest that it is some type of feminist plot, as has been stated by Mr Waters.
Exploring Masculinities is a well researched and carefully planned educational initiative for boys in Transition Year and senior cycle. It outlines a series of tasks and activities which may be undertaken as part of a personal and social development programme. It is designed to encourage analysis and discussion about a range of issues which are of central concern to men's (and women's) lives, including work, health, relationships (including power and violence within relationships), sexuality and sport.
It provides young men with an opportunity to reflect on their evolving identity in an increasingly complex, diverse and changing society. As such, it is a timely and welcome resource for teachers and students.
Theoretical basis
Both John Waters and Breda O'Brien suggest that the programme is intrinsically flawed, though there is no sound educational or social scientific evidence provided in support of this claim. The only argument made is that they do not agree with the idea that concepts of masculinity and femininity are strongly socially constructed.
Yet, there is a vast body of social-scientific and anthropological evidence supporting the "social-constructionist" perspective on gender roles. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality has become a classic in the social sciences, demonstrating the complex way in which the social world we live in is the world that we make ourselves, over time and generations. Professor Robert Connell of the University of Sydney, Australia, has written a major work on "masculinities" in a similar vein.
Eminent developmental psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard University has demonstrated the ways in which concepts of intelligence have changed over time and across cultures.
Our biology may influence our destiny, but it does not determine it. While we may be genetically predisposed, we are not genetically predetermined, there is a difference between the phenotype and the genotype. Human being are rational and wilful creatures; when they have resources and opportunities, they make choices, including choices about how they want to live their lives as men and women.
A number of questionable and unsubstantiated assertions are made by Mr Waters about the education programme. He claims, for example, that it is "doss-class fodder", a statement that tells us more about his own lack of understanding about different educational methodologies than it does about the nature of the initiative. This unfounded allegation is also deeply offensive to the many teachers and educationalists who spent five years developing the programme. Further, his assertion that the sports section of the programme would "empower the most weedy and unathletic boy" betrays a disdain for boys who lack interest in sport, and an exclusionary and dismissive attitude to those whose understanding of masculinity may be different from his own.
It is regrettable that a pioneering initiative in education such as Exploring Masculinities has been trivialised in such an ill-informed manner by opinion columnists in The Irish Times. Undoubtedly a programme of such importance deserves to be reviewed and examined. However, this analysis should be undertaken by journalists and commentators who are knowledgeable on the subject matter.
