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Abstract
The education of boys appears from media reports to be the latest `crisis in education'. Following a brief review of some of the theoretical positions for this apparently new phenomenon, the author goes on to suggest that insights gained from one intervention known as the Advanced Physical Education Programme (APEP) run in a Canterbury rural secondary school, may be useful. To engage students in learning, educators must catch their interest for many, their greatest interest is in the area of sport. Instead of disregarding sport for its inherent dangers, the author argues that modified sport can be a useful vehicle for intervention.
Introduction
A glance through recent educational literature gives the overwhelming impression that boys are in trouble in our schools. Studies such as those by Fergusson and Horwood (1997), and the Education Review Office (ERO) (1999), for example, have suggested an alarming - and apparently increasing - gender gap in achievement between boys and girls taken as separate groups. ERO, for example, reports that twothirds of students in reading recovery programmes are male. Boys also tend to be more consistently in contact with the discipline systems within schools, and nearly three-quarters of all those suspended in New Zealand are boys (Praat, 1999).
What about the boys?
In the current debate - often called the `what about the boys debate' (see, for example, Mahony, 1996) - different commentators have argued the reasons for this apparently recent situation from very different perspectives. Some, for example Biddulph (1994) and Greer (1998), claim that the lack of male teachers in both primary and secondary schools has led to few positive male role models for learning - the `feminisation of schools' argument.
Others claim that this is a manifestation of the gains made by `the women's movement' over the past three decades. Boys are now being left behind as a result of extra resourcing being allocated to girls, so that as Zordan (cited in Stirling, 1998; p.19) suggests:
... getting girls on par with boys has occurred at a cost and the boys have been ignored in the process.
This argument is sometimes described as the 'backlash' or even `victim-envy' argument by critics such as Mills and Lingard (1997). It is extended by sex-role theorists, who...