The girls against the boys

Maurice was a 14-year-old African American boy. Like most of the students in Mrs. Bailey and Mr. Smith’s class, he had scored in the third quartile on the assessment test for eighth-graders. Like Tyisha and many of his other peers, he was verbally skilled and seemed more intelligent than his test scores indicated. Maurice was popular with the students and had several close friends in the class. He joked and wrestled playfully with his male friends before and after class. He also sat near the other boys, and he would sometimes talk to them surreptitiously during class. Maurice was physically larger than average, and he played on the football team. He was also attractive, and many of the girls flirted with him. He was interested in the girls as well, and he flirted, teased, and occasionally fought with them both during and outside of class.

Maurice participated actively in class discussions all year. He was routinely one of the half dozen students actively contributing to discussions, and he often made thoughtful comments. For the first three months of the academic year, both teachers and students treated Maurice as a good student and a valued participant. But Maurice was the only boy to participate willingly in class. The other boys spoke only when asked a direct question, and so Maurice was an unusual boy in this classroom context. The highly gendered nature of this particular classroom provides essential background that is necessary to analyze Maurice’s emerging position.

Wortham (2006) describes a somewhat distinctive local model that emerged in this classroom: both teachers and students habitually presupposed that girls are less troublesome, smarter, and more promising than boys. This model circulates widely in American society and many American schools, increasingly in recent decades. But teachers and students developed a specific local version of this model that emerged over the first two or three months of the academic year, with both teachers and students positioning boys and girls differently. They presupposed that girls cooperate more with teachers, are more intelligent, and will more likely succeed in life. Boys, in contrast, supposedly resist classroom expectations, are less intelligent, and are less likely to succeed. More than any other category of identity, gender became relevant to the social identification of these students in this particular classroom. By the middle of the year, many students were routinely identified according to these gendered models—as “promising girls’’ and “unpromising boys”—and these categories of identity could easily be presupposed in almost any interaction.

By the end of November, Mrs. Bailey had articulated the model of promising girls and unpromising boys explicitly, and several girls were beginning to treat the boys as if they were unpromising. The teachers often referred to the class in gendered terms, especially when making comments about discipline. On November 30, for instance, Mrs. Bailey characterized girls and boys this way: “Okay, that’s one meaning of ‘discrimination.’ I look and I see differences. ... I see that Katrina is a girl and William is a boy and I discriminate against William because he’s a boy and girls are much easier to deal with.” This comment was not tongue in cheek—she said it with a straight face, and it fit with similar comments that she made on other occasions. The teachers and the vocal girls often excluded the boys from classroom conversations, treating them as third-person objects of discussion and legitimate targets of the girls’ teasing. The boys, except for Maurice, did not say anything and kept their heads down.

Maurice’s classroom identity emerged in this context. The other boys rarely contributed to class discussion, but Maurice participated actively and successfully throughout the year. He almost always answered questions willingly, articulated his own arguments about the subject matter, and engaged in constructive discussion with the teachers and other students. Despite his gender, Maurice began the year being treated by teachers and students as a typical promising student. In the first two or three months, the teachers and many female students accepted and even praised his regular contributions. After a few months, however, the vocal female students and sometimes the teachers began to identify him in a less flattering way—not as the same sort of disruptive outcast that Tyisha became, but as an outcast nonetheless.

The first extended example of the vocal girls picking on Maurice occurred on December 17. They were discussing “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty, a short story in which a soldier for the Republican side unwittingly shoots his brother during the Irish Civil War. In the following segment they define “civil war,” and the girls jump in quickly when it looks as if Maurice is about to make a mistake.

Segment 6: Maurice makes a mistake

T/B: what kind of war do you get family on opposite

sides? (2.0) civil war. what’s a civil war?

FST: °a wa[r°

FST: [a war

40 MRC: [a war against- one country against-

FST: no:

FST: no

FSTS: ((2 seconds of overlapping chatter))

T/B: okay, a war within the country, a war with- shhh

45 FST: ((6 unintelligible syllables))

T/B: a wan within the country, so brother fights against

brother, neighbor tights against neighbor, is there any outside invasion going on here, am I protecting my home against a bunch of foreigners?

50 MRC: no

FST: no:

FST: no

At line 41, a female student says “no” with noticeable stress and elongation of the vowel (similar to the fall-rise intonation contour as one would find with “duh,” which generally means “how could you be so stupid as to say that?”). Another student repeats “no” at line 42. Maurice has only begun to make an error, but the girls quickly jump on him. At line 50, Maurice says “no” himself, perhaps attempting to preempt the girls’ criticism. But the girls repeat “no” at lines 51 and 52, with the same intonation contour at line 51, reminding everyone of Maurice’s earlier mistake.

As the conversation proceeds, the girls continue to object to Maurice’s comments. This pattern recurred from December through the end of the year: girls often teased or disagreed with Maurice, and the teachers did not intervene.

Segment 7: Maurice makes another mistake

T/B: you don’t know who you’re fighting against? you do

know who ((3 unintelligible syllables)) you’re fighting 90 against, don’t you?

FST: right=

FST: yeah

T/B: who’s that?

FST: ((4 unintelligible syllables))

95 MRC: same people in the=

FST: no

T/B: the people that are like you. people in your country.

At line 95, Maurice begins to answer Mrs. Bailey’s question. His truncated response might well have been correct, but at line 96 a female student cuts him off with another “no.” The teacher steps in immediately and gives the correct answer, without commenting on whether Maurice might have been correct and without intervening in the developing conflict between Maurice and the girls.

Table 3.3 represents our cross-event discourse analysis at this early stage. So far, we have the events from December 17 and January 24, together with several others which we do not have space to present in detail—events in which

	Linked events: December 17, January 24, and other days on which Maurice was teased and excluded by girls
	Dangerous, not eating or bathing appropriately “No:”—girls criticizing Maurice
	As “No:” and similar treatment of Maurice recur across events, a configuration begins to form, perhaps indexing a model of Maurice as unintelligent
	Maurice may be “difficult,” unintelligent, or deviate from the model of a “good student” which is enacted by the girls But no clear pathway has formed yet
	Maurice is being excluded from the core group of students and teachers and perhaps starting to be positioned as academically unpromising

the girls tease or exclude Maurice (cf. detailed analysis in Wortham, 2006). We select these two focal events because in both of them Maurice is positioned in unexpectedly negative ways, as making a stupid mistake, and perhaps as an outcast. The second line mentions a few indexicals across the two events that could presuppose these construals. These indexicals have not yet come together into a solid configuration that would support a definite reading of the pathway Maurice is traveling over time, however. We have seen a few indications that Maurice is not a typical good student. And we know that, as a male in a classroom with a strong model of “unpromising boys,” he is anomalous. But his pathway could still go in several directions. He could have ended up being an exception to the rule, accepted as a good student despite his gender. He could have given up his attempt to be a good student and joined the boys sitting silently at the back of the room. There are various other possibilities as well. We need to trace his participation across other events to see if more robust cross-event indexical configurations emerged and established a clearer pathway.

On February 18, the class discussed the scene from the Odyssey in which Odysseus encounters the Sirens. The Sirens were female creatures who lured sailors with enchanting songs and then killed them. Having been warned, Odysseus makes his men plug their ears and tie him down, so that he is able to enjoy the Sirens’ song while his men keep the ship safely away. The class explores the implicit messages of this episode, like the representation of women as seductive but dangerous. In the discussion, Mrs. Bailey makes Maurice himself an example, a victim of the girls.

Segment 8: Maurice victimized by the girls

CAN: think you like somebody else on purpose, pretend to like somebody else on purpose.

90 T/B: okay, that could hurt Maurice, that kind of thing. They could play with his affections and then toss him overboard, okay, what else c- could the ladies in the room do?

FST: we can become obsessed

T/B: not, not the women being obsessed with him, wh-

95 what might happen to Maurice? I want your opinion, what,

what might happen to you, Maurice? (10.0) Maurice, is this thing in this classroom full of women a distraction? ((female laughter)) would you do better in a classroom full of boys? (4.0)

100 MRC: °I don’t know⁰

T/B: Maurice, I’m asking you a question.

MRC: I don’t know.

T/B: you don’t know.

Candace describes a generic male who might be hurt by dangerous girls. At line 90, Mrs. Bailey explicitly introduces Maurice as the subject of discussion. This adds Maurice as a character in an example, with Mrs. Bailey and the girls voiced as potentially dangerous females and Maurice as their potential victim. Figure 3.2 represents the narrated and narrating events at this point, with the relationship between the girls and Maurice in the example potentially having implications for Maurice’s actual position in the classroom.

FIGURE 3.2 The example of the Sirens.

Mrs. Bailey refers to Maurice in the third person at line 91, making him an object of discussion for the moment. Mrs. Bailey also makes him the object of the girls’ actions—they could hurt him, “play with his affections and then toss him overboard.” Maurice has thus become an object in two ways: a few lines earlier in the conversation he refused to participate, and now the females have excluded him interactionally; Mrs. Bailey has also described him, within the narrated example, as an object of the girls’ actions. As shown at line 93, the girls continue to position themselves as first-person participants, referring to themselves as “we.”

In her comments at lines 94—99, however, Mrs. Bailey makes it clear that she does not want to focus on the women’s “obsessions.” She wants to focus on Maurice. She turns to him at line 95, referring to him again as “you” and inviting him to be a participant in the conversation. But Maurice, uncharacteristically, does not respond at all. At lines 95—101, Mrs. Bailey increases the pressure on Maurice to respond, escalating to the explicit statement, “Maurice, I’m asking you a question.” The teachers often spoke like this to other boys when they refused to participate, but across 30 hours of observation at that point in the year they had never talked like this to Maurice. Maurice responds with “I don’t know” twice, which is the only thing he says in this whole discussion.

By focusing on the gendered dimension of the Sirens myth, and by using Maurice as an example, Mrs. Bailey strongly presupposes the separation between boys and girls in the classroom. This opens up the possibility that she might apply gendered categories of identity from the curriculum to students themselves, positioning Maurice and perhaps others in the narrating event. Because Mrs. Bailey and the girls were teasing him, Maurice likely suspected that this would not be a dispassionate academic discussion of the subject matter. Mrs. Bailey thus put Maurice in an awkward position. He generally cooperated with the teachers and participated willingly in class, but he probably knew that this particular topic would be awkward, an opportunity for Mrs. Bailey and the girls to tease him or position him in unpleasant ways. It is likely that he chose to act like a stereotypical male student and refused to participate because he anticipated this danger.

Mrs. Bailey and the girls responded by explicitly characterizing the boys as unpromising.

Segment 9: Boys are stupid

JAS: you would because they are able to take ((4

105 unintelligible syllables)) stupid things because if more boys than girls

T/B: oh the place would get stupider.

((laughter from female students))

T/B: that’s how boys are, they’re kind of stupid, maybe,

110 maybe the boys in this room are a little bit ((2 unintelligible syllables)), okay, ahh, (6.0) I am going to have to ask this question to the girls because the boys aren’t very forthcoming, anybody in here ever have a crush on somebody?

At line 105, Jasmine seems to be saying that a predominantly male class would produce more “stupid” comments. Mrs. Bailey echoes this at lines 107 and 109, characterizing boys as stupid. She may be teasing here, trying to entice the boys to participate. Wortham (2006) shows, however, that she has articulated similar negative evaluations of boys on several other days without apparent irony. Her blunt statement here is probably not just teasing. The message about the boys’ identities in the narrating event is clear: they are uncooperative and unpromising students. Mrs. Bailey then directs her instruction exclusively to the girls at lines 111 and beyond. Thus, she not only describes but also enacts the difference between promising girls and unpromising boys, acting as if it is not worth teaching the boys because they do not respond.

Table 3.4 represents our emerging cross-event discourse analysis of the three events on December 17, January 24, and February 18. These three events are linked because, in each one, Mrs. Bailey and the girls position Maurice as marginal. On December 17, the girls gang up on him in the narrating event, acting as if he is stupid. On January 24, Mrs. Bailey creates the example of Maurice the beast, which might imply that he is an outcast, maybe even a dangerous one. Neither of these events in itself establishes an enduring position for Maurice, but—together with other events in which the girls pounce on his mistakes— these events form a potential trajectory across which Maurice may be getting positioned as an unpromising boy and something of an outcast. The example of the Sirens on February 18 makes it clear that Maurice is male and different from

TABLE 3.4 Emerging pathway for Maurice

	December 17, January 24, and February 18 Narrated examples of Maurice the beast and Maurice and the Sirens
	“No:” and other criticism and teasing; “we” vs. “him,” talking about Maurice; “stupid” boys, boys not “forthcoming”; “dangerous,” “sneaky” Maurice
	Clear configuration presupposing “promising girls” and “unpromising boys”
	Model of boys’ incompetence Still not clear whether Maurice is incompetent also—he may be following a pathway from competence to incompetence
	Exclusion of Maurice and reinforcement of gendered model of “unpromising boys”

the vocal, cooperative, intelligent girls who dominate classroom conversation. Mrs. Bailey and the vocal girls foreground gender as a salient dimension and clearly apply the local classroom model of “unpromising boys” to Maurice.

With the February 18 discussion, a more rigid pathway began to form. Across several events, Maurice’s competence was questioned. Mrs. Bailey and the girls reminded him that boys are not good students and that he is a boy. Thus, they foregrounded a central tension in Maurice’s position in this classroom, his desire to be a good student in a context where boys are not supposed to be good students. A configuration of indexicals across events emerged, presupposing that he was marginal. Maurice’s position in the classroom thus began to solidify across a pathway of linked events. In the early months of the year, he was just another good student. Starting in December, however, Mrs. Bailey and the girls placed increasing pressure on him, foregrounding the tension in his position as the one boy who wanted to succeed academically. The example discussed in the next section crystallized the choice teachers and students were forcing on him, a choice between being a promising student and being one of the boys.