Those who organise schools usually have more in mind than delivering a curriculum. There is often a sense that a school will shape its students into certain kinds of persons. The development of “character” is one of the more popular ways in which the ambition is expressed (mainly for boys), although what the elements of that character might be varies over time in different schools, among the different communities that support schools, and is very responsive to the social class origins and sex and gendered characteristics of young people.
It is a mistake to imagine that schools are efficient in this task. Over-ambitious attempts at character formation often inspire rebellion. Moreover, the influences on young people are far wider than their schools. Families, friends and communities of origin are also of significance, as are cultural influences that may have little in common with what a school or family may think desirable. Popular youth cultures, often disapproved of by families and schools from the 1950s provide a clear example. Earlier there were the impacts of child and youth labour, the conflicts and pressures arising from ethnic origins and religion, to name some of the more important.
Martin Crotty’s book Making the Australian male: Middle-class masculinity 1870-1920, published in 2001, made a considerable contribution to this discussion. It was a specifically Australian addition to an increasing number of international studies which focussed on the cultural history of masculinity. As part of the argument was a recognition of the historical importance of schools in the making of gendered identities.
The historical phases
In his chosen period from 1870 to 1920, Crotty detects three major phases of developing middle-class masculinity.
The first phase responds to Claudia Nelson’s argument in Boys will be girls (London, 1991), that the ideal middle-class boy became manly by controlling his natural aggression, listening to and learning from his mother, schoolmaster and priest. Some of the early headmasters of private and corporate schools visibly supported the evolution of such identities in their charges as they fought to inculcate scholarly habits and modest demeanours. As part of this agenda they resisted demands inside and outside of schools for ‘games’ and the cricket field to become the cultural and spiritual centre of schoolboy life rather than the chapel or Latin class.
The author’s second phase sees the triumph of athleticism, not only in the schools of the Anglo-Protestant middle class, but in Catholic schools as well. A successful boy was one who devoted himself to sports. This was the beginning of a somewhat brutal period in which tolerance for boys unwilling or unable to conform to the demands of athleticism was sharply reduced.
The third phase was potentially even more oppressive. It evolved not long before World War One, and added militarism to athleticism. The ideal middle-class boy would be a selflessly patriotic soldier as well as a sportsman. Schools offered, then required, that boys join cadet troops, where they learnt military values, and the basics of weaponry and war.
Domesticated boy, unidentified, ca. 1900-1920. Source: State Library of Victoria, H84.37/4/4
Sites of masculinity making
Making the Australian male concentrates on three sites of masculinity making. The first is the boys’ schools of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. Events such as the arrival of L.A. Adamson as Headmaster of Wesley College in 1902 are taken as significant moments in the history of Australian masculinity. Adamson’s arrival is represented as the triumph of athleticism over a more reflective Christianity in the making of middle-class Methodist boys.
The second site is the world of novels and stories for boys, the Australian literature equivalent to Tom Brown’s Schooldays through to the novels of W. E. Johns, the Biggles stories, widely read by boys across the British Empire.The analysis of this literature supports the three phase argument. Crotty works his way through the writings of Australian authors, Robert Richardson, Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, Joseph Bowes and Lillian Pyke among others.
Richardson’s boy heroes of the 1870s overcame bestial boys. They become creditable and sensitive sons to their widowed mothers. By contrast, the heroes of Mary Grant Bruce and Lillian Pyke are much more active, muscular and nationalistic. They are not particularly religious or studious. Mothers for the most part are to be set aside; their influence is too feminine, even a potential cause of emasculation.
The third site is the adult-supervised boys’ clubs and societies which grew up from the late nineteenth century. Here Crotty finds a sharp transition from the first, the religiously-oriented ‘feminine’ phase to the third, nationalist and militarist phase. His lack of evidence for a defined athleticist phase between may be a function of his decision not to look at the rise of age-graded sporting clubs and teams for boys.
While the arguments on the boy-saving societies are interesting, they fail to contribute much to the broad argument on the making of middle-class masculinities. Until the rise of the Boy Scouts, recruitment for groups such as the boys’ brigades or the Try Society were not aimed at the sons of middle class families. The diversion of working class boys from immorality, criminality and larrikinism was the more common object.
A boy with a riding whip. A gendered accessory? Unidentified boy, c. 1901-1910. Source: State Library of Victoria, H2001.74/6
Critical discussions of historical masculinities
Making the Australian male begins with a summary of historical and theoretical debates about masculinity. This is more convincing than the weaker discussion of social class and the relationship between the discourses of desirable masculinities, and contemporary class relations. The book is very much a study of words and ideas; the gendered cultural production of a small group of educators, writers and youth-group organisers who imagined a better boy in the period 1870-1920.
Crotty is aware of this as a source of criticism. He rightly argues for the relevance and importance of a study of the historical discourses of masculinity: ‘Although created through discourse, ideologies of manliness had very real effects in the social world’ (p. 227). One can imagine a parallel volume which reviews a selection of biographies and autobiographies of middle class men in this era, to detect the themes revealed in this book, similar perhaps to Roper and Tosh’s Manful assertions (1991).
What could be made of the differing masculinities and school educations of Australia’s founding federation fathers? For example, Alfred Deakin’s interest in spiritualism and the close relationship with his sister contrasting with Charles Cameron Kingston’s devotion to the South Adelaide Football Club, his aggressive politics and his problematic relationships with women?
Crotty’s study of middle class masculinity, and its relationship to the changing character of schools for middle class boys extended the range of topics usually addressed in educational history. Studies of girls, women and schooling well preceded Crotty’s work. A reluctance or failure to address the historical emergence of boys and men, of masculinity, in relation to the changing character of schooling was being remedied at last.
Note 1: A number of the issues explored in this entry are also explored in the entry in this dictionary on Arnoldianism in Australian schools.
Note 2: An earlier version of this entry by the author occurs in The History of Education Review, 2002, vol. 31 (1), pp. 84-85.