The Problem With “Little Jack Canuck”: Exploring Over 70 Years’ Worth of Concerns Over Boys’ Underachievement in School in Ontario, Canada

• In Event: Gender, Achievement, and Learning

Abstract

Today, it is almost impossible to open a newspaper in Canada without confronting a headline about the latest ‘trouble’ with boys in school. The problem is that contemporary educators and social commentators typically present concerns over boys’ education in a way that they seem unique to our own time, rather than part of a long history. Drawing upon a wide range of sources including evidence from mass-circulation periodicals and newspapers; school board minutes, ministry of education annual reports and other related materials, this paper traces over 70 years of varying levels of concern among educators, politicians, and social commentators in Ontario, over boys’ underachievement in school, revealing how gender anxieties in the past continue to have resonance today.

Author

• Christopher John Greig, University of Windsor