School Grades And Other Resources: The “Failing Boys” Discourse Revisited

Abstract

Worry about the poor school achievement of boys is one of the current travelling discourses that is repeated in one country after another. One of the assumptions that is taken for granted is that school achievement, as it is displayed in school grades, has dramatic effects on young people's paths to further education, the labour market or society at large. It has also been taken for granted that these effects are the same for young men and for young women. I challenge this assumption drawing on the educational paths of a several young people living in Helsinki, following them from the age of 13 to 20–24. I discuss how they themselves construct their lives within the positions that are available, how they interpret their achievements and failures, and what resources they use. I suggest that some resources are gendered. I argue that for young men in the current Finnish educational and political context, school grades are not as important as for young women. This paper draws from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal life history study called Tracing Transitions—Follow‐up Study of Post‐Sixteen Students.