Wow.  I'm glad I made it through youth and puberty as a boy without reflecting on the ways my masculinity was performed and enacted so I could expand the repertoires of the self.

Last year was Hugh's first year at school.  Every afternoon for the last half hour of class parents would take it in turn to come in and help the children in small groups with reading.  Our day was Friday.   Hugh would pose a bit in front of his mates and play up at the start - but after he settled in we just got on with reading.   Like at home.

I never noticed him negotiating the hyper-masculine world, or contemplating what it meant to be male in such a world, or the meanings and ways of being constructed through such a world.   We just read books about fishing and animals and trucks.

Here is some of that report on boys and reading.

Glenn Ford is one of the greatest teachers I've ever known.   Mr Ford was Hugh's teacher last year and I will be grateful forever for the way that Mr Ford taught Hugh and his classmates.  Hugh was so fortunate to have a great teacher and a male teacher into the bargain.

Great teachers make the difference.   Here are the people who produced the report that Old Timer referred to.   You'll be the judge.