'Making a man out of a boy': Masculinity, male privilege, and miseducation in the Boy Scouts of America

This inquiry responds to a perceived "masculinity crisis" by examining the educational meanings and cultural values of "masculinization." (Pollack, 1998, 2000; Sommers, 2000; Gurian, 1996) Claiming that a masculinization process premised upon the dominant form of masculinity in American culture brutalizes boys, and contributes to social violence, misogyny, and homophobia, this study challenges the narrow conception of manhood on which this "crisis" is premised. This study theorizes such masculinization as a form of "cultural miseducation" (Martin, 1992, 2002) by means of "regimes of truth" (Foucault, 1984) that construct a violent social order and establishes criteria for understanding boys' responses to brutalization as "varieties of masculine experience" derived from William James' Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Through numerous educational strategies and environments, a variety of masculinities emerge as boys respond to masculinization in American culture -- Prisoner, Victim, Stranger, and Healthy-Minded. Thus masculinity is a social construction of spiritually consequential meaning attributed to male bodies, rather than a biological determination; formulating a concept of "serial masculinity" derived from Iris Marion Young's concept of "gender as seriality"(1997). It argues that education (and miseducation) is the primary means for the social construction of masculinity.;This inquiry's central thesis is that educators can respond helpfully to the brutalization of boys by resisting masculinization and recognizing boys as "live creatures" (Dewey, 1934) who can and should learn through adventure rather than brutalization.;As the Boy Scouts of America exemplifies the dominant mode of masculinization, this inquiry conducts a case study of the Boy Scouts of America, examines the works of Boy Scout founder Baden-Powell (1908), BSA's textual curricula, and recent court cases against BSA as its primary sources, introducing and applying a "cultural scouting" method of critique that traces and maps "adventures" and "brutalizations" in those sources as cultural assets and liabilities. While thus mapping and critiquing the BSA's miseducative curriculum, this study also recognizes the educational wisdom of its method, and provides clues for future meliorist construction of a curriculum for boys (and girls) as "live creatures," to foster their partnership over privilege, resist their brutalization, and construct new opportunities for adventure in building a less violent society. The study closes by proposing further work in developing strategies of resistance which address adventures and brutalizations.