RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSIONS
6.5 Limitations of Study
The limitations of this study were discussed in detail in chapter 3 and largely focused on my role as an insider researcher. However, it must also be pointed out that whereas there is undoubtedly a gap in the literature on masculinity and the understanding of history which this study sought to fill, this study is at the same time limited in a number of ways. As I made use of a bounded case study using a purposive sample it is difficult to draw generalized conclusions that can in turn be applied to the general world population of boys at large or even to South African boys or to that matter even other boys’ schools. The context of this study therefore immediately limits the conclusions drawn. This study was located in a well-resourced, independent boys’ school and not a co-educational or state school. It must also be borne in mind that the boys participating in this study were predominantly wealthy, white, English-speaking, Christian boys who attended a particular independent boys’ boarding school – Balcomb Academy - for 5 years. Compared to the wider population group of boys of secondary school-going age both within South Africa or even the world, they are not diverse or even representative.
In addition I am reluctant to make any firm recommendations following the identification of the findings of this study. This is in keeping with the qualitative nature of this study which was to understand the phenomenon that came under the lens.
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The movie Fight Club offers a portrait of men who feel their lives are without meaning.
Before a fight, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) describes the state of manhood to the other men:
We’re the middle children of history, man – no purpose or place. We have no Great War … no Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives. [We’ve] been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars … But we won’t (Wood, 2009, p.105).
Schools become the site for the “production, negotiation and policing of particular forms of masculinity” (Martino, 2000, p.106). But through an intertwining vine of unofficial history made up of influential role players such as family members and friends, and official school history over both primary and secondary schools, the boys of this study sometimes found themselves to be lacking because they did not measure up to the ideals of the hegemonic masculinity. At other times, through their study of history, these boys were empowered to be able to dominate other boys because of their possession of historical knowledge thus formulating their own hegemonic masculinity as embodied in the history boy. Masculine hierarchies are therefore constructed by institutions, teachers, subjects like history and boys themselves.
The official South African history curriculum is a transformative one that seeks to achieve an appreciation of gender equity and a sensitization to power dynamics at play in a constantly evolving South African society. However, the institution in which the boys found themselves is not evolving. It is a traditional one that essentially aims to maintain old-fashioned or “time honoured” values. These independent school history boys learnt many lessons on what it means to be a man from the independent boys’ only boarding school in which they all found themselves as well as through official school history. The institution has taught them contradictory lessons: being independent but learning how to be accepted as part of the group; accepting your punishment like a man but confronting
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those who have caused you an injustice. Official history has taught them that you cannot be a caveman with a big stick yet they glorify the association of positive role models like fathers and grandfathers with war. These contradictory lessons all led to the conflicting and ambiguous notions of what it means to be a man and the formulation of the image of the history boy. The ambiguity is further clouded by the clash that exists between the ideal me versus the real me and which is heightened by the pecking order or hierarchy of masculinities that a boy faces within schools as he becomes a man. This in turn led to the creation of the hegemonic masculine form of the history boy that is established towards the top end of the masculinity hierarchy within this South African independent boys’ school.
However, for many boys as emerging men, the attainment of a hegemonic form of masculinity is an ideal that they seldom reach. They are sold stories of bravery and of heroes by both influential role models and by the history that they study within their 12 years of formal schooling but their own lives will seldom mirror these heroic stories. By far their greatest journey will be their quiet, private, introspective one in which they develop from boys into men and in so doing make sense of the conflicting images which bombard them of what it means to be a real man. In time they may find, as I have, that masculinity is both ambiguous and fluid.
In conclusion, masculinity influences a boy’s understanding of history but, at the same time, a boy’s understanding of history influences his understanding of his own masculinity. Each boy’s masculinity, like his own unique stories, is his own - shaped by his own experiences - one of which is the studying of history. Moreover, history, above all other subjects constantly forced the boys to stare masculinity in the face. Masculinity is always present. Their study of history therefore both legitimized as well as deconstructed these history boys’ notions of what it means to be an emerging man in a South African independent boys’ school.
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