Guys, class and cultural reproduction : Upper secondary schoolguys relation towards class, masculinities and studies

This examination project examines how masculinity and class affect upper secondary school guys relations towards school and education. The purpose of my project is to expand the understanding of why there is a relation between class, sex and results in studies. The examination is made according to the focusgroup method where two groupinterviews where made. One of the group consist of four guys from a practical upper secondary education and the other consist of four guys from a theoretical upper secondary education. As it shows in the resultchapter the groups also have a different class background. The result is best understood as a cycle where class strengthen masculinities in different ways, different masculinities have different conditions in the schoolcontext, masculinities and school are factors that strengthen the class differences. In the result I show that both groups have similar view on what to consider masculine, but the guys from the theoretical group point out masculinitie as something negative in opposite to the guys from the practical group. The idea that schoolwork is something unmasculine is clear in the answers from the theoretical group but the same idea can not be found in the answers from the practical group. The attitude towards school and education separates the groups most clearly in the attitude towards university studies. The answers indicate that teachers are one factor to why the attitude towards schoolwork differed so widely between the groups. In the ending a discussion is held about how school helps to maintain the patriarchy and class differences and how to counteract it