Role Models or Normalizing Agents? A Genealogical Analysis of Popular Written News Media Discourse Regarding Male Teachers

Abstract

In this article, the author examines popular written news media discourse from the United States concerning the “boy crisis,” the gender gap, and male teachers as role models employing genealogical methodologies and theoretical concepts suggested by Foucault (1984, 1990, 1995). It is argued that such discourses reveal how “common sense” beliefs operate to perpetuate unjust systems of patriarchal power by maintaining the socially superior status of White, middle‐to‐upper‐class, heterosexual men. The discourse of male teachers as role models in particular exposes the popular desire to have such men demonstrate for their male students what “proper” masculinity looks like, to reassert male authority in the classroom and beyond, and to control the behaviors of African American males as well as boys and young men from fatherless homes. In other words, to serve as normalizing agents for youth. However, it is also argued that such discourse provides opportunities for tactical resistance. By focusing on discourses that are either marginalized or silenced in the popular written news media, the author reveals the possibility for the establishment of reverse discourses that could operate from within systems of power to disrupt taken‐for‐granted ideals and to problematize those masculine characteristics or traits often considered to be unquestionably innate.