Hard lines and soft scenes: constituting masculinities in the prospectuses of all-boys elite private schools.

Gottschall, Kristina ; Wardman, Natasha ; Edgeworth, Kathryn 等

Introduction

Just over ten years ago Symes (1998) drew attention to the aesthetic dimensions of school corporatisation, undertaking a semiotic analysis of school prospectuses as examples of school marketing. He argued that schools in the UK, USA and Australia were succumbing to neo-liberal market forces, which had caused them to become 'more conscious of the need to engage in stratagems such as advertising and promotion' as necessary to the perceived success of their status and reputation. In particular, Symes argued that school prospectuses were an important aspect of schools' impression management activities, and, far from being arbitrary, they were strategically and carefully constructed texts. In the decade after Symes's original paper, school marketing materials have become the subject of renewed concern about the ways that education providers communicate their ethos and ideals to potential clientele (Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004; Mills, 2004; Saltmarsh, 2007; Saltmarsh, 2008).An analysis of more recent private school prospectuses shows that schools' semiotic awareness is far from disappearing and that 'impression management' is still one of the main 'orthodox[ies] of the modern school' (Symes, 1998, p.133). In this paper, we draw insights from this body of literature to analyse the construction of masculinities in the prospectuses of six single-sex private boys' schools in the Sydney region.

Along with Symes, we understand these prospectuses as both text and 'artefact' of neo-liberal agendas and as residue of consecutive conservative governments in Australia (and other Anglophone nations). Our concern, like Symes and others (Meadmore & McWilliam, 2001; Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004; Meadmore & Symes, 1997; Synott & Symes, 1995), is with the way such texts contribute to discourses that construct private schooling as the model for educational 'excellence' and 'quality'. Private schooling has long been established as the domain of social elites (see Boyd & Lugg, 1998; Connell, 2002; Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004; Poynting & Donaldson, 2005), and in the case of private boys' schooling, as a vehicle for re/producing idealised versions of white, middle-class, heterosexual masculinities. We are particularly concerned with the incitement, under successive state and federal neoliberal governments (particularly from the 1990s onwards) for public schools to 'play this game' and to participate in open competition for students in what has been described as an educational 'quasi-market' (Apple, 2001; Leathwood & Hayton, 2002;Whitty, Power & Halpin, 1998). As Connell noted: 'The rise of the market agenda has undermined all policies built on concepts of the public interest pursued through collective action (2002, p. 324). While a detailed analysis of the effects of neo-liberal reforms on public schooling is beyond the scope of this paper, we remained concerned about an educational climate in which competition for funding and success is defined according to narrowly prescribed indicators.

Taking these concerns as a reference point, our work turns to questions of subjectivity, and the discursive tensions that emerge at the intersection of representations of masculinity as signifiers of elite education. Within feminist and poststructuralist theoretical frames (Butler, 1993,2004; Foucault, 1969,1988), we utilise tools from social semiotic and discourse analytic research approaches (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Wetherell, Taylor & Yates, 2001) to undertake the analysis of the selected visual texts. Specifically, we consider how the prospectuses construct idealised images of masculine subjectivity through the juxtaposition of action and passivity; constructed and natural environments; and hyper-masculine adolescence and feminised childhoods. We argue that these seemingly contradictory discourses coalesce to 'sell' idealised (elite, masculine, 'successful') schooled subjectivities.

Under neo-liberal reforms, schooling functions as a technology for social selection and sorting, in which a mentality of 'survival of the fittest' unleashes 'competition among individuals, among institutions' (Davies & Saltmarsh, 2007, p. 3). The ideal neo-liberal subject is individualistic and entrepreneurial (see, for example, Peters, 2001; Walkerdine, 2003); one who is 'rational, self interested [and] utility maximising' (Doherty, 2007, p. 273). In Foucauldian terms, such discourses operate as truths that 'systematically form the object[s] about which they speak' (Foucault, 1969, p. 49). In this sense, school prospectuses use image and text to discursively produce certain 'truths' about schooling and schooling subjects. As a result, educational providers (governments, schools, teachers) and education 'consumers' (parents, students) are situated in relation to these regimes of truth predicated upon neo-liberal discourses of competition, which make it difficult or impossible to think about successful schooling in any other way. As Connell noted:

   The school system's clientele has increasingly divided between
   those attempting to position themselves for competitive
   advancement--who have increasingly responded to the private
   schools' PR claims to be better at this game--and those who are
   dependent on public education to reach the bare minimum. (2002, p.
   323)

As a result, students (whether public or private) are constructed in terms of ability and conduct, which are in turn taken to be generalised, measurable and fixed qualities (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). Students and schools are understood as either 'winners' or 'losers' in the commodified game of contemporary schooling (also see Youdell, 2006a, 2006b). Problematic in terms of schooling, then, are meritocratic incitements to (self)development and (self)management, since they function to make possible and desirable some subjectivities (white, masculine, heterosexual, upper/middle-class, athletic, able-bodied, adult), while devaluing others. In the prospectuses analysed here, we are interested in the predominance and repetition of masculinity in narrow terms: older boys signifying a 'hard' hyper-masculinity that exudes physicality and strength; young boys infantilised as submissive and 'soft'. As Butler has reminded us, 'gender' is a carefully regulated corporeal style, constituting the 'effect [in] the very subject it appears to express,' (1993, p. 1). In this sense, the prospectus is also a regulatory text, governing the gendered subject of schooling, limiting potential fields of possibility, and promoting an exclusionary regime. We explore some of the complexities held in tension within the prospectuses regarding the contemporary male private school student.

Glossy prospects: Situating the idealised masculine subject

School prospectuses have become an important means by which elite schools market their educational 'wares'. The glossy prospectus is a costly element of the promotional budget, with many schools employing professional image consultants, photographers, and graphic designers (Symes, 1998). In other words, prospectuses are carefully constructed cultural and social texts--from their layout and design, to their glossy photos, school mottos, promotional slogans and content. Importantly, the high quality of prospectus materials is crucial in supporting the school's claims to superiority--not just of the standard of education offered, but of the high status of the institution itself (Saltmarsh, 2007; Symes, 1998). Symes noted that 'the quality of finish and paper used in the prospectus ... contribute in the material sense to its rhetorical power, to underwriting the qualitative import of the institution' (1998, p. 143). 'Quality' and 'superiority', as discursive practice, construct and situate the idealised, competitive social subject as 'successful' within the symbolic social space of the idealised elite school. For example, the prospectus for School A (we adopt a simple alphabetic system--A to F--to refer to individual schools), like the others analysed here, consists of a thick, glossy A4-size folder, containing documents such as a 6-page full-colour brochure, school handbook, full-colour 28-page magazine, a full-colour single-page brochure promoting the International Baccalaureate Diploma offered at the school, a newsletter, schedule of fees, scholarship information, information on uniform specifications and an application form. The images in Prospectus A depict calm scenes and ordered activity, giving the impression of a well-disciplined and 'civilised' schooling environment.

Similarly, Prospectus B consists of a heavy A4, 24-page booklet employing multiple, highly polished graphic design techniques. Each double-page spread contains promotional slogans, quotes and written information about the school, and photo montages bursting with colour, movement and action. The impression created is that School B offers a proactive and multifaceted academic, spiritual and extracurricular program, implying that there is something special about schooling in this place, something only the elite educational institution can offer:

   There is an aura about many of the world's more famous schools.
   Their very architecture seems to encourage learning. When ancient
   grandeur meets modern equipment, one has a wonderful resource.
   (School B Prospectus, p. 6)

Such schools typically promote the grandeur of their buildings and grounds as traditional signifiers of social and financial capital, representing school architecture and landscapes as a distinguishing feature of their students' educational experience. Alongside traditional markers of prestige, the urban environments of the school are often stressed, notably where the school is located in or near the 'heart of the city'--implying that the school is materially and symbolically well placed in relation to the cultural urban 'edge'. School C, for example, reiterates frequently its close proximity to Sydney Harbour with several images showing boys working at desks with unobstructed views of the Harbour Bridge, from their rooms within purpose-designed new buildings. Just as the boys are the centre of the frame, they are situated at the centre of these 'innovative' and 'exciting' learning spaces. In this way, traditional and progressive elements work together to produce a 'truth' that the elite private school can provide it all, ensuring success and mastery at the competitive edge embodied by the city. One image from Prospectus C depicts boys seated on benches with folders on their laps, high up on the roof of one of the school's buildings. No other building is higher in this shot, which acts as a spatial metaphor for the school's 'lofty ideals' and the heights of individual achievement it presumably offers. Here the Harbour Bridge is a strategic backdrop, an engineering homage to masculine forefathers and a symbol of masculine innovation and ingenuity.

Across the prospectuses reviewed for this paper, the notion of the school as an idealised masculine space is commonly integrated into the representation of school grounds and facilities, corresponding to suggestions by Synott and Symes (1995) that advertising material of private boys' schools is typically rich in imagery 'asserting masculinist values' and 'virile discourses' (p. 148). 'Hard' constructed lines are typically represented architecturally, in contrast to the 'soft' scenes of nature that moderate it. In School Prospectus B, for example, on nine of its 24 pages, and most notably in eight of its first 13 pages, are large, hard, constructed surfaces that are repeated from page to page. These images take the form of brick pylons, buttresses and a much-repeated image of a network of Doric columns. Photographed in strategic ways, for instance from the base looking up, the length and breadth of the columns are emphasised, casting huge shadows below. The vertical grid of the text not only supplements but enhances the images' implied sense of size and power. The positioning of architectural elements utilises the physical environment to reiterate the message that the boys who attend this school are encouraged to see themselves as superior manly men. Indeed, Prospectus B constitutes its charges not as students or boys but rather as men:

   each [School B] man is a miracle of creation and every one of them
   needs to feel valued and celebrated in some way by being given
   recognition and individual attention. (School B Prospectus, p. 11)

   every [School B] man is unique. (School B Prospectus, p. 10)

But in the same prospectus we also see images that place emphasis on the school as a nurturing environment--a place of reflection and peace. The 'soft' images accompanying such themes depict the pastoral or natural features of the school campus (even those in the heart of the city), and are, significantly, almost always used in images depicting younger/pre-adolescent students. These scenes emphasise lush, green and shaded school grounds, with colourful images of trees, flowers in full bloom, and manicured lawns and courtyards. In contrast to the hard lines of buildings and pylons are the soft scenes of the idealised natural environment, positioned as a place in which the practice of nurturing and developing young boys in an appropriate manner occurs. In this way, the non-man or the feminine is colonised, briefly, for masculine ends. Both the 'hard' lines and 'soft' scenes contribute to the private school's 'competitive edge', advertising it as an imagined and 'actual' place, and always as more than just a space where education takes place. Images of 'hard' and 'soft' physical aspects of the school contribute to discourses that symbolically and materially promote a system of values framing specific educational culture. Such semiology constructs aesthetic, social and ideological values (Benito, 2003) typically associated with elite private all-boys schools. As Solomon-Godeau pointed out, the division of ideal masculinities into 'hard' or 'soft', phallic or feminised incarnations is 'a consistent feature within the larger cultural context of bourgeois ideologies of gender' (in Harding, 2003, p. 23; also see Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 1996). In the prospectuses analysed here, 'hard' images are associated with the older, senior boys, while the 'soft' images denote the younger, smallest boys. This binary reiterates the continuum of becoming a successful male subject of schooling, and is focused on the unknowing/knowing, boy/man discourses as key to the development rhetoric at the core of promoting schooling in all-boys private elite schools.

Hard boys: Disciplined bodies and straight activities

Harding (2003) provided important insights into masculinity in contemporary institutions in these market-driven times, detailing how, through a host of implicit rules, institutions construct discursively masculine worlds that require their inhabitants to exhibit characteristics such as competitiveness, aggressiveness and control. The positioning of senior students in these prospectuses resonates with these characteristics, and a common feature of all the prospectuses is the discursive repetition of older boys as active and always doing. These images convey the importance of masculine activities in the school, but more than this, they imply that it is precisely the unique qualities of the elite school that enable male students to accomplish physical domination over self and social spaces. For example, of the 24 pages of School B's prospectus, all of the pages depicting boys represent them as active doers, most notably in the sporting realm: playing rugby, running, rowing, abseiling, marching in cadets. The senior boy body is fetishised as the object of the market's gaze. Yet, far from being powerless figures merely to be watched, these subjects are powerful, embodying the idealised qualities of the hyper-masculine subject: active, heavy, skilled, dangerous, dirty, interesting, virile, strong, independent, capable, rational, knowing, hard (see Connell, 1995; Stephens, 2002). Naturalistic photos give the impression that the camera has caught boys naturally asserting themselves as achievers in the physical realm. The photo-realism normalises and naturalises activities as 'real', shifting focus away from their function as constructed, idealised and fetishised texts. Synott and Symes (1995) noted that contemporary schools still retain the residue of Victorian ideals such as the cult of athleticism, which prizes hyper-masculine physical strength and endurance over other qualities.

The point we wish to highlight is how being capable, and succeeding at physical pursuits, has become inextricably bound with being a competitive, self-enterprising, 'successful' masculine subject, now commodified as the idealised school subject. Furthermore, we note how academic success has been conflated with physical capabilities and accomplishments in these texts. In a Foucauldian sense, the prospectuses operate as both a marketing strategy as well as a disciplinary practice, constituting the idealised male subject according to the regimes of the market. For example, School B's prospectus contains a double-page spread with a photographic montage: a goalie in mid-flight stopping a ball from going in the nets; a rower, arms stretched and glistening with sweat; a rugby player jumping high into the air; a swimmer, with arms outstretched, is larger in size than the other photographs, expanding over the whole two pages as if embracing the spread--an homage to the active male form. The school crest is clearly visible on his swimming cap, exemplifying how male bodies are bound up in the school ethos, moving onwards 'Bravely & Faithfully'. The emphasis in these photographs is on senior boys whose tanned, muscular, semi-naked, hard bodies embody and personify a highly valued hetero-normative hyper-masculinity.

McCallum (2002) noted that some social texts avoid feminisation and homo-eroticisation because images of the masculine subject 'in action' are signs of suffering and endurance. In the prospectuses' images, boys are often dirty (mud-spattered on the rugby field), hot and sweaty, and depicted in activities that stretch the bounds of the physical endurance. In addition the expectation/promotion of 'real men' as being heterosexual is constantly reiterated, such as in this example from School E's prospectus: '[s]ocial interaction with girls from local schools occurs through academic programs, dramatic and musical productions and social functions' (p. 6). In School B's prospectus, on the same page as the sporting montage, are three pictures that show that less hyper-masculine activities are available in the school: a boy's fingers on a brass instrument; a boy drawing a portrait of the nude male form; and a boy in costume on stage. But these three pictures are small, crowded and visually overwhelmed by the homage to the sporting male bodies, underscoring the relative insignificance of subordinate masculinities (Connell, 1995) in the discursive hierarchies of elite schooling. While School B's prospectus promotes the range of facilities offered at the school, and the freedom of choice the school claims to provide, discursively, the subjects that are most prized, and the type of activities most valued, is clear. These three pictures only serve to reinforce the importance of hyper-masculinities in the commodification of (elite) education, and in the making of 'successful' school subjects.

Consolidating the images of the physically healthy sportsman are photos that speak to the military traditions of the school--boys in cadet uniforms--images that reinforce the value placed on physical power and strength for young men in elite schooling. School D's prospectus, for example, elicits notions of highly disciplined young men, with the school providing spaces for participation in cadet service activities. School D produces real men, the text implies, taught by real men who participate in masculine activities. The promise of becoming the powerful hyper-masculinised subject resonates in images both in and out of the classroom. Even images depicting boys sitting in a classroom gesture toward action, masculine potential and success: rows of boys sit behind desks in a tiered lecture room, the younger boys are at the front sitting up straight, looking directly and seriously at the teacher, red pens poised to receive instructions. Meanwhile, older boys sit in the back row without pens or books, self-assuredly leaning almost backward against the wall, privileged by their rank, age and masculine accomplishments, which are signified by their higher rank uniforms and their elevated position in the room. As in School D's prospectus, classroom scenes for all the schools are rarely still or inactive, and boys in class are always at work: measuring chemicals in test tubes, sawing wood or drafting building plans. These boys are depicted as capable and professional, with all the technical 'cutting-edge' equipment required for such masculine physical tasks, including protective eye- and ear-wear, machinery and tools. These scenes construct the 'hard' pursuits of science and technology, historically associated with masculinist rationality and enlightenment, but with the new urgency of the 'competitive edge' needed in the 21st century. The prospectuses position the boys as natural and legitimate heirs to the masculine successes of past, present and future. Consumers are invited via these images into the symbolic and material economy of the schools, which tacitly offers elevated status and social capital. The educational expectations and ideological views constructed in the prospectuses arguably make it difficult or impossible for its 'consumers' to imagine schooling differently. As Symes lamented,'[e]ducation is just another commodity to be bought and sold' (1998, p. 139), and gender is deployed as one of its primary selling techniques.

Soft scenes: The natural child and comforting progressions

The idealisation of the hard-bodied older boy is dependent in part upon the construction of a binary that depicts the body of the young boy as soft and passive. Prospectuses of schools with preparatory year levels depict young boys in vastly different ways from those of the older boys. In particular, images of young boys emphasise their smaller physical stature, implying weakness and vulnerability. Such images speak to parental concerns about their children's well-being, while simultaneously gesturing toward the school's capacity to carefully guide the transitions from vulnerable boy to capable man. The prospectuses frequently picture the youngest boys with others of similar size, often sitting cross-legged, while reading in small groups or semicircles, and appearing inactive, ordered, calm and clean. Commonly, the whiteness of their skin and blondness of their hair renders them within the terms of fantasised Western images of the beautiful, innocent and angelic child. In images reminiscent of Rousseau's (1762) natural, innately good child, uncorrupted by the influence of society, the younger boys are almost without exception pictured in gardens or lush green courtyards. School D boasts an 'unspoiled natural environment' (p. 14), dedicating a full page to the image of young boys in crisp white shirts, sitting calmly under canopies of greenery in soft, filtered light. The natural setting is still subjected to institutional discipline, the white school hats placed neatly to one corner, as the boys smile serenely in their clean and unwrinkled uniforms.

This juxtaposition of natural world and disciplinary order implies that the 'natural' impulses, innocence and vulnerabilities of childhood are manageable. These discursive infantilisations render the small boys much less exciting, hence less significant, in the schools' masculinist economies. Just as the activities of the young boys are 'soft' in comparison with those of the older boys, the ethos and philosophy of young boys' schooling is not as heavily emphasised as that of older boys. For example, School F's prospectus contains a message from the senior infants mistress (an old-fashioned title with clear gender delineations) about the motto of the infants department: 'Reading aloud is as good as a hug'. Notably, drama, art and music are listed before other key learning areas in the infants' school, implying that such soft pursuits are acceptable, if only temporarily, in this 'feminised' space. The younger boys are further 'feminised' by being depicted with female teachers, and commonly only female teachers appear in the pages that depict the youngest boys.

The prospectuses of schools C, D and E picture young boys being served by women and female teachers in stereotypically nurturing and mothering roles. School E's pamphlet on boarding states that: 'Each House has a resident Matron whose role is to be a "mother figure" for the boys and to deal with domestic matters of the House, such as laundry and cleaning'. Such passages commodify the idea of the nurturing and supportive nuclear family to parents. But more than this, the prospectuses represent young boys as vulnerable, hence in need of feminine guidance at this developmental stage. While the young boys are given less emphasis in the prospectuses, we argue that they are far from marginalised subjects here. Rather, they take on value as subjects in the educational marketplace precisely because of their potential: although soft and vulnerable now, one day they will be senior boys, hard bodies, physical, active and capable, and in the words of School B's prospectus:

   Little is more important than the beginning ... Good beginnings
   tend to lead to great endings ... Having a son at ... [School B]
   will give him a start in life which he should enjoy for the rest of
   his days. (pp. 4-5)

The privileging of certain subjects and certain activities is a gendered, age-based and place-based set of discursive practices serving to demarcate the subjects that are of most value in this market.

Age hierarchies reinforced: Straightening little boys' ties

The depiction of young boys and older boys together in the same image provides an interesting counterpoint to those discussed above. The front cover of School C's prospectus pictures a senior boy, in full school uniform including blazer and tie, kneeling to straighten the tie of a much smaller boy, who is also in school uniform. Similarly, the feature image on the cover of School E's prospectus is of a senior student standing in a 'big-brotherly' stance behind a younger student. Central to these images is size comparison between younger and senior boys, and the depiction of older boys (rather than teachers, for example) as providing disciplinary guidance. Looking closer at the image in Prospectus C, the little boy's blazer, with the cuffs a little too long, his short shorts revealing his little weak knees, and long shoelaces that touch the ground even though they are tied, serve to emphasise his tiny frame. That the taller, stronger, older boy must crouch to the level of the small boy, further exaggerates the juxtapositions of big/small, strong/weak and capable/vulnerable. In the prospectuses for both schools C and E, the little boy is blond and blue-eyed, light-skinned and freckled, while the older boy is dark-haired and tanned, once again stressing their differences and corporeal worldliness.

While the older boy's straightening of the younger boy's tie might be read in terms of feminine nurturing, we read this image as depicting a patriarchal adjustment to the phallic symbol of the school tie. Straightening the tie is clearly a symbolic gesture, both highlighting the young boy's helplessness, and stressing the older boy's skilful mastery of this aspect of discipline. In School C's prospectus, the words 'They hand on the torch of life' (based on the school's Latin motto 'Vitai, Lampada, Tradunt') appear above their heads, giving symbolic meaning to this scene-the senior boy disciplines the little boy in the 'right' way, managing and correcting his embodied appearance and conduct. He hands on the knowledge legitimated and valued in this place to the young boy who will one day ideally be like him, kneeling down to 'straighten the tie' of another 'ill-refined' boy. The words that accompany this image (much like School E's motto: 'Utinam Patribus Nostris Digni Simus'--'O that we may be worthy of our forefathers') symbolise the patriarchal cultural and social capital to which attendance at the school provides privileged entitlement. These prospectuses assert the ideas of tradition and a sense of family, belonging and loyalties that are often associated with elite schooling (Meadmore & Meadmore, 2004; Symes, 1998).Through these 'touching' images of the senior boy nurturing and 'looking out for' his younger 'brother', what is demonstrated are patriarchal, hetero-normative, ageist values, quite literally that of an Old Boys' school (see Synott & Symes, 1995).

Like the images of young boys with 'nurturing' female teachers, young boys positioned alongside older boys may signal to parents that the 'protective arm' of the elite school will shield the small boy from the risks inherent by virtue of his obvious 'vulnerabilities'. It could be argued that positioning older boys as caring for young boys is an attempt on the part of the schools to anticipate and assuage possible parental anxieties about the safety and wellbeing of their sons (see Poynting & Donaldson, 2005; Saltmarsh, 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2008). Notably, in the years after highly publicised incidents of sexual violence in a particularly prestigious Sydney boys school in 2001, there was widespread public debate about not only the school at the centre of the scandal but also about the endemic cultures of bullying and violence in ruling-class boys schooling. Poynting and Donaldson (2005) noted that the promotion of the school as a bastion of respectability and moral virtue was an attempt by the school to placate these anxieties. While we are sympathetic to such views, we also note that the school at the centre of the 2001 sexual violence scandal did not substantively alter the images used in the next iteration of the prospectus that was produced after these events (see Saltmarsh, 2005). That being the case, we suggest that such images are part of a more general strategy of representing the transition from small, vulnerable boy to capable, responsible man within a schooling tradition that produces age hierarchies seen as an integral part of taking up one's rightful place in elite patriarchal society (Saltmarsh, 2005). Furthermore, we wish to highlight how altruistic and 'soft' values are now being normalised and commodified alongside the rhetoric of individualisation and competition within the current 'business' of schooling.

The male private school subject has always been measured by traditional behavioural codes such as honesty, duty and loyalty towards his institution. What the contemporary market rhetoric demands are values that put the individual firmly in focus as a 'self-regulating, choice-making, self-reliant' subject (Marginson, 1999, p. 25). While the idealised masculine subject remains physically strong and competitive, a new focus on self-management and self-reflexivity also requires masculinity that stakes a claim to introspection and community service. As McWilliam and Brannock (2001) and Meadmore and McWilliam (2001) pointed out, under neo-liberal incitements, emotional intelligence and soft-skills, values traditionally associated with the feminine, are now powerful touchstones for the reshaping of male educational identities as competitive and enterprising subjects. In elite school contexts, such contemporary market regimes work alongside traditional patriarchal values. In this sense, the presence of the little boy in the elite school space does not force the senior boy to leave the pursuit of his individualistic goals (if only for a moment) to concern himself with helping/instructing the little helpless boy. Instead, the presence of the little boy enables the senior boy to demonstrate his competence at soft-skills, and of being a well-rounded and complete individual that the marketplace now requires. While such claims to truth might be pervasive, even insidious, they may be easier to sell than to teach and, as Meadmore & Meadmore (2004) argued, they are wholly unmeasurable and completely subjective. Nonetheless, such rhetoric is a powerful marketing tool, promoting ideas about the need to educate the 'whole' boy:

   A boy cannot be considered educated until he has explored the
   limits of his intellectual ability, sung with exultation, extended
   his character in sport, given generously to another, and pondered
   his place in the heavens. (School B's prospectus, p. 14)

Such rhetoric implies that that elite private boys schooling is best placed to shape boys into the 'right' kind of men.The private schools' presumed capacity to secure success for students in all aspects of intellectual, moral and social development is normalised in the prospectuses, just as is the parental responsibility to make the 'right' school choice for their son.

Conclusion

The competition for 'consumers' in Australian schools over the last decade has seen an intensification of promotional activities in the private school sector. School prospectuses remain a feature of the school marketing landscape, constructing idealised images of students and schools that accord with dominant discourses of masculinity. As discussed here, these kinds of promotional documents privilege certain forms of masculine subjectivities, while simultaneously subordinating others. The image of the hyper-masculine senior boy body is common to all of the prospectuses analysed here, with strenuous physical activity and demonstrations of male strength depicted against the backdrop of 'hard' surfaces and architectural elements. The 'hard lines' of these images sit in contrast to the 'soft scenes' that moderate them--scenes of natural elements and gentle, ordered activities--that set the initial scene for young boys to commence their transitions from innocent, vulnerable boy to well-rounded, yet 'hardened' elite men. The complex interplay of hard and soft typifies binaries that pervade market rhetoric of elite private boys' schooling, reiterating discursive hierarchies and ultimately privileging the association of elite masculinity with notions of individual success, competition and prowess--'hard men' superimposed on the social world they inhabit.

References

Apple, M. (2001). Educating the 'right' way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality. New York: Routledge.

Benito, A. E. (2003, February). The school in the city: School architecture as discourse and as text. Paedagogical Historical, 39(1/2), 53.

Boyd, W., & Lugg, C. A. (1998). Markets, choices, and educational change. In A. Hargeaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan & D. Hopkins (Eds.), International Handbook of Educational Change (Part One, pp. 349-374). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Butler, J. (1993). Imitation and gender insubordination. In D. Fuss (Ed.), Inside/out: Lesbian theories/gay theories. New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.

Chouliaraki, L., & Fairclough, N. (1999). Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Connell, R. W. (2002). Making the difference, then and now. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 23(3), 319-327.

Davies, B., & Saltmarsh, S. (2007). Gender economies: Literacy and the gendered production of neo-liberal subjectivities. Gender and Education, 19(1), 1-20.

Doherty, R. (2007). Education, neoliberalism and the consumer citizen: After the golden age of egalitarian reform. Critical Studies in Education, 48(2), 269-288.

Foucault, M. (1969). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.) 1972 ed. New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Gillborn, D., & Youdell, D. (2000). Rationing education: Policy, practice, reform and equity. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Harding, N. (2003). The social construction of management. Texts and identities. London: Routledge.

Haywood, C., & Mac an Ghaill, M. (1996). Schooling masculinities. In M. Mac an Ghaill, Understanding masculinities: Social relations and cultural arenas (pp. 50-60). Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press, 50.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge.

Leathwood, C., & Hayton, A. (2002). Educational inequalities in the United Kingdom: A critical analysis of the discourses and policies of New Labour. Australian Journal of Education, 46(2), 138-153.

MacCallum, R. (2002). Masculinity as social semiotic: Identity politics and gender in Disney animated films. In J. Stephens (Ed.), Ways of being male: Representing masculinities in children's literature and film. New York: Routledge.

Marginson, S. (1999). After globalization: Emerging politics of education. Journal of Education Policy, 14(1), 19-31.

McWilliam, E., & Brannock, J. (2001). The way to a boy's heart? New mechanisms for making boys better. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 29(1), 7-17.

Meadmore, D., & McWilliam, E. (2001). The corporate curriculum: Schools as sites of new knowledge production. Australian Educational Researcher, 28(1), 31-45.

Meadmore, D., & Meadmore, P. (2004). The boundlessness of performativity in elite Australian schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 25(3), 37-387.

Meadmore, D., & Symes, C. (1997). Keeping up appearances: Uniform policy for school diversity? British Journal of Educational Studies, 45(2), 174-186.

Mills, M. (2004). The media, marketing, and single-sex schooling. Journal of Education Policy, 19(3), 343-360.

Peters, M. (2001). Education, enterprise culture and the entrepreneurial self: A Foucauldian perspective. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 2(2), 58-71.

Poynting, S., & Donaldson, M. (2005). Snakes and leaders: Hegemonic masculinity in ruling-class boys' boarding schools. Men and Masculinities, 7(4), 325-346.

Rousseau, J.-J. (1762). Emile. (B. Foxley, Trans.) 1911 ed. London & Melbourne: J. M. Dent & Sons, Everyman's Library.

Saltmarsh, S. (2005a). Complicit institutions: Representation, consumption and the production of school violence. (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University.

Saltmarsh, S. (2005b). Disrupting dominant discourses of private schooling. Paper presented at Creative Dissent, Constructive Solutions. Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Research in Education, Parramatta, New South Wales. Retrieved 10 January 2010 from http://www.aare.edu.au/ 05pap/sal05126.pdf

Saltmarsh, S. (2007). Cultural complicities: Elitism, heteronormativity and violence in the education marketplace. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(3), 335-354.

Saltmarsh, S. (2008). Disruptive events: Elite education and the discursive production of violence. Critical Studies in Education, 49(2), 113-125.

Stephens, J. (Ed.). (2002). Ways of being male: Representing masculinities in children's literature and film. New York: Routledge.

Symes, C. (1998). Education for sale: A semiotic analysis of school prospectuses and other forms of educational marketing. Australian Journal of Education, 42(2), 133-152.

Synott, J., & Symes, C. (1995). The genealogy of the school: An iconography of badges and mottoes. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 16(2), 139-152.

Walkerdine, V. (2003). Reclassifying upward mobility: Femininity and the neo-liberal subject. Gender and Education, 15(3), 237-248.

Wetherell, M., Taylor, S., & Yates, S. J. (Eds.). (2001). Discourse theory and practice: A reader. London: Sage.

Whitty, G., Power, S., & Halpin, D. (1998). Devolution and choice in education: The school, the state and the market. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Youdell, D. (2006a). Impossible bodies, impossible selves: Exclusions and student subjectivities. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Youdell, D. (2006b). Subjectivation and performative politics--Butler thinking Althusser and Foucault: Intelligibility, agency and the raced-nationed-religioned subjects of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 511-528.

Kristina Gottschall is a PhD Student at the School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University, Australia.

Email: kgottschall@csu.edu.au

Natasha Wardman is a PhD Student at the School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University.

Kathryn Edgeworth is a PhD Student at the School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University.

Rachael Hutchesson is a PhD Student at the School of Teacher Education, Charles Sturt University.

Sue Saltmarsh is Associate Professor of Educational Studies in the School of Education, Australian Catholic University.