Abstract

Anthropologists have documented male initiation rituals across the globe; few, however, have paid attention to the formal schooling environment in which many forms of modern socialisation and initiation take place today. ² Schooling has yet to be considered a worthy object of anthropological scrutiny. Beyond a difficulty in grappling with new objects of enquiry linked to modern forms of the nation state, of which contemporary educational systems are products, one of the reasons for this neglect by anthropologists may also lie in the anticipated obviousness of the findings: whether in mixed schools or in same sex schools, gender must be reinforced in a variety of ways with which we are all too familiar.