When rookie teacher Lawrence Fairbrother arrives at Docklands Comprehensive School he finds himself in the centre of conflict.  The Annexe to which he is assigned is staffed largely by malcontents and cynics struggling to occupy the less able pupils.   In contrast The Paddock, late the Girls' Grammar School, houses a nucleus of reactionary academics. He is thus between the devil and the dep blue sea.  When he is offered a post at The Paddock, in preference to the attractive but wayward Valerie Arrowsmith, for whom he has conceived a passion, Lawrence has to scrutinise his conscience and his professional ethic.

Whether in the classroom or on the games field, in the staffroom or in the pub, Fairbrother finds himself constantly bamboozled by naive idealists, hardened cynics, shameless lechers and even outright villains masquerading as philanthropists.

While Boy Among Men maintains an essentially knockabout approach, it nevertheless addresses such perenially vital themes as elitism versus democratic education, art and the marketplace, anti-feminism and the place of trade unions in the politics of education.