Tangled Up in School

by Jan Nespor

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in an urban elementary school, this volume is an examination of how school division politics, regional economic policies, parental concerns, urban development efforts, popular cultures, gender ideologies, racial politics, and university and corporate agendas come together to produce educational effects. Unlike conventional school ethnographies, the focus of this work is less on classrooms than on the webs of social relations that embed schools in neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions. Utilizing a variety of narratives and analytical styles, this volume:

* explores how curriculum innovations are simultaneously made possible by and undermined by school district politics, neighborhood histories, and the spatial and temporal organizations of teachers' and parents' lives;

* situates the educational discourse of administrators and teachers in the changing economic and political climates of the city;

* analyzes the motivations behind an effort by school and business proponents to refashion classrooms within the school into business enterprises, and of children's efforts to make sense of the scheme;

* examines the role of the school as a neighborhood institution, situating it at the intersections of city planners' efforts to regulate city space and children's efforts to carve out live spaces through out-of-school routines;

* contemplates the meaning of school as a site for bodily experience, and looks at how patterns of space and control in the school shaped children's bodies, and at how they continued to use body-based languages to construct maturity, gender, and race; and

* investigates the school as a space for the deployment of symbolic resources where children learned and constructed identities through their engagements with television, comic books, movies, and sports.

Tangled Up In School raises questions about how we draw the boundaries of the school, about how schools fit into the lives of children and cities, and about what we mean when we talk about "school."

Genres: Education

276 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

how does school address students? what's typical address? (vs how books/characters can address)

school control (not risk?

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. This was a hard one to justify giving two start to. Was it really fascinating stuff? Absolutely. Was Nespor effective in making his point and making his findings pertinent to education in general? Also a yes.

But did I enjoy reading this novel? Hell no.

It is very very intelligent, and the research is for the most part irrefutable (one exception being that when he asks for children to draw their neighborhoods in chapter three Nespor compares space perceptions of children who have been living in houses for the majority of their lives with children who have been bouncing between apartments or have recently moved into a new apartment. It would be interesting to see if the same differences would appear in children who had lived their entire lives in the same apartment building.) It is all just very dense. It is WORK to get through. This by no means makes the book invalid - indeed, I would recommend this book to many people. But goodreads rates on enjoyment, and I would not recommend that someone pick this book up for some casual, fun reading.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads as a narrative, but is the result of a qualitative study of an urban school (A WHOLE LOT) like one where I work. The author looks at the school enviornment from the point of view of the students, teachers, administrators, and community after the school has undergone several shaking changes. Pretty cool book, but might take a special person to appreciate it.