Sociologist Harry L. Gracey spent two years studying an East-Coast school system, which he calls "Brookview," and determined that the bureaucratic social structure of schools can have a profound and irreversibly negative effect on the creativity of teachers. This volume tells the story of the "Wilbur Wright" elementary school in Brookview. It examines the relationship between the educational institution as a bureaucracy and the goals of the two main types of teaching orientation found in elementary schools such as Wright. The majority of teachers are "production" oriented. They believe that their job is to see that the children in their charge complete as much of the standardized grade level curriculum as possible during the school year. They do achieve some success in preparing children for life in a society where bureaucracy is the dominant form of social organization. The other significant type of teaching orientation is that of the "craftsmen." These instructors see their goal as the development of each individual's learning potential, with the curriculum built upon the specific needs and interests of each child. Bureaucratic school structures do nothing to promote this kind of teaching. Any ideas that are at variance with the school's organizational structure will fail. The craftsman teachers do not have the time to communicate the standardized programs desired by the school board and also to make use of their own individualistic techniques. Further, the continued use of the former cancels the effects of the craftsman approach. In delineating his conclusions, Professor Gracey includes his observations on the community and educational setting of the study, the two types of teachers, the administration, the parents, and the children's response to educational organization. This study is unique in approaching its educational subject matter from a sociological point of view; Professor Gracey intended it as a study of behavior in organizations. It should also serve educational goals, however, and will therefore interest educators and concerned citizens as well as sociologists.

This unusual and interesting book is a fascinating account of the world of Chinese writing. It examines Chinese space and the political and social use of writing as propaganda, a publicity booster and as a ladder for social climbing.

As one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation, St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America's wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul's, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality. In "Privilege", Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul's students continue to learn what they always have - how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul's students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life - from Beowulf to Jaws - and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule.

本书以内容丰富的故事情节和极富洞察力的生活细节，考察了书中那些贫困家庭、工人阶级家庭、中产阶级家庭及富有家庭孩子在学校和在家里的生活，颇具思想性地展示了不同社会分层的人们占有不同的资源，这种不同表现在日常生活中养育子女的点滴例行上，并有可能对孩子获得更高的社会地位、实现美国梦的机会产生巨大的影响。

What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children - but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way "this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do". Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult. At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes - to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own. Provocative, unflinching, wry, "Someone Has to Fail" looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.

《跳出我天地》里，比利·艾略特的工人父亲坚持认为男孩子应该学拳击，而不是跳芭蕾；《光猪六壮士》里，下岗的工人们告别钢筋水泥，在聚光灯下跳起脱衣舞却收到了意外的喜剧效果..... 啤酒、烟草、男性气概的业余爱好、幽默但粗野的对话.....是电影给我们展示的英国工人掠影。 而来自普林斯顿大学社会学系的保罗·威利斯教授采用田野调查的方法，通过展现一个工业城镇里12个出身工人阶级家庭的男孩从毕业前18个月到工作后半年这段时期内的学习生活经历，向我们解释了英国工人阶级的子弟为何选择继承父业——这就是《学做工》一书所呈现给我们的精彩内容。 2013年3月，《学做工》这本20世纪社会学、人类学和教育学的经典著作，终于由译林出版社推出中文版，威利斯先生也将首次和中国的读者见面。 本书是20世纪社会学、人类学和教育学的经典著作之一。第一部分是生动通俗的民族志的深度描写，第二部分是精辟透彻的理论分析，向我们解释了工人积极子弟之所以继承父业，不 仅是社会结构性因素再生产的结果，更是他们对学校主流文化做出反叛的一种反讽新文化生产的结果。中文本还收录了作者于2000年所做的访谈，以及专门为中国读者写的序言，有助于读者从一个比较历史的角度理解全球化背景下中国的青少年教育和失业问题。

Upon its initial publication, many reviewers dubbed Dan C. Lortie's Schoolteacher the best social portrait of the profession since Willard Waller's The Sociology of Teaching. This new printing of Lortie's classic - including a new preface bringing the author's observations up to date - is an essential view into the world and culture of a vitally important profession.