In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a report calling for the total reassessment of policy and curriculum governing American education. The commission's findings were met with impassioned interest and volcanic debate. Seemingly overnight, the "education crisis" became a battleground on which citizens, education professionals and numerous organized groups fought for America's children. Nowhere is this more evident than in the compilation of essays contained in "Excellence in Education". Five areas of investigation are focused upon in this comprehensive volume: an overview of the debate occasioned by the report; a consideration of the social, political, and economic content of the report; how reform will affect policies initiated in the 60's and 70's; how reforms impact on curriculum, teacher preparation, and student success; and the historical implications of past reform movements in education.

Working Method focuses on the theory, method, and politics of contemporary social research. As ethnographic and qualitative research become more popular, noted scholars Weis and Fine provide a roadmap for understanding the complexities involved in doing this research.

First published in 1985, this book explores the 'lived culture' of urban black students in a community college located in a large northeastern city in the United States. The author immersed herself in the institution she was studying for a full academic year, exploring both the direct experiences of education, and the way these experiences were worked over and through the praxis of cultural discourse. She examines in detail the messages of the school, including the 'hidden curriculum' and faculty perspectives, as well as the way these messages are transformed at a cultural level. The resulting work provides a major contribution to a number of debates on education and cultural and economic reproduction, as well as a leap forward in our understanding of the role schooling plays in the re-creation of race and class antagonisms. This work will be of great interest to anyone working with minorities, particularly in the context of education.

First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Social Class and Education: Global Perspectives is the first empirically grounded volume to explore the intersections of class, social structure, opportunity, and education on a truly global scale. Fifteen essays from contributors representing the US, Europe, China, Latin America and other regions offer an unparralleled examination of how social class differences are made and experienced through schooling. By underscoring the consequences of our new global reality, this volume takes seriously the transnational migration of commerce, capital and peoples and the ramifications of such for education and social structure. Moving beyond national confines, internationally recognized scholars, Lois Weis and Nadine Dolby, offer a set of emblematic essays that break new theoretical and empirical ground on the ways class is produced and maintained through education around the world.

Since the 1980s, the relationship between social class and education has been overshadowed by scholarship more generally targeting issues of race, gender, and representation. Today, with the global economy deeply immersed in social inequalities, there is pressing need for serious class-based analyses of schooling, family life and social structure. The Way Class Works is a collection of twenty-four groundbreaking essays on the material conditions of social class and the ways in which class is produced on the ground in educational institutions and families. Written by the most visible and important scholars in education and the social sciences, these timely essays explore the production of class in and through the economy, family, and school, while simultaneously interrogating and challenging our understandings of social class as linked to race, gender, and nation. With essays by distinguished scholars and questions for further reflection and discussion, The Way Class Works will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars in education, sociology, and beyond.

For more than three decades Michael Apple has sought to uncover and articulate the connections among knowledge, teaching and power in education. Beginning with Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Apple moved to understand the relationship between and among the economy, political and cultural power in society on the one hand "and the ways in which education is thought about, organized and evaluated" on the other. This edited collection invites several of the world's leading education scholars to reflect on the relationships between education and power and the continued impact of Apple's scholarship. Like Apple's work itself, the essays will span a range of disciplines and inequalities; emancipatory educational practices; and the linkage between the economy and race, class and gender formation in relation to schools.

Noted scholar Lois Weis first visited the town of Freeway in her 1990 book, Working Class Without Work. In that book we met the students and teachers of Freeway's high school to understand how these working-class folks made sense of their lives. Now, fifteen years later, Weis has gone back to Freeway for Class Reunion. This time her focus is on the now grown-up students who are, for the most part, still working class and now struggling to survive the challenges of the global economy.
Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study that provides powerful, provocative insight into how the lives of these men and women have changed over the last two decades--and what their prospects might be for the future.

Noted scholar Lois Weis first visited the town of Freeway in her 1990 book, Working Class Without Work. In that book we met the students and teachers of Freeway's high school to understand how these working-class folks made sense of their lives. Now, fifteen years later, Weis has gone back to Freeway for Class Reunion. This time her focus is on the now grown-up students who are, for the most part, still working class and now struggling to survive the challenges of the global economy.
Class Reunion is a rare and valuable longitudinal ethnographic study that provides powerful, provocative insight into how the lives of these men and women have changed over the last two decades--and what their prospects might be for the future.

With a fascinating new introduction on the proliferation and development of the field of whiteness studies and updated essays throughout, this much-anticipated second ddition continues to redefine our understanding of race and society. Also inlcludes three maps.

"Working Method "explores the theory, method, and politics of contemporary social research. Through ethnographic and qualitative study, noted scholars Lois Weis and Michelle Fine investigate communities under siege and document both the costs of oppression and the strengths of endurance that circulate among the young, poor, and working-class in America. They provide an important model for negotiating the complexities involved in this type of research and give thoughtful consideration to the various strategies and tools available to social researchers

With a fascinating new introduction on the proliferation and development of the field of whiteness studies and updated essays throughout, this much-anticipated second ddition continues to redefine our understanding of race and society. Also inlcludes three maps.

First published in 1985, this book explores the 'lived culture' of urban black students in a community college located in a large northeastern city in the United States. The author immersed herself in the institution she was studying for a full academic year, exploring both the direct experiences of education, and the way these experiences were worked over and through the praxis of cultural discourse. She examines in detail the messages of the school, including the 'hidden curriculum' and faculty perspectives, as well as the way these messages are transformed at a cultural level. The resulting work provides a major contribution to a number of debates on education and cultural and economic reproduction, as well as a leap forward in our understanding of the role schooling plays in the re-creation of race and class antagonisms. This work will be of great interest to anyone working with minorities, particularly in the context of education.

Dedicated to a better understanding of the diversity of children being taught in American public schools, this book includes the experiences of groups (e.g. Haitians, Dominicans, Indians, and Vietnamese) not often represented even in the multicultural education literature. It also includes the experiences of often marginalized groups such as lesbians and gays, Appalachians, and white working class males.

"... Beyond Black and White opens a discussion of diversity that goes beyond the notion that white or black can be looked at as any kind of homogeneous groupings. While numerous studies focus on the ways in which schools privilege some groups of children and marginalize others, such work tends to construe differences along a narrowly constructed black-white dichotomy. Beyond Black and White forces the reader to abandon this construction". -- Nelson C. Vincent, University of Cincinnati

The book encourages the centering of voices often not heard, even in volumes whose aim it is to center historically silenced voices. The contributors probe the experiences of "Familiar Minorities", such as African Americans, native Americans, and Mexican Americans, as well as those among "Newcomers", such as Haitians, Dominicans, Indians, Salvadorians, and Vietnamese. In the final section, "Other Minorities" are encountered -- groups struggling for recognition such as lesbians and gays, Appalachians, and white working class males. This interdisciplinary volume stands as vivid testimony to the myriad of voices in today's schools.

Eleven historical-ethnographic case studies examine the social and cultural projects of modern schools, and the contestations, dramatic and not, that emerge in and around and against them. These case studies, ranging from Taiwan to South Texas, build upon an original joining of anthropology, critical education theory, and cultural studies. The studies advance the concept of cultural production as a way of understanding the dynamics of power and identity formation underlying different forms of "education". Using the concept of the "educated person" as a culture-specific construct, the authors examine conflicts and points of convergence between cultural practices and knowledges that are produced in and out of schools.

Based primarily on ethnographic data, "Working Class without Work" examines the identity formation process among white working-class youth in the context of the de-industrialization of the American economy. The elimination of many basic production jobs and the expansion of the service sector have changed the expectations and opportunities of the white working class. Weis documents the way in which these young people respond to such changes, and the way they help to create the conditions of their future lives. In the process, she explores issues of race, class, gender and considers the roles of school and family in the production of self.

Social Class and Education: Global Perspectives is the first empirically grounded volume to explore the intersections of class, social structure, opportunity, and education on a truly global scale. Fifteen essays from contributors representing the US, Europe, China, Latin America and other regions offer an unparralleled examination of how social class differences are made and experienced through schooling. By underscoring the consequences of our new global reality, this volume takes seriously the transnational migration of commerce, capital and peoples and the ramifications of such for education and social structure. Moving beyond national confines, internationally recognized scholars, Lois Weis and Nadine Dolby, offer a set of emblematic essays that break new theoretical and empirical ground on the ways class is produced and maintained through education around the world.

For more than three decades Michael Apple has sought to uncover and articulate the connections among knowledge, teaching and power in education. Beginning with Ideology and Curriculum (1979), Apple moved to understand the relationship between and among the economy, political and cultural power in society on the one hand "and the ways in which education is thought about, organized and evaluated" on the other. This edited collection invites several of the world's leading education scholars to reflect on the relationships between education and power and the continued impact of Apple's scholarship. Like Apple's work itself, the essays will span a range of disciplines and inequalities; emancipatory educational practices; and the linkage between the economy and race, class and gender formation in relation to schools.

Since the 1980s, the relationship between social class and education has been overshadowed by scholarship more generally targeting issues of race, gender, and representation. Today, with the global economy deeply immersed in social inequalities, there is pressing need for serious class-based analyses of schooling, family life and social structure. The Way Class Works is a collection of twenty-four groundbreaking essays on the material conditions of social class and the ways in which class is produced on the ground in educational institutions and families. Written by the most visible and important scholars in education and the social sciences, these timely essays explore the production of class in and through the economy, family, and school, while simultaneously interrogating and challenging our understandings of social class as linked to race, gender, and nation. With essays by distinguished scholars and questions for further reflection and discussion, The Way Class Works will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars in education, sociology, and beyond.

Resting on the belief that educators must be at the center of informing education policy, the contributors to this revised edition of the classic text raise tough questions that will both haunt and invigorate pre- and inservice educators. They explore the policies and practices of structuring exclusions; they listen hard to youth living at the margins of race, class, ethnicity, and gender; and they wrestle with fundamental inequalities of space in order to educate for change. Written from the perspective of researchers, policy analysts, teachers, and youth workers, the book reveals a shared belief in education the "could be," and a shared concern about schools that currently reproduce class, race and gender relations, and privilege.