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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

THE GOOD STUDENTS: A STUDY OF HIGH-ACHIEVER
CULTURE IN A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS

presented by

STEVEN KARL WOJCIKIEWICZ

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
of the requirements for the

 

 

 

 

PhD. degree in CEPSE
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Major Proiéssor’s Signature
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Date

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PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
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6’07 p:/ClRC/DateDue.indd-p.1

THE GOOD STUDENTS: A STUDY OF HIGH-ACHIEVER CULTURE
IN A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS

By

Steven Karl Wojcikiewicz

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education

2007

 

ABSTRACT

THE GOOD STUDENTS: A STUDY OF HIGH-ACHIEVER CULTURE
IN A HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY CLASS

By

Steven Karl Wojcikiewicz

This piece describes a critical ethnographic study of the culture of hi gh-
achievement. The study was set in an Advanced Placement US History class at a
suburban American high school. Based in Dewey’s concept of collateral learning, this
study is situated among work on school culture and hidden curricula.

This study was undertaken for several reasons. Hi gh-achieving students are
positioned to take inﬂuential roles in society, yet the culture of achievement has not
received much attention. Further, it is possible that high-achievers may be learning
lessons that we would not wish them to learn. Questioning the “best” in schools also
makes it possible to examine the nature and priorities of our educational system. Finally,
a study of hi gh-achievers may tell us, as academics and educators, a bit about ourselves
and our ﬁeld.

Observation of the classroom was combined with interviews with the students and
faculty and collection of documents. This data was analyzed and interpreted from three
different perspectives, focusing on the students, on the classroom, and on the school,
using a framework that combined Deweyian and postmodern philosophical concepts as
well as ideas from previous work on school culture and the hidden curricula of schooling.

The results of this study paint a picture in which achievement is never achieved,

in which endless striving for an elusive goal leaves students little time for reﬂection or

 

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stepping-back from the experience of learning. Additionally, achievement is portrayed as
a goal which becomes its own justiﬁcation, an idea reinforced by the moral overtones
which accompany narratives of achievement. When achievement becomes a goal-in-
itself, high-achievers may be seen as unprepared to act critically and with considered
purpose, or to ask “why” questions.

This work raises questions about an educational system that aims to support a
democratic society. Uncritical pursuit of achievement, with little room for reflection or
consideration, may leave our “best” students trained to strive to make use of their skills
and talents in the service of any goal which comes along, so long as they are achieving.
Further work on this subject and examination of its implications, at all levels, is called

for.

"‘ — r...”- —

COPYri ght by
Steven Karl Wojcikiewicz
2007

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the memory of John Dewey, and to all those educators who
strive, amidst many obstacles, to keep things interesting.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A project like this can never be done by oneself, and I owe a great deal to all
those who supported me, and put up with me, as I worked my way through it.

First thanks go to my family - my ﬁancé Abby, Mom and Ray, Dad, and my
brother Ben - who were with me all the way. Lots of folks from MSU deserve thanks too,
but especially Zach, Stef, Shane, and Adam, who helped me out and gave me some faith
in the future of educational research. Nor can I leave out Jake, Brian, Matt, Amy, Robin,
Anisa, Tasha, Jeremy, Andrea F. and Andrea C., who proved that some people still want
to hang out with you even when your are crazed from working on a dissertation. A
special mention, or “shout out,” is due the ER Gang, especially Dustin, Jay, Laura, and
Leslie, who provided much needed perspective and humor. The Espresso Royale Coffee
Shop in East Lansing is the site where the majority of this work was written, and while
one cannot thank a coffee shop, it at least deserves a mention of its own.

I also thank my committee, Avner, Dick, Ralph, and Dorinda, for all their work.
Dorinda shared her own research experiences and helped me much in setting up my
study. Dick and Ralph have known me from the beginning of my graduate career, and
have supported and pushed me since then, even when I left and then returned. Ralph, as
my advisor, has guided me through the perils of graduate school requirements. Dick has
given me endless opportunities for work and thought as well as constant encouragement,
and I’ll miss our regular philosophical conversations. Without these guys, I could not
have gotten this far. Special thanks go to my dissertation director, Avner Segall, who has
been supportive, challenging, conscientious, and is a ﬁne example of a scholar, a mentor,

and a teacher.

vi

In addition, I wish to thank Sharon, J aNice, Joni, and Sue, as well as the other
folks on the College of Education staff, for their patient and endless help and support
throughout my career. They are good people, and they make the College of Education
work.

I will end by expressing my gratitude to Mr. Eric Elliot, the students of his AP US
History class, and the faculty and staff of F airlawn High School. From the beginning,
they were open, friendly, and generous with their time. There would be no study without

them, and I enjoyed getting to know them as I canied out my work. I wish them all the

best.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: FRAMING THIS STUDY

Introduction .................................................................................... 1
Theoretical Framework ....................................................................... 5
Deﬁning “Culture” .......................................................................... 8
Culture and Meaning ....................................................................... 10
Culture, Discourse, and Discipline ...................................................... 13
Culture at Several Levels .................................................................. 16
Theoretical Framework: Summary ...................................................... 19

CHAPTER 2: POSITIONING THIS STUDY
The Inﬂuence of Dewey’s Philosophy on the Shape and Purposes of the Present

Work ......................................................................................... 22
A Few Words on Determinism, Culture, and Purpose ................................ 29
High-Achievers ............................................................................. 34
School Culture and the Hidden Curriculum ............................................. 39
In Summary ................................................................................. 54
The Culture of Hi gh-Achievement and the Deweyian Educative

Experience ................................................................................... 57

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
Where is This Study Coming From? ................................................... 60
On Writing .................................................................................. 64
Positioning Myself in this Work: Part I ................................................. 65
Positioning Myself in this Work: Part H ................................................ 66
Positioning Myself in this Work: Part HI ................................................ 73
On Methods ................................................................................. 76
Data Analysis ............................................................................... 84
Addressing Validity and Generalizability ............................................... 87
Setting and Participants .................................................................... 91
The Fairlawn Community and Fairlawn High School ................................. 93
Mr. Elliot and his 1St Hour AP US History Class ...................................... 96
Arriving at Fairlawn High School, December .......................................... 99
Mr. Elliot .................................................................................. 104
The Students of AP US History ........................................................ 105
Sitting in Desks ........................................................................... 109
CHAPTER 4: THE GOOD STUDENTS

Opening - Fifteen Minutes of Mr. Elliot’s 1st Hour AP US History ............... 114
High-Achievers in the Particular Institution .......................................... 116
Trustworthy and Worthy of Trust ...................................................... 117
Competence, but not Too Much ........................................................ 125

viii

CHAPTER 5: THE GOOD CLASS

Opening — Lecture and Analysis ........................................................ 151
Interview with Mr. Elliot — 1-30-07 .................................................... 154
Hi gh-Achieving Students in A Good Class ........................................... 156
A Good Teacher ........................................................................... 158
An Advanced Class ....................................................................... 164
The Hierarchy of Knowledge ............................................................ 174
Interlude — The Sub ....................................................................... 179
Good Students, Better Students ......................................................... 184
Interlude — Reading from an Old Textbook ........................................... 191
Just the Facts, Ma’am .................................................................... 193
CHAPTER 6: A GOOD SCHOOL
A Lesson on American Social Philosophy ............................................ 207
High-Achieving Students in A Good School .......................................... 210
The Fairlawn Bubble ..................................................................... 212
The Hardworking Students .............................................................. 220
Addendum: Hard Work isn’t Quite Enough Either .................................. 234
CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION
Introduction and Recapitulation ........................................................ 237
High-Achievement and the Disciplining of Advanced Students ................... 245
No Child Ever Gets There ............................................................... 255
High-Achievement and Morality ....................................................... 258
Purpose, High-Achievement, and Some Philosophical Speculation on
Education .................................................................................. 265
Conclusion ................................................................................. 269
REFERENCES .................................................................................... 279

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CHAPTER 1: FRAMING THE STUDY

”While saints are engaged in introspection, burly sinners run the world. "
John Dewey
Introduction

As educators, teachers and professors, deans and principals, staff and faculty, we
have come up with a great many ways of talking about our students. There are students
who are quick, who get it, and there are those who are a bit slow, a little lower down on
the normal curve. Some of our students are strong in a subject; others may be weak,
perhaps underprepared, perhaps. unmotivated, perhaps out of their depth, yet their work in
other subjects could earn them identiﬁcation as articulate, intelligent, mature. Some kids
are trouble, or troubled, or trouble-makers; others are motivated, interested, and here to
learn. There are the gifted and there are those of low-ability, and of course there are the
underachievers, the overachievers, the low-achievers, and the hi gh-achievers.

These are the labels that we create ”for our students, the ways we refer to them in
everyday conversation, the ways that teachers describe them to parents and to each other,
the ways they are categorized in research and in policy. And these are the labels, too,
which create our students. These are far more than words. They describe the structure and
the activity of schooling, the shaping of students and of their lives, the boundaries of the
world of educators. They are part of the culture of schooling. A portrayal of this culture is
a picture which includes more than words, describing a way of living, of getting along in
the world. And this whole way of living, the experience that comes from years of
immersion in the culture of schooling, this is much of what we, as educators, are teaching

when we conduct our lessons every day.

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There is, of course, no one culture of schooling. There are many schools, in many
places, and they are immersed in larger social and cultural contexts. Even within schools
there are cultures and sub-cultures. Culture is no simple phenomenon, certainly not one
amenable to certain ﬁndings and ﬁnalized statements. In a way, culture is a very
democratic sort of idea; because no description of it is complete, there is no one to tell us
the full story of our own cultural environment, and so we must ask our own questions.
Nor does the complexity of culture exempt us from asking these questions. Indeed, as
educators, teaching all of the lessons we teach in school, we are called upon to learn more
about school culture if we are to know who and what we are teaching. Furthermore, we
must ask questions not only of those things which are not-working, but also of those
which are, those parts of schooling which are held up as ideals and as good examples.

It is in this spirit, the responsibility of educators to attempt greater understanding
of school culture, and the need to question the “best” in schooling, that I undertake this
study. It is a study of the culture of high-achievement in an Advanced Placement US
History class in an American public high-school. Hi gh-achievers are the “good” students,
the best and the brightest, the cream of the crop. In studies in education, high-achievers
are the ones who get good grades, who take advanced classes, who participate in
extracurricular activities, and who receive recognition from their teachers. The school in
which this study takes place was also chosen for its own high-achieving position as a
suburban, middle class high school recognized by US. News and World Report as one of
the best public high schools in America. The teacher, too, is experienced, successﬁil, and

well-regarded - a good teacher. In this work, I aim to critically examine good students, in

a good class, at a good school, to see what can be learned about the culture of hi gh-
achievement and these students’ experiences within it.

It is my contention that the experiences of these students deserve critical attention;
yet, there is always a tendency to leave “the best” unquestioned. In the modern era of
educational accountability, it goes against the grain to ask questions of the students that
actually can pass the tests and the schooling experiences that facilitate this process. Hi gh-
achieving students are not the ones being “left behind,” but rather are those who forge
ahead, and who, it is presumed, are role models for the less fortunate and less motivated.
They are not the poor, the disadvantaged, the disengaged, or the primarily minority
populations of failing schools, not Willis’ (1977) “lads” or Lareau’s (2003) “working
class” kids, not Eckhart’s (1989) “bumouts” or the children left, as Kozol (1967)
describes, to “death at an early age.” The students in this study are going to college, and
will have opportunities for professional jobs, leadership roles, and inﬂuential positions in
business, academia, and government.

Still, such questioning is necessary. Being the “best” does not necessarily say
anything about what one is the best at or the ways in which achievement is lived out;
questions of purpose and practice must also be asked. Pope (2001), portrays the lives of
high-achievers negatively, full of stress and compromise, and she suggests that high-
achievement, as a goal, may produce outcomes for students which work against and even
contradict the values that we may wish schools to instill. If more reasons are needed to
study high-achievers, we should consider the possibility-that if the students who do well
in school go on to positions of responsibility in business, academia, and government —

and they are certainly positioned to do so — then their educational experience may have

some inﬂuence in the workings of our society. The education of citizens, too, is at stake,
and as Parker (2003), argues “those who most need democratic enlightenment, especially
a highly developed sense of justice, are those who occupy the board rooms, legislatures,
court chambers, and faculty positions at prestigious universities” (p. 155).

Additionally, a critical examination of the experiences of high-achieving students,
of the culture of hi gh-achievement, may supply some insights which go beyond those that
bear on the students themselves. If these students can be called the “best” — and in the
eyes of many, they are — then their experiences can also tell us something about the
nature and priorities of the educational system which produced them. This idea goes
further when it is seen that a study of high-achievers as a middle-class high school is, in a
sense, a study of those who “ﬁt in” with the structures of schooling. In work on
reproduction and injustice in schools, schooling is portrayed as favoring “middle class”
values and ideals, as opposed to those of the “working class,” (Eckhart, 1989; Hemmings,
1996; Lareau, 2003; Mehan, Hubbard, Lintz, & Villanueva, 1994; Vallance, 1983).
Building off of these portrayals, this study is a look, not only of those successful in
schooling, but also of those values and ideals embodied in schooling.

The focus of this study on the culture of hi gh-achievement, and on the
relationship between that culture and the development of students as persons and as
citizens, is rooted in a concern for the lessons students learn in school, especially those
which lay outside of the formal curriculum. I thus adopt a frame derived from Dewey’s
notion of “collateral learning,” (1916), similar to that which has been described in other
literature as the “hidden,” “implicit,” or “null” cuniculum of schooling (e. g. Apple, 1979;

Eisner, 1985; Jackson, 1966/1990). The Deweyian frame not only places emphasis on the

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educative effects of schooling that go beyond formal lessons, but also includes the
guiding notion that educators must attend to this wider view of the education that they are
providing, and, further, that they must do so because the development of their students
both as persons and as citizens is at stake.

This is, then, a critical study in its questioning tone and a Deweyian study in its
collateral-learning theme and emphasis. Further, through its speciﬁc focus on issues of
collateral learning, meaning, and culture in one particular AP US History class, it is by
necessity an ethnographic study. In studying the good students in a good class at a good
school, I am aiming to get at the culture of hi gh-achievement, the meanings and ideas that
contextualize and shape the lives of the students who do well in school. I hope to connect
this to issues of citizenship, based on these students’ positions as successful, college-
bound, potentially-inﬂuential members of society. It is also my intention, in studying the
“best and the brightest” at a model school under an excellent teacher, to shed some light
on the priorities and structures of this school and, by extension, the broader American
educational system of which this school is a part.

Theoretical Framework
”In ethnography, the oﬁ‘ice of theory is to provide a vocabulary in which what symbolic

action has to say about itself - that is, about the role of culture in human life — can be
expressed. ”

Clzﬂord Geertz
This is a study of high-achievement in an American high-school. Speciﬁcally, it is
a study of one class at that high-school, an Advanced Placement US History class. The
aim of the study is to learn more about the “culture of hi gh-achievement,” a phenomenon

which is seen through the lens of one class at one school but which, I presume, will have

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enough themes, ideas, and activities in common with other settings to make the work
broadly useful in examining the experiences of hi gh-achievers in other schools. The
research question with which I began this study is:

How do high-achieving students interact with one another and their

educational environment to form a culture of hi gh-achievement, and what

are they learning from this culture?

This question worked to guide my inquiry and writing, focusing my efforts on the
students’ activities as well as their environment and making use of a broad-based idea of
culture in deﬁning this study’s boundaries and areas of emphasis. This question ﬁnds its
roots in the work of John Dewey and his notions on the educative nature of environment
and the responsibilities of educators to take this nature into account. This being so, the
Deweyian framework provides both theoretical and normative guidance for this study
(much more will be said of Dewey’s ideas in Chapter 2).

Yet this study does not live on Dewey alone, and indeed Dewey’s pragmatic
viewpoint is enhanced, modiﬁed, and questioned by reference to other theoretical ideas
and traditions, particularly those views of school culture which take a variety of related
stances on schooling and cultural reproduction. In addition, I bring in some postmodern
ideas and concepts which apply to education and to knowledge. This study is
intentionally broadly-based and draws upon ideas from very different sources. What
brings all these ideas together is their mutual bearing upon, and contribution to, the
understanding of the culture of high-achievement as I am studying it.

I am framing this study as a critical work. It must be added that, though I add the
term “critical” to my framework because it is not one employed by John Dewey, a critical

approach is also consistent with the Deweyian frame. Dewey clearly saw the link

 

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between the theoretical and the political (1920/1967), noting that philosophical and even
psychological theories were political views expressed. He also examined schooling and
its meaning in the light of larger social and economic systems, calling for education and
social reform that would re-direct our nation’s efforts away from industrial modes of
living and market-dominated thinking and toward individual fulﬁllment and the just
society (Cohen, 1995, Dewey, 1916, 1934/1980, 1935/1946). Criticality, as employed in
educational research, has multiple meanings, from a questioning of the status quo
(Madison, 2005) to an opening up of interpretations of and conversations about the
forms, practices, and narratives of education (Britzman, 2003; Segall, 2002), to an
approach which points out the inﬂuences of societal, and especially economic, structures
as they are played out, reproduced, produced, and resisted in schools, classrooms, and
workplaces (Apple, 1982; Margolis, 2001; Giroux & Penna, 1983; McLaren et. a1. 2004).
My critical approach touches upon all of these, aiming to open up the culture of the
accepted and the celebrated — the “good” students — to discussion, to question what high-
achievement is, what it means, how it plays out, and to look at its educative effects on
students.

A critical view looks not only at what happens in the classroom, but also why,
especially in regards to the reasons that students and teachers claim in legitimizing their
actions and ideas. In looking at issues of legitimation and purpose, I also borrow from
Segall’s (2006) notion of critical history, as well as Lyotard’s (1984) idea of legitimation
through narratives (also in Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish, 1998), in his case “grand
narratives,” though I look not only to the ways that grand narratives play into classroom

life but also the ways in which smaller, local narratives create and justify practices and

ways of thinking that surround high-achievers (Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997).
The centrality of narrative in the organization of human experience (Bruner, 1991;
Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Randal & Furlong, 2005) makes the stories told about hi gh-
achievement, the way that students and teachers make sense of the work they do, an
important consideration in a study of culture. Going further in the postmodern direction,
criticality, drawing from Foucaltian perspectives (Foucault, 1975, 1982; Prado, 1995)
represents an attempt to open up spaces in discourses of knowledge and truth, an act of
questioning that revealsthe ways that the taken-as-given is constructed and accepted.

In all this, the study remains rooted in Dewey, and thus the point here is to learn
more about the culture of high-achievement because, as Dewey maintains and as I also
believe, it is the whole culture which educates, not merely the lessons we teach (Dewey,
1916, 1938/1997). Dewey refers to the learning that goes on outside of formal lessons as
“collateral learning” (1916), but even when he does not use this term he treats the
educational experience as a wholistic one which involves the student, the enviromnent,
and social interactions within it. Taking this as a starting point, this study is rooted in the
idea that, as educators, we must attend not only to our lessons and our curricula, but to
the cultural environment in which we work. Additionally, Dewey’s emphasis on fulﬁlling
activity means an emphasis on the purpose of what is done in schools, not only the “why”
of what is done, but on who or what determines the “why.”

Defining “Culture”

I have elected to use the term “culture” to designate the focus of this study

because it encompasses a wider range of issues than “collateral learning” and brings in a

number of useful perspectives that extend beyond Dewey’s notions. Having elected to

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use the term culture, I am bound to deﬁne it, and so I shall try, though I believe that any
such deﬁnition is bound to be incomplete or impossibly broad. It is difﬁcult to begin
because Dewey didn’t spend a lot of time writing about culture per se, nor has Dewey’s
work been employed as a frame for ethnographic work. Where Deweyian accounts of
culture are to be found, there is some question as to just what culture is, either an existent
entity with which human nature interacts to produce certain ways of living (1939), or a
mediating factor in the transaction of person and environment (Biesta & Burbules, 2003).
My own answer to the question of whether culture is something which people interact
with or something they interact through is that it is both. Culture shapes what people do
and see and who they are, but they can also step back from culture, examine it, change it,
gaze upon it.

This deﬁnition is intended to be consistent with the general transactive nature of
Dewey’s pragmatic frame. Dewey’s descriptions of the ways that organisms (including
humans) interact with the world follow the lines of his perceptual argument about the
“reﬂex arc” (Bredo, 1998; Dewey, 1897) in which he posited a mutually-deﬁning and co-
modifying relationship between stimulus and response. Separations between stimulus and
response, like separations between person and world, are taken as analytical divisions but
not as divisions in reality. This line of thinking is consistent with the way that Dewey
deﬁnes “experience” (Dewey, 1934/ 1980) and “intelligence” (Bernstein, 1966; Dewey,
1916). The distinction between person and world is an analytical distinction only or, a
functional one, and the same can be said of how one views culture. The deﬁnition of
culture can thus be taken as dependent on how one is viewing it at the time, whether one

is seeing through it or looking at it, viewing it, to use Polanyi’s (Polanyi & Prosch, 1976)

perceptual terminology, tacitly or focally. One can then be immersed in culture or can
step back from it, even critique it. Such a view is also consistent with the active and not-
fully—determined part, in Dewey’s descriptions, that individuals play in the creation of
social and institutional environment.

Positing an active role for individuals in culture means that one of the priorities in
looking at hi gh-achiever culture will be to observe the ways in which the students
themselves create and maintain it. Thus, in deﬁning “culture,” this study thus also draws
on a conception of culture borrowed from a post-Marxist conception of cultural
production, speciﬁcally from Willis (1977), though Apple (1982) and Eckhart (1989)
have contributed to my thinking on it as well. Willis’ account of the active nature of
cultural activity gives a role to students in the formation of culture. Culture creates the
students, in a sense, yet it is also at the same time created by them. This notion of culture
is useful because it provides an account that explains how cultural reproduction occurs
without relying on a frame of cultural determinism (Apple, 1982; Eisenhart, 2001). For
these researchers, and for my own purposes, such a deﬁnition gives the students a part in
the creation of their own culture, and thus some hope for change. While the idea that
students play such a role does not necessarily lead to any change in the culture or action
on their part to move outside of their places in it — as Eckhart’s and Willis’ students
certainly show — the potential for such action or change does exist.

Culture and Meaning
When speaking of culture, as Geertz (1973) makes clear, it is necessary to talk

about meaning, and it is to this issue that I trim next. Biesta and Burbules (2003), in their

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deﬁnition of Dewey’s mediational view of culture, connect the active deﬁnition of
culture to meaning in a pragmatic sense:

Dewey had an anthropological understanding of culture. For him culture

is everything that is the product of human action and interaction. The most

important cultural product is language, which Dewey deﬁned as

everything that has meaning. What is included in this broad deﬁnition of

language is not only spoken and written language, but also, for example,

rituals, ceremonies, monuments, and the products of art and technology.

These things and events get their meaning from the role they play in

coordinated human action... (p. 29)
Meaning, according to Dewey (1925/1965), comes through use; that is, to use something,
or to conceive in the ways one might use something, is to endow it with meaning
(Dewey, 1931/1968). Putting meaning into the context of use brings the implication that
meaning cannot be fully predetermined, thus lending additional support to the notion that
culture is neither ﬁxed nor deterministic. This also means, however, that culture is not
just a matter of forms and structures, but also of how they are used and interpreted, and
this use, and interpretation, is, furthermore, a social matter. In terms of the workings of
this study in particular, the importance of meaning in culture indicates an approach which
attends to the “why” of the activities of the students and teacher. Meaning, as a matter of
culture, is thus also related back to the idea of purpose that plays a role in the Deweyian
deﬁnition of learning and intelligence.

Geertz gives a pervasive role to meaning in his deﬁnition of culture and in the
Work of the ethnographic researcher. As Geertz (1973) puts it in an oft-used description:

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of

signiﬁcance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the

analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law
but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (p. 5)

ll

In studying culture, then, meaning is clearly a vital piece, not just what is done but why
and how, and to what ends, and in whose eyes. The idea of “webs of signiﬁcance” adds a
certain feel of immersion in culture while maintaining the active idea that has already
been put forth, since “man” does after all spin those webs — as Eisenhart (2001) says of
Geertz, “meanings” are “partially shared and manipulated by those who knew them” (p.
209). The idea of shared meanings, of “signiﬁcance,” gets at explanation, not even just of
telling-why, but of making-sense, of giving an account of actions and ideas such that they
have a grounding and a coherence:

...what we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s
constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to... (1973, p. 9)

As the above examples show, meaning is a complex thing. Studies of school
culture (e. g. Eckhart, 1989; Willis, 1977) focus on a wide variety of features of such
cultures, including strategies, attitudes, practices, positions, ideals, goals, actions,
explanations, ideologies, and stories, as well as a process of what might be called
“meaning-making” in which daily life comes to assume a coherence and a direction, akin
to a narrative. This may be due to the foundational role that narrative plays in thought and
CXperience, as Bruner (1991) emphasizes when he suggests that “narrative organizes the
Structure of human experience” (p. 21) and that “we organize our experience and our
memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative” (p4). This narrative
Organization ﬁnds a parallel in the way that culture itself is studied. Part of the
Ethnographer’s job, as Geertz sees it, is to construct a picture of the meanings in a cultural
setting:

...anthropological writings are themselves interpretations. . .They are, thus,
ﬁctions; ﬁctions, in the sense that they are ‘something made,’ ‘something

12

 

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In doing so, the ethnographer must attend to the ways that the people under study do their
own constructing, that this, the ways in which they explain, talk about, justify, deny,
make sense of, or “commonly” understand their experiences. At the same time, the
ethnographer is also engaged in the same process, and thus an ethnographic study is a
construction of constructions. Therefore, the narrative mode will play an important role in
this study, not only in analyzing the way that hi gh-achievement and experience are
“narrated” within school culture, but also in the ways in which the “results” of this study
are portrayed and presented — more will be said of this later on.
Culture, Discourse, and Discipline

As a study of culture, this work is not intended to be a study only of narratives,
but also of actions, of justiﬁcations, various inﬂuences, and deﬁnitions of achievement
and knowledge and learning. The justiﬁcatory function of narrative, the “legitimizing”
function, can be examined by borrowing Lyotard’s (1984) conception of the way “grand
narratives” secure and support realms of knowledge. With the promise of modernist
universal knowledge unfulﬁlled, grand narratives give purpose and legitimacy to our
ways of viewing and acting upon the world, as the narratives surrounding the culture of
high-achievement may function to prop-up, explain, justify, and account for it. It will also
be useful, this study of hi gh-achiever culture, to go beyond narrative in other ways and to
enter the realm of “discourse,” coming from a postmodern, and particularly a
Foucaultian, perspective (Blake et. al., 1998; Foucault, 1975, 1982; Prado, 1995).
Discourse ties in with the idea of a “narrative,” as mentioned above, since discourses, in

creating ways of talking and acting, act to make possible some cultural forms and to rule

13

out, or not mention, others. Yet discourse, which includes practices, verbal and non-
verbal acts of communication, and the boundaries of what is or is not accepted and even
what is known (Prado, 1995), is a broader and more widely applicable concept than
narrative. Also, the language of discourse and legitimation goes beyond interpretive
meaning-making in the sense that it reveals purposes that lay behind constructions of
culture. Cultural constructions have consequences, one might say they are interested, and
thus can be used to justify, to devalue, to include and to exclude.

In addition to the ways that culture is acted out, talked about, told, and justiﬁed,
there is also a concern in this study, drawing from its Deweyian base, with the effects that
“collateral learning,” which I am taking as a cultural phenomenon, has on students. Thus,
not only are the aspects of culture embodied in discourse important, but also the ways in
which the participation in discourses shapes the students as they live out their high—
achiever roles. Thus, the notion of “discipline,” the shaping of the self through the
possibilities, knowledge, and actions created through the adoption of a discourse, or the
manifestation of a discourse in institutional forms, adds richness to this view of culture
(Blake et. al., 1998; Foucault, 1975; Prado, 1995; Usher & Edwards, 1994). Use of
“discipline” as an analytical and observational frame makes it possible to talk about the
creation of hi gh-achievers, the ways that the idea and position of a “hi gh-achiever” is
made by the ways that school, knowledge, talent, individuality, and opportunity position
high-achievers in their class, the school, and even society at large.

There is also the dualistic nature of discourses, and their disciplinary functions, as
at once liberating and coercive. Discourses simultaneously make possible certain ways of

being, acting, and speaking, yet in doing so open up subjects to new ways of regulation

14

and control, making it possible in a sense to look at what hi gh-achievers both gain and
lose as they participate in hi gh-achievement as a practice and as a position. This, in turn,
re-connects to Dewey’s idea that an awareness of the inﬂuences of environment,
institution, and culture is necessary in order to see how students are being shaped by
schools. This point may require some clariﬁcation. The empowering and disempowering
nature of discourses, since they are ways in which the self is shaped and controlled
(Prado, 1995), can be viewed from a perspective of “technologies of the self,” which
make certain operations possible on subjects yet, at the same time, open up selves to
regulation (Usher & Edwards, 1994; Rose, 1996a). In postmodern thought, this is a part
of the process of subjectiﬁcation, and indeed it can be seen as such in the cultural
environment of the school by examining the ways that students are subjectiﬁed and
deﬁned. At the same time, however, the idea that students are at once gaining and losing
through subjectiﬁcation can be seen in a sense that goes beyond a postmodern concern
with the subject and works on what might be called a macro level to inﬂuence the
criticality of this study. In examining the. culture of high-achieving students and the
collateral learning in school, it is important to attend to the possibilities opened up by
their position as high-achievers, the opportunities and ﬁ'eedoms and access to privileges
that represent the empowering side of their disciplining as hi gh-achieving students
(Prado, 1995).

Dewey’s perspective is further enhanced by attention to the differential
positioning that plays a part in creating the culture of high-achievement in schools. The
Foucaltian notion that knowledge is always tied in with power, and that power acts

through knowledge to create “disciplines” which give shape and deﬁnition to actions and

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ideas (Blake, 1998; Usher & Edwards, 1994), is quite helpful in a look at high-achiever
culture. Hi gh-achievers are, by deﬁnition, set apart from, and above, other students in
schools. This positioning is a part of their culture, and a part of the culture of schooling,
yet such positioning is not much seen in Deweyian accounts of education. Dewey for the
most part treats schooling as a unitary activity, and while he does recognize inﬂuences of
what amounts to cultural reproduction when he calls for equal educational opportunities
for students of varied socio-economic backgrounds (1916), there is little in Dewey that
helps in talking about the ways in which students are distinguished ﬂom one another,
placed into categories such as “high—achiever,” and shaped, not only by schooling, but by
their speciﬁc positions within schools.
Culture at Several Levels

What we have so far is a critical focus on the culture of high-achievement based
on Dewey’s ideas about the way learning works in schools and the role educators should
play in shaping that enviromnent and the learning that occurs within it, a role which I
have taken to demand concern for the culture of schooling and, in this particular case, of
high-achievement. Culture itself has been explained as seen and seen-through, as created
and creating, as working in the realm of meaning, and as accessible through narrative,
discursive, and disciplinary ﬂames. This is ﬁne as far as it goes, but more can be said
about the sorts of ﬁrings that come into this view of culture, the levels at which culture is
viewed, so as to give the reader additional insight into my priorities of observation and
analysis. These levels include the classroom itself, the school and schooling, connections
to the society in which all this takes place, and, going in the opposite direction in terms of

scale, the workings of knowledge and learning.

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Dewey’s concern about the cultural features of schooling extends to what he calls
the “environment” (Dewey, 1916, 1938/1997; Hansen, 2000), the ways that the students,
as a group, interact with their surroundings, their teacher, and that which they are
learning. A look at culture thus includes a look at the physical environment, desks and
rooms and buildings, the social environment, meaning the ways that students interact
with one another and the teacher, and the work of school itself, how the students of AP
US History approach and are directed by their lessons. This means that culture, in this
study, is at one level a classroom phenomenon, one which takes place in, and is deﬁned
by, what does and does not happen in the particular AP US History classroom that I spent
several months sitting in.

Of course, this classroom does not stand alone, but is itself a part of a school and
of the particular institutional environment of “school” in a wider sense. A study of hi gh-
achiever culture takes place not just within one classroom but within the school. The
school is identiﬁed as a separate level here because “school” is itself recognized as a
unique and complex setting, a place with its own particular rules and ways of doing
things, though schools may share some commonalities to other institutional environments
(Cusick, 1973; Goodlad, 1984; Jackson, 1966/ 1990). In the “particular cultural
environment. . .of the school” (Lutkehaus & Greenﬁeld, 2003), learning and development
take on certain characteristics, and occur in ways which may not look like learning
outside of a schooling (Dewey, 1916; Lave and Wenger, 1991). Pope (2001), in naming
her study of high-achievers “Doing School,” gets at part of what I mean here. The hi gh-
achievers of AP US History are not positioned and deﬁned, and acting, solely as

members of a particular class, but as students living out their lives in school.

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The inclusion of the Marx-inﬂuenced work in the deﬁnition of culture (e. g.
Apple, 1982; Willis, 1977) also has the effect of bringing in concerns related to society as
a whole with a particular emphasis on the ways that economic, industrial, and
bureaucratic forms are manifest in schools. Again, this bringing in of economics and
industry is consistent with the links school and society found in Dewey -— in fact,
Dewey’s ideas can be seen as a response to the grth of industrial organization and
urbanization in American life (F effer, 1993). Thus culture expands beyond the walls of
the school, and my study of high-achieving student culture must also take into account
ideas, ideologies, narratives, structures, and inﬂuences ﬂom “big” culture, American
culture, consumer culture, the culture of capitalism, and the like. Here, the critical stance
once again becomes important, as the discourses of these various cultural settings may
make their way into the school, or into the local discourses of the teachers and students as
they make sense of their cultural environment. Beyond the school and the classroom,
then, culture is a societal-level idea.

As a study of classroom culture, this work is also a study of learning, and thus this
ﬂamework must go beyond culture in a societal and an immediate physical and social
sense and touch also upon structures of knowledge and meanings attached to learning
itself. Dewey’s concern with the quality of activity is a piece of this. What is important
about learning, for Dewey, is that it leads to the ability to act with intelligence, that is,
with an appreciation of the means and ends involved in activity, the ability to act with
purpose, and the sensitivity to adjust means, ends, and even purposes to ﬁt the ongoing
demands of the activity (Dewey, 1916, 193 8/1997; Bernstein, 1966). Learning thus

becomes a question, not just of knowledge, but of the purposes of that knowledge, and

18

 

he uses to

the uses to which it is put. In a way, the position of schooling as a unique cultural
environment also plays into this, as Dewey’s purpose in contrasting schooling to informal
learning environments was to argue that one of the dangers of schooling is that it can
separate knowledge from purpose and activity (1916). This emphasis, then, adds a twist
to the notion of meaning in looking at culture, since a part of meaning, in looking at
learning ﬂom a Deweyian perspective, lies in the realm of purpose. The inclusion of
structures of knowledge and ways of learning is also enhanced by the inclusion of some
ideas and viewpoints that come ﬂom postmodern perspectives. Postmodernism, though
not a single coherent stance, does embody a critique of the modernist project and its
accompanying hierarchical, progressive, and exclusive view of knowledge (Gergen,
1992; Kvale, 1992; Prado, 1995; Polkinghome, 1992; Usher & Edwards, 1994), and thus
makes an ideal viewpoint for a critical view of learning, how it is deﬁned, how it is used,
and what purposes it serves. As with the above point on the culture of school, hierarchies
and dualistic thinking become a matter of attention using the postmodern lens (Usher &
Edwards, 1994), but at this micro-level these can be looked for in the very structures of
knowledge and learning as propagated in the classroom.
Theoretical Framework: Summary

This study, then, is intended as an ethnographic description of the culture of high-
achievement, as manifest in a high-school AP Social Studies class. The ethnographic
frame gets at questions of meaning and culture, a focus made necessary by the study’s
roots in Dewey’s conception of “collateral learning,” the idea that the entire educational
environment does the teaching in school, and that educators should take responsibility for

what students are learning beyond the formal lessons of the classroom. The study is

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ﬂamed as a critical study in several senses of the term, as a questioning of that which is
taken as accepted and good, as an opening up of conversations around different
interpretations of high-achiever culture, as a questioning of the role of ideologies and
structures as they play out in the classroom, and as an examination of the ways that high-
achievement is deﬁned and legitimated.

The term “culture” was chosen, over collateral learning and other similar terms
(such as “hidden curriculum”) because it is a more ﬂexible and all-encompassing notion
and allows a wider investigation that Dewey’s original emphasis on student dispositions.
Culture, as used here, is a lens and a process, something which the students act through
and upon, create and are created by. Students’ role in the cultural process is not a passive
one, and culture is not intended here as a deterministic concept. As the realm of meaning,
culture, as a subject of study, demands attention not only to what is done and how, but
also why, and to what ends. Postmodern and narrative concepts are drawn upon to allow
an examination of the stories, discourses, and disciplines that create and give support to
high-achievement, high-achievers, and other notions and practices surrounding and
imbuing the culture under study. Finally, culture is seen as a multi-leveled phenomenon,
created and sustained within the classroom, the school, and society-at-large, but also
present at the level of knowledge and learning.

The overall intention is to examine, ﬂom a variety of directions and perspectives,
the culture of hi gh-achievement as manifest in AP US History. The broadness of the
frame, and the use of multiple perspectives, comes in some ways from the subject of
study itself. High-achiever culture is no simple matter, and indeed the picture drawn in

this study is only a partial one, and only one of many possible portrayals, as necessitated

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by the complexity of the topic and the particular bent of the researcher. This complexity
comes from the existence of high-achiever culture at the nexus of ideas, practices,
ideologies, structures, discourses, and stories that is schooling in America. The school
itself, its educational mission, this educational ideal in the light of American culture, the
particular position of high-achievers as students who “buy-in” to education, the place of
the school in a suburban neighborhood, values surrounding hard work and intelligence,
economic concerns, and even theories of knowledge and learning are just some of the
pieces that come together to push and pull upon the culture. of hi gh-achievement. The
broadness of my ﬂaming of culture reﬂects the many pieces of the culture. In addition,
this broadness reﬂects my desire to remain open, in the spirit of qualitative ethnography
and out of a general curiosity, to as many of these inﬂuences as possible in carrying out

my work.

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CHAPTER 2: POSITIONING THIS STUDY

I

”It is unfortunate, but almost everything we are interested in turns out to be complex. ’

S. Jay Samiuels and Michael L. Kamil

The Inﬂuence of Dewey’s Philosophy on the Purposes of the Present Work

While there is not a tradition of cultural research from a Deweyian perspective,
Dewey did leave us with a set of ideas which, because of their coherence and their broad
applicability, form a ﬁrm base for this work. Because Dewey’s presence looms large in
this work, it is necessary to spend some time, before turning to the literature of school
culture and hidden curricula, delving into Dewey’s ideas as they apply to, and guide, my
study. Dewey’s ideas on learning, the self, the relationship between person, school, and
society, have been alluded to in the above deﬁnition of culture and the theoretical
framework for this study, but have been left without much conceptual support or
explanation. Thus part of the positioning of this study in the ﬁeld is to re-visit the
Deweyian ideas mentioned above and lay them out with greater speciﬁcity, so that their
inﬂuence on my thinking, and the purposes of this study, are clariﬁed. I will thus begin
with a more complete description of collateral learning, its basis in Dewey’s philosophy,
and its connections to education, society, economics, and government. I will also spend a
little time showing how collateral learning connects to culture, and describing how the
active nature of culture in this study is related to Dewey’s conceptions of learning and
democratic life and the ways that these conceptions might also inﬂuence the purpose and

direction of this work.

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As a study of school culture, this work ﬁnds its roots in the Deweyian idea that, in
schools, it is the entire environment which is educative, not merely the lessons and
cunicula themselves. In Democracy and Education, Dewey begins by examining the
phenomenon of societal transmission of knowledge outside of formal schooling. In this
process, “. . .the particular medium in which an individual exists. . .gradually produces in
him a certain system of behavior, a certain disposition of action” (Dewey, 1916, p. 14).
Dewey states that this process of learning societal knowledge through direct participation
is not feasible in a society with a written record and a vast store of accumulated
knowledge, making formal schooling necessary. He does not, however, make a great
distinction between the process of informal education and the process of formal
schooling, at least in terms of the basic educative process: in both, it is the whole
environment that educates.

Starting ﬂom this idea, Dewey claims that the most important and inﬂuential
lessons of school are not those which are deﬁned by lesson plans and curriculum guides,
but rather are the set of student dispositions that Dewey calls “collateral learning” (1938).
The idea of “collateral learning” places a responsibility on educators to be aware of, and
to intentionally make use of, the school as institution and environment. If school
produces certain dispositions, then educators must deliberately act to design an educative
environment that will produce the dispositions that we would wish our students to have.
Dewey wrote on this responsibility:

The only way in which adults consciously control the kind of education in

which the immature get is by controlling the environment in which they

act, and hence think and feel. We never educate directly, but indirectly by

means of the enviromnent. Whether we permit chance environments to do

the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a
great difference. (1916, p. 23)

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The end of this quote emphasizes the responsibilities of educators that I mentioned above.
The environment is going to educate — there is no escaping this — and thus educators must
take that environment into account. If they do not, they leave this education to “chance,”
with the danger that they may get outcomes counter to their goals and desires for
schooling. Dewey claims that the only proper approach to education is an “intentional”
one, “a specially selected environment, the selection being made on the basis of materials
and method speciﬁcally promoting grth in the desired direction” (1916, p. 43). Thus
the educator has a “duty” to attempt to regulate the “objective conditions” in which the
experience of learning takes place (Dewey, 193 8/ 1997, p. 45).

The idea of “collateral learning” is based on Dewey’s ideas about the relationship
between the “individual” and the “social,” ideas which lay at the foundation of his point
that it is the entire environment which is educative. Dewey maintained that this
distinction between individual and social was a false one, since the two are intertwined,
and preferred a distinction between “culture” and “human nature” that emphasized the
idea that there is no individual which exists outside of his or her social environment
(1920/1967, 1939). Dewey derided the idea of the individual self, derived ﬂom “the
individualistic school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,”
(1920/1967, p. 193), and was no fan of the educational and societal inﬂuences that
accompanied the idea of the “individual.” Bernstein calls this view Dewey’s
“dissatisfaction with classic liberalism,” and says of it:

The trouble with classic liberalism is that it understood man as having a

relatively ﬁxed endowment of rights and powers that would be actualized

once external constraints were removed. The main problem for classic

liberalism is ensuring a minimum of external inﬂuence upon the individual
by social and political institutions. (Bernstein, 1966, p. 139)

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Rather than positing a preexisting individual, and a society where individuals
associate as separate pre-existing units, Dewey painted a picture of individuality as
societally formed. “Individual,” he notes,

...is a blanket term for the immense variety of speciﬁc reactions, habits,

dispositions and powers of human nature that are evoked, and conﬁrmed

under the inﬂuences of associated life. (1920/1967, p. 199)

Since it is in association that individuality is found, then one cannot look at individuals
out of context. Put simply, Dewey is claiming that what people do has a great deal of
inﬂuence on who they are or, as Hansen (2000) put it, “Human beings become what they
do, think, worry about, attend to, feel, and so forth” (p. 2). In Dewey’s words:

...the human being whom we fasten upon as an individual par excellence

is moved and related by his associations with others; what he does and

what the consequences of his behavior are, what his experience consists

of, cannot even be described, much less accounted for, in isolation. (1927,

p.188)

Here the individual/society dichotomy is put into a new light: individuals are not opposed
to society, but are born of it, social at the very root of their being. This social nature, in
turn, gives deﬁnition and direction to who people are and what they do.

...while singular beings in their singularity think, want and decide, what

they think and strive for, the content of their beliefs and intentions is a

subject matter provided by associations. Thus man is not merely defacto

associated, but he becomes a social animal in the make-up of his ideas,

sentiments and deliberate behavior. What he believes, hopes for and aims

at is the outcome of association and intercourse. (1927, p. 25)

Taking all this into account, Dewey’s idea that educators must shape the
environment of schooling, the “objective conditions” in which the experience of learning

occurs, makes sense. It is through association in activity in environment that individuals,

who are social in their makeup, are formed. Thus, the educator, but shaping the

25

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9

conditions in which such associations take place — one might say by shaping the “culture’
of schooling — acts to see that students come out of school having learned the “collateral”
lessons that are desired. It must also be noted that Dewey’s call for the deliberate shaping
of “objective conditions” went beyond schooling, and thus that his educational priorities
were connected to his larger democratic vision. Dewey wanted to see everyone leading
fulﬁlling lives according to their potential, and this could only happen in a democratic
system (1916, 1935/ 1946, 1937/1946). With individuality deﬁned in association, the only
way to realize this democratic dream, which was also a matter of freedom for persons,
was to shape the real-goings on of society (1916, 1920/1967, 1938/1997, 1946). Dewey’s
theory of individuality makes his theory of social change necessary:

...when self hood is perceived to be an active process it is also seen that

social modiﬁcations are the only means of the creation of changed

personalities. Institutions are viewed in their educative effect: with

reference to the types of individuals they foster. The interest in individual

moral improvement and the social interest in objective reform of economic

and political conditions are identiﬁed. And inquiry into the meaning of

social arrangements gets deﬁnite point and direction. We are led to ask

what the speciﬁc stimulating, fostering and nurturing power of each

speciﬁc social arrangement may be. The old-time separation between

politics and morals is abolished at its roots. (1920/ 1967, p. 196-197)

For Dewey, “social arrangements, laws, and institutions. . .are not means for
obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating
individuals” (1920/ 1967, p. 194). Once we have gotten to the idea that the individual is of
the social, and that the social is embodied, in part, in the institutions, we can then begin to
speculate on how some institutions in particular may inﬂuence the individuals which
participate in them. As you might imagine here, I am thinking speciﬁcally of educational

institutions, and Dewey, too, thought of them as particularly inﬂuential. While Dewey did

state that, “In the broad and ﬁnal sense all institutions are educational in the sense that

26

 

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they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions and disabilities that constitute a concrete
personality,” he reserved a special place for institutions that are speciﬁcally pedagogical
in nature, noting that:

This principle applies with special force to the school. For it is the main

business of the family and the school to inﬂuence directly the formation

and growth of attitudes and dispositions, emotional, intellectual, and

moral. (1937/1946, p. 62)

This idea can, in turn, be seen as related to Dewey’s larger point, which he made
ﬂequently, about the uses of philosophy. Philosophy should, Dewey believed, speak
directly to the affairs of the world, the “problems of men,” as he called them (1946).
Dewey wished to take down the barriers between morality, empirical methods, and social
organization, making for intentional efforts, based on philosophical principles and
observation of the actual effects of social structures as related to our intentions, to shape
society (1920/ 1967, 193 5/ 1946). Dewey scorned the idea that moral concerns should
remain separate ﬂom politics and govermnent, and pointed to the idea that morality as an
individual affair actually acted to keep society as it is:

Let us perfect ourselves ﬂom within, and in due season changes in society

will come of themselves is the teaching. And while saints are engaged in

introspection, burly sinners run the world. (1920/1967, p. 196)

In Dewey’s account, moral change becomes a matter of societal structure:

We may desire the abolition of war, industrial justice, greater equality of

opportunity for all. But no amount of preaching good will or the golden

rule or cultivation of sentiments of love and equity will accomplish the

results. There must be change in objective arrangements and institutions.

We must work on the environment not merely on the hearts of men. (1946,

21-22)

There are several important implications here for a study of the culture of hi gh-

achievement. First, this culture is seen not just as the way that school works, but as a

27

 

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piece of “collateral learning,” the educative nature of the whole environment of
schooling. Thus, a study of hi gh-achiever culture is set up to be a study of part of what
these high-achieving students are learning in school. Furthermore, this look at the cultural
aspects of school learning, as opposed to the strictly curricular aspects, ﬁnds purpose in
Dewey’s insistence that, if the whole environment of school is educative, it is the
responsibility of educators to attempt to shape that environment to produce desired ends.
A look at the culture of high-achievement is thus an attempt to increase understanding of
the educative effects of schools in a broad way, with an eye toward widening the scope of
educators’ concerns regarding what and how their students are learning, and why they do
the things they do.

This sort of work can also be seen as ﬁtting into the wider Deweyian project of
using philosophy as a way of questioning, commenting upon, and addressing problems of
schooling and society, and not only problems of philosophy itself. The examination of
cultural issues in schooling, by virtue of education’s inﬂuence on the lives of individuals
and on the place of education as a piece of the larger society, is by necessity an
examination that touches upon issues of politics, government, and democracy. The ways
that hi gh-achievers learn to work, to act, and to be, and the ways that they come to see
themselves in the school and in society are connected the construction and maintenance
of our democracy and a striving toward more just forms of social organization. Since
morality and social organization are not separate, Dewey demands that we strive to ﬁgure
out what sort of society we want and then act to intentionally shape it as such. Deweyian

work, thus, shares with critical work a desire to work for change, with certain ends in

28

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mind, and leaves behind research, and philosophizing, which are “disinterested.” This in
mind, I turn next to some issues relating to purpose from Dewey’s perspective.
A Few Words on Determinism, Culture, and Purpose

Dewey’s philosophy was not a purely speculative one, nor did he make any claim
to neutrality in terms of his aims, either for philosophy, education, or society. He wished
to see schools, and society, come together along some certain lines, and he wished that
this process would occur through a combination of philosophical examination and
empirical observation. The general gist is that Dewey wished to question things which
were taken as “natural” or outside of the control of humans, natural law, or the operations
of economic forces, or even science and technology (1935/ 1946; 1944/1946), and to
bring these under the control of people working to shape society for deﬁnite, in his case
democratic, ends. As the products of human thought and activity, the ways in which we
organize society, and the decisions we make in doing so could, Dewey believed, be
shaped and made according to chosen purposes rather than left to chance or to some
supposedly natural and thus uncontrollable forces.

For all the faith in humanity that Dewey expressed in putting forth such goals and
ideals, he does present a vision which can, at ﬁrst glance, sound rather too controlling,
akin to the failed vision of the communist planned society. And in schools, too, all this
talk of shaping students, and Dewey’s mention of concerns that touch upon the moral,
make this account of the inﬂuence of the environment sound quite overbearing. Aside
from the larger concerns that such a vision might produce, for the purposes of this study a
controlling version of enviromnent might translate into a view of culture that is

deterministic, one in which the high-achieving students under observation are mere

29

 

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products of the environment, with no role of their own in cultural creation. But Dewey
did not want to take charge of everyone in society or in school, and a Dewey-derived
cultural study does have room for students’ creation of culture, but in claiming all this the
issue of determinism must be addressed. Thus, here I brieﬂy examine three of Dewey’s
ideas related to the nature of the inﬂuence of “objective conditions” of school and society
on the lives of individuals: the formation of individuals in an active and social process,
the presence of social control already in society, and the appropriation of social control in
the name of individuality and ﬂeedom.

The ﬁrst two points already show up in the Deweyian account above. Individuals,
as social, being formed through association with others in society and institutions, are
thus formed in activity, in pursing their goals and purposes, in working and learning and
playing. Thus, even within the ﬂamework of the educative nature of environment and the
inﬂuence of societal structures, individuality is not determined. Dewey’s transactive view
of the individual precludes this. The second point, that of the already existing presence of
social control, Dewey makes when he claims that school environments are already
exercising an educative function, and that the point is to be aware of it and shape it
deliberately. This is not a matter of being controlling as much as it is working to be
responsible for the wider picture of what schooling does, akin to calls in educational
research to be aware of “hidden,” “implicit,” or “null” curricula of schooling (e. g. Eisner,
1985; Jackson, 1966/1990). Dewey makes this same point in regards to society, one
which sounds rather like complaints that the hidden curriculum of schooling forms
students along economic lines (e. g. Apple, 1982; Giroux & Penna, 1983). As Dewey says

it:

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It is nonsense to suppose that we do not have social control now. The

trouble is that it is exercised by the few who have economic power at the

expense of the liberties of the many and at the cost of increasing disorder,

culminating in that chaos of war which the representatives of liberty for

the possessive class identify with true discipline. (1935/1946, p. 114)

This brings us to the third point, which is that Dewey’s calls for control are
constructed as calls for institutional, educational, and social environments that lead to
greater ﬂeedom for individuals. Believing that social control was thus already being
exercised, though it was being exercised in the name of market principles (1935/ 1944), or
scientiﬁc and technological ones (1944/1946), Dewey believed that it should be exercised
deliberately and in the name of chosen ends. The purpose of this intentional approach is
to foster individual ﬂeedom:

Dewey ﬁrmly believed that if complexes of social, economic, and political

institutions are not deliberately controlled, they will result in an increase in

human alienation and dehurnanization. . .When we appreciate the extent to

which the quality of human individuality is affected by the social

transactions in which man ﬁnds himself, then we are in a position to see

what must be done for the creative realization of human individuality.

(Bernstein, 1966, p. 139-140)

Individual ﬂeedom, for Dewey, is closely related to his ideas about learning and
activity in general. Without going into great detail about Dewey’s educational and
aesthetic theories at this point, it is enough to say that learning, and fulﬁlling activity in
general, are dependent upon a purpose and perception. Coming at school subjects in this
way, Dewey is aiming to develop in students a certain open, perceptive, informed way of
looking at the world. In his words, he wants schools to prepare students to act with what
he calls “intelligence.” Of intelligence, Dewey claims that:

When I act intelligently, my behavior has a mental quality. When things

have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they
, do not, we act blindly, unconsciously unintelli gently. (1916, p. 34)

31

 

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However,

If a person cannot foresee the consequences of his act, and is not capable
of understanding what is told about its outcome by those with more
experience, it is impossible for him to guide his acts intelligently. (1916, p.
32)

Intelligence, then, is a matter of perceptive action characterized by both knowledge and
openness. As Bernstein (1966) states:

Intelligence consists of a set of ﬂexible and growing habits that involve
sensitivity; the ability to discern the complexities of situations;
imagination that is exercised in seeing new possibilities and hypotheses;
willingness to learn ﬂom experience; fairness and objectivity in judging
and evaluating conﬂicting values and opinions; and the courage to change
one’s views when it is demanded by the consequences of our actions. (p.
143-144)

This idea of intelligence is central in both education and in civic life. Returning to
freedom, and connecting it to intelligence, we can see that Dewey links them directly:

...the only ﬂeedom that is of enduring importance is freedom of
intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment
exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worthwhile.
(1938/1997, pg. 61)

The failings of society, and of education, can for Dewey be put into terms of intelligence:

The authoritarian separation of means and ends in education reﬂected,
Dewey thought, the absence throughout society of productive activity
done for its own or self-expression’s sake. . .Factory work and classroom
recitations were, for Dewey, instances of the same psychological and
ethical failure: in each someone works for a goal not of her own choosing,
with which she cannot identify, in which she has no stake. For Dewey, this
was no better than slavery, at least on a psychological level... (Feffer,
1993,p.128)

This also connects to Dewey’s insistence that, as far as society goes, only democracy will
do as a way of organizing things:
The ideal society, for Dewey, is an association that allows for maximum

grth of each person, through his own activity and self-
development. . .the justiﬁcation of democracy is not to be sought in some

32

 

 

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mythical infallibility of democratic procedures. Rather it is to be sought in

the quality of human action promoted by institutions that acknowledge

each person’s dignity and judgment in forms of public exchange and

participation in public life. (Schlefﬂer, 1974, p. 242)

Getting back to this study of high-achiever culture in high-school which, as the
reader may have forgotten, is actually the point of all this philosophical speculation,
several important ideas have been brought to light here. First, the nondeterrninistic nature
of the idea of collateral learning and the shaping inﬂuences of environments and
institutions means that, for the purposes of this study, school “culture” must be deﬁned
actively, not just as something which is imposed upon students, but something in which
they play a role in creating. Second, that the connection of this study to the purpose of
understanding and better designing school environments is not intended to support more
controlling school environments, but rather a more aware approach to the ways that
school environments work now. Finally, there is the Deweyian conception of intelligent
activity, which is to say, activity in which purpose and perception are seen as important,
particularly in regard to the individual’s active role in determining and working with
each. While this idea is important in defending a Deweyian paradigm from charges of
determinism, is also comes out in another way for a study of culture in schools. When
looking at hi gh-achiever culture, it is important to attend to the purposes involved in what
is done, the “why” questions which deﬁne and legitimize the actions of the teacher and
the students and the structures of the school and the class. Looking to purpose, to the

“why” of education, is also a way of assessing, from a Deweyian standpoint, whether an

educational experience is a democratic one.

33

 

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High-Achievers

Having gone into the philosophical basis of this study in greater depth, it is time
to turn to the ways that this study can be positioned within the ﬁeld of educational
research. This ethnographic study of hi gh-achiever culture can be seen as a Deweyian
study of schooling, a study of high-achievers, a study of school culture, and especially,
ﬂom the Deweyian perspective of “collateral learning,” as a study of issues of the
“hidden curriculum” in schools. Of course, it would be a ﬁne thing to situate this study
within a tradition of Deweyian research on collateral learning, except that Dewey did not
inspire a particular paradigm of research ﬂom his ideas (Cohen, 1995), and my work falls
outside of the realm of the philosophical works and attempts to employ Dewey in
classrooms that form the bulk of Dewey scholarship. I have not found other ethnographic
cultural work coming ﬂom Deweyian roots. Thus, I turned to literature on hi gh-achiever
culture, high-achievement, school culture, and especially ideas related to the hidden
cuniculum - indeed, there is much crossover between hidden curriculum ideas and work
on school culture, indicating that my notion of linking collateral learning with hi gh-
achiever culture is not unusual.

High-achiever culture, in and of itself, has not been the subject of much study,
though there are exceptions such as Pope (2001) and to a lesser extent Canaan (2004) and
Rizza (1999). Pope (2001) focuses on high-achieving hi gh-school students, as I do, and
gives different accounts of the ways that high-achievers’ lives play out in school. Her
study, Doing School, looks in particular on the outcomes of hi gh-achievement in terms of

how the students live and how they approach school and life. She employs an

34

 

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ethnographic approach and describes in detail the lives of six high-school students, and
the portrait she paints of high-achievement is largely negative:

They seem to be diligent, talented, and focused. They get good grades, win

awards and commendations, pursue extracurricular interests, do

community service, and help teachers and administrators at the school. But

in pursuit of this success, the students participate in behavior of which

they are not proud. They learn to cheat, kiss up, form treaties, contest

school decisions, and act in ways that run counter to explicit or implicit

rules and guidelines. Often their behavior contradicts the very traits and

values many parents, students, and community members expect schools to

instill. (p. 149)

Thus does Pope add to her negative portrayal an additional concern, that of the effects of
game-playing on the students who participate in it, and the various struggles these
students face as they attempt to negotiate the contradictory requirements of being hi gh-
achievers, learning, family life, goals and ideals, and their own priorities and extra-
curricular activities. High-achievers are stressed out, overworked, and stuck doing work
they don’t much care about, hoping that someday they will get to work that is interesting
and worthwhile.

Rizza (1999) looked in particular at the work and study strategies of high-
achieving high school girls. Coming ﬂom the opposite direction ﬂom Pope, Rizza (1999)
gives a largely positive interpretation of the hi gh-achiever lifestyle, focusing heavily on
study habits and homework and these students, as well as their aware, strategic approach
to their studies, which she calls “metacognitive,” in which they consciously used a
variety of study methods, and were aware of what worked best for them. Pope (2001)
includes such methods but emphasizes a deﬁnition of the game that is something more

akin to scheming, short-cuts and little tricks that take away ﬂom learning and life and

give the game a decidedly negative image. Also unlike Pope’s work, and unlike my own,

35

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Rizza focused mainly on strategic issues and left aside the many other pieces which I
include in my deﬁnition of culture. Yet, the work is informative for its view of the
“wor ” of high-achievers in school, and their attitudes toward it, including “playing the
game,” akin to Pope’s “doing school.” The “game,” as referred to here, is the “school
game,” that is, learning to act in ways that will bring success in school. While there are
certainly other games to be played, indeed games for any culture or discourse in which
students participate, it is the “school game” which is of primary concern here with my
emphasis on the culture of high-achievement.

Coming from yet another frame, and another country, Caanan (2004) examines
the political discourses present in the way hi gh-achieving British college students
describe their college experiences. Using a limited F oucaultian notion of discourse,
Canaan examined the ways two students talked about achievement and themselves as
achievers. She was particularly interested in looking for evidence of New Right, neo-
conservative, and neo-liberal ways of talking about achievement, and students responses
were analyzed in the context of each of these. Three discourses, those of the “good
student,” of “education as investment,” and “marking” (p. 763) were identiﬁed, and
within these students conceptions of ability, hard work, dedication, motivation, and worth
of self and work were explored, and students views of ability and hard work were
identiﬁed with the meritocracy, mostly in a “social-democratic” sense, though their “New
Right” side comes out in their disappointment with students who don’t work, in their
opinion, hard enough. Though this is not a study of American high-school high-achievers

or culture, it did get at some of the discourses of high-achievement, and what goes into it

36

 

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— hard work, ability, a meritocratic view, the afﬁrmation that comes ﬂom grades, and that
these high-achievers were invested in school.

Aside ﬂom these works, studies which focus on hi gh-achievers, and hi gh-achiever
culture in particular, are not in abundance. Achievement itself has been the topic of quite
a bit of speculation, especially from the perspectives which employ frames related to
motivation, goals, self-regulation, efﬁcacy, and metacognition (e. g. Arnes, 1984; Dweck,
1986; Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990; Schunk, 1995; Stipek, 1988; Zimmerman & Martinez-
Pons, 1990) but these do not focus on high-achievement speciﬁcally, with the exception
of Ablard and Lipschultz (1998), who investigated links between high-achievement and
self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies. Such research on the factors that play into high-
achievement, like research on achievement motivation and learning, is rather far removed
from what I am attempting in my work. By deﬁnition, such studies treat “achievement”
as a given, rather than adopting the critical and investigative stance which I adopt here.

Of studies in education which focus on high-achievers speciﬁcally using such
ﬂames, there is a vein of work which examines the phenomenon of hi gh-achievement
within minority populations in the United States. High-achievement is investigated as a
phenomenon with causes, these causes being related to personal and social factors which
relate to motivation, self-regulation, self-concept, and resiliency (Gayles, 2005; Grifﬁn,
2006), and some of the work is comparative, examining differences between low- and
high-achieving minority students (Fisher, 2005; Lee, Winﬁeld, & Wilson, 1991), and one
(Hebert & Reis, 1999) adds a focus on how “high-ability” students become high-
achievers (or not). The idea of “high-ability” students, phrased in an entire vein of

research and writing as “gifted” students, which falls outside of the minority paradi gm of

37

 

 

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the above studies. Some of these studies, for example, examine the ways in which
“gifted” students become high-achievers or “underachievers” (Berkowitz & Cicelli, 2004;
McCoach & Siegle, 2003). Muir-Broaddus (1995), in examining differences in transfer
and strategy use between different types of students, even divides students into “hi gh-
achieving gifted, high achieving nongifted, and average achieving nongifted middle
school students” (p. 189).

Again, the idea that achievement is taken as a given thing puts this work outside
of my approach. Additionally, the emphasis in such work on inherent or internal traits,
while it does acknowledge environmental factors, takes a stance which is inconsistent
with the transactional and cultural views of individuals that underlie this study. This is
especially true of the studies which work from an idea of “high-ability” or “gifted”
students with certain inherent traits who either rise to the top, or stay at the bottom, of the
achievement ladder in schools. That being said, these studies do serve to give some
insight into deﬁnitions of high-achievement and, additionally, high-ability. Measures of
achievement in these studies include grades, scores on standardized tests, participation in
honors programs, academic honors and awards, and teacher nominations. In one study
(Fisher, 2005), teacher nominations were broken down to show how high-achievement
included grades, effort, preparedness, responsibility, desire to learn, and plans for the
future. The portrait of achievers, then, is one of “good” students, who are good at school,
good at standardized tests, and perceived as “good” by their teachers and other personnel
who might reward them or choose them for advanced programs. Ability was measured by
standardized testing, with over- and under-achievement a matter of school performance.

Aside from this portrait of a high-achieving or “good” student, a picture emerges of a

38

 

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stream of belief in education in which inherent ability exists and is measurable through
standardized achievement tests and comes out in grades, and where ability is realized
through achievement depending on various factors which affect or exist within the
student.

That being said, it is interesting to notice, ﬂom a point of view of asking what
“hi gh-achieving” is and what it means, that most of the studies cited above take place
within the ﬂamework of examining how minority, students become hi gh-achievers, or
what distinguishes minority high-achievers ﬂom other students. High-achievement in
general is not much studied, but perhaps in the study of minority students, for whom
high-achievement is seen as more of an exception or a difﬁcult goal (a tone that emerges
particularly in Gayles, 2005, and Hebert & Reis, 1999), high-achievement is more likely
to be seen as something worth looking into. My own work, focusing on white, middle-
class students who are themselves hi gh-achievers, and asking about achievement itself,
comes ﬂom a very different direction not only ﬂom its questioning stance toward
achievement, but also as a study from a mainstream perspective.
. School Culture and the Hidden Curriculum

Having established a bit about high-achiever culture, looked at what counts as
achievement, and distinguished this work from studies of factors of high-achievement
and traits of hi gh-achievers, I can now turn to broader interpretations of school culture as
they apply to this study. As a Deweyian study of high-achiever culture, relying at its base
on the idea of collateral learning and the role of educators in it, this study ﬁnds itself
allied with other theories, ideas, and studies which posit that the educational effects of

schooling go beyond the formal curriculum and, further, that educators should attend to

39

all these educational effects, for a variety of reasons. Thus I look here at the larger realm
of works on school culture, structure, practice, and ideology that can be classed as
bearing upon the “hidden curriculum” in a wide sense.

Not all of these works use this term, and some indeed work in realms of culture of
structure speciﬁcally, but the wider deﬁnition of what is “learned” in school is a common
one between them. In addition to this, I ﬁnd that these works, often making use of a
variety of critical approaches, carry an implicit or (often) explicit message that educators
(and, perhaps, students) should be aware of, and even involved in creating or changing,
the hidden curriculum. Certainly, such ideas connect closely to my study of culture from
a Deweyian perspective. While these works do not focus speciﬁcally on high-achievers,
they do address ideas which may come to bear on a study of hi gh-achiever student
culture. It is these ideas on which I intend to focus. The literature on the hidden
curriculum, and similar ideas relating to school culture, is voluminous, and so 1 will
attempt to concentrate in particular on the ways that this literature comes to bear on hi gh-
achiever~ culture.

Since a study of the culture of high-achievement begins with the idea that students
are learning more in school than is ofﬁcially stated, this effort to ﬁnd out to what to look
for in a culture of high-achievement begins with ideas such as Dewey’s (1916) notion of
“collateral learning” and Jackson’s ( 1966) description of the “hidden curriculum.”
Jackson’s (1966) portrayal of the hidden cuniculum, in turn, emphasizes that life in
classrooms looks much like life in “the Company” and brings out strongly the
institutional and bureaucratic nature of schooling. The connection between the hidden

curriculum and the institutionalized nature of school environments is a major theme in

40

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the literature, coming out strongly also in Cusick (1973) who also focused on the effects
of institutional structures in a “functional” (Lynch, 1989) approach, but also manifesting
itself as a market focus in school (Labaree, 1997), schools patterned on industrial models
to the detriment of intrinsic and artistic engagement (Eisner, 1985), schools serving the
dominant capitalist ideology and/or the corporate or industrial order (Anyon, 1980;
Apple, 1979, 1982, 1983; Brantlinger, 1993; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Everhart, 1983;
Giroux & Penna, 1983; LaCompte, 1978; Mc Laren, Martin, F arahmandpur, & Jararnillo,
2004; Willis, 1977), though some deny that the cuniculum is “hidden” (Apple & King,
1983;Vallance, 1983). In a similar vein, schools are seen as aligning with a middle-class,
institutional, corporate way of living (Eckhart, 1989; Hemmings, 1996; Lareau, 2003;
Mehan, Hubbard, Lintz, & Villanueva, 1994). In many of these studies, reproduction of
existing class structures and economic inequalities, and the ideologies or practices which
support such reproduction, are also of concern.

This lengthy list of references is not meant to imply that all of these studies take a
common approach, say the exact same things, or attribute the same importance to various
interpretations. The point is, however, to establish that there is a great deal of crossover
among the literature that addresses the hidden curriculrun, and that institutional,
corporate, market, bureaucratic, and industrial themes are prevalent, as well as questions
about social reproduction. Clearly, the ways that schools are structured, and particularly
the ways in which these structures align with institutional, bureaucratic, industrial, or
corporate forms, are of concern to the researcher studying school culture, and so they
must be the subject of some attention in my own work. Further unpacking this literature

will provide additional guidance for the study of high-achievement.

41

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After Dewey, a look at work on collateral learning must begin with Jackson’s
now-classic Life in Classrooms (1968/1990), in which he posits a “hidden curriculum”
which is taught through the features of students’ in-school lives and which must be
mastered in the pursuit of school success. The way that the school day runs, student-
teacher relations, deﬁnitions of ‘Vvor ” and “play,” and the use and regulation of time,
Jackson claims, combine to teach a powerful set of lessons to students. Many of these
lessons center around turning the student into something of a Company Man, since,
“From kindergarten onward, the student begins to learn what life is really like in the
Company.” (p. 37) For Jackson, the institutional nature of schooling, and the way that
students were shaped into the mold of institutional individuals, were central themes.
Jackson maintained that such an environment leaves students well-equipped for the world
of work, having had long practice in engaging in activity deﬁned by others and taking
obedient and compliant stances regarding the vicissitudes of authority. An additional
affect of the school environment is to make school success a matter of perceived effort
and of conformity, with intellectual achievement of questionable value.

Grouped with Jackson as a “functional” account of school culture and the hidden
curriculum (Lynch, 1989; Margolis, 2001) is Cusick (1973). Like Jackson, Cusick
focuses on the organizational structures of schools, formal and informal, and he also
portrayed school as ideal preparation for corporate life in the future. Because of
institutional structures, students spend more time on “procedural and maintenance
details” (p. 47) than on engagement with subject matter, allowing students to succeed
with minimal engagement, attention, and time devoted to schooling. Cusick observed a

dual-system structure in schools, with the formal structure on one hand and the informal,

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group structure on the other. The formal institutional structure is remote from students,
and the group structure ﬁlls in the gaps. Students are not engaged by their work, or even
kept busy by it, but they do derive a feeling of pleasure and independence from their
small-group participation. Cusick also assigns students’ group lives a role in maintaining
the school structure, since it channels their “interest, enthusiasm, and involvement” in
ways that these do not interfere with the organization of the school (p. 216). He notes that
this sort of structure is a ubiquitous feature of bureaucratic institutions, and results from
the way the school is set up. In the bureaucratic getting-along of students (and teachers)
Cusick also noted a “truce” phenomenon that governed classroom activity, where
teachers and students act in ways that are directed primarily toward keeping order, not
toward learning. This same sort of “truce” or “bargain” shows up in accounts of school
life by McNeil (1986), who also emphasizes the institutional features of school life and
school knowledge, as well as by Pace (2003), Sedlak, Wheeler, Pulling, and Cusick
(1986), and Sizer (1984).

The important piece that Jackson and Cusick bring to this work, by virtue of the
frames they used in their analyses, is that certain features of school and life may be
attributed to the school—as-institution. While later theorists who take approaches that
criticize capitalism or social reproduction may ﬁnd these views inadequate, I believe that
they are a valuable addition to a study school culture. They raise a question for
reproduction theorists and critics of capitalism, and provide a plausible explanation for
some of the features of schooling that does not require the feel of large-scale conspiracy
that hangs around the work associated with Marxist views: what if schools are like they

are because of their institutional nature? Or, phrased differently, how does the structure

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of school as an institution, making institutional demands, shaping people to follow the
rules and priorities of the system, contribute to what is learned? Such questions are not
meant to leave aside notions of reproduction or capitalist inﬂuence, but merely to put
forth the idea that institutions have inﬂuence as institutions, whether they are school
institutions or work institutions.

Similar concerns with school as an institution, and with industrial inﬂuences on
schooling, inhabit the work of Eisner, who also adds to the concept of the hidden
curriculum. Feeding off Jackson’s work, as well as that of Sarason and Dreeben, Eisner
(1985) divided the curriculum of schools into three parts: the explicit, the implicit, and
the null. Like Jackson, Eisner maintained that here was more going on than the ofﬁcial
line, the explicit curriculum. There was also an underlying implicit curriculum, the
“pervasive and ubiquitous set of expectations and rules that deﬁnes schooling as a
cultural system that itself teaches important lessons” (p. 107). To the explicit/implicit
dichotomy, Eisner added an important additional concept: the null curriculum, “the
options students are not afforded, the perspective that they may never know about, much
less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not a part of their intellectual
repertoire” (p. 107). He gives numerous examples of the sort of lessons students learn and
the features of the implicit curriculum that teach them. Students learn compliance by
learning to satisfy their teachers, competitiveness throngh grading and ability-grouping
practices, an association of success with goodness through “honors” classes, the
commodity value of grading through differential credit systems. The importance of the
arts is signaled by the time and resources allocated to them. The school timetable and the

school building, too, teach lessons. Consequences of the null curriculum include students’

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limitation to types of thinking that are narrowly deﬁned and leave students with little
appreciation for the more artistic pursuits of life.

Yet Eisner, rather like Dewey, takes an activist stance toward the curricula being
taught in schools and also draws connections between schooling and larger socio-political
themes. Citing the history of schooling, he notes that a “technically rationalized industrial
culture” has arisen, and that this culture, ﬁnding expression in the American context in
the work of Thorndike, Taylor, and Cubberly, has focused schools on teaching the wrong
lessons, emphasizing an “industrial culture” that focuses on extrinsic rewards and where
“achievement has triumphed over inquiry” (Eisner, 2002, p. 4). In emphasizing the
industrial nature of schooling and searching for intrinsically satisfying work in school,
Eisner follows other work on the hidden curriculum. In addition, his emphasis on school
timetables, buildings, structures and the like echoes the institutional focus of Jackson and
Cusick, but his emphasis on the ways that students are able to think, and his insistence
that the arts are a vital piece of the curriculum, go beyond other accounts. The null
curriculum, and its messages, are added to the lessons of bureaucracy, institution, and
market-based inﬂuences in schooling. While the null curriculum is, according to Flinders,
Noddings, and Thornton (1986) a hazy concept that is difﬁcult to deﬁne and hard to use
analytically, and is problematic because it is, at heart, a normative concept — what is not
there is established by the priorities of the researcher - this does not seem to be a
handicap for Eisner, who clearly lays out his normative position. Martin (1976) and
Ahwee et. al. (2004), in analyzing various aspects of the null curriculum, both support a

reﬂective, aware approach to it, one in which educators consider it as a part of schooling

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worth attention. This, too, ﬁts with Eisner’s insistence that the null curriculum be
attended to.

Labaree (1997) does not carry out a critique of school culture in the same manner
as Jackson and Cusick, but rather performs an analysis of schooling. The results are not
focused on bureaucracy and institutionalization, but follow a similar line, claiming that
education is constructed along corporate, market-oriented lines, and that this is a problem
both for the way schools work and for the ways education is viewed in American society.
Education becomes a consumer good, not a public good, and so schooling becomes a
matter of educational credentialism. This results in reproduction of existing social
structures, game-playing among students, separation of school work from “learning” and
credentials from content, and a consumer attitude among students. Like Cusick (1973),
Labaree points to a lack of engagement with schooling, both note the exchange
value/market/institutional nature of school knowledge. Both ask for changes, Cusick for
structures that promote engagement, Labaree for schooling for the public good. The
essential point to be taken from both is that the point of schooling is not education, but
rather getting along with the institution, either to have time to be left alone, to gain
credentials, or some combination thereof, something like what Jackson is saying, too.

Other work focuses on the ways which the market-based, bureaucratic,
institutional nature of schooling is portrayed as a matter of the capitalist order. As
Jackson is seen as the father of the hidden curriculum, Bowles and Gintis groundbreaking
Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) is often cited as a major landmark in connecting
schools to industrial purposes and the forms of capitalist society at large. Bowles and

Gintis argued that school structures correspond to economic structures, and particularly

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those of capitalism, and thus that schools act to shape student into industrial modes of
living, including “alienated labor” whereby they are separated from control over, and
purpose in, their work. They also critique the progressive movement in education, and the
entire concept that US. education is a system based on merit, as both being subsumed by
the overall priorities of the capitalist economy, its sorting functions, and its maintenance
of existing class structures. Schools have not solved problems of inequality, nor ﬂattened
out class, race, and sex differences. They promote a false meritocratic strategy that
elevates IQ to a place of honor and legitimizes inequality by maintaining that any
inequalities that come-out of the system are due to people’s inherent differences or the
choices they make. They claim that schools take a “technocratic-meritocratic” approach -
that serves to feed those who are talented and willing into the hierarchical economic
system. The point of all this is to shape students, to modify their behavior, so that they
internalized the discipline of business, and thus top students, our hi gh-achievers, are
conformists.

While Bowles and Gintis have been criticized because their “correspondence
theory” was too deterministic, their ideas were nonetheless foundational. School work as
alienated labor, the false meritocracy, and the sorting and reproductive ﬁmctions of
schools are all themes that continue to appear today. In some ways, they appeared before
Bowles and Gintis — both Cusick and Jackson address school work as something out of
students’ control and, particularly in Cusick’s case, not very interesting or engaging to
students. Additionally, Cusick showed how informal student groups functioned to

maintain the school structure by channeling student excitement and interest and keeping

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them out of the formal academic structure, which might have had to change otherwise, a
process akin to reproduction on the school scale.

Following Bowles and Gintis, LeCompte (1978) studied the hidden curricula of
four different teachers, and found all were similar in following management strategies
which prepared students for the world of work, with acceptance of authority, and the need
to work hard, as major themes. Anyon (1980) claimed that schools which served different
classes in society prepared students for different sorts of work, work that corresponded to
their future places in society. Though denying that the hidden cuniculum is hidden,
Vallance (1983) described schools as operating to foster the sort of docility and
adherence to class structure that would ﬁt into an industrialized society. Giroux (1983)
also agreed that the hidden curriculum of controlling students was once openly the point
of schools, thought it has since been hidden behind a technical approach that leaves
schooling looking neutral. Though the accusation that schools produce conformists had
been made before (Holt, 1969; Kozol, 1975), and continues to be made today (Gatto,
2003), theorists from several Marxist, neo—Marxist, critical, and resistance perspectives
(these vary depending on who is classifying them, see Lynch, 1989, and Margolis, 2001)
have worked to update this notion so as to account for connections to industry and
reproduction of social order and inequality while avoiding the idea that schools merely
impress culture upon students with no active role on their part.

Apple, for one, switched from a more deterministic and correspondence-oriented
view (1979) to one which made the school, or the workplace, a site of cultural
production, giving an active role to students (and to workers) who, through their activities

create, and resist, the dominant forms of society (Apple, 1982; Apple and King, 1983).

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He holds on to the ideas that the schools reproduce the social order, and that the idea of
the meritocracy is a false one, but shows the ways that students and workers act to ﬁnd
meaning amidst the alienating and conforrnist structures in which they ﬁnd themselves.
Like Cusick and others, Apple, too, saw aspects of “the bargain” in keeping order in the
school. Apple’s approach draws from the seminal work of Willis (1977), who studied
working class secondary students in Britain, asking how these students act to create for
themselves their place in capitalist society, yet also the ways in which their actions are
meaningful for them and, additionally, how those actions open up certain truths about
their position and opportunities — Willis calls this latter phenomenon “penetration.”
Willis, like Bowles and Gintis and others, argues that the idea of upward mobility for all
in the capitalist society — the meritocratic ideal - is a false one, but adds that there is a
process of self-selection whereby working class students, deﬁning themselves as opposed
to school culture, actively create their future position as working class adults. While this
active view of culture is a pessimistic in a sense, as it shows the students doing their part
to ensure that they will ﬁt into the mechanism of social reproduction, both Apple and
Willis maintain that this active role in cultural production also offers hope that change
may also be possible.

Like Willis, Eckhart (1989) focused in particular on the way that class plays out
in school, but took a different approach. Rather than focusing on working class students,
Eckhart looked at the dominant cultural groups in a hi gh-school and looked at the
oppositional relationship between the culture of the students who buy-in to schooling and
ﬁnd their meaning through going along with the school’s priorities and values (the

“jocks”), and those who ﬁnd meaning in opposing them (the “bumouts”). Rather like

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Cusick, who found that students’ group activities maintained the school as it was, and
like Apple and Willis with their ideas on the active nature of reproduction, Eckhart points
to the maintenance function of the J ock/Bumout relationship, both of which live out their
identities with or against the school while nothing really changes. The difference between
the jock culture, a middle-class, corporate existence, and the burnout, a working-class,
relationship-oriented one, shares some features with the difference between the
institutionally-invested “ear’oles” and the institutionally-opposed “lads” in Willis.
Eckhart also highlights the culture of the school itself, middle-class and corporate, with
which the jock culture matches and, as in the above accounts, which prepares these
students for their future corporate existence. The bargain of schooling comes out in a
different way in Eckhart, not just as a way for students to avoid work and engagement
with school, but as a process by which Jock students trade allegiance to school values for
perceived freedoms and advancement within the school. On the other side of the
reproductive process, the freedoms that bumouts seek, like the freedoms of Apple’s
workplace culture and Willis’ lads, are not the sorts of freedoms that bring institutional
advancement.

Class is a theme in Lareau’s (2003) work as well, as she attributes the process of
social reproduction to class and not to race. Studying poor, working class, and middle-
class families, she shows how the childrearing practices of these families and the social
activities‘the children engage in either match up with schooling, as in the case of the
middle class students, or do not, as in the case of the others. School is, once again,
portrayed as the site of middle-class values, which are institutional in nature, matching up

with Eckhart in the middle-class piece and with many others in the institutional one

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though, again, the idea that the institutional nature of schooling advantages one class in
particular is not universal. The idea that school is a place of middle class values and ways
of doing things also comes out in work on race in schooling (Hemmings, 1996) and in
attempts to teach the “implicit” cuniculum of schooling to minority students who are not
of the middle class, so they, too, are able to succeed (Mehan, Hubbard, Lintz, &
Villanueva, 1994).

Everhart’s (1983) own Marxist analysis of junior high-school culture and cultural
production follows the paths blazed by Jackson, Cusick, Apple, and Willis, among others,
bringing out the way students “get by” in school so that they can ﬁnd their own
meanings. But Everhart makes an explicit connection between this behavior and the
“alienated” nature of their school activities, taking disengagement and giving a Marxist
twist, somewhat along the lines of Bowles and Gintis (1976) but with a more active and
laid-out role for students. The alienation of school knowledge, which Everhart calls
“reiﬁed knowledge,” from knowledge produced in involving social interactions, which he
calls “regenerative knowledge,” is a major theme in his work, and contributes to division
between students and their activities, school knowledge and practical knowledge, and, in
a large sense, work and control of the purposes and results of work. In taking the
reproduction of the capitalist order down to the very level of knowledge and how students
deal with it and with their work, Everhart takes a step beyond accounts which emphasize
structure and practices and even cultural meaning-making and brings in concerns about
the ways knowledge itself is presented and dealt with.

Following the critical vein of the above studies, but operating from a social-

cognitive perspective, Brantlinger (1993) did a class-based analysis to examine the ways

51

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that high- and low-income students conceive of their positions within secondary school.
Class issues and dominant ideologies come out at school which, Brantlinger maintains, is
not a neutral meritocracy, though it is described as such, especially by high-income
students who attribute their success to their own merit rather than to class—based
explanations. High-income students demonstrate behaviors akin to those of the middle-
class students in Lareau’s (2003) study, working within the school culture and expecting
that they can manipulate it. Hi gh-income students were elitist, though not always directly,
and looked with disfavor on the actions of their low-income counterparts. Like others,
Brantlinger takes an active stance towards these issues, demanding that something be
done.

The inﬂuence of the concept of “meritocracy” on this work is hard to miss, and so
a bit must be said about this concept and work which refers to it speciﬁcally. The term
“meritocracy,” drawn from a book by Young (1 95 8) which was a satirical historical
portrayal of a society which worked entirely on merit, is now in general use. At times, it
is used positively to describe schooling systems, and such a use by British Prime Minister
Blair which appalled Young himself (Nicholson, 2003; Young, 2001). More often, as is
the case here, the idea of meritocracy is used to describe a system which is supposed to
be operating but which, in reality, is not, and indeed Young claims that his own
predictions about the abuse of the meritocratic idea have come true (Young, 2001). The
entire idea of meritocracy is said to be a bit of a cover-up for the truly unequal and static
nature of society. According to the meritocratic ideology (Apple, 1982) or “myth”
(Rodriguez, 1998), it is the best who rise to the top, the best in natural ability (Oakes,

1986; Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997), though Bowles and Gintis (1976) also

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emphasize choice, bringing in a mix of the ability to do well and the desire to take
advantage of that ability. Oakes et. al. (1997), Parker (2003), and Nicholson (2003) '
attribute the presence of meritocratic ideas in American schools to a resonance between
the idea of meritocracy and deeply held American ideals, with Parker writing about the
idea of the American Dream and Nicholson working off a piece by Fisher (1973) which
analyzed the presence of two myths in American society, the “materialistic” and the
“moralistic.” Fisher was particularly interested in analyzing the victory of Richard M.
Nixon in the 1972 US presidential election, but, as Nicholson recognizes, his materialistic
myth nicely captures the spirit of meritocracy:

The materialistic myth is grounded on the puritan work ethic and relates to

the values of effort, persistence, “playing the game,” initiative, self-

reliance, achievement, and success. It undergirds competition as the way

of determining personal worth, the free enterprise system and the notion of

freedom, deﬁned as the freedom from controls, regulations, or constraints

that hinder the individual’s striving for ascendancy in the social-economic

hierarchy of society. . .it promises that if one employs one’s energies and

talents to the fullest, one will reap the rewards of status, wealth, and

power. (p. 161)
Fisher almost does it. Add in the particular emphasis on intelligence and testing that
shows up in the educational setting (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Oakes et. al., 1997; Parker,
2003), and you have meritocracy as it is written about, and shows up in schools, today.

Oakes et. al. (1997) get more speciﬁc on how the meritocratic ideology transfers
to teacher beliefs, describing how the ways that teachers regarded student differences in
achievement related to the meritocratic ideology. Teachers at the schools studied by
Oakes et. al. believed that intelligence was ﬁxed and innate, unidimensional and equated

with speed, easily assessed, found along normal curves within society, and connected to

racial and cultural explanations which included home support as a factor. These same sort

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of explanations showed up in Everhart (1983), who showed teachers differentiating
between students according to effort, ability, and personal characteristics, with ability
being attributed partially to home life. Meritocratic ideals pop up in a variety of settings,
justifying tracking, and resisting de-tracking efforts in American schools (Oakes, 1986;
Oakes, Wells, Jones, & Datnow, 1997), connecting to the portrayal of Asian students as a
“model minority” in America (Yu, 2006), and creeping in to the language of students in
education courses in the US. (Applebaum, 2005) and Canada (Solomon, Portelli, Daniel,
& Campbell, 2005). Meritocratic ideas are not only present and resonant, but they serve a
function, and one that relates to reproduction: the meritocratic ideology allows
inequalities and hierarchies to exist in a society that proclaims democratic values and a
chance for all (Oakes et. al., 1997; Parker, 2003).

In Summary

The point of the above literature review is twofold. First, it is to position this
work, a study of the culture of hi gh-achievement, within the existing literature on hi gh-
achievement and the hidden cuniculum and school culture, since Dewey-inspired studies
of high—achiever culture are, in general, somewhat lacking. The second point of the
literature review is to identify, within the existing literature that relates to this study,
themes and ideas which give some preliminary ideas about what a culture of high-
achievement might look like, as well as the sort of structures, ideologies, practices,
discourses, and student effects, derived from a general picture of schooling, which may
show up as a part of the culture of high-achievement.

Hi gh-achieving students, who in the literature (as a composite) get good grades,

do well on standardized tests, get along with their teachers, participate in extra-curricular

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activities, and take advanced classes, will likely be the students who “buy in” to the
institutional culture of schooling, akin to Eckhart’s (1989) “jocks” and Willis’ (1977)
“ear’oles,” or the middle class students who ﬁt into middle class school culture in other
studies. As students ﬁom professional families at a school in a middle-class
neighborhood, as well as high-achievers, the students in my study may show some of the
strategic or manipulative behaviors of high-achieving, middle-class, and hi gh-income
students in these studies, and may also show some of the negative behaviors like
cheating, compromising, game-playing, taking intolerant attitudes toward fellow students,
and viewing their own goals and desires as things to be deferred to some unknown future
time. High-achievers may put up a good front while engaging in such behaviors, in the
interest of appearing to ﬁt in with school demands, and they may also show valued school
behaviors like taking strategic approaches to their studies or, again from an institutional
standpoint, behaving in ways which are broadly compliant or demonstrate “buy in”.

It is also interesting to look at the relationship between these hi gh-achievers and
their work, given the prevalence of ideas of disengagement, alienation, and diversion of
interest and enthusiasm that characterizes students’ relationship to work in the above
studies. Focusing on high-achieving students in particular, Pope’s (2001) work suggests
that high-achievers will often conform to institutional priorities, perhaps even adopting
them as their own. Similar strategies come out in Willis’ (1977) “ear’oles,” Eckhart’s
(1989) “jocks,” and in Lareau’s (2003) middle-class students. High-achieving students
will also likely put forth the effort to do well in their schooling, whether for intrinsic or
extrinsic reasons (Sedlak et a1, 1986). And yet, with the theoretical frame of this study

predicting a students’ part in creating culture, there should be another level of complexity

55

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beyond simple conformity. While a picture of hi gh-achiever culture as merely conformist
would be consistent with that painted by some school critics who emphasize the place of
conformity in schools (Gatto, 2003; Holt, 1969), it should be considered that high-
achieving students are, for all their conformist tendencies, learning more than simple
conformity to institutional demands. The problem of disengagement from school work,
and the phenomenon of “the bargain” (Cusick ,1973; McNeil, 1986; Pace, 2003; Sedlak
et. al., 1986; Sizer, 1984) makes it seem that students are not buying into institutional
goals wholeheartedly, but rather are participating in them only to the extent that is
required by the students’ priorities, be those priorities an easy class, time to hang out with
ﬁiends, or active resistance to schooling. Such a lack of engagement may carry over into
the ranks of the high-achievers, but may take on a unique form. High-achieving students
may suffer from the same disengagement from learning, from interest, from passion, and
from quality that other students do. The key difference is that, unlike other students, who
may be disengaged for the sake of pursuit of other goals, hi gh-achieving students may
undertake this disengagement as a strategy in the pursuit of the institutional rewards of
grades and school success (Pope, 2001; Rizza, 1999).

Coming from another direction, along with the institutional, bureaucratic,
corporate nature of schooling which runs through many of the studies cited above, there
are other factors of the school culture which should be attended to. Cultural production,
in the form of students taking active roles in hi gh-achiever culture, is included in my
theoretical framework as a facet, for some of the same reasons that Apple and Willis use
it, because it gives a role to students, and it gives hope for change. Along related lines,

the inﬂuence of capitalism broadly, and the meritocratic ideology in particular, is

56

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certainly something to look for in the culture of hi gh-achievement. The ways that
students and teachers talk about merit, intelligence, hard work, and students’ background
may ﬁnd some connections to broader American ideas about worth, success, and the
workings of society. All of this could be of particular interest given that this study is set
in a middle-class school, with middle-class students. This brings up one last point,
' perhaps a minor one, but one which distinguishes this work from the particular inﬂuence
of Marx. While not all the studies in the Marxist vein focus on the “working class,” some
do, and there is in such work the notion that it is the working class which must liberate
itself. In the literature on cultural reproduction, one feels, again, that it is the working
class and the poor who are getting shafted. My study, however, looks at the middle-class,
the future managers, the bourgeoisie if you will. Thus it takes a different tone and
emphasis, one which focuses it critique on the middle classes in particular.
The Culture of High Achievement and the Deweyian Educative Experience

One might wonder, upon reading the rather grim picture of school culture painted
above, how anyone gets out of school with some semblance of self or any attributes
approaching those of Dewey’s democratic citizen, or how the positive aspects of the
hi gh-achiever cultural experience will be addressed in this study particularly. The answer
is that the above is only a part of the story. A monolithic and negative picture of learning
is not only unrealistic; it is also inconsistent with the very theoretical framework adopted
in this study, which, after all, does not assign a deterministic role to culture. Since it is
unlikely that all students who are hi gh-achievers bring the same approach to their
schoolwork, or take from it the same lessons, attention should be paid students’ positive

experiences within the culture of high achievement as well as to possible negative ones.

57

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Perhaps the disengagement, the playing of the school game, an the cultural shaping of
students into work roles is not so prevalent as indicated above. Or, even if it is, some may
learn the lessons of disengagement while others may learn to play the game without
losing the spark of interest in ideas and learning, the personal investment in growth and
involvement that Dewey calls for in an education for intelligent life and citizenship.

In looking for the positive in the'culture of hi gh—achievement, I will take as my
guide the Deweyian notion of a good education. For Dewey, experiences are divided into
two types: educative and mis-educative. The educative experience is purposeful,
affectively engaging, intelligently directed, disciplined by- the demands of social activity,
and resulting in an open disposition to more experience that, in turn, leads to intelligent
and purposeful direction of future action. The mis-educative experience, lacking some or
all of these features, leads to closed-off perceptions, action without intelligence,
direction, and purpose, and even disengagement with learning and life (Dewey 1916,
1934/ 1980, 193 8/1997). The educative experience leads to growth, to greater potential for
other educative experiences and for intelligent action, while mis-educative experiences
actually limit these potentials. For Dewey, growth, an increase in connection with the
world, was the very goal of life, and thus of education (Dewey, 1916, 1934/ 1980,
1938/1997; Granger, 2000; Hansen, 2000).

The upshot of all this, in terms of what a study. of high-achiever culture, is that
Dewey’s philosophy offers the idea of the educative experience as an alternative to the
meaning-poor nature of institutionalized activity. These sort of experiences, thus, may
provide a contrasting case to the inﬂuences of the hidden curriculum and the institutional

nature of school as laid out above. People fully engaged in purposeful activity not only

58

 

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ﬁnd satisfaction in it, but also growth, and greater ability and power in their future
activities. The powers of discernment they develop through participation in educative
activities allows them to live more ﬁrlly as individuals, and, at the same time, to exercise
better and more complete judgment in exercising their responsibilities as members of a
democracy. Further, the openness and awareness characterized by intelligent activity go
right along with democratic ideals. Thus, in studying hi gh-achiever culture, it would be
informative to look for evidence of satisfaction with work, of students’ feelings of
personal success and achievement in and out of the context of the classroom. It would be
good to look for students demonstrating personal, affective engagement with the subject

matter and the lenses of the history class.

59

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ,

Where is This Study Coming From?
“Since all the sciences, and especially psychology, are still immersed in such tremendous
realms of the uncertain and the unknown, the best that any individual scientist, especially
any psychologist, can do is seems to be to follow his own gleam and his own bent,
however inadequate that may be. In fact, I suppose that actually this is what we all do. In
the end, the only sure criterion is to have fun. And I have fun. ”
E. C. T olman
This work is a qualitative, ethnographic study, focusing on the students and
teacher of one AP US History class at one high school. An ethnographic study is called
for because I am aiming to get at culture and the meanings attached to actions, what
students make of their environment and thus how they shape and are shaped by it. The
only way to get at such meanings is through close attention to participants’ actions, the
signiﬁcance they attach to those actions, and their stated and even unstated intentions in
undertaking them. Geertz’s (1973) “thick description,” where a thoroughly explored
situation can be a site of larger meanings, is in keeping with this ideal. I also approached
this study as an ethnographic project which aims, along the lines of Eckhart (1989) and
Willis (1977), to get at the cultural interactions of students through regular observation
and individual interviews. I have chosen this format with a view toward producing a deep
account of the high-achiever culture in this one class, a level of detail necessary to
address the questions of meaning that are the stuff of ethnographic study (Bogdan &
Biklin, 2003; Geertz, 1973; Maxwell, 1996; Seidman, 2006).

Such a look at meaning, an emphasis on analysis of activity with attention to how

school environments are realized through cultural responses, is also in keeping with this

study’s theoretical framework, rooted, as it is, in the American pragmatic philosophical

60

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standpoint coming from the work of Dewey and Peirce. The recursive nature of
experience with its constant revision of ends and means in the light of each, and the
connected idea that meaning is never fully deﬁned but only realized through activity
(Dewey, 1897, 1934/1980; Bernstein, 1971), support the position that school
environments can only be studied by observing how such environments are really
operating day to day. Just as, according to Peirce, no set number of occurrences can
determine all the possibilities inherent in any concept (Bernstein, 1971), no formal
deﬁnition of school structures can tell us how schools actually work. The creation of and
by culture cannot be studied by setting a pre-deﬁned standard and measuring a relation
between that standard and observed results, since, Dewey would say, there can be no pre-
deterrnination of the outcome of the transaction. Only close observation, which notes not
only what is there but also how that what is being lived out, can tell us about cultural
activity, the realm of meaning. The relationship between culture, meaning, learning, and
development must be looked for in the details-in-action.

There will, in my ethnographic methodology, be some features of a “critical
ethnography” (Britzman, 2000; Carspecken, 1996; Madison, 2005; Segall, 2002), with an
emphasis on the practices of ethnography, an historical viewpoint of the culture of
schools, and an awareness of the responsibilities and commitments, personal and ethical,
of myself as researcher, as well as of the “value laden” nature of qualitative research
(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p.8). Ethnography, as a general frame, provides the basic
methods. The emphasis on criticality adds an awareness of history, an acknowledgement
of the ethical stances taken in the context of the study, careful attention the purposes of

the study and the ways in which the purposes shape the inquiry, and an alignment with

61

the idea of praxis, of working for change in education. The awareness of history is
manifest here in my reﬂection on the frames employed in the study, their contexts, and
the ways in which they inform one another and the ways in which they clash. It also
comes out in my use of work on the culture of schools that comes from the last 30 years
of educational research. Ethics, purposes, and praxis come together in my use of, and
acknowledgement of, the Deweyian frame, one which is based in the notion that schools
and society should operate in certain ways, that schools teach more than formal lessons,
and that educators have a responsibility to shape school lessons in the context of a
democratic society. This is not just an inquiry into what is happening in a classroom, but
a reﬂection on what should be happening there and a call for action, a bringing together
of the work of research and moral values that Dewey would support (Biesta & Burbules,
2003)

If it is true, as Denzin and Lincoln (2000) maintain, that the current moment in the
history of research is the “moral” ”one, this means that research cannot be carried on as
though it were outside of morality. Research is more than a fact—ﬁnding endeavor, and

‘6

this research makes no pretence of gathering what’s out there” and presenting it as a
ﬁnal answer. For one thing, such a stance would be inconsistent with a pragmatic
approach, and also with the critical one (Britzman, 2000, 2003; Segall, 2002) since the
critical stance, in asking questions, would hardly do to provide certain answers. For
another, this work was carried out informed by Dewey’s emphasis on the idea that
philosophical and educational study should be applied to addressing, and not merely

documenting, the problems of the world, a stance on inquiry also adopted by Weis and

Fine (2000). Work in the Deweyian tradition cannot be said to be neutral.

62

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Research is invariably involved (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000), and knowing this I
have endeavored to be aware of my own views and their effects on this work (Angrosino
& Mayes de Perez, 2000) by recording my ongoing thoughts in a research j oumal (Hatch,
2000). The journal allowed me to be more aware of my own ideas so as to be more aware
of how those ideas shaped the progress and conclusions of the study (Maxwell, 1996). It
served as a repository for thoughts that came up in the process of taking ﬁeld-notes, and
as a source for research memos (Bogdan & Biklin, 2003), which I used to share my
thoughts, ideas, and progress reports with my committee. As a hi gh-achieving student
myself, and as a teacher, high-achiever culture is a highly personal subject to me. It
fascinates me, and, at times, frustrates me greatly, both as something to observe and as
something to participate in. I have, in the course of this work, been subject to pressures
and experiences which connect to those of the students I have been observing and talking
to. While this was a strength in a sense, because of my familiarity with the cultural setting
in which I am working, it also called for ongoing care to see that my work did not exceed
itself, a care I also addressed by maintaining a presence in the classroom through my
analysis and writing and by sharing my ideas with the teacher as they came to me.

Finally, in keeping with the qualitative and pragmatic spirit, I approached this
study from the very beginning anticipating that the plan, focus, questions, and ideas
would change once subjected to the vicissitudes of a real high school classroom. This
indeterminacy is seen by some as a feature of qualitative research, which is not to say that
qualitative research does not know what it is about, but, rather, that it is oriented toward
an exploration which may reveal unanticipated features of an environment (Bogdan &

Biklin, 2003; Carspecken, 1996). Carspecken’s point that the exact deﬁnition of variables

63

n

 

and frameworks that characterizes quantitative research does not sufﬁce to capture
phenomena on the level of human meaning supports the ﬂexibility of qualitative research
is consistent with the pragmatic deﬁnition of meaning as not completely speciﬁable
(Peirce & Turrisi, 1997; Bernstein, 1971) as well as with Polkinghome’s (1988) claim
that research practices that are suitable for material and biological questions cannot
capture the complexity of meaning-related topics.
On Writing

As an ethnographic study aiming at meaning, a Deweyian study which is based on
the idea that knowledge and research are not neutral, and a study which makes use of
Marxist and postmodern lenses to question the notions of scientiﬁc and institutionalized
knowledge in schooling and to look for discourses and narratives of hi gh-achievement,
this work would be inconsistent were it to adopt a neutral, scientiﬁc, objective form and
tone. Being aware of the demands of the form of the dissertation, and seeing value in
descriptive writing for making points and arguments, I am not attempting to write a
research novel, as Eisner has argued may happen in educational research (Saks, 1996),
yet, as Eisner calls for, I do hope to maintain continuity between my theoretical ﬂames,
research questions, and practices of inquiry and writing. Research consists of putting
together a story for a purpose. It is the researcher’s responsibility to acknowledge that
purpose and to serve it well, both by putting together a good story (both an interesting
and a warranted one), and by doing research that does not contradict the commitments in
which it is rooted. Angrosino and Mays de Perez (2000), Denzin and Lincoln (2000) and
Fine et. al. (2000) reinforce this idea, emphasizing the importance of bringing one’s work

in line with one’s purposes. Therefore, in doing ethnography, work aimed at meaning, I

64

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am making some use of narrative ideas and narrative forms in the writing of this work
(Polkinghome, 1988, 1991). In doing so, I also I draw on Tyler’s (1986) notion of
ethnography as evocative, and work from the idea that a case study format (Stake, 1980,
quoted in Donmeyer, 1990) or narrative research (Ellis & Bochner, 1996) can provide a
form of vicarious experience of a setting. Use of narrative forms is also consistent with
the general, critical tone of this work, with the intention of producing, not an authoritative
and controlled account, but one which is an interpretation of interpretations, as Geertz
(1973) puts it, and which itself will be interpreted.

All that being said, it is natural that I make use of short, narrative pieces in this
work, descriptions that are drawn from ﬁeldnotes and classroom experiences, but which
are written with the intention of giving the reader a feel for the AP US History class, and
F airlawn High School], that goes beyond the possibilities inherent in descriptive writing.
These narrative pieces, along with sections where I adopt a less formal and more
speculative tone, are intended to accompany the descriptive sections of the work, but also
to stand as evocative renditions of the classroom. They are my own written renditions of
my own observations, and make no claim to portraying the classroom “as it is,” yet they
may do a useﬁrl job as presenting as I saw it, in a way that complements and adds to the
other sections of this piece.

Positioning Myself in this Work: Part I

It is the fall of 1998, and I am standing before my second-hour World History
class. It is my second year of teaching, and I have begun to feel more conﬁdent, and even
a bit more competent, in running my classes. On this day, I am introducing a project, and

I’m pretty excited about it. The focus is on the era after the Fall of Rome in 476 AD,

 

' All names, those of the school, the teachers, the students, and the community, have been changed.

65

knots

known as the “Dark Ages.” It incorporates some research, some discussion, and an
artistic or narrative component where the students are asked to imagine what a “Dark
Age,” a fall of “civilization,” might look like in their own day. I stride around the front of
my classroom as the students sit in their ordered rows, and I’m sure my excitement is
evident as I go over the assignment sheet I’ve handed out. This is better than a worksheet,
better than a reading, better than an essay. I ﬁnish laying everything out, take a breath,
smile, and ask if there are any questions. One student raises his hand, and I call on him,
wondering what he’ll ask.

“How much is this worth?” he says.

My world is shattered. Of all the things he could have asked about, of all the
facets of this assignment, all the creative possibilities it contains, question #1 is on points.
My thoughts spiral off. What is the purpose of schooling? Why are my best students
always running after points? What am I doing here? Why do I always end up giving C’s
to kids who write thoughtful papers, and A’s to kids who write papers which are quite
correct and not quite interesting? I snap out of it and answer my students’ question, but
the damage is done. This is a pivotal moment in my teaching career. Now I am doomed,
for there are some questions to which I have no answers, and this means, as it turns out,
that I will end up in graduate school.

Positioning Myself in this Work: Part II

There were several instances in the course of this study when things seemed to
become clear, when I glimpsed an important idea, when I saw the world in a different
light. Here I describe one of them. The difference between this instance and all the other

ones, which I do not describe in depth, is that those instances became chapters or parts of

66

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chapters, the “rags to riches” class, for example, or the political cartoon analysis where
the teacher did most of the analyzing — the reader will see these later. This particular
moment, while important enough to write about, was not meant to become a theme, a
chapter, or a telling point. It was just a good idea, a resonant idea, one which really stuck
with me. It says something about me as a researcher, something about this study,
something about schooling and hi gh-achievement.

So let’s go back to that idea...

I am sitting in the Fairlawn High School cafeteria at about seven-ﬁfteen in the
morning. I have arrived early, before 1St hour, to conduct a student interview before
school. This was not easy. In the winter, school starts before the sun comes up. I used to
know this, of course. I lived it. But graduate school has made me forget and now, sitting
at a little round table in a hard plastic chair, in the brightly-lit cafeteria which even now
smells of lunchroom food, I think to myself: this is no way to start one’s day.

Rachel Early arrives and sets her heavy backpack down. Rachel, 17 years old, a
junior, has seldom gotten anything but a straight A at F airlawn High School: her GPA is
3.967. She is taking four AP classes, plays saxophone in the school band, and has
participated in the school’s Human Rights Club. In more than one interview, Mr. Elliot,
the AP US History teacher, identiﬁed Rachel as a student who is capable of, and ready
for, more than even AP US History is offering. In a later interview, Mr. Elliot will say, of
Rachel as a student, that “her writing is publishable,” and “the style is the most original
style I’ve ever heard.” When I ask what makes her one of his best, he answers,
“enthusiasm, work ethic, brilliance of mind, and she’s grown.” But I don’t know most of

this when she sits down on this January morning. What I do know is that she is a quiet

67

so:

her

student in class who perks right up when modern political issues are mentioned, and that
her history teacher thinks she is a good student.

I start my tape-recorder, and we begin the interview with a brief and somewhat
nerdy digression — my fault - on the joys of playing in the school band. We talk about her
schedule, why she is taking so many AP classes. “I was kind of hoping that, like, AP
classes you, that students would be a little bit more serious,” she tells me, “like you
wouldn’t have kids. . .,” she stops herself, “. . .students in the class that didn’t want to be in
the class.

“Um hm,” I say, hoping she’ll say more.

She adds only a bit. “But, it’s not really always the case, so, I’m kinda
disappointed in it.” She laughs, and we move on and talk about her interests in school.
She is not, she has ﬁgured out, a huge fan of math and science classes. We get around to
talking about the students in AP classes, and of them she says, “I think you should take
an AP if you have some interest in the subject. And, like, I would like it if, like, like for
history, if like everyone in that class was interested in history outside of class too...”

“Um hm,” I say again, staying out of the way.

She complains that the students in AP US History are too grade- and transcript-
focused. “I think an AP should be only people who are. . .er, it should be people that want
to be studying it or are like interested in it.”

We talk about this for a bit, and Rachel goes on to claim that she is not the sort of
grade- and transcript-focused student she is complaining about. I ask her about her own
approach to school.

She gives a long answer:

68

Um, well it, I guess. . .more focused on learning the material. . .like my big

thing that I wish more of. . .is like more of a discussion focus.

Like. . .especially in the humanities and the liberal arts subjects... if you

were to leave class...to be able to like go to [a local coffee shop] and talk

about, like, the class... you know, current events and stuff but be able to,

like, apply it to that. And then a lot of people. . .they’re bored by it, and it’s

more of like a chore, and they don’t really wanna talk about it outside of

taking the test or like getting an A in the class. And, like, I personally

wouldn’t want to sit through a class that I didn’t have enough of interest in

to... then leave class and wanna talk about it.

Of AP US History, she has good things to say, and she enjoys the challenge and
the independence of the class, the very things Mr. Elliot is aiming for in this advanced
class. “I think, history is my favorite AP,” she tells me. “I think Mr. Elliot does a really
good job of, um, it’s more student-driven. . .he expects a lot out of you.”

But she also says, of this AP class,

I was kind of hoping it’d be more like, ah, um, like how college would be.

Like by taking AP it’d be kind of like, getting your feet in the water as far

as more of a college experience by starting earlier. But it’s deﬁnitely just a
high school AP class. (laugh)

Rachel goes on to talk, among other things, about the ways in which people take AP’s for
transcripts, the way a friend of hers is taking easier math classes, even though she wants
to be an engineer, so that she can keep her four-point. Rachel Early believes that this sort
of thing is a “waste of talent.”

Something in this interview hits me. As I walk with Rachel up to Mr. Elliot’s
class, through the madness that is the hallways ﬁve minutes before ﬁrst hour, I am
thinking about her description of wanting to take AP classes to ﬁnd something “better,”
to work with students who were actually interested in the subject. I think about how she
would like people, and her friend, to take classes because they are interested in them. I

think about how she mentioned college as the model for what she hoped AP would be;

69

hat

college, the next place, past AP classes, where the students might be taking classes for the
right reasons, where classes might be better. 1
These words strike me for two reasons. First, I feel like I’ve heard them before. I
remember talking to Adam Braff and to Connor Imboden, two of Rachel’s classmates, in
the two previous weeks. I think of how Adam wished that classes could be about interest,
and how Connor claimed that, having taken classes for the “wrong” reasons before, he
had made interest a priority in his class selection. I recall that Adam hoping that college
will be about interest, intellectual engagement, appreciation of the subject, though he’s
heard otherwise. I also think of two other students who mentioned college as the place
where they will ﬁnally be able to pursue their interests. As I pondered of all this, it
occurred to me that a part of being a hi gh-achiever, at least for some of these students,
was about defening that day when it would ﬁnally be good and interesting and worth it.
This was not a new idea. Dorothy Pope wrote about it in Doing School. But it '
suddenly occurred to me what a useful idea it was if you wanted to keep things just as
they are. Tell the students who want more, who could make trouble, that they’ll
eventually get more if they just keep plugging away. Tell them this at every level. By the
time they realize that they should have made some trouble at some point along the way,
they’ll be too far along, too invested in the whole thing, and they’ll just keep moving on.
Willis (1977) also pointed out the “ear’oles” investment in schooling, the ways that they
act to enforce the school rules because they have given up on their chance to oppose
them. Eckhart (1989) writes about the apparent freedoms gained by the middle-class

jocks, freedoms contingent upon participation in the purposes and structures of schooling.

70

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Now, when such thoughts creep into my mind, I tend to view them with some
skepticism. They sound rather conspiratorial, the sort of ideas held by people who wear
tinfoil on their heads to keep the government from reading their thoughts. Yet such ideas
really don’t sound too wacky, not when set up next to some of the educational writing
that curses the inﬂuence of government and business in schools, articles that talk about
things like “U.S. phallomilitary warrior nationalism” (McLaren et. al., 2004). Still, I
wonder, is it necessary to posit a conspiracy when a system promotes ideas that tend
toward the preservation of the system? Isn’t this what systems do?

Perhaps it is, but this doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. This brings me to the
second reason that Rachel’s words were so striking to me as I sat in that cafeteria. Not
only did I feel like I’d heard them before, but I also felt like I’d said them before. Those
words resonated with me, dredged up memories of my own thoughts about college and,
somewhat more disturbingly, my thoughts about graduate school. Yes, when I came to
graduate school, I thought to myself, “ﬁnally, I will be in classes with people who want
to be there, who will be really interested in their subject, who won’t care about grades
and hoops and games and the sort of necessary evils of schooling.” When I dropped out
of graduate school, two years later, it was because I was disappointed, somewhat like
Rachel has been in her AP classes, but in a much deeper way; at that point I realized that
I’d gone as far in school as a person could go and - guess what? — it still wasn’t about
interest and learning and deep discussions about ideas. It was about assignments and
readings and papers and grades. It was still, even though we were all grown-ups, all about

school.

71

This makes my feelings about graduate school, and schooling in general, rather
obvious. This is a dangerous thing for a researcher to do, as it risks the reader will place
my observations, interpretations, and conclusions into the category of polemic rather than
research. But it must also be said that I do not approach school as one who hates it and
wishes it gone, but rather as one who loves it too much and wishes it were about all of the
lofty things we claim for it, things I still believe it could be about. Like the campaign ‘
workers in the 1996 novel Primary Colors who work for a presidential candidate because
they actually care about him and the issues, I am inﬂicted with the “true believer”
syndrome. These campaigners were not being “professional” because they were letting
themselves become involved. I am a professional student — lord knows I’ve been doing it
long enough, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it — but I am not so professional that I can
view school with any sort of detachment. When fall comes and the sweater breezes blow
and the leaves crackle, I can’t wait to get back into classrooms and libraries and coffee
shops. And when all the time and energy and genuine effort that goes into school is
channeled into stilly, stupid pursuits like grade-grubbing and game-playing and
achievement-for—achievement’s sake, it makes me feel sad for what could be.

When I said earlier that this idea would not become a theme or a chapter, I wasn’t
exactly right. The idea that high-achievers are always looking ahead, that achievement is
a pursuit that has no end, runs through much of what I have written about. High-
achievers, to continue achieving, must prove themselves worthy over and over again.
They must play the game while pretending not to, or not wanting to, always telling
themselves that they will eventually get to some point where the game no longer matters.

I guess the idea that high-achievers are looking to the future and hoping for more is not

72

just a theme; it’s practically the theme. And I think it’s a good theme, a right one, one
that captures something about the experience and the culture of hi gh-achievement,
something that needs to be talked about.

School is not an inherently bad thing, and neither is achievement. Obviously, I
came back to graduate school. I passed comps. I am writing this dissertation. I am here
and doing what I need to do to get my degree, because I think it’s worth it. And I’ve
started to see, after all this time, that if hi gh-achievers go on and on, waiting for
enlightenment and interest from without, they are going to be waiting a long time. You
have to ﬁnd ways to love what you are doing and make it worthwhile. This is Dewey’s
vision too and, like him, I think it should be a societal goal for all citizens. Heck, I think
we should teach it in schools, instead of teaching our “best” students that they need to
wait, our “middle” students that they aren’t a priority, and our “worst” students that they
shouldn’t even try.

Positioning Myself in this Work: Part 111

There is a bit of the romantic about John Dewey. His view of schooling and
society, where a democratic way of living is possible, where philosophy informs life,
where people live aesthetically is deeply optimistic. He began his work during the period
of American history referred to as the Progressive Era, the era of muckrakers and
trustbusting, of strikes and strikebreakers, of vast growth in the industrial base of the
country and of attempts to control the new inﬂuences of the industrial way of life on
society. Dewey himself put forth a vision that relied on the old J effersonian ideal of the
independent farmer or small town-type individual who has a great deal of control and

choice over their own work and time, and he feared that the Jeffersonian ideal of a

73

Republic made up of free persons, for a long time threatened, was disappearing under the
weight of industrialization (Bernstein, 1966; Cohen, 1998; Dewey, 1935/1946; Feffer,
1993). As Bernstein puts it:

Dewey’s life spanned the radical changes that were taking place in

America. He perceived quite acutely that the fortuitous set of

circumstances that had given birth to American democracy were rapidly

disappearing. . ..The very agencies that were originally looked upon as

those that would advance the cause of freedom now pose the most serious

threats to democracy. (1966, p. 136)
The agencies included literacy, mass communication, and laissez-faire economic ideas
(Bernstein, 1966; Dewey, 1939). Overall, Dewey seemed to believe that a threat to
democracy existed in what might be called the “industrial” way of life.

One of the focal points of public concern among progressive activists and

elsewhere was the erosion of traditional work values under the factory

system. . .In the years after the Civil War, it became apparent that factory

production was transforming work into industrial drudgery, from an

artisan enterprise that reinforced social responsibility and built good

character. Modern factories turned crafts into labor done for wages and

turned workers’ minds ﬁ'om the intrinsic value of labor to extrinsic

rewards. (Feffer, 1993, p. 98)
Dewey was deeply concerned with these changes, and directed his philosophy toward
solving what he called the “problems of men” (1946). He was hopeful that the changes
that seemed to be coming in society, the realization of the plight of the workers, would be
the start of a movement toward a democracy he envisioned (Menand, 2000), a democracy
structured philosophically, not solely according to the dynamics of the market or of
science and technology devoid of moral considerations (Dewey, 1935/ 1946; 1937/1946,
1944/1946).

The idea that industrial ways of living are a threat to democracy, and the

accompanying idea that things used to be better or different, is not unique to Dewey.

74

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Weber (1905/1952), in his seminal work on the now widely referred to “protestant work
ethic,” wrote of the old capitalist class before they became capitalists of the “protestant”
type. The old capitalist business, in Weber’s account, ran in a rather relaxed fashion, with
the work getting done and nobody straining themselves overly to do it. The new
capitalism arose in the combination of neutral (by Weber’s deﬁnition) capitalist business
practices with protestant ascetics, making for an emphasis on accumulation and increase
for its own sake, changing the deﬁnition of quality of life and business to a new,
competitive, and all-consuming one. Mills (1959) also writes of an “old” middle class,
one identiﬁed with the small business owner or entrepreneur, and he points out that this
ideal is not just a type of business owner but also a rhetorical strategy in America, one
embodied in the Progressive Era. Indeed, Dewey’s educational work was identiﬁed
within a realm known as “progressive” education (Dewey, 1938/1997).

I mention all this because I have a great afﬁnity for Dewey’s views — I think he
was on to something — and the situating of Dewey within a progressive framework is a
situating of my work as well. Like Dewey, I have a vision of schooling and democracy
which equates learning and activity, as they should be, with purpose, meaning, and value.
I ﬁnd “industrial” approaches to education and life, in the broad sense of disconnected
and alienated, done for bureaucratic or institutional purpose rather than meaningful one,
disturbing. I realize the limitations of this approach, its identiﬁcation with the progressive
narrative of the evolution of society, and even problems that arise given postmodern
criticisms of the subject, and the all-encompassing nature of discourse. Dewey is not the
person with all the answers, and his own frame, taken to its limits, has holes as big as

any:

75

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It is here that we reach the contextual and conceptual limits of the

pragmatist tradition. As a radical self-realization theory, pragmatist social

psychology offered a democratic alternative to an emerging mass

production society in which education and participatory organizations

would heal social divisions and enrich otherwise degraded lives. It

suggested that the agency of social change would be ordinary people

encouraged to self-active reconstruction by a democratic reform

movement. But as a theory of moral imminence, Chicago pragmatism also

rooted social transformation in a dying tradition of civic virtue,

community, and productive labor, thereby imposing a shape and direction

on what should have been a process of self-transformation. (F effer, 1993,

p.270)

All this being said, the Deweyian progressive vision resonates with the ideas that I
have come to hold, based on my own experiences as a student and as a teacher. I think
that my stance in this work is a necessary one, which can be used to examine and to open
up high-achiever culture. Yet I take a critical stance, an open and questioning approach
toward high-achiever culture, because I do not wish to fall into the trap of taking one
view to the exclusion of all others, even as I must adopt a frame if I am to carry out any
sort of critique. In my work I tried to look for more than I had expected, to be open to
ideas outside of my expectations and my frame, and even to employ ideas from a variety
of traditions to enrich and to challenge my ﬁeldwork and analysis. If it can be said that
educators must be aware of the language and practices and ideals that shape what they do
and what they teach, so too must I keep in mind my own Deweyian leanings and the
place which my arguments ﬁnd in the rhetorical ﬁeld of culture, society, democracy, and
schooling.

On Methods
Methods used were those commonly associated with ethnography: interviews,

observations, and gathering of artifacts, in this case, documents. Observations were

carried out using hand—written ﬁeld notes, taken in a manner similar to that suggested by

76

Hatch (2000). Notes were taken on a pad during class and then typed into the computer,
usually immediately after a class session so that the memory of the class was fresh. The
notepad was used in class, rather than a laptop computer, because I believed that a laptop
would form more of a barrier between myself and the class and, furthermore, because the
tapping of laptop keys would have, in a relatively quiet lecture—intensive class like AP US
History, been too obtrusive. As I took notes, I made marks to indicate points of particular
interest, adding additional comments if I had the time right away, and if not, adding them
when I typed the notes up after class. The class activities and self-notes were written in
separate fonts to distinguish my observations from my thoughts and ideas related to those
observations.

Observations were carried out over a period of four months in the 2006-2007
school year. Initially, I visited the class every day, and continued this pattern for the ﬁrst
two months of the study, then dropped my visits to once or twice a week. Each visit
lasted the entire class period, and I usually remained at the school for one to two hours
more, typing up my notes in the school library. Even after the fourth month, I continued
to stop by the classroom every week or two, to maintain a presence there, see how the
class was doing, and to remind myself, as I analyzed my data and carried out my writing,
of the classroom setting that was the source of that data. This latter purpose was a way of
getting a feel for whether my analysis and conclusions were staying close to what I’d
seen or if they were wandering too far from the class as I’d experienced it, this being
done in the interest of keeping my account close to the situation studied (Schoﬁeld,

1990).

77

Observations covered all manner of classroom events, from lectures to tests to
assignments, and even included one class in the computer lab and a three-hour, after-
school review session for the ﬁrst semester ﬁnal exam. Short conversations with students
before, during, or after class were likewise recorded in ﬁeld notes. Initial observations
began with descriptions of everything about the class, classroom, desk arrangements,
posters, pictures, lighting, sitting and standing and movement, a general writing-down of
classroom features as recommended by Hatch (2000). I attended to the teacher’s lecture
topics and his lecture style, how he addressed and talked about history, how he presented
it to his students, and how he interacted with them in terms of his questions, answers, and
monitoring. I also watched how his views came out in class, how he referred to his
students, to history, to the AP, to the school, and on and on. I watched the students in the
same way, noting what they said, how, and to whom, being especially alert for the ways
in which they acted to exert control or to act strategically in the classroom enviromnent.

Documents collected included both class and school documents. School
documents, obtained from the main and guidance ofﬁces at the school, were things like
maps and schedules, school demographic information, a school course guide, and the
year-end guidance ofﬁce report ﬁom the previous year, which included information on
grades, standardized testing, and college attendance for Fairlawn students. Class
documents included class tests, assignments, practice AP tests, worksheets, readings, and
the end-of-year review guide compiled by the class under Mr. Elliot’s guidance. These
documents supplied information on the type of work being done in the class, the
opportunity to study and review the work that was being done while I was taking ﬁeld

notes, and general information on the school and the students who attend it.

78

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Interviews were carried out with the students and teacher of ISI hour AP US
History, as well as with several other faculty members. All interviews lasted
approximately an hour each, since, even though the stated aim was 45 minutes, they
tended to run long. Several were shorter, but none were under 35 minutes in length. Most
of the interviews, with the exception of one student interview, one interview with Mr.
Elliot, and one interview with school principal Dr. Riveli, were carried out with a tape-
recorder running; for the remaining three interviews I took notes. All interviews were
transcribed so as to have typed records of conversations and, additionally, as a way of
getting to know what was in the interviews. Student interviews were fully transcribed, as
were the initial interviews with Mr. Elliot and both interviews with other AP social
studies teachers. Later interviews with Mr. Elliot, and the taped interview with Dr. Riveli,
were partially transcribed.

Students were selected for interviews by virtue of their membership in the class
under study, and I interviewed every student who volunteered. The students’ willingness
to be interviewed, even enthusiasm for it, was a surprise. Along with this willingness,
initial interviews yielded results which were unexpected, both in the topics which came
up and in the answers to anticipated topics. Taking all this into account, I felt it was best
to interview as widely as possible just to see what else might come up, and so my initial
plan to interview only a select few, picked as representative of different class groups,
evaporated in the face of the possibility to speak to almost four-ﬁfths of the class, 20 of
the 26 students, about their experiences. This may seem like the abandonment of my
“purposeful sampling” plan of choosing students to interview (Maxwell, 1996), where

students are picked for particular attributes or a representatives of groups of interest, but

79

it is actually an enhancement. These students, in this class, with this teacher, at this
school, were all chosen for speciﬁc purposes, that is, because they represent an
educational ideal, hi gh-achievers in an advanced class taught by a renowned teacher at a
suburban school with a reputation for rigor and a college-prep atmosphere. Within the
class, it was my intention to interview selected students to represent the class, and so the
opportunity to interview more of the students, representing all the initial grouping
categories I was going to use to choose just a few, was a gain for this work. While it
could be pointed out that there is a bias toward people who would volunteer to be
interviewed, all the students who did not volunteer were in class peer—groups which were
represented by those interviewed. All racial and ethnic groups in the class were present
among the interviewed students.

Interviews took place in a variety of settings, most in the school cafeteria before
or after school, but several took place in the school library and one was done in a coffee
shop off the school’s campus. The settings were chosen with a mind toward maintaining
privacy yet keeping interviews in public settings where the researcher and the student
were never really alone or out of sight of others. This later point was an idea impressed
upon me while I was a teacher, that being alone with students can lead to accusations of
abuse, but for the purposes of this research another consideration was student comfort,
since I was an adult that they did not know well. Sitting in isolated but visible parts of the
cafeteria or library seemed to work best for these interviews though, on one occasion, a
crowded and noisy coffee shop proved to work well, even though it made the transcribing
a bit more challenging. All of this was taken into account as I considered the possible

effects I might have, as an interviewer, a researcher, an adult speaking to students, and a

80

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person from outside of the school, on those I was interacting with (Angrosino & Mayes
de Perez, 2000; Fine et. al., 2002; Kirsch, 1999).

These interviews followed a partially-structured format (Bogdan & Biklin, 2003;
Carspecken, 1996; Scheurich, 1995) to allow for a certain indeterminacy in what I would
ﬁnd, an indeterminacy consistent with the Open nature of qualitative research, my interest
in exploring this particular context in depth (Maxwell, 1996), and the Deweyian
pragmatic tone of this work. In simpler terms, I had some idea what might come up, but I
did not assume that I knew everything, and wanted to make some room for students to
bring out pieces that I had not anticipated or imagined. As it happened, these interviews
ranged over a broader scope of topics than I’d initially intended, and these were
incorporated into the study. To facilitate this openness, yet maintain some continuity
between interviews that would help me to get at my speciﬁc interests and would also
facilitate comparison and analysis, I did not use set interview questions, nor did the topics
I addressed follow any set order. Instead, I brought with me to each interview a list of
thematic talking points. As the interviews progressed, sometimes starting off with a few
simple questions about name and classes and such, other times ﬂowing right from pre-
interview conversation into the interviews themselves, I would glance from time to time
at the talking points and attempt to guide the interview so that all of them were touched-
upon. Though the interviews did share some commonalities, all were different, and
student responses to the different talking points varied quite a bit.

The interview format also followed the idea of “active interviewing,” (Holstein &
Gubrium, 2002) because, in asking these successful students and their teacher critical

questions about their class, school, and experiences, I found myself not only questioning

81

their beliefs about school and purpose, but also providing them with alternate frames for
their answers. Instead of operating from the perspective that I was gathering “data” and
should step back from inﬂuencing this collection by adopting a neutral tone, I
participated in the interviews as conversations, or as much like conversations as I could
within the framework of a taped interview with a graduate student doing research. This
meant that I pressed, challenged answers, or proposed alternative possibilities, more
mildly with the students and more explicitly with the teacher, since the students were
younger and viewed me as a teacher—like ﬁgure, while the teacher is my own age and not
a reticent individual. In addition, the teacher was involved from the beginning of my
study with its critical and questioning aspects, and as I shared my ideas and
interpretations with him, he used these as an opportrmity to air his own speculations and
questions.

Faculty interviews worked along a similar framework and structure. Though we
had occasional conversations before and after class which I added to ﬁeld notes, I
conducted ﬁve interviews with the teacher, four of these lasting around an hour and one
about twenty minutes. Four of the ﬁve interviews were tape-recorded, one was done
using notes. I also interviewed the other AP US History teacher, Mr. Brown, as well as
Mr. Schlieffen, one of the two AP Government teachers; in the end I talked to three of the
four AP Social Studies teachers at Fairlawn. Mr. Brown and Mr. Schlieffen were each
interviewed once, and each interview lasted one hour. Finally, I interviewed the school
principal, Dr. Riveli, twice, once for half-an-hour using a notepad, and once for an hour-
and-a—half using a tape-recorder. Mr. Elliot was interviewed for obvious reasons, and

these interviews provided not only the opportunity to talk to Mr. Elliot, but also the

82

opportunity run by him my ideas, observations, and initial conclusions, to carry out a bit
of “member checking,” as they say (more on this below). Mr. Brown and Mr. Schlieffen
were interviewed to provide more insight, from different directions, into the AP social
studies experience at Fairlawn and hi gh-achieving students and their culture generally.
There are two AP US History sections at Fairlawn High School, and Mr. Brown teaches
the other one. Mr. Elliot and Mr. Brown work together to plan the AP US History class
and to choose the students, and often share ideas, opinions, strategies, and even
ﬁ'ustrations as the year progresses. Mr. Schlieffen teaches AP Government, the other AP
social studies class at Fairlawn, and aside from his experience teaching high-achievers in
an AP class in general, Mr. Schlieffen also has many of Mr. Elliot’s former AP US
History students, who took AP Government as seniors after taking AP US History as
juniors. Dr. Riveli was interviewed to get a different point of view on the school and its
ﬁrnctions, as well as on hi gh-achievers, the community, and Mr. Elliot and his teaching. I
also had brief, unrecorded conversations with the director of guidance, Mr. Riveli’s
secretary, a substitute teacher who covered Mr. Elliot’s class one day. These
conversations mainly covered the topic of how good a teacher Mr. Elliot is, a topic which
these individuals brought up, and held forth upon, with no prompting from me.

As mentioned above, the partially-structured, active interviewing process was
employed with a mind toward creating space for the unanticipated. This space was not
just necessary because of my inability to fully anticipate what I might ﬁnd but also
because it was the point, to a great extent, to see what was happening with high-achiever
culture. Openness was thus necessary because, if I already knew what was there and just

what to ask about or look for, there would have been little reason to spend all this time

83

 

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and effort doing a study. The whole point of qualitative work, particularly ethnography, is
to see what is there or, rather, to create an account of what is there, bearing in mind that
such an account does not tell what is “there” in any objective sense, but rather in an
interpretation of the ‘there’ that was the immersion of the researcher in the setting in the
context of the researchers goals, beliefs, methods, and purposes. The partially-structured,
active interview process ﬁts with all this by taking seriously the idea that the participant
and interviewer are engaged in making meaning (Holstein & Gubrium, 2002; Scheurich,
1995). Furthermore, given that research must take responsibility for its possible effects
(Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Fine, Weiss, Weseen, & Wong, 2000) which might include
changes in the participants’ views, an active approach makes this possibility a part of the
interview itself.
Data Analysis

Data analysis was approached as an ongoing process, begun while observations
and interviews were still in progress and continuing afterwards (Maxwell, 1996).
Analysis began on the ﬁrst day of observation, when I typed up the ﬁeldnotes I had taken
and recorded the thoughts, impressions, and ideas that I drew from that initial experience.
As already mentioned, I typed up all ﬁeldnotes, most often immediately after the class
observed, and this process always involved more than retyping what was written in the
notebook. Typing up of ﬁeldnotes also afforded opportunities to look for emerging
themes, regularities in speech and behavior, certain ways of addressing ideas or topics,
and the like, as well as the chance to reﬂect on how the classroom was looking the same
and different as observations continued. Emerging themes were looked for in later

observations and incorporated into research memos and interviews.

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Transcribing interviews also presented an initial opportunity for analysis. As I did
all the transcribing myself, I became very familiar with the interviews, and while
transcribing I took notes on pieces which stood out, themes across interviews, or other
items of interest. Later, when reading through the transcripts of the interviews, I had the
notes to use as a resource, one which not only gave me some ideas about what to look for,
but some insight into the ways I was looking, how it had changed and stayed the same
between the time when I was transcribing and the time when I was re-reading and
performing further analysis. My thoughts recorded in ﬁeldnotes, my research journal
entries, and my transcription notes, along with my research memos, were all quite helpful
in establishing what stood out for me and what I ended up leaving behind, as well as
reminding me of where I had started off. This helped prevent me from getting swept off
by new ideas as they arose and forgetting other, older but still important notions.

Dedicated analysis occurred in two stages, one halfway through data collection
and one as data collection was wrapping up. The ﬁrst analysis involved a read-through of
all notes, journal entries, memos, ﬁeldnotes, and interview transcriptions, in search of
themes and ideas which could be used to monitor what was emerging in the course of the
work and to shape and direct the second half of the study. The second stage, which really
represented the start of analysis as a focal process, began in earnest as interview
transcription came to a close. Again, I started with a read-through of all notes, journal
entries, and conceptual memos and making a list of themes, corrunonalities, and
possibilities. Then I read through all the ﬁeldnotes and made a similar list, and read
through all the interview transcriptions and made two more, one for the student

interviews, one for the faculty interviews. These lists were then used to construct an

85

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overall list of themes, which were then organized into categories, then shufﬂed around
until they began to form a coherent picture. Having put together the master category list, I
returned to the data to re-check the categories, ﬁll in speciﬁcs on the master list, and so to
begin to construct an account.

This form of analysis was drawn, very broadly, from Weis and Fine (2000) and
Bogdan and Biklin (2003), but the read-through and categorize plan also relied on
recommendations from Seidman (2006). I did use the categorization process to “fracture”
the data (Maxwell, 1996), to take it apart and recombine it thematically, but my “coding”
process operated from an annotated master list of themes and categories which I used to
reference parts of transcripts and ﬁeldnotes, rather than from cutting up transcripts as
some recommend. The use of a master category list also operated to insure that I returned
to the data periodically during my analysis. When I wanted to refer to a particular part of
my ﬁeldnotes or interview transcripts, I went back a looked at that event or statement in
context, which kept me close to the data and reminded me of where various pieces had
come from. The repeated returning to the data and to the themes, coincidentally (or
perhaps not) close to Dewey’s recursive process of experience, was also meant to ﬁt my
general practice of writing, which is to return to the information time and again until I
can envision how I wish to write about it. In this spirit, the master category list became
not just an organizational tool but also a writing guide. The re-shufﬂing and re-organizing
of data into categories, and the reworking of categories to ﬁnd connections,
commonalities, disagreements, eventually turned from categories into sections and

chapters.

86

Addressing Validity and Generalizability

As with any study, issues of validity and generalizability, of the authority of the
research to say what it says and its applicability beyond the immediate setting, arise and
must be addressed. Neither of these terms, here, is meant to be used in the terms
employed in statistical analysis, that is, as in terms of accuracy of measures or the
applicability of ﬁndings from a sample to a population. Indeed, I agree with Donmeyer
(1990) in his skepticism of the generalizability even of statistically-based work, but that’s
a whole other argument. On the results of ethnographic studies, Geertz (1973) claims:

They are interpretations, or misinterpretations, like any others, arrived at

in the same way as any others, and the attempt to invest them with the

authority of physical experimentation is but methodological slight of hand.

Ethnographic ﬁndings are not privileged, just particular: another country

heard from. To regard them as anything more (or anything less) than that

distorts both them and their implications, which are far profounder than

mere primitivity, for social theory. (p. 23)
Nor is it assumed that validity means a match up between an objective classroom reality
and the account of it which I provide (Schoﬁeld, 1990), nor that generalizability means
proof or prediction. As I am employing these terms, validity is'a matter of evidence, of
warrant, of attempting to produce an account that, if is not the same account that anyone
would produce, is one that could be seen as connected to, and derived from, the
observations and interviews which I carried out:

The goal [of qualitative research] is not to produce a standardized set of

results that any other careful researcher in the same situation or studying

the same issue would have produced. Rather it is to produce a coherent

and illuminating description of and perspective on a situation that is based

on and consistent with a detailed study of that situation. (Schoﬁeld, 1990,

p. 203)

In addition, I will try to meet the criteria that Jackson (1990, drawing on Wolcott, 1990)

puts forth when he says that:

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We should all try. . .to be as credible, balanced, fair, complete, sensitive,

rigorously subjective, coherent, internally consistent, appropriate,

plausible, and helpﬁrl as possible. (p. 154)

I especially like the bit about plausibility and helpfulness.

While I agree with Maxwell (1996) that method does not guarantee validity, and
that validity is something to aim for rather than something to be produced, there are still
some steps one can take to aim for it. Already mentioned was my use of research memos,
a research journal, recording of thoughts and ideas, and repeated returns to each of these,
all of which were meant to keep me aware of my research process and thinking and to
share those thoughts with others (Hatch, 2002; Hamilton, Pinnegar, Russell, Loughran, &
LaBoskey, 1998). Member checking (Denzin and Lincoln, 2002; Fine, et al., 2002;
Maxwell, 1996; Weis & Fine, 2002) came into my study as I ran my interpretations and
ideas past the teacher of the class I studied, in the course of the ﬁve formal interviews I
carried out with him as well as in informal conversations before and after class visits. In
producing my account of hi gh-achiever culture, I attempted to use multiple data sources
and points of view (Maxwell, 1996; Weis, 1994), an idea sometimes referred to as
“triangulation.” I performed observations, carried out interviews, and collected
documents. Interviews were carried out with as many students as volunteered, to get as
many perspectives as possible. I also interviewed not only Mr. Elliot, the teacher of the
class I studied, but also two of the other three AP social studies teachers, as well as the
principal of the school. I also had shorter conversations with the director of guidance, the

principal’s secretary, and a substitute teacher who taught Mr. Elliot’s class one day while

I was observing. Finally, I have endeavored to look for “validity threats” (Maxwell,

88

1996), alternative explanations for what I was seeing, and to include alternative
explanations into my results as a way of questioning my interpretations.

Generalizability, coming from a study of a particular class, is here a matter of ﬁt,
in situational or thematic terms, with other settings, as well as one of useﬁrlness in
prompting questions. This is, as the reader may have ascertained, a study of one
classroom. As such, it cannot be said, in some senses, to represent the culture of any other
classroom or school. Yet the goal of this study is not simply to describe one classroom,
but rather is to gain insight into a larger culture of high-achievement, widespread
practices and learning associated with the culture of high-achievement, and the
relationship between these features of school and their societal context. Thus, there is an
assumption here that the ﬁndings of this study will be applicable beyond their immediate
setting, though this assumption does not extend to the idea that these ﬁndings will be
generalizable in a statistical sense.

To start off, generalizability, in the sense of direct application of the ﬁndings of
this study to another setting, is not a desirable or even a possible goal given the
philosophical commitments of this work. This study’s Deweyian, cultural, pragmatic
features deny that any site of culture could be completely described beforehand, since the
culture is created even as it guides participation in the learning activity. Given this, no
study about any particular setting could be said to fully describe any other setting.
Additionally, as a work of qualitative research, this study does not aim for the same
narrow sort of generalizability that is required of quantitative studies (Schoﬁeld, 1990).

Insights about the “system” of high achiever culture, to use the Wolcott’s (1990) term,

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Er

will not tell us anything deﬁnite about what any one student will do in any other setting, a
point similar to that made by Donmeyer (1990) and Kohn (2006).

Still, there are several ways in which this study’s applicability can extend beyond
its own immediate setting. First, there is the idea that a culture of high-achievement could
exist in any number of other schools, and while the situations and enacted cultures will
not be exact matches, work in one area can inform ideas about others. Other ethnographic
work does seem to indicate that such connections do exist. As an example, Eckhart
(1989) pointed out in Jocks and Bumouts that she found variations of the J ock/Bumout
cultural dichotomy in existence across different schools in different towns. Indeed, the
very idea of “culture,” as it is used in educational and sociological research, implies that
there are similarities that cut across speciﬁc situations and bind together groups with
comparable experiences. Other qualitative researchers have used terms such as
“transferability” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, cited in Donmoyer, 1990) or “ﬁt” (Schoﬁeld,
1990) to indicate that ﬁndings in one setting might be applied to other, similar settings.
Thus, my ﬁndings about this particular group of high-achievers, while not deﬁnitive
about any other group, can certainly provide some insight into the educational
experiences of hi gh-achievers in similar situations elsewhere in the American educational
system.

Along a different line, and following both my qualitative methodology and my
use of narrative, this study will aim for what Eisner (1997a, 1997b), Bruner (1991, 1995),
and Bochner and Ellis (1996) call “verisimilitude,” a notion of ﬁt that goes beyond the
exact conditional similarity that is characteristic of experimental generalizability. The

sense of the culture of high-achievement, the meanings attached to schooling and the

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possibilities realized in this classroom, may ﬁnd some connection to schools that are not
exact replicas of the school that will be the site of my study. Still, students and teachers
may note that this study of the hi gh-achiever culture resonates with their own educational
experiences, perhaps even giving them new insight into their lives and work. Ideally, this
study will, in the sense of verisimilitude, “hit the nail on the head” regarding high-
achiever culture, forming a connection between the speciﬁc site of my work and other
schools and settings and giving others a broader perspective and more power in viewing
their own surroundings.
Setting and Participants

In studying the culture of hi gh-achievement, I wanted to pick, not only high-
achieving students, but an advanced class with a “good” teacher at a high-achieving
school. In studying the “best and the brightest,” I wanted an environment that
represented, at least to some, an excellent public high school. In this way, this study of
high-achiever culture would be a study of what our educational system does when it
works well, with motivated students, a highly qualiﬁed, experienced, and passionate
teacher, at a well-funded, relatively new high-school with a reputation for rigor and a
high-rate of college attendance among graduates. In many ways, Fairlawn High School is
a good school, and in the context of carrying out my study I came to admire the workings
of this school in some ways, including the work of Mr. Elliot. But I was also there to
question what I was seeing, and, in a larger sense, to question just what this large,
rigorous, suburban high school, and the culture of high-achievement as manifest in Mr.

Elliot’s class, stands for in education.

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There were other factors that went into the selection of this class and these
students in particular for a study on the culture of hi gh-achievement. The AP class is
ideal because such classes attract the sort of students that are the focus of this study, that
is, “high-achieving” students. High-achieving here means students who perform well in
their classes (they get good grades), who work at the honors or AP level, who are
recognized as hi gh-achievers by their teachers, and who are involved in school or extra-
curricular activities such as organizations, clubs, teams, music, and the like. These
features were chosen because they appear as attributes of high—achieving students in other
work (Eckhart, 1989; Fisher, 2005; Gayles, 2005; Hebert & Reis, 1999; Pope, 2001;
Rizza, 1999; Wineburg, 1991) and because grades, advanced classes, and school
activities can, because they ﬁgure prominently in college applications, be taken as
common measures of school‘ success.

I choose a social studies class for particular reasons as well. Social studies is the
subject area which takes, as a major reason for its existence, development of students-as-
citizens, a topic well within my area of concern as a researcher working ﬁ'om Deweyian
ideas. Secondly, I have studied history and economics in college, I read large, unwieldy
history books for fun, and I have taught high school history and other social studies
classes. Thus I am conversant with the subject matter and teaching practices of such
classes. This familiarity allowed me to better understand and interpret the students’ work
and also what is happening in the classroom. High school was my preferred age group for
several reasons. Hi gh—achievement at the hi gh-school level, with honors and advanced
classes, takes on a different role than at other levels. Also, in my experience as a hi gh-

school teacher, high-school students are accomplished and aware players of the school

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game, and they are thinking very much of their identity as high-achievers as they prepare
for college. This impression is backed by Pope’s (2001) work. Also, I am familiar with
the age group and comfortable working with them, which will contribute to my ability to
work within the high school setting.

This section, on setting and participants, is divided into two main parts. The ﬁrst
is a description of the community, school, teacher, and class, put together with statistics
drawn from census and school data, as well as from self-reported information from the
teacher and the students. This part is presented in a traditional mode, descriptive and with
many numbers, and it does present some information which tells quite a bit about the site
and the participants. The second part of this section takes a different stance, a description
of my arrival at F airlawn and the view from the school hallways and Mr. Elliot’s
classroom. This section is meant to round out the picture of Fairlawn, to give the reader a
more complete impression of this site.

The Fairlawn Community and Fairlawn High School

F airlawn Hi gh-School is a located in F airlawn, a suburban community located in
the middle of a Midwestern state, only a few miles from the state capital and the campus
of the state university, and functions as a bedroom community for people who work at
both the capitol and the university. The old town center of Fairlawn is a stoplight and a
set of two-story buildings around an intersection, but F airlawn has grown to include a
mall to the north of the old town and a strip of shops, gas stations, restaurants, coffee
shops and other businesses that crowd around an exit for the freeway that runs south of
Fairlawn. With a population of approximately 23,000, F airlawn is a majority white

community, with 75% of residents falling into this category. African-Americans make up

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12% of the population, Hispanics another 12%, Asians 4%, American Indiansl%, which
sounds impossible since it adds up to over 100%, but some people are double-counted as
more than one race (US. Census Bureau).

The median household income for F airlawn residents is $62,810, above the US.
average of $41,994, and the per capita income is $33,401, as compared to the US
average of $21,587. Families below the poverty level make up 3.3% of the population,
below the 9.2% that is the US. national average. On a census map of the state, Fairlawn
shows up as the most afﬂuent area in the center of the state (U .8. Census Bureau). In
terms of occupations, 60% of Fairlawn residents work in management or professional
ﬁelds, another 24% in sales and ofﬁce occupations. Of the remainder, 10% work in
service occupations, 3% in construction, extraction, and maintenance, and 5% in
production, transportation, and material-moving occupations. While the deﬁnition of
“middle class” is imprecise, Fairlawn can reasonably be described as a middle-class
community. The household income deﬁnition of middle class, operating off of the
median household income of $46,326, or on other deﬁnitions which place the middle
class household income from somewhere in the range of $40,000 to somewhere in the
range of $200,000 (Cashell, 2007), ﬁts Fairlawn either way. Additionally, the
preponderance of professional and managerial occupations meets the general conception
of the middle-class as the corporate, professional class (e. g. Eckhart, 1989; Lareau,
2003).

Approximately 1400 students attend F airlawn High School. The student
population is 75% white, 14% Asian, 8% Black or African-American, 3% Hispanic or

Latino, and less than 1% American Indian/Alaskan Indian (F airlawn High School, 2007).

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Fairlawn ﬁts the deﬁnition of 3 “hi gh-achieving” school as employed in a study of hi gh-
school science teaching and school culture (Carlone, 2003), with high-achieving meaning
a middle-class population and a high (97%, for Carlone) rate of college attendance. Of
the F airlawn graduating class of 2006, 97% of students continued on to post-secondary
education, 74% of those at four-year schools, 24% at 2-year schools. The drop-out rate
was 1%. Similar statistics run all the way back to 1996, which is as far back as the
information I got went. The percent continuing their education ranged from 88% in 1997
to 97% in 2006, the highest, but all the percentages save the 1997 numbers were in the
90’s (Fairlawn High School, 2006).

Fairlawn High School was included in Newsweek’s top 1,200 high-schools in
America, the top 5% of the 27,500 public high-schools in the country. Fairlawn came in
at right around 800. Using the statistics and criteria of the Newsweek report, the Fairlawn
guidance department report places Fairlawn in the top 3% of public high-schools in the
United States, and the top 1% of public high schools in the state. Of the class of 2006,
71% of the class was honored by the state for their performance on standardized state
assessments, each receiving $2500 from the state to be used at an in-state university.
GPA distribution at F airlawn angles toward the hi gh-side. Of the total population for the
2005-2006 school year, on a four-point scale, 47% had a GPA between 3.5 and 4.0, 29%
were between 2.8 and 3.49, and another 19% were between 2.0 and 2.79. Only 5% of
F airlawn students had GPA’s below 1.99, and only 1% below 1.49. As for the AP
program at Fairlawn, in 2006, 245 Fairlawn students took a total of 473 AP exams

(Fairlawn High School, 2006).

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Mr. Elliot and his 1“t Hour AP US History Class

There are two sections of AP US History at Fairlawn High School, one taught by
Mr. Elliot during ﬁrst hour, the other taught by Mr. Brown during sixth hour, the last of
the day. Mr. Elliot has been teaching for a dozen years, and teaching AP US History for
seven of them. Mr. Brown has been teaching AP US History for four years. They work
together on the class, though each teaches according to his own style; Mr. Elliot has been
teaching for a dozen years. He is renowned throughout the F airlawn High School, praised
by every individual I ran into and by his current and former students. The praise I heard
was sometimes in response to direct questions about Mr. Elliot’s reputation, as it was
when I talked to his colleagues in the social studies department, but in many cases the
praise was offered without solicitation on my part, a spontaneous response when people
found out that I would be spending time observing his classroom. The principal, the
director of guidance, the secretary in the principal’s ofﬁce, all gushed about Mr. Elliot
without any prompting from me.

- Mr. Elliot has a B.A. with hi gh-honors from State University, with a major in
History and a minor in French. He has an M.A. in Curriculum and Teaching, also from
State, and is working on completing a second M.A., this one in Humanities, from another
university in the state college system. Along with AP US History, Mr. Elliot teaches or
has taught World History, Economics, French, History of Film, 20th Century Humanities,
and Psychology. He is on various school committees relating to curriculum design,
building planning, tolerance and community issues, and training and planning involving
online curricula and the FHS computer grading system. He is also a member of two North

Central committees that focus on cuniculum planning. Aside from teaching at Fairlawn,

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where he did his student teaching and where he has taught full-time since 1996, Mr.
Elliot also spent a year teaching at a Comprehensive Secondary School in England as part
of a Fulbright International Teacher Exchange Program. He is a regular attendee at
conferences and workshops relating to teaching.

AP US History is a prestigious class at Fairlawn High School, and one of the only
two AP’s offered in the social studies department, the other being AP Government. Most
students who take AP social studies take AP History as juniors and AP Government as
seniors, though some take both simultaneously. All students take regular US History their
freshman year, and World History as sophomores. The AP results from the two sections
are impressive: in 2005, 51 students took the AP US History test, 37 of which got a “5”
and 13 a “4,” with one “2”. In 2006, the “5” and “4” numbers were 36 and 9 respectively, ,
with the remaining 2 students receiving a score of “3”. To take AP US History, students
must, the spring semester before the fall in which they want to take it, go through an
application process. They must ﬁll out an application form (which warns of dire
consequences for incomplete or falsiﬁed applications) and take a 45 minute multiple-
choice history entrance exam. In the selection process, equal weight is assigned to overall
GPA, teacher recommendations, adjusted GPA for social studies and English classes, and
the score on the entrance exam. Two interesting tidbits — there is a deﬁnite similarity
between these criteria and the criteria by which students are classiﬁed as “high-
achieving” in education literature and, secondly, Mr. Elliot has expressed some concern
that the process selects for students who are good at playing the school game. Once the
application process is complete, Mr. Elliot and Mr. Brown rank all the students according

to these factors and then hand pick their students for next year, aiming to get around 50,

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or 25 for each class. Of the 83 students who applied to be in AP US History this year, 56
were accepted, an acceptance rate of 67%.

It is reported to be something of a big deal to get into AP US History, and even
though not all students agreed with this assessment, the two that disagreed have the
. highest GPA’s in the class, so for them, perhaps it was not as big a deal. There is a certain
feel of espirit de corps that inhabits the AP US History class. The application process
contributes to this, as do class meetings the spring semester before the fall semester
where the students take the class, and summer work including reading books and
watching movies which pertain to the topics of AP US History, and writing reports on the
same. Every year, the AP US History classes make t-shirts, which they wear to take the
AP together. (In a rather interesting turn of events, in terms of researcher involvement,
my name was a prominent part of this year’s lSt hour class’ t-shirt, which would seem to
rule out any thoughts that I was an unobtrusive presence in the class) Mr. Elliot and his
students also engage in class study-sessions before the AP exam, consisting this year of
two three-hour sessions, one the week before the exam, the other the night before. Mr.
Elliot also gave his students a two-and-a—half hour review session before their fall-
semester ﬁnal exam.

Mr. Elliot’s ﬁrst hour AP US History class has 26 students, one over the target
class size of 25. There are 14 girls and 12 boys, all but one of whom participated in the
observational portion of the study. Of the total of 26, 20 of them volunteered to
. participate more intensively in the study by being interviewed. Having not worked with
any other student populations, I cannot make any comparative statements, but I can attest

to the willingness of hi gh-achieving students to participate in research, or at least in this

98

study. Perhaps I gave a particularly compelling description of my work. Four of the
students are seniors, the rest juniors. Of the 25 participating students, 19 identiﬁed
themselves as white, two as Asian, one as Hispanic, and three as “mixed” (white/black,
white/Hispanic, white/Asian). Their parents are a mix of doctors, lawyers, professionals,
professors, small-business owners, teachers, and ofﬁce workers, and ﬁve of the students
had stay-at-home moms. The students’ GPA’s, upon applying for AP US History, ranged
from 3.585 to 4.0. As students taking an advanced class, with good grades, participating
in one or several extracurricular activities, and with good enough teacher
recommendations to get into AP US History, they qualify as hi gh-achievers as deﬁned in
various realms of educational research (Eckhart, 1989; Fisher, 2005; Gayles, 2005;
Hebert & Rice, 1999; Pope, 2001; Rizza, 1999; Wineburg, 1991).
Arriving at Fairlawn High School, December
”We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us. ”
Winston Churchill

F airlawn High School sits in the middle of a ﬁeld, in an area that was once farms
and still is if you drive for a couple minutes. Most of my drive to Fairlawn, which took
me from the vicinity of the state university in about ten minutes, was through farm ﬁelds,
white and empty and stubbly on dark winter mornings like this one. The darkness is
something that takes some getting used to. I have become accustomed to my cushy
graduate student existence, one which has seldom involved alarm clocks. After a long
time out of the high-school classroom, there is part of me that was slightly shocked to

recall that hi gh-school students, and their teachers, are in their classrooms before the sun

at this time of year.

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Aside from farms in the area, there are businesses which line Baxter Road, the
four-lane road which runs in front of FHS, as well as a large and modem-looking church.
Starting on the next block down from F HS you can ﬁnd the sort of suburban
developments that people refer when they talk about “sprawl,” large houses on curving
residential lanes, all rather close together. Continuing down Baxter Road, you ﬁnd an
area of strip malls, gas stations, restaurants, and stores. Many of them are clustered
around the intersection of Baxter and F airlawn Road. Just south of Baxter is the
interstate, and there is an exit which connects the interstate to Fairlawn Road. This means
that the intersection of Baxter Road and F airlawn Road 100ks like a thousand freeway
exit strip-mall sections in a thousand American towns, with a McDonalds, a Cracker
Barrel, tall gas-station signs, and plenty of trafﬁc, especially around morning and
afternoon rush hour when the commuters leave F airlawn or come home.

On this morning, I arrive at F airlawn High School about ﬁfteen minutes before
school starts. This is not the best idea; making a left turn off Baxter Road into the front
entrance of F airlawn, ﬁfteen minutes before school starts, is neither pleasant nor
advisable. There is no turn lane, and there are lines of cars, coming ﬁ'om both directions,
waiting to get into this entrance. We unfortunate people who must make left turns not
only get to wait for all the people ﬁrming right, but we also get to block a whole lane of
trafﬁc, which seems to endear us to few. And this is not even the entrance the students
use; faculty use it, but they are all already at school. School buses use it, but they, too,
have already arrived. All the cars I am competing with are driven by parents who are
dropping their students off. They may be ﬁne parents, but they aren’t much for letting

people into the trafﬁc stream.

100

After ﬁnally making a hair-raisingly quick turn into the driveway ahead of a
clump of oncoming trafﬁc, I head for the visitor lot and park. The school looks new, the
brick walls and many windows clean, and it is in fact a dozen years old. It is a rambling
structure, yet imposingly tall in some parts, noticeably the three gymnasiums, the
auditorium, and the library, which has a peaked, translucent glass roof. The building has a
main section with ofﬁces, the cafeteria, and the library, four classroom wings, and the
ﬁne arts and sports wing which includes art and music rooms as well as the auditorium
and gyms. The classroom wings have turrets at their ends, and there is another turret in
the front of the building by the main entrance; these contain stairwells, and the break up
the angular lines of the building.

Walking into the main entrance, the door nearest the visitor lot and main ofﬁce, I
join the rush of students, most wearing large backpacks with the straps adjusted so that
they hang low. As I enter, I am facing the cafeteria, two stories high, with a glass-
windowed front wall which faces the hallway in which I’m now standing. The hallway
itself is as tall as the cafeteria, and the effect is impressive, airy, somewhat imposing. I
imagine being a new ﬁ'eshman and looking up at that ceiling and being awed, but perhaps
these kids are more sophisticated than I was. They’d almost have to be. The tall cafeteria
has a tiled ﬂoor, which you’d expect, and is full of round tables, eight loose plastic chairs
to a table. There is an open serving line, and students go through getting snacks or drinks.
The cafeteria smells of school cafeteria food, an aroma that is as distinct as it is hard to
describe, something of old grease and heavy processing. It brings back memories. Several

of the round tables have students sitting at them, studying before school or just taking.

101

The lighting is ﬂuorescent but recessed into the ceiling, a different effect than the
industrial light strips I’ve seen in other schools.

To my left is the main ofﬁce, and I walk in; the ﬁrst thing I must do when I arrive
.at the school is sign myself in. The ofﬁce is clean and new-looking. Two desks sit in the
front room of the main ofﬁce, wooden desks, not the gray metal ofﬁce furniture usually
associated with public schooling, at least as I remember it. There is also a small round
table with a couple chairs, where the student assistant sits waiting for errands. The
secretaries are businesslike but ﬁiendly, and one encourages me to take a piece of candy
from the basket on her desk. Signing in is a simple process, consisting of putting my
name, purpose, and time-in on a sheet on a clipboard. There are no visitor passes, and in
my visits to Fairlawn I have never been required to show any form of identiﬁcation or
documentation of my status as a researcher. When I explored the school, I was never
stopped in a hallway and asked why I was wandering around peeking into classrooms.
Perhaps I am a particularly innocuous-looking individual, but in my researcher-mind it
occurs to me that Fairlawn High School is not the sort of school where they are worried
about strangers sneaking in and making trouble.

Leaving the ofﬁce, I hang a left and head for the classroom wings. Mr. Elliot’s
classroom is in the “B” wing, on the second ﬂoor. The hallway is all jostling, yelling
chaos, with students walking, running, standing in groups, sitting against the walls,
talking, shouting, eating, punching each other, and laughing. The contrast to the relatively
empty and sedate hallways of the College of Education building at the university is-
striking, and as always my brain begins to throb with the sensory experience of a 1400

student high school ﬁve minutes before ﬁrst period. The halls are carpeted, the recessed

102

lighting rather subdued, the colors in brownish tones, again different from the bright tile
and ﬂuorescent bank lighting of the schools of my teaching and student experiences. The
class wings, labeled with letters, have a different appearance than the travel and ofﬁce
hallways. Lined with lockers, with off-white walls, they are taller and lit up brighter. All
the classrooms are labeled with numbers and with the teachers’ names, indicating to me
that many teachers likely have their own rooms, a nice deal. A strident electronic tone
sounds in the hallways, the ﬁve minute warning, and I pick up my pace. Heading up the
stairs to the second ﬂoor amidst a jostling herd that puts me in the mind of commuters in
New York City, I wonder, as I often do, about the institutionalized nature of mass
schooling. As I arrive in the classroom, the two-minute warning tone goes off, a tone
even more strident than the ﬁve-minute tone and made up of three clashing notes. It
sounds like a malicious, synthesized train-whistle.

Mr. Elliot’s classroom is carpeted in gray, with off-white walls, a drop ceiling,
and ﬂuorescent lighting. It also has the two pull-down map sets and one projection screen
that are familiar from when I was in hi gh-school, even elementary school. I wonder if the
company that makes those map sets is not the world’s most tradition-bound organization,
because they look exactly the same as the ones I remember seeing in classrooms twenty
years ago. Mr. Elliot’s room is covered in posters and pictures. I see a mix of history
posters, art, recruiting posters, and pictures of far-off places. Near his desk, there is a wall
of personal photos and decorations. There are dry-erase boards, Whiteboards, on the wall
at the front of the room, where the students face when they sit in their desks. At the back
of the room, across from the door, Mr. Elliot has a big teacher’s desk and a padded

teacher’s ofﬁce chair. Behind this desk is a table on which sits Mr. Elliot’s computer.

103

There is another teacher’s desk at the front of the room, in the center, about ﬁve feet from
the center whiteboard, and next to this desk sits a stool. These, 1 have learned, are popular
sitting spots for Mr. Elliot as he lectures, when he is not pacing or writing on the
whiteboard. The classroom also has a television at the front of the room, up toward the
ceiling on the right side, and a projector hanging from the ceiling that faces a pull-down
screen up by the maps.
Mr. Elliot

Mr. Elliot, the teacher of the ﬁrst hour AP US History class, is 32 years old. He is
not a reticent man. When he speaks, making a point in class, or in conversation, he says
what he thinks and gets the whole point out before he entertains a response. He is about
5’10”, fashionably dressed most days in slacks and button-down shirts, or sweaters;
sometimes he’ll show up in a suit. Thin, with a mustache and goatee and short black hair,
he is one of the few people I’ve seen, outside of pictures in history books, to whom the
adjective “dapper” applies. He is often in-motion, and his energy stands out during the
ﬁrst hour of the school day. With degrees in history and education, teaching experience
here and overseas, and an impressive grasp of the subject which he teaches, he is fun to
watch as a lecturer. He tells good stories, adding little bits not found in the textbook,
throwing in his own opinions, illustrating his points by modulating his voice and
gesturing expansively. He can be seen, at various times, stomping around, yelling, joking,
adding sarcastic asides, making scathing criticisms regarding historical ﬁgures, or quietly
pointing out poignant moments in history.

Mr. Elliot has a reputation as an excellent teacher. Fairlawn faculty and staff,

upon learning that I was going to be observing Mr. Elliot’s class, lost no time in letting

104

me know that he is very, very good. The principal of Fairlawn High School, Dr. Riveli,
claimed that anything he could say about Mr. Elliot would be “all superlative.” His
students also praise him, and even amidst the occasional complaint, often having to do
with Mr.‘ Elliot’s domineering style of lecture, their overall response is overwhelmingly
positive. His unique educational background is known around the school. His
encyclopedic knowledge of history comes out in his teaching. He gets results on the AP
test. Mr. Elliot is good at what he does.

The Students of AP US History

On my ﬁrst days observing, I expect that the students of AP US History, as a
bunch of hi gh-achiever-types, will show up to their class early, but this is seldom the
case. They begin to ﬁlter in as the two-minute tone sounds, and a torrent arrives as class
begins with the ﬁnal tone. They generally continue to trickle in as Mr. Elliot gets things
started. They are talkative when they arrive, but when Mr. Elliot begins class, they quiet
down immediately. When they do arrive and sit down, they most often sit in or near the
same seats every day, and when a student comes in late and sees his or her seat taken, this
sometimes results in a look of confusion which I always ﬁnd a little ﬁrnny.

They tend to cluster in groups. Helen Wei, Bill Newton, and Sara Pleasanton
always sit on the left side. Bill and Helen are in quiz bowl together, and all three are
serious students. As Mr. Elliot lectures, Bill will often mumble answers to all the
questions Mr. Elliot asks, even the rhetorical ones. Most of the time, Bill gets these
answers right. Helen is not as outspoken, but when she and Bill talk they make jokes
which require some knowledge of history to be understood. Helen is ﬁrst-generation

Chinese-American, is one of the two students in class who has a straight 4.0, and claims

105

that her heritage plays a part in her academic achievement. Sara talks little in class, but
she loves history, especially the story of it, and Mr. Elliot believes her to be one of his
best students. Other students will sit on the left side occasionally, if their seats are taken,
but Bill, Helen, and Sara are the regulars.

The middle of the class is a mix. Connor Irnboden often sits in the back, near Mr.
Elliot’s desk, and Thomas Ames usually sits right in front of him. They will work
together when the class divides up into groups to do assignments. Connor is a senior, one
of the few in the class, and is looking forward to going to college where he can study
music. He is taking six AP tests this year, three of which he is studying for on his own.
Thomas is the only male student with hair that falls below his ears, almost to his
shoulders, and he wears black shirts and combat pants and boots, the exception to the
usual jeans-and-shirt look' of his counterparts. He is a transfer student, from Florida
originally, and is considering the FBI as an eventual career. Connor is outspoken in class,
Thomas is usually not. Rachel Early and Janice Warren often sit together too, usually in
ﬁont of Connor and Thomas. Rachel, who also came into AP US with a 4.0, is a star in
AP US, and Mr. Elliot calls her writing publishable. She was hoping that AP US would
be more like a college class, by which she means a class that is about learning and not
about grades. In this, she has been disappointed. Janice has a quiet way of speaking,
claims she is not a competitive person, and plays in the school orchestra. She does not
like it when Mr. Elliot ﬁres questions at his students as they sit and listen to his lectures.

There are other groups in the middle. Rich Barlow sits in the middle, but he often
sits alone, at the one student desks which is not in a row and is in fact placed in front of

all the student desks. He is very low-key, and says little except in response to direct

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questions. Reilly Howard and Laura Pender always sit next to one another, and they form
part of a larger group which includes, at various times, Emma Armistead, Candice
Andueza, Adam Braff, and Andy Meade. Reilly is tall and smiles often, and laughs at all
of Mr. Elliot’s jokes, while Laura, the other student in class with a Chinese heritage -— her
mother is Chinese, her father American — is less enthusiastic about class. She does not
enjoy school as much as she once did, and refers to herself as “lazy” in her schoolwork.
Adam and Andy are seniors, the former wants to be ﬁlm director and the latter a stage
actor. They are seniors, they are the two Jewish students in the class, and they are
characters. Adam wears a long wool coat, carries a briefcase, and moves around with a
frantic haste. Andy is often late and is the best student in class for shouting out answers
and joking and arguing with Mr. Elliot. Candice, who is Mexican-American, is also a
senior, also does theatre, and, like Andy and Adam, is less motivated by grades than the
juniors in the class. Candice is politically active, and will be taking a year off after hi gh-
school to do community service. All three of these seniors will see their GPA’s drop this
year; lack of motivation. Emma is a quiz-bowl kid like Bill and Helen, and can be found
before school in the cafeteria, doing homework. Showing her horse, along with her
schoolwork, keeps her quite busy.

The right side of the room is itself a large group, dominated by the student-
athletes in the class. The exception to this athletic theme is Allie Meredith, who is more
of a musician than an athlete, who always sits in the front corner desk nearest the middle
and who, after Andy Meade, is the second most outspoken student in the class. She will
frequently argue about assignment due dates and once told Connor to “eat it” when she

was running a class discussion on a test date and he disagreed with her. Cathy Kilpatrick,

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a soccer player, and Margi Doubleday, a former gymnast who’s on the track team, always
sit behind Allie. Allie and Cathy often chat, and while Cathy does not have much to say
in class, she will occasionally get Allie to make a point for her. Margi, one of the other
minority students in class, identifying herself as half-black, doesn’t say much but can be
seen talking to Jim Schurz, a baseball player, Matt Ward, who is on the basketball team,
and Eric Morris, who runs track. Jim has a reputation from his other classes as a smart-
ass, but likes Mr. Elliot’s class because it is fast-paced and interesting. Eric, one of the
only students with a job outside of school, took AP US History because he is a fan of the
Civil War, which was not much covered in AP US History. Pete Reynolds, who plays
soccer at times, also sits on this side of the room, but he will drift around. He is very
earnest, striving to do his work very carefully, and AP US History has been quite
demanding for him.

They do not form a uniﬁed picture of the high-achieving student. They have
varied interests and varied interest in history, they sit in different groups, they laugh at
different jokes. They do not all know one another very well — twice when I arrived I ask
students to tell me other students’ names, and they could not answer me — and this has
been disappointing for some, like Candice and Allie, who expected a more close-knit
class. Some of them talk constantly in class, others say little, a few do not wish to say
more. Most of them like Mr. Elliot as a teacher, and they overwhelming claim that his
class is better and more interesting than their previous history classes, though a few wish
for something more — more discussion, more student excitement about history, less
emphasis on grades. But all of them have chosen to take AP US History, a class with a

reputation for being fast-paced and work-intensive, and they all listen to lectures, take

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notes, and work steadily when given in-class assignments. They are the high-achievers
who are the focus of this study, and for all their differences, they are all in this class
together.
Sitting in Desks

Mr. Elliot is lecturing, and I am listening from my seat. I am in one of the student
desks, as I always am. The ﬁrrniture in the classroom is of the old style, the desks of the
integrated seat-desk type, but they are not old. The shiny, unmarked student desks match
the teacher’s fumiture, which is shaped like the big, gray, metal desks I’ve seen but made
of plastic. For all its newness, though, much of Mr. Elliot’s classroom is familiar to me,
and not just because I’ve been sitting in it for weeks. From the neutral colors to the maps
and posters to the way that the teacher stands and the students sit, it is a classroom like
many others. What is perhaps most intimately familiar to me, however are the desks in
which the students sit, and in which I sit with them. They are one-piece units, desk-and-
chair together. The chair has two legs underneath it, and is connected to the desk by a
diagonal bar on the left side, so that students enter the unit by sliding in from the right.
The desk is supported by the other two legs, for a total, for desk and chair together, of
four. There is a space for books under the chair, and a little trench for pens or pencils at
the head of the desk surface. I have spent a signiﬁcant portion of my life sitting in some
variation of these desks, as have most of us who have gone to school. There is nothing
new about them.

If the furniture is built in the same old way, the students sitting in them also adopt
poses that are not new to me, though I am perhaps really noticing them for the ﬁrst time.

The desks seem to inspire one of two postures in the students, postures which I, in my

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weeks in the classroom, have named the “slouch” and the “curl”. The “slouch” is where
the students slide forward on the chair until their bottoms are on the forward edge, splay
their legs out in front of them, and rest the top of their back on the top of the chair back.
Their body is thus at a shallow, almost laying-down angle, except for their head, which is
kept level and facing forward. Students sitting in the other most popular posture, the
“curl,” rest their bottoms fully on the chairs and tuck their legs underneath. They lean the
top halves of their bodies forward, and their heads are bent over even farther than their
backs. The “curl” gets its name from the way these students seem to be curled around the
desk, not only in their backs and necks, but also in their arms, which form crescents that
outline the paper on the writing surface.

In taking notice of their postures, I ﬁnd myself sitting up straighter, trying hard to
resist either the “slouch” Or the “curl,” both of which feel quite natural to me when I
attend to them. I also ﬁnd myself attending to the looks on the students’ faces, looks
which at times seem as standardized and functional as the furniture. The students are
never all truly still, but when individuals are not talking, responding, questioning, or
looking incredulous, they adopt a neutral expression that one might call “resigned.” It
seems, to me, that this not-quite—bored, not-quite-excited, energy-saving expression could
be one mark of the experienced, professional student. They stare straight ahead, their eyes
not quite down but not quite level. In this way, they can avoid accusations of inattention
that might come from looking elsewhere while also avoiding the direct eye-contact that
might draw a question or comment from the teacher.

The overall impression of all this, when one sits back and tries to take in the room

as a whole and the postures of the students as a group, is disconcerting. These students

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are shaped by their desks, and the shapes these desks give are not particularly ﬂattering.
When the students curl, they wrap themselves around their papers, like bent old men and
women toiling at some exacting task, or misers hoarding their money as they count. They
almost look deformed. When they slouch, they seem hunkered down against the
pounding rain of information. The resigned look gives them the appearance of
lifelessness, like the animatronic ﬁgures at Disneyland when seen between shows. I have
watched lively faces go slack and blank as the teacher throws questions. To see this room
of young kids curled up or slouched over or staring blank-eyed at a point between the
board and the ﬂoor is to wonder what is being accomplished through the routine and
regimen of institutionalized education. And this, mind you, is a class which students
praise as interesting and even ﬁrn, and I have to agree with them about the passion and
dynamism of their teacher.

Why notice these things? Is this anything new? Certainly not. But the point is not
that anything new is happening in this classroom, but rather that old and unsurprising
things are happening, some of them accepted as natural and run-of-the-mill, others not
just accepted but even praised as examples of education working well. These students are
high-achievers. By measure and by design, they are some of the best at Fairlawn High
School, certainly the most talented and dedicated of students to come through the social
studies department. Their teacher is experienced and highly regarded. And we educate
them (as we educate all) by stufﬁng them into one piece school desks, wrapping them
around plastic and metal and paper, bringing stillness, contorting them, ﬁtting them to a
particular model of intellectual engagement. You see, to “think,” to be “smart” to be a

“good student” is to be shaped to a passive, contorted existence under ﬂorescent lights.

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Though many critics of schooling have pointed out its conformist tendencies, I do
not mean to place this shaping of these AP students solely into that league. Putting the
slouch and curl into the context of knowing and knowledge, they may reveal themselves
as occasions of more than conformity, and far more than the adoption of blank
expressions or poor posture. The curl, while it is an occasional note-taking posture, is a
universal test—taking posture in AP US History. It is a guarded posture. The miserly
image may not be far off. The curled-up students seem to be hiding their information,
defending it from prying eyes, maintaining a private interaction between person and page,
or between person and teacher. Knowledge thus demonstrated is used to measure, and it
must be kept close. The slouch, on the other hand, as a posture of resignation, is not
guarded but open, and also passive. It is a posture of listening, of the taking-in of
information, almost of surrender. Information here is the transfer of fact, Freire’s banking
model embodied. The slouch and the curl thus seen are not only postures of sitting, but
are indeed posture of learning, embodied commentaries on the nature of knowledge in
education, metaphorical representations of history-as-taught within the particular
institution of schooling.

The ways in which the students of AP US History are shaped is my concern, not
only how they are shaped by their desks, but also by their position as students, and in
particular as students at an elite class at a hi gh-achieving school. This shaping is not a
passive affair, as the students adopt these postures themselves, sometimes unthinkingly,
sometimes strategically as when they avoid questions or hide their papers. Nor is this
solely a matter of the students, since the process of becoming a hi gh-achieving student,

and the process of continuing to be one, says quite a bit about the school, the class, the

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teacher, and learning and knowledge themselves as these students encounter them. The
culture of high-achievement, embodied in one section of AP US History, is a crossroads
of theories, intentions, practices, and ideologies that move across levels from the
individual to the societal, and as such it is more than a story about these few students. But
it starts with them, juniors and seniors with excellent academic records, well-behaved and

hardworking, sitting in their classroom, and in their desks.

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CHAPTER 4: THE GOOD STUDENTS

Opening - Fifteen Minutes of Mr. Elliot’s 1’t Hour AP US History

It is another cold, dark morning in January as the tone sounds signaling the
beginning of the school day at Fairlawn High School. In 1St hour AP US History, Mr.
Elliot is at the front of his room, launching into a lecture. There is no call for quiet or
attention. He simply begins, and the students cease their conversations and settle into
their seats. Two minutes into the lecture, Allie walks in and takes her seat at the ﬁont of
the room. Mr. Elliot asks a question about congressional debate and a student at the front
answers “the gag rule.” Mr. Elliot acknowledges the answer and moves on. Matt walks in
late, sits down. Amy is next, and she stops to say hello to Allie before taking her seat. Mr.
Elliot pauses in his lecture, turns to the whiteboard, picks up a marker, and begins
writing. As soon as the pen hits the board, the students leap into action, and notebooks
and pens ﬂy out of bags and appear on desks in with a bustling series of rustles and
thtunps. As the rustling and thumping fades, the students are writing, faithfully recording
Mr. Elliot’s notes.

As Mr. Elliot warms to his topic, the students sit quietly, facing their teacher, only
occasionally whispering or gesturing to one another. This is not to say that the class is
quiet; Mr. Elliot himself is an enthusiastic lecturer who asks frequent questions, and his
students talk back to him. Some give answers before he asks. Often the whole class
laughs as Mr. Elliot makes one of his more colorful illustrations of a historical point. And
yet, while the class cannot be called quiet, it could most certainly be called “orderly.”
There is noise, but very little extraneous noise, the occasional whispered conversation,

but very little talking that is not related to or sanctioned by Mr. Elliot.

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Mr. Elliot has turned from the board and is talking again, and here he pauses in
his narrative to emphasize a particularly useful pieCe of information, the perceived role of
the US. government in depressions, in the mid-19th century. “This is important,” he tells
the students, “I want this stuff to stick in your head.” Four of his students scribble in their
notebooks. He turns back to the board, writes the name of an historical ﬁgure. The rest of
the students, as a unit, pick up their pens and begin writing. He steps away from the
board, takes a seat on the stool that sits at the front of the room, and begins talking again,
his voice rising and falling as he speaks. Most students set down their pens.

Eight minutes have gone by. Mr. Elliot asks Mike a question on the method
parties used, at that time, to choose their candidates. Mike answers incorrectly, and Mr.
Elliot supplies the correct answer and then holds forth for a minute or two on how parties
choose their candidates now, connecting and contrasting former and current practices. He
then jokingly illustrates the concept of a “dark horse” candidate by asking his students to
imagine a complete unknown, “Thomas Crumplebottom,” suddenly nominated for
president. In the back of the room, Reilly and Laura, who seem to always laugh at Mr.
Elliot’s jokes, supply a snicker. At that moment, Andy, who seems to always show up
late, strides in and, ﬁnding his customary seat taken, looks confused for a moment before
sitting in another.

Ten minutes into class. As the lecture moves into Polk’s campaign for president,
Mr. Elliot walks over to the left side of his room and presses play on a CD player he has
resting on a shelf there. One of James Polk’s campaign songs, sung by a folksy-sounding
guy with a guitar, ﬁlls the room. Mr. Elliot gets into it. He grins at his class, sings along,

taps a dry erase pen on his hand. Several students smile or laugh quietly. As the song

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ends, Mr. Elliot reveals that Henry Clay will also run in this election, and several students
groan audibly — Henry Clay’s status as a repeat candidate who never wins, “always the
bridesmaid,” as Mr. Elliot says, is a running joke in AP US History, and the students
remember it.
High-Achievers in the Particular Institution
”Those are regulars, by God! ”

Major General Phinias Rial], Royal Army, at the Battle of Chippewa, 1814

General Riall was remarking on the appearance of Colonel Winﬁeld Scott’s
American troops which, though they were dressed in the uniforms of militiamen,
advanced in good order like the disciplined regular soldiers which they were. Watching
Mr. Elliot’s students produces a similar impression. Fifteen minutes of AP US history on
a January morning, and several things stand out. Mr. Elliot begins his class right away,
and the students settle in without direction. There are no calls for quiet or attention, and
neither are any of the late students called out for their tardiness. Mr. Elliot gives a lively
lecture with humorous examples, board notes, connections between historical times, and
a song, and he asks only one question in ﬁfteen minutes. The students are quiet,
cooperative, and responsive. They listen, they answer, they occasionally laugh. They
write down everything Mr. Elliot writes on the board, and little, if anything, else. The
students know enough about Henry Clay that some groan when his name is mentioned as
a presidential candidate in the 1800’s. As hi gh-achieving students, they are successful
within their school, and within the social studies department, as attested to by their
presence in this class. They are the “regulars,” well-disciplined and knowledgeable about

the work of being students.

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This ﬁrst look at them, then, is one which emphasizes their identity as “good”
students, as hi gh—achievers who are known as such by their place within the particular
institution that is school. In this study of the best-of-the-best, I start with the students
themselves as the best. Schooling itself, a unique cultural environment, and one formed
by the idea that knowledge can be taught in decontextualzed form to large numbers of
students in institutional settings, is the ocean in which these high-achiever ﬁsh are
swimming. Thus, in this chapter, I come at the phenomenon of hi gh-achiever culture by
exploring their position as “good” students, and, in particular, as students who have
demonstrated, and who must continue to demonstrate, that they are trustworthy and
competent within the context of schooling. As trustworthy and competent students, they
have a place within the school, AP US History being the manifestation Of that place. Yet
this place is at times insecure and difﬁcult to deﬁne, and the deﬁnitions, boundaries, and
contradictions within these two facets of high-achiever culture are important in shaping

who these students are, what they do, and how they view their world, and how they are

viewed within it.

Trustworthy and Worthy of Trust

Mr. Elliot’s AP US History students know how to act in class. They seldom need
to be told to be quiet or to pay attention. They never need to be told to behave
themselves. There are no detentions or ofﬁce visits for these students, no spit wads or
Snoring to mar Mr. Elliot’s lectures. I never saw an AP US History student disciplined
While I observed Mr. Elliot’s class, and Mr. Elliot only needed the occasional “Shh” or
Call for quiet to keep order. They are “good” students in their class behaviors, akin to the

0rl-task and focused students in other “hi gh-track” classes (Oakes, 1986). Mr. Brown, the

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teacher of the other AP US History section, calls teaching AP US History “teaching
without discipline,” and said of AP students, “I don’t have to discipline these kids. I’ve
never had a single conversation with an AP student about their behavior in class”
(Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-07). Mr. Brown has been teaching AP US History for
four years.

These striking student behaviors and activities formed the basis for my ﬁrst take
on high-achievers as the “good” students: their trustworthiness. As high-achievers, they
have shown themselves to be students of a certain sort, and in AP US History the
structures of work and discipline reﬂect these students’ unique position. They are given a
bit more, brought into the purposes of the class, allowed some ﬂexibility in how they
carry out their assignments and in the ways they are “managed.” This is a part of their
identity as high-achievers, but it also shapes them, determining the ways in which they
must act, yet doing so in ways which show that they can be trusted to do what is expected
of them. The culture of hi gh-achievement, seen through this lens, is a culture in which
teachers and students exist in a particular relationship, one deﬁned by additional
freedoms, on the teachers’ side, and by an implicit promise to use those freedoms in
certain ways on the part of the students.

Really, Mr. Elliot’s class is a teacher’s dream. The in—class behavior of the
students is really quite striking to this researcher, who is, after all, a former high-school
history teacher. Mr. Elliot knows that he can hand out an assignment and, after minimal
direction, set them to it and leave the room to make copies; the students will work away,
unsupervised, until he returns, a phenomenon I have witnessed. Indeed, both AP US

History classes seem to be like this, as Mr. Brown tells it:

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...my AP students, I say, alright, here’s a series of documents. You’ve got

a series of questions to go with them. I want you guys to get in groups of

three, you’ve got a half hour, you’ve got to be able to answer these

questions when you’re done. They will work diligently until they are done,

either the entire 30 minutes or until they can answer every question

(Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-07)

When Mr. Elliot writes something on the board, all of the students take notes.
This is automatic, and never needs reminding. They do not have to be told to take out
their notebooks; as soon as marker touches whiteboard, the rustling and thumping begins
and the pens go to work. Except when starting his lectures, Mr. Elliot does not have to
talk over his students, and once he starts talking, they almost always stop. They may
speak without raising their hands, and some even argue with Mr. Elliot on occasion, but
they are respectful. And when class ends with a lecture, the students sit dutifully in their
seats and record what is to be recorded, even after the tone has sounded signaling the end
of class. They seldom are seen to pack up early. They leave when he tells them that they
may do so.

In academics, they have demonstrated similar dedication. Having gotten the
grades, and having signed up for an AP-level class, and in particular having gone through
the application process to get into AP US History, these kids have proved themselves.
They have proved themselves by their behavior and achievement in previous history
classes. Mr. Elliot spoke of their dedication when he described the difﬁculty in
constructing a survey-level course that works for all students:

Because, they, they’re so motivated that they’re gonna do, they’re gonna

do all the completion, that’s not an issue. And then, they’re gonna get all

of the “all” questions on test and quizzes and activities and things that you

set up, and then so you’re trying to set up both activities, as well as

rubrics, assignments, et cetera, that somehow have some area of both

reward and challenge for those upper level students in the 9th and 10th
grade curriculum. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

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One might say that they have proven that they will act in certain ways, that they
“buy in” to the ideals of advanced classes and good students. Mr. Brown, teaching the
other AP US section, described the biggest difference between his AP students and those
in his other classes as “automatic student involvement,”

...my AP classes, the students are involved every day. They’re asking

questions, they’re communicating, ah, they’re workin’ hard. Whereas in

my regular classes, you’ll have kids who just come and just wanna shut up

for an hour. They just, they don’t make a big stink about bein’ here, but

they’re happy just to sit in their desk and just not converse either with

myself or with anyone else in the class. (Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-

07)

Because they have proven themselves, because they will do what is expected of
them, and because their expectations match those of the school and the teachers, AP
students can be trusted. The idea of “good” as “trustworthy” takes some shape. Mr. Elliot
can structure his class, not as a survey course, but as an advanced course, selective in
membership and set to operate at a higher level in terms of the content and type of work.
He gives his class a bit more ﬂexibility and responsibility, since he can be relatively sure
of what they’ll do with it. And he can use the language of personal responsibility,
attributing students’ results to their own actions, because these students have shown that
they will take responsibility. The students of AP US history, in becoming high-achievers
and AP students generally, have bought into the school’s values and assessments, like the
“jocks” of Eckhart (1989) or Willis’ (1977) “ear’oles”. Their generally high GPA’s and
records of achievement demonstrate this to their teachers. Mr. Elliot and Mr. Brown both

acknowledge that AP US History students have succeeded in the past, and they expect to

continue to do so:

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You know, progress in a 9th or 10‘h grade class for these kids is an A.
There’s nothing else. All of these kids were A students, straight A, in all
their other history classes, with a couple of exceptions. . .but in general,
their expectation is a perfect A. Anything beneath that is failure. It’s not
OK. It’s failure. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

These high expectations also come out in interviews with the students themselves.
Connor described to me how he had “just sort of tuned-out Algebra III honors” and when
I asked him if he’d gotten a bad grade, he said, ”B+. It was the lowest grade I’ve gotten,
all high school” (Interview with Connor Imboden, 2-13-07). Another student, describing
to me how she was not a very stressed-out individual, said:

...I try hard but I don’t like beat myself up if I get, like, a B+. If I make,

like, a stupid mistake and, you know, like that kinda thing. (Interview

with Reilly Howard, 3-1-07)

Having hi gh-expectations, and buying into the school’s achievement structure,
also manifests itself in the idea that these students are willing to do what they must to
succeed, and this includes doing things they do not like or care about. They get their work
done, and done well, and they do this whether they personally ﬁnd it of interest, or enjoy
it, or wish to do it.

...like in all, all my classes I’ll do the work whether I like it or not, just

because, to get a good grade. Like, ah, like my French class. I don’t really

like it all that much, but I’ll do all the homework, as pointless as I think a

lot of it is, just so I can get the credit. (Interview with Thomas Ames 2-13-
07)

I like getting good grades, you know, I get that. . .self-appeasement by
getting good grades. . .So I ﬁgure, OK, I wanna get a good grade, so I have
to do this, so just grind it out, do whatever it takes, and then just move on.
(Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)

...my work is very, quote-unquote, puritan work ethic. . .You know, I, I
just sort of, I just do it...I tough it out because, for one I just ﬁnd. . .that the
beneﬁts, like the, I feel rewarded when I tough it out and do well.
(Interview with Connor Imboden, 2-13-07)

12]

AP US History students, then, come to class to learn, to do their work, to do what
is expected to them, and to succeed. Because of this, they are trustworthy, and thus they
receive special treatment. The students of AP US History and their teacher have a
“bargain” of sorts. Mr. Elliot can treat his students with a certain ﬂexibility because he
knows that they will do what is expected of them. The situation in AP US History seems,
oddly, to share some features of the “bargain” found in classrooms in the work of McNeil
(1986) and Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, and Cusick (1986) and also in Pace (2003), where
students and teachers agree not to bother one another and academic work suffers as a
result. The bargain in Mr. Elliot’s class, however, seems to operate on a rather higher
level. These students do not merely stay out of trouble, they are actively engaged and
they do good work. And their teacher does not just avoid hassling them, but selects them
for an advanced class where he negotiates and lets things slide and talks to them. One of
the more popular responses, when students were asked what they liked about Mr. Elliot
as a teacher, was that he cares about students, and, connected to this, that he knows how
busy students are and that he talks to them.

It seems like he’s really enthusiastic about the teaching, I think he really

cares about how we do in the class, I feel like he’s really there for us. Like

if you have a question maybe you can pop in and ask him. (Interview with

Sara Pleasanton, 1-26-07)

I guess it’s just his teaching style. Like, you’ve seen, he’s very, he goes up

there, he talks a lot, he’s very, vocal. . .He puts a lot of energy into his, ah,

presentation. . .it keeps you hooked. He puts some humor into it, he’s, and

he’s very, I don’t know, I guess he’s on the same level as all the students,

he understands that you have your, you have other tough classes, you have

other activities you do (Interview with Thomas Ames, 2-13-07)

In his behavior toward his students, Mr. Elliot is also acting like teachers of other

“high-track” classes (Oakes, 1986). This bargain seems to resemble a bargain proposed

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by Eckhart (1989) between the “Jocks” in a high school, the kids who ﬁnd success
through compliance with the school system, and the school administration. Although
Eckhart’s bargain refers speciﬁcally to extra-curricular activities, there is still a trade-off
between apparent freedoms and dedication to school values:

The institutions that appropriate student energy and cooperation also
socialize participants for a corporate mode of existence. In return for the
opportunity to play roles within the school and enjoy the status and
freedom associated with them, the student must endorse the corporate
norms of the school and the overriding authority of the adults who run it.
The school thus strikes a limited bargain with its student population that
mitigates, for some, the loss of freedom that attendance imposes. (p. 100-
101)

One student even mentioned the relationship between the teachers’ perception of AP
students as “good,” the comparative nature of this perception, and teachers’ attitude
toward their classes:

I feel kind of like the teachers like their AP classes more than regular
classes, because then they feel like, even if it’s not true, they’re getting the
brightest and the best, the cream of the crop, these kids want to be here. So
if they, appreciate the fact that you are interested in their subject, and you
want them to teach you, and so, if a teacher is told, I want to learn about
this, they’re gonna, they’re gonna put their best foot forward and, and try
and do their best. So I think that has a big impact. I mean, you know, look
at Mr. Elliot, how he gets so, you know, energized and emotional about
history. (Interview with Andy Meade, 3-8-07) '

And yet, their positioning as AP US History students, and their part in this bargain, does

not earn them a place where they are ﬁnished in proving themselves:

MR. ELLIOT: And when I provide them with a cartoon which is, pretty
much, to be honest, quite a step back, you know, urn, cartoon analysis is
difﬁcult, it’s not the easiest thing in the world, however, because it is
primarily just visual, it doesn’t involve interpreting a lot of writing and
things like that, students generally have an easier time with this so we give
them even though it involves a different slate, a different skill set, it tends
to be something that, um, at this level that they ﬁnd easier. Even when
I’ve presented them with cartoons, recently, I don’t, I’m not sure if you

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were here when we did the cartoon on reconstruction, ah, had the white
league and the, urn, the KKK member joining hands.

SW: Nope, I wasn’t there that day.

MR. ELLIOT: And they were, they were talking about worse than slavery,
the just cause and still about, I’m going to say about 1A of the class totally
misinterpreted it, the, the cartoon. And it’s, it’s difﬁcult because the
things that they’re reading are not necessarily wrong, like all the elements
but when they put it together they arrive at the wrong conclusion. If that
makes any sense. So, I’m looking at the individual pieces “a” they got
right, “b” they got right “0” they got right, but when they add the 3
together they don’t get “d”. They’re getting “e” or “f“ and it’s not like
they’ve gone further, it’s that they’ve gone off track and so it’s like, it’s
been difﬁcult because I feel like I haven’t trusted them enough to turn a lot
of the locus of control in the classroom over to them.

SW: Right.

MR. ELLIOT: And I’m sure, I’m assuming, I’m sure that you’ve seen that

and then those are choices that I’m uncomfortable with but I have made

the choice to do that because of the group and where I feel that they are at

certain points. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 2-23-07)
Mr. Elliot’s feeling that his class could do more, and that if they did do more he could
give them more “control,” clearly ﬁts within the same structure that got them into AP US
History in the ﬁrst place. They must earn their places as students in AP US History,
where students get to do work that is hi gher-level and less just about the facts, but when
they get to US History there are still more hurdles for them to get over. They must
demonstrate ever higher levels of commitment, showing, not just that they will carry out
the more directed and constrained tasks of survey classes, but that they are also capable
of working with less direction and direct supervision in AP. If they do this, then they are
granted a measure of control in their classroom, and may move on to higher-level tasks.

The feel of this, then, is twofold. First, that much of what goes into these students

identiﬁcation as AP students, the best of the best, worthy of doing better work, is that

they are trustworthy. Second, that even when they reach the level of AP US History, they

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must continue to work to maintain, even to increase, their worthiness of trust. They are
willing to work hard, to behave themselves, to sit quietly, to get good grades. The way
the teachers talk about their suitability for AP classes include a combination of reasons,
some relating to their academic skill and readiness for “higher” work, others to their past
records of achievement, their priorities, their dedication. Indeed, it seems that much of
what deﬁnes an AP US History student, a hi gh-achieving student, is less their readiness
and more to their willingness. They come in with records which say they are worthy of
the trust bestowed upon them in their advanced, AP-level class, and once there, they are
far from done.
Competence, but not Too Much

The students of 1st hour AP US History at F airlawn High School are attentive,
clever, compliant in their behaviors yet occasionally pushing the boundaries of their
teacher’s forbearance. In all this, they are not only trustworthy, but also good at what they
do. They are good students, then, in that they are competent students, able to assess, and
to meet, the demands put upon them by AP US History. This is not to say that that they
are perfect students, that they have no trouble with this rigorous class, or that Mr. Elliot is
not at times frustrated with them. It is to say, however, that they work at a level which
has gotten them to AP US History, and in AP US History they are called upon to continue
to develop their competence as students, sometimes in new ways. Still, the notion of
competence is not without its contradictions, and the tricks of the student trade, while
they are necessary for hi gh-achievers, are sometimes viewed as necessary evils by
teachers and students alike. Indeed, student competence includes strategies and attitudes

Which fall outside the boundaries of acceptability in the context of AP US History, as

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well as in the contexts of school and of learning. Here I explore the identity of high-
achievers as competent students, and the difﬁculties and questions that arise when
competence becomes too much, crossing the boundary into scheming and manipulation.

This competence comes out in many ways, the ﬁrst being their classroom
behaviors. It is very apparent that they know their way'around Mr. Elliot’s classroom,
and know how to get what they need within it. Now, Mr. Elliot gives a fast-paced lecture;
his questions are short, and he expects quick answers. In fact, he acknowledges that
patience is not his strong point, and that he would like to give the students more room to
speak. Some of his students feel this as well; Candice referred to him as “a dictator-ish
lecturer.” As can be seen in the above glimpse of his classroom, sometimes he gets into a
lecture and does not want to stop. When he does ask questions, I have at times had
trouble distinguishing whether the questions are rhetorical or merely asked-and-answered
too quickly for student input. Taking this into account, students who wish to escape Mr.
Elliot’s questions know what to do. Speciﬁcally, they have learned to stall until Mr. Elliot
moves on.

Surprised by a question from his teacher, Adam simply began talking, stringing
together words that had appeared in the last few minutes of the lecture. This he did until
Mr. Elliot, not getting the answer he wanted, let him off the hook. Similarly, when asked
an unexpected question, Leeza looked up ﬁom her notes and smoothly rephrased the
words in the question to provide two answers without really saying anything. This
prompted Mr. Elliot to shift his attention to another student. Matt used a different strategy
— when asked a question he did not want to answer, he simply said nothing, waiting until

Mr. Elliot asked the question to the entire class. This ability to avoid questions,

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apparently, transfers to non-class situations: in an attempt to avoid directly answering a
couple of my questions during an interview, Allie began questioning me.

While Mr. Elliot’s fast pace gives advantages to students who wish to dodge
questions, it presents a challenge to students who do wish to speak. He is reluctant to stop
in the middle of a point, even if hands are up, so the eager, too, have found ways. Among
her other strategies, Allie will wait for Mr. Elliot to make a mistake on a fact or date, and
will then call out the correction from the textbook, earning a place in the sun. She also
knows that hand-raising is not always enough, but hand-raising and talking
simultaneously sometimes does the trick. Bill, not so bold but quite knowledgeable, will
mumble answers to every question Mr. Elliot asks, rhetorical or not. In this way, Bill
occasionally draws an acknowledgment. Andy, who aspires to a career in theatre and who
knows no such shyness, shouts out any answer or question that comes to his mind,
sometimes also raising his hand. Often, he will get a response, too.

As “good” students, the students of AP US History also demonstrate intentional,
strategic behavior in other ways, inside and outside of class. As I circulated around the
room one morning, observing the students work on a group assignment, Adam expressed
his opinion on it: since it was not a test or a lecture, he said, it was “probably not even
worth any credit. As long as there’s pen in each of the blanks, it will probably be ﬁne”

(F ieldnotes, 12-12-06). He called this manner of working “apathy mode.” Their note-
taking behavior, closely connected to what Mr. Elliot does or does not write on the board,
is also an adjustment to what they believe will be important. Figuring out what is
important is often a matter of “reading” their teachers, and in general, they seem to have

some skill at this. Indeed, all of them are quite good at it, in Mr. Elliot’s assessment.

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Because of this, they know what hints to look for, when an assignment requires in-depth
work and when is merely a matter of ﬁlling in blanks, and what will be on a test. This
teacher-reading goes beyond the bounds of AP US History:

Well, I’m sure that we all play the game to a certain extent. Um, we know
what teachers are looking for, and, we know the quality of work that will
get by. (Interview with Pete Reynolds, 2-27—07)

Well, I mean, you kind of learn, like, depending on how much, for
example, how much a teacher reviews a certain subject, you know whether
that’s going to be a big deal or not, you can tell if something comes up
more than once or if it seems to have some sort of signiﬁcance depending
on whatever it is, that, it’s probably going to be something that you’d need
to know, or something that is going to be good to remember. (Interview
with Bill Newton, 2-1-07)

For my chemistry class, her homework check-ins are, like, just looking at

the paper and seeing that there’s writing on it and seeing that it’s done.

And so playing the game would be, like, ﬁlling in, like, just like writing

stuff. (Interview with Allie Meredith, 3-2-07)

In math class, you can usually tell, like, if you know your teacher you can,

like, guess what the homework is going to be and you can do it during

class. (Interview with Cathy Kilpatrick, 3-2-07)
And this sort of thing goes beyond teacher-reading, too. The students of AP US History
know, by “instinct” in Helen’s words (Interview with Helen Wei, 3-6-07), just how much
effort to put in, how much they must do to get by or go through the motions. They tell of
being able to get “A’s” in many classes by doing the bare minimum, though this is not the
case in AP US History, as Mr. Elliot tells me. The students agree, citing workload and
difﬁculty. They also refer to Mr. Elliot’s savvy as a teacher:

...he can see past you when you do, like, minimum. He has high demands,

because he was kind of a nerd. . .And so, it’s like, you know, you have to

do everything too, really intense, and ...... he knows kids’ tricks. And he

also knows that. . .kids like skip test day, to ﬁnd out what’s on the test and

they try to make it up, he knows that, yeah. (Interview with Allie
Meredith, 3-2-07)

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In hearing this, Mr. Elliot would no doubt be pleased; the increased difﬁculty of playing
the game in Mr. Elliot’s AP US History class is something that Mr. Elliot aims for.

Mr. Elliot’s AP US History students are also cognizant of the ways that their work
varies, and can be varied, according to content and interest. They know that they study
differently for different classes, and even plan to take those classes for different reasons,
some for intellectual interest, some for how those classes will look on their transcripts. Of
course, they do not claim to be interested in all of their classes, but they have learned to
take this into account as well. Approaches to getting homework done, for example, seem
to account for variations in interest. One does her fastest work ﬁrst, so as to get
something accomplished quickly. Several related that they like to start with subjects that
they do not like, so as to save time for the things they like better, with one indicating that
this pass over un-liked work was a quick and not-too-careful one. Some do what is
immediately due ﬁrst and save other work, at times including the notes for Mr. Elliot’s
class, until later.

It is apparent that, as “good” students in the sense of “competent” students, the
juniors and seniors of AP US History demonstrate an awareness of environment and
goals, and a concurrent strategic approach to getting what they want. These students’
work habits seem to demonstrate just the sort of knowing, intentional approaches that
educators would like to see, approaches praised in Rizza’s (1999) positive account of the
school game. The students of AP US History are “metacognitive,” in the words of Rizza
and of Mr. Schleiffen, an AP government teacher (Interview with Mr. Schleiffen, 1-27-
07). Students described knowing what they “get” and “don’t get” as a method of

budgeting time and effort. Their frequent comments on “busywork” reﬂect their sense the

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difference between work that requires effort and that which can be completed without
much thought. Time management and organization were praised as skills for coping with
their large workloads.

In a sense, none of this is terribly surprising. One would expect students in a class
like this, in a school like this, to know the score. Rizza (1999), and Pope (2001), have
both written accounts of hi gh-achievers’ lives and strategies, and both described “playing
the game,” with Pope even naming her book “Doing School,” after the students’
characterization of what they do in classrooms every day. It is important to note that “the
game,” in the sense used here, is the particular game of success in schooling. There may
be as many games as there are cultures and discourses, ways to act and to get ahead in
various settings. Indeed, some of the above-cited studies on minority student achievement
(Gayles, 2005; Hemmings, 1996) examine the challenges some such students may face in
playing multiple games. This game emphasized here is particular to schooling, and thus
particular to a middle-class, corporate ideal of behavior, thinking, achievement, and
success. And the students of AP US History seem to be well-versed in this particular
school game. The similarities between the strategic, aware, and at times conniving
approach to school shown by the students of AP US History and the approaches
employed by Pope’s and Rizza’s students is striking, and this is important here for the
way it links the students of AP US to hi gh-achievers in other high-schools. That being
said, “playing the game” is interesting for reasons that go beyond a catalogue of similar
behaviors between hi gh-achieving students in different settings, reasons that get at a
tension within the game itself and how this tension might play out for the students who

operate within it.

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This tension occurs in the experience and deﬁnition of “good” students when
“playing the game” seems to shade into the negative. On one level, such actions seem
desirable, but they also have a whiff of corruption about them. At times, as with teacher-
reading, it seems that such awareness can easily go beyond strategy and into scheming,
and the transition is not quite clear. It is hard to say, perhaps, where being a “good”
student ends and where being a schemer begins. Consider the above example of students
employing certain strategies in order to participate in Mr. Elliot’s class. Here we have
students who are paying attention, who are eager to talk in class, and who are savvy
enough to ﬁnd ways to do so that take the teacher’s particularities into account while not
stepping over the bounds of decorum. Yet they are, in a sense, manipulating their teacher
through these strategies. In addition, leaving aside the slight feel of manipulation that
accompanies these efforts, game-playing may be operating on another level as well.
Andy, the non-shy aspiring actor from above, described his in—class questioning and
answering in these terms:

I think participation in class really makes you stand out, to a teacher. So,

in my classes, I’m always raising my hand to participate. I feel like, if you

show the teacher that you want to be there, even if you don’t, it’s gonna

give you extra points even if, you know, you don’t wanna be there at all.

(Interview with Andy Meade, 3-8-07)

Thus does participation go beyond any desire to participate, and thus do the two types of
playing the game - being strategic and asking questions in order to learn and to
participate, and being strategic and asking questions in order to kiss-up to the teacher —
blend together.

Other examples of the scheming side of the game abound. They include some of

the strategies described above, such as teacher-reading, as well as others described by the

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students, like doing uninteresting or “pointless“ work for credit, knowing and doing the
bare minimum, signing up for classes just to pad transcripts, and pursing grades over
interest in learning. Sometimes, students team up to carry out their schemes. Allie
described an episode in which she mustered a group of students to all show up late
together to AP US after a junior class meeting. They were supposed to go right back to
their class after the meeting but ﬁgured, correctly, that if a group of them skipped out
they would not get into trouble (Interview with Allie Meredith, 3-2-07).

Illegal or discouraged approaches like copying, cheating, and learning without
understanding are also associated with the game. Two students, for example, gave
accounts of rampant cheating in self- grading in another class, though one denied
participating and the other claimed her participation was limited to necessary times. Allie
described the widespread (in her eyes) practice of “pattern checking” on standardized
bubble-form tests:

...you have your scantron [standardized test form], and then you just look

at the person next to you to see if, like, your pattern matches up a little bit.

And if it doesn’t, you go to the question that is like different on the

pattern, you’d be like, no, I know this one is the answer. I do that all that

time, actually. Yeah, and so I’ll just be like, no, that other person got it

wrong. . .everybody like “checks patterns” you know. ‘Cause that’s the

easiest thing on. . .bubble scantrons. . .actually on the last test we had, like,

ﬁve answers of “D” in a row. And I get freaked out about patterns. So I

just kinda glanced at Pete’s and he had ﬁve “D’s”, and I was like, OK.

That’s OK. (Allie Meredith, 3-2-07)

Not only does this show a questionable practice of checking out other students’ exams,
but it also indicates a strategy of test taking, the idea that a set of the same answers, all in
a row, is suspicious and perhaps indicative of wrong answers on the students’ part.

Crarnming is another strategy relating to testing, another way of playing the game. It was

always described in unfavorable terms, as a less-efﬁcient way of learning that led only to

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“short term” memory. For all that, though, students admitted to cramming, when
necessary. As Helen put it, “you gotta do what you gotta do” (Interview with Helen Wei,
3-6-07).

This dual nature of the game, good and useful yet perhaps also underhanded and
manipulative, comes out in Rizza’s (1999) and Pope’s (2001) opposing accounts as well.
Rizza gives a largely positive interpretation of game-playing behavior among hi gh-school
students. Rizza focused heavily on studying and homework in her account, and students
playing Rizza’s game take an aware, strategic approach to their studies, consciously used
a variety of study methods, and were aware of what worked best for them. Pope (2001)
includes such methods but emphasizes a deﬁnition of the game that is something more
akin to scheming, short-cuts and little tricks that take away from learning and life and
give the game a decidedly negative image. Pope emphasizes, among the seeming good
qualities of high-achievers, that they are forced to “participate in behavior of which they
are not proud,”

They learn to cheat, kiss up, form treaties, contest school decisions, and

act in ways that run counter to explicit or implicit rules and guidelines.

Often their behavior contradicts the very traits and values many parents,

students, and community members expect schools to instill. (p. 149)

Thus does Pope add to her negative portrayal an additional concern, that of the effects of
game-playing on the students who participate in it.

It seems, then, that the students of AP US History are walking a ﬁne line as
“good” students. The same sorts of behaviors that earn them praise and position, and
which are necessary (“you gotta do what you gotta do”) to maintain the grades that are a

part of being hi gh-achievers, can turn sour when taken too far or applied in the wrong

circumstances. It may be hard to tell which game one is playing, Rizza’s useful and

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admirable one, or Pope’s unfortunate and troubling one. When students attempt to seek

advantage within the approved boundaries, sometimes they go too far. Another example
shows how this strategic behavior, calculating in several senses of the word, can switch

from admirable to regrettable rather easily:

Mr. Elliot tells them. . .that the choice is between [a test on]
chapters 11, 12, 13 on this Friday, or 11, 12, 13, and 14 next Thursday.
When the class hears “next Thursday,” the mood changes, heads nod,
approving murmurs rise. Mr. Elliot tells them to consider their schedules,
what else will be happening this week. Also mentions that he’s ﬁnished
“review guides” for each chapter and thanks them for their patience,
noting that these guides are difﬁcult to put together.

Mr. Elliot then asks if anyone wishes to campaign for [one of the]
test [dates]. Andy notes that “just in the back row here” there are students
who already have two AP tests on Friday - sitting in the row are Connor,
Candice, and Emma. Connor speaks up, disagreeing with Andy and saying
he wants the test Friday. Opinions ﬂy in a low rumble, but aside from
Connor nobody else speaks up.

There is a moment of relative quiet, and then Allie asks if the
bigger test will be longer. Mr. Elliot says no, 80 questions like always. Bill
asks about the number of questions per chapter, and Mr. Elliot answers
that it will be fewer per chapter, probably around 20, in the longer version.
Adam says, loudly, that this means there will be less impact if the students
don’t know a chapter. There are chuckles. Mr. Elliot replies “it’s not
supposed to be like that.” (Fieldnotes, 12-13-06)

As one might expect, the class choose the later exam with the greater number of chapters.
This would have been ﬁne had they only been considering their workload and schedules,
but in considering what might be to their advantage in terms of the structuring of the test,
they stepped over a line, signaled by Mr. Elliot’s disapproval. It was Mr. Elliot’s
encouragement of a strategic approach, of debate and voting on the test date, which
inspired the students’ pro- and con- conversation in the ﬁrst place. Yet when they went
from acceptable considerations of a convenient date-to less-reputable discussion about the
effect of the date on the form of the test, Mr. Elliot balked. The way that these two ways

of viewing test-scheduling seem very different, yet ﬂow into one another, is indicative of

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the already mentioned tension that exists within the idea of the game and in the identity
of the “good” student.

This tension seems to cause Mr. Elliot to view his students’ behaviors with a
certain ambiguity. He wants his students to be intentional and strategic. He wants to give
his busy AP US History class some ﬂexibility in their schedules, and additionally to give
them some ownership over their class. In bringing responsibility and strategy together,
Mr. Elliot takes a stance that can be seen in Rizza (1999), who brings together her
students’ dedication to learning with their aware approach to schooling. It is “good” for
students to take control over their learning, to be “goal” oriented (Rizza, 1999), to get on-
board with their teachers and classes. Because of this stance, Mr. Elliot will often grant
his students [the beneﬁt of the doubt, and he is usually willing to negotiate with them. As
seen above, the students have some say in the scheduling of quizzes and tests and due
dates on assignments.

Like, with Mr. Elliot, he’s a big softy. (laugh) Like, no joke. . .chapter 21

was supposed to be due today, and, like, this other. . .imperialism essay

was supposed to be due today, and it’s got moved to Monday. Like, big

softy. (Interview with Allie Meredith, 3-2-07)

His allowance of negotiation also came out as his students attempted, on another day, to
bring about some changes in the project they had to complete over their winter break.
Excuses for lost, late, and partial assignments were, at least When I was watching,
accepted, though with some hemming and hawing on Mr. Elliot’s part.

And yet, this same strategic approach which Mr. Elliot wants to support can,
when it appears at the wrong time, become exasperating for him, as his “it’s not supposed

to be like that” shows. It appeared at a wrong time, for example, on the day that Mr.

Elliot set up an extra-credit review game for his students. They took far longer to get

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ready for the game than he had anticipated, because they had so many questions about the
rules and took so long time in preparing their game boards. Concerned about winning the
game, because extra credit was at stake, the students took the time to try and ﬁnd out as
much as they could about the game and how they might win it, and they reacted badly

when things did not go their way.

8:30 — Mr. Elliot tells them “You know what you’re playing for? A bonus
point on next week’s quiz.” Bill makes a comment. “What? Is that not
enough?” Mr. Elliot asks, putting disbelief into his voice. Bill backs off,
says it’s ﬁne. Blank grid sheets are passed out, and Mr. Elliot projects a
list of terms onto the board. The students ﬁll the sheets with terms, and
then Mr. Elliot reads descriptions which match the terms which they can
then cross off. When they get a full row, they yell “Reform!” instead of
“bingo.” (these are questions about reform movements). Mr. Elliot notes
that this will be hard, that he won’t give them deﬁnitions to use, and that
“this is AP.”

8:32 — Many questions on the rules of the game, Bill contributing
especially. Mr. Elliot wonders aloud why this is so complicated, says “It’s
just bingo,” but then comments aloud that, perhaps, these kids haven’t
played much bingo. He then asks “are you ﬁnished?” The question is met
with a resounding “No!” He tells them to hurry. Mr. Elliot seems
impatient. (Fieldnotes, 12-1 5-06)

Once the playing actually began, the students argued and complained about the conduct
of the game and their ability to win. There was groaning, whining, and wheedling:

8:38 - Another question about the rules, this time from Amy. As Amy
talks, Mr. Elliot answers “Five in a row, ﬁve in a row, ﬁve in a row,”
talking over her, until she stops talking. Amy and Eric appear to be
sharing answers. Laura makes little comments after each question. Clearly,
he’s impatient. He seems annoyed, perhaps a bit surprised...

8:39 — Mr. Elliot clariﬁes a question, ‘anit, wait” Reilly says. More
clariﬁcation - it’s a question on the Mormon church, and Mr. Elliot will
take either the church name or the founder to make up for his lack of
clarity, a solution that seems to satisfy the masses.

8:42 —— The game goes on. Allie says “ah, reform!” Mr. Elliot mentions

that he’s not looking for straight across anymore, but lines, a point he
made before but didn’t emphasize or repeat after Sara won. Mr. Elliot says

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he wants a “T” shape now. “Oh, thanks for saying that,” Allie responds,
sarcastically. Mr. Elliot says “sorry” but doesn’t sound all that sorry.

8:45 — Mr. Elliot starts to read a description, says “no, that will give it
away.” “That’s OK!” many voices shout.

8:46 — Jim asks if his “T” shape can be sideways. Mr. Elliot says yes, Jim
says “Ah, Reform.” Mr. Elliot picks up Jim’s paper, says “No more T-
shape. We’re looking for a box.” Much groaning. As the kids complain,
Mr. Elliot again chides them for being so slow in ﬁlling out their sheets,
then points out that their whining is depriving them of the chance for
additional points since it’s taking up time.

8:48 — The tone [signifying the end of class]. Mr. Elliot does one more
description, but there are no more winners. “That was ﬁrn,” Mr. Elliot
says. The response is sarcastic. “Oh, it wasn’t fun?” He says, pretending to
be offended. “Fine! Fine! No games for you!” The kids shufﬂe out.
(Fieldnotes, 12-15-07)

One can see that AP US History students take their extra—credit bingo very seriously.
“Little legalists,” Mr. Elliot called them, after class. And as with the test-moving scene,
above, it can be seen that this legalism is “good” strategic and aware and goal-directed
behavior showing up in a new and wrong way.

Mr. Elliot is not alone in his ambivalence. The tension that inhabits the “good”
students’ strategic behavior is manifest, too, in students’ contradictory attitudes toward
game-playing. As with the above “you gotta do what you gotta do,” Several of the
students claimed that the game is something everyone must play and that, to some extent,
it is necessary. This is especially true if one wants to get into college:

[Playing the game] means learning how to succeed in the environment

you’re gonna be in, adapting to different things, and, um, learning from

your mistakes ...kids who don’t learn how to play the game, urn, don’t

succeed. (Interview with Andy Meade, 3-8-07)

Oh, yeah. Well, I think everyone has to play the game, in some sense, to,

you know, get by. . .I guess, by playing the game, I mean. . .doing the

things that you’re supposed to do in order to get. . .I guess, into
college. . .It’s basically all about college. ...there’s just certain things you

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do that. . .if you do them, and you do them well, then you get rewarded by
going to a good college. (Interview with Candice Andueza, 3-1-07)

I’ve heard people say. . .you know, even if. . .you do art, but you Still have
to play the game, you can’t just completely drop out of high school, and
pursue that exclusively (Interview with Adam Braff, 2-2-07)

Yet, for all its seemingly wide use, students’ descriptions of playing the game did
tend to take on a rather negative shade: students described taking “short cuts,” doing
things they are not happy about, behaving in a manner that may seem, ultimately, to be
unfulﬁlling. For some, the game is perceived as something that has to be done rather than
something one would choose. If playing the game is a necessity, than this necessity is
also portrayed as more of a necessary evil than anything else. As the “good” students,
they are expected to work to a certain standard, to do what needs to be done, to bring a
sense of detachment, of adopting a view that enables one to get the job done however one
feels about it. Connor described his contradictory feelings in this way:

I don’t think there’s a problem, I don’t think it’s a bad system, I think to a,
it’s very hard to be able to do things purely because you have a genuine
interest in them, purely for all those reasons. You always are gonna have
to do stuff, because it’s there. I mean, it’s just the nature. . .I can’t think of
anything better. . .I can say that there’s problems with it, but can I do any
better? Absolutely not. . .I look at the system we have and I’m like, you
know it sucks sometimes that you have to get, be a valedictorian, take a
thousand AP classes in order to get into an Ivy League school but, you
know, how else you gonna test that? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you how.
(Interview with Connor Imboden, 2-13-07)

Andy, too, provided a mix of justiﬁcation and regret about the need to play the game:

You either have to know how to play it, or you have to care about playing
the game. There are some kids that I know that don’t care, you know, so
they don’t even take the time to learn how to succeed in high school. And,
you know, hearing about how the politicians run their races for president
and how, really, it’s not like what you would want ﬁom your

president. . .you know, they’ll strategize, and, you know, even if the best
candidate is from Iowa, they’ll still run the person from Illinois because
it’s a swing state. . .it’s awful, but it happens. And I think that happens here

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too, you know? Even if you want to take a different class, you take what

you need to because it’s what’s expected of you. . .even if I don’t want to

hold a conversation with Doc [Dr. Riveli, the principal] for ﬁve minutes in

a hallway, I will, so that when the times comes and I need him to help me

out with something, he’ll help me out. . .the other'week I talked to Mr.

Elliot. He stopped me in the hallway, and I really needed to get home, but

I stayed and talked to him for like 10 minutes. . . just to keep up the, you

know, kind of. . .we’re ﬁiends as well as teachers. . .I feel like if you

become the friend of your teacher, rather than just them being your

teacher, you’re much better off. Because then they, you know, actually

will care about you and try and help you more. And, understand, as a

friend talking to a friend more, rather than as a teacher seeing a student

slack off. (Interview with Andy Meade, 3-8-07)

Aside ﬁom the feeling that this passage gives of the necessary-but-unpleasant
aspect of game-playing, it is telling for another reason. It can be used as an opening to
explore the game a bit more closely, to see if it is possible to glimpse the source of the
ambivalence that surrounds these “good” students. In that spirit, let us digress for a
moment from our concern with ambivalence about the game and “good” students.
Looking again at the passage, it can be seen as a cogent analysis of the actions of AP
students. Rather impressively, it includes comparisons across contexts and levels of
society, deployment of knowledge ﬁom AP US History, personal examples, and an
argument. We might look at how it measures up to Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1984), a
system which this researcher had drilled into his head during teacher education, and a
system that Mr. Elliot himself believes in with a certain fervor. In his answer, Andy gives
evidence of knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and even
evaluation.

Perhaps it is not so surprising to get such an answer from a high-school senior

taking an AP US History class — or perhaps it is, if your views of the American

educational system are less charitable — but it may be surprising to learn that the student

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who made the comment, Andy Meade, senior, aspiring actor, is not, according to Mr.
Elliot, the sort of student who should be taking AP US History. This is because he is not
dedicated enough. Andy is suffering from a bad case of senioritis, is more interested in
his theatre pursuits than in school, and is frequently late for Mr. Elliot’s class. Andy plays
the game, and is aware of how he plays, but in Mr. Elliot’s class he has not been playing
it well enough, for surely part of being a “good” student is showing up on time and giving
due attention to one’s classes.

This, of course, brings in another disturbing aspect of the game, namely, that it
does not necessarily have anything to do with actually learning about the subject that is
ostensibly the purpose of the class. In focusing students’ attention on external or
“performative” (Lyotard, 1984) features of the classroom environment, the game may
take away from the things school is, at least as the story goes, supposed to do. This is
certainly Pope’s (2001) contention. This, of course, raises some pretty complicated and
divisive questions about just what “learning” is and, in a different vein, just what schools
are supposed to be accomplishing. As Pope sees it, the game’s very goal-orientation can
become something akin to the striving for credentials that is described by Labaree (1997)
as the very problem with American education:

...credentialism undercuts learning. In both college and high school,

students are all too well aware that their mission is to do whatever it takes

to acquire a diploma, which they can cash in on what really matters - a

good job. This assumption has the effect of reifying the formal markers of

academic progress — grades, credits, and degrees — and encouraging

students to focus their attention on accumulating these badges of merit for

the exchange value they offer. This strategy means directing attention

away from the substance of education, reducing student motivation to

learn the knowledge and skills that constitute the core of the educational
curriculum. (p. 259)

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It is intriguing that Labaree cites “the game” as an effect of credentialism (p.4). And it is
rather nifty that his use of “badges of merit” is echoed in the words of Andy on playing
the game in the form of choosing AP classes. It should be noted that Andy is, among his

other accomplishments and interests, an Eagle Scout:
It’s kind of like, you know, getting a merit badge in scouting, you know.
Even if you’re not that interested in it, ﬁngerprinting, you basically just
have to put your ﬁngers down on a piece of paper and learn like swirls and
loops and then you have a ﬁngerprinting merit badge, so it’s so easy why
not do it? You know, basketweaving you have to make one basket and the
pack, you know, the package comes pre-assembled you just have to
basically weave the things through and you have the basketry merit badge.
I think lots of kids, just taking an AP, and having, just being able to say “I
took AP Bio and I took this and I took this” is kind of like just being able
to put more pins on you and say “I did all this” and even if they aren’t that
interested they just want to be able to say that. (Interview with Andy
Meade, 3-8-07)

Of course, the game as a part of the “good” student experience is not always so
explicit, or so much a matter of scheming, cheating, or working with a lack of interest.
Rizza’s (1999) positive version, and the way AP US History students carefully approach
their homework and participate in class and know what they are about generally, does not
seem inherently bad. On the other hand, there is a sense that the game may be just that.
When practicality becomes the language of “good” students, other types of learning may
be threatened. As Blake, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish (1998) put it, when speaking of
the discourse of control in cuniculum:

Where what is learned is subordinated to outcomes and useﬁrlness,

intrinsic worth is surreptitiously eclipsed. It is a different idea of education

that she acquires. (p. 82)

While Blake et. al. were talking about the curriculum, the same might be said of students’

actions. Their note-taking is a relevant example. The pattern of note-taking, repeated

daily in Mr. Elliot’s class, centered around what Mr. Elliot wrote on the board.

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Discussions, digressions, ideas, and even facts which arose in class but which did not
make it on to the board were not generally recorded. Only a few students, if any, could be
observed to be writing anything down if Mr. Elliot did not write it down ﬁrst. Yet, every
time Mr. Elliot put his marker on the whiteboard, the students responded immediately by
recording what he wrote. More tellingly, all of them, every one, could be seen to write
when Mr. Elliot himself was writing.

Of course, I write down everything he puts on the board, except. . .I tend to

not write down as much of the books and other artsy, literature stuff that

he puts up there. . .and then I emphasize the big points.

Like. . .the. . Kansas-Nebraska act. Like he, put that on the board, put the

two things under it, and then he talked about it for a while and that’s the

stuff I took notes on. (Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)

While note-taking is a useful and even necessary activity for students, and these students
are disciplined enough to do it without being told, their priorities also demonstrate the
utilitarian nature of this information- gathering activity.

A consideration of the separation of activity from worth, of doing from thinking,
brings Dewey to mind. His philosophy is shot through with the idea that the things people
do, in and out of school, should be whole activities (Dewey, 1916, 1922/1957,
1934/1980, 1938/1997). Goal-orientated game-playing, on any level, opens up the
possibility of the separation of ends from means, of changing activities from “intelligent,”
in a Deweyian sense, to activities which are merely mechanical. For Dewey, intelligence
requires possession of intention and purpose, along with an awareness of how they line
up with means, ends, and consequences. In this aware and purposeﬁrl activity, the

esthetic and educative experience, a person does not merely do things well, but indeed

dwells within the things they do:

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...the difference between the artist and the mere technician is

unmistakable. The artist is a master technician. The technique or

mechanism is fused with thought and feeling. The “mechanical” performer

permits the mechanism to dictate the performance. (Dewey, 1922/ 1957, p.

7 l )
There is a difference, then, between activity that is undertaken with intelligent direction
and that which is undertaken without. This difference between intelligent and mechanical
activity is not the same as the difference between unthinking activity and strategic
activity. Goal-oriented students, as Dewey sees them, are not necessarily intelligent, just
as a skilled craftsman is not necessarily an artist. This difference between the purposeﬁrl
and the merely skilled is characterized by Field and Latta (2001) as the difference
between wisdom and competence, between doing that involves the self and doing which
does not. In Dewey’s account, purposeful, intelligent activity, educative activity
(1938/1997) is self-involving, engaged activity. Put another way, in order to learn about
themselves and the world, students must have experiences in which their selves are fully
involved, challenged, changed, and expanded.

It may be disturbing to think that, in selecting for “good” students, schools such as
. Fairlawn High School are selecting the competent and having little concern with the wise,
and that this may be the competence of Dewey’s craftsman rather than his artist. Still, this
idea is not disturbing for everyone. In fact, the goals of a middle-class suburban school
like Fairlawn certainly seem to tend in this direction. Teachers’ accounts of the goals of
FHS lean heavily toward a college prep explanation. And Dr. Riveli, when asked what
sort of students Fairlawn is aiming to produce, responded that when I asked the question,

“Capable ﬁrst came to mind.” Going on, he said, “we hope to produce capable students.

Capable for what? Capable for continuing their education.” He mentioned that 93 to 95%

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of FHS students go to college, and that they are “well-prepared” when they get there
(Interview with Dr. Riveli, 1-8-07).

Still, while arguments about school goals are a part of what I hope to address
here, it is hi gh-achieving students’ experience and culture that is my focus. If there are
questions about what schools should be accomplishing, then the high-achievers of AP US
History are embroiled in them and living them out. Yet, coming back from this
digression, it may be found to have been of some value in bringing additional perspective
to our earlier concern with the tension inherent in being a “good” student, ambivalence
toward the game, and the blurred line between strategic and scheming, good and too
good. Perhaps negative conceptions of playing the game are rooted in the same sort of
concerns that Dewey brings to schooling.

For Mr. Elliot, negotiating the day of a test, the students’ strategic behavior is
acceptable as long as it stays within non-academic boundaries. Once it enters the realm of
academics, however, it becomes something else, namely, a threat to the idea that the test
to be taken could be about anything except learning. This boundary may be seen in other
areas where the game could be considered to be either positive or negative. Cheating,
which makes school about some skill other than skill in learning, is a bad instantiation of
the game. Knowing what to study and for how long, which supports students’
achievement without raising unfortunate questions about what they are achieving, is a
positive example. Reading teachers is something in-between. It is not exactly cheating,
though it does smack of success in school coming from some source other than academic

prowess. Schmoozing, brown-nosing, and the like fall into a similar category. Andy, who

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earlier described how he talked to Mr. Elliot and Dr. Riveli on occasions just to gain
advantage, said of such tactics that:

I feel like I’m kind of cheating, but, everybody’s cheating, so you have to
go with it. Or, you know, even if everyone’s not cheating, well, it’s not
really cheating, it’s just using the system in your favor. (Interview with
Andy Meade, 3-8-07)

Using the system, then, is not cheating. Reading teachers and brown-nosing and aiming
for every possible advantage is permissible, up to a point, and that point seems to be the
place where the game intersects with the question of learning.

If the line can be drawn at learning, it certainly seems that Mr. Elliot would like to
draw it. He openly acknowledged, when asked, that his students are accomplished garne-
players. “I would say, actually in AP almost all of them have gotten really good at
playing the school game” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30—07). He even described some
of the strategies they have developed, and how these strategies were fostered by the
structuring of their 9th and 10th grade history classes:

they’re very aware that the knowledge is discrete, and that it’s meant to be
class contextual, it’s not meant to carry on to the next class level. . .the
average unit is, you take the notes, you either get the review sheet if the
teacher is giving you another crutch, if not you make it yourself. Um, you
study really, really hard, all the factual information, you regurgitate
exactly what was said back to from the teacher, based on what the teacher
told you. . .And then, you follow that up with a teacher-written test, that is
written, again, in the language of the teacher, asking for regurgitation by
the teacher of what the teacher said, and the questions are clearly meant to
have three wrong answers and then only one correct answer. And. . .the
correct answer is not interpretive. It’s not up for debate or discussion, or
any kind of deductive reasoning or anything like that. Students are even
rarely challenged with something they haven’t seen before. . .where
they’ve been given a document or something where they’re supposed to
apply the knowledge... (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

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Yet, even as he acknowledges their game-playing, he insists that this is not much help to
them in AP US History, and in fact is a hindrance that can explain some of this year’s
class’ difﬁculty with the advanced work he asks of them:

...we’re having students who’ve learned very well in some cases how to

play the hidden curriculum, how to play the school game, if you will, and

as a result when they come in here, they sometimes come in with false

expectations of their own abilities, false expectations of what the course is

going to entail, the challenges they’re going to face. And, um, we spend a

lot of our time and energy kind of dealing with that... (Interview with Mr.

Elliot, 1-30-07)
The reason that playing the game does not work in AP US History is that, unlike previous
classes that operate in the ways Mr. Elliot described above, AP US History requires that
students learn their factual knowledge and then, having learned it, apply it in some
challenging ways. To use the language of Bloom (1984) again, a language to which Mr.
Elliot would not object, AP US History demands analysis, synthesis, and at times even
evaluation. This is a point he stressed repeatedly. In criticizing the AP US History
selection process, for example, he worried that:

We’re just rewarding students who are really good at playing the school

game, which would be ﬁne, only that’s not what we do when we get them

in here. And so, we are being a bit disingenuous in letting kids into the

class based on the fact that they’ve been really good at playing school, and

then once they get here, they’re going to do very badly at playing school.

(Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)
AP US History demands more than playing the school game, more than the regurgitation
of rote knowledge, an idea Mr. Elliot believes and which he bolsters by placing great
faith in the AP test itself:

And I guess, if I’m biased toward anything, it’s probably toward

promotion of students success on the exam. . .And part of that is because I

think it’s a good exam, I think it’s a really challenging exam, and I think it

does a good job of testing where the students’ individual ability is in
regards to both, not just knowledge acquisition, but interpretation,

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analysis, and ultimately synthesis, where is where the essay writing does
such a good job. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)

Since I did not do a thorough study of the AP test and the ways that it assesses
students’ abilities, I will leave aside the question of whether one can succeed in an AP
class or on an AP test by playing the game. It is rather tempting to not leave this question
aside, since personal experience would suggest that people can get all the way through
graduate school by playing the game, but I shall resist this temptation and focus instead
on what seems most important here, namely that Mr. Elliot knows that the game is out
there, but does not believe that it makes its way into AP US History. He wants to draw
the line between the game and learning.

The students, too, draw such a line. Some of this can be seen in their assessment
of game playing tactics such as cramming, which, as seen above, they deride as poor
learning. It can be seen, too, in a desire that some of them seem to have for something
more, something beyond the game and “good” students as they have known them:

Um, I think that, generally. . .in high school ...at least in our high

school. . .the students are ...very smart. They’re very, like, they’re very

smart. They. . .know how to get by, and. . .play the game. Which is what I

hate. Because I, I don’t like to play the game. I don’t know. I don’t like to

do things just for, like, dumb, like. . .treat at the end. Like college, or

whatever. Which is what I was trying to get out of when I signed up for an

AP class. (Interview with Candice Andueza, 3-1-07)

...ideally I wanna education where I’m, everything is very interesting,

challenging, and you’re genuinely interested to understand something, and

you can use it yourself. It is. . .there’s a level of sort of fascination that I,

that I like, and if that, if you have that sort of throughout an entire course,

and you do well on the course based on, you know, intellectual motivation

as opposed to strictly, logistics, or playing the game, or that sort of thing.

That sounds great, I mean that sounds like the utopia of education.

(Interview with Adam Braff, 2-2-07)

I think you should take an AP if you have some interest in the subject.
And. . .I would like it if. . .for history, if like everyone in that class was

147

interested in history outside of class too. . .that’s ideally how I think and

AP should be. But, um, a lot of people take it and they’re really grade-

focused. Like, on getting an A, or, like on having it on a transcript. And

then. . .it’s not really an interest of theirs outside of class which, I don’t

know, I don’t think that’s the best situation. I think an AP should be only

people who are. . .it should be people that want to be studying it or are like

interested in it. (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07)

What is to be made of the tensions inherent in the game? Why is the deﬁnition of
the “good” student as “competent” so loaded with inconsistencies and ambivalence? Why
are the two sides of the game, the strategic and the scheming, divided for the teacher and
students of lSt Hour AP US History? Why is the game separated from learning? How do
these students negotiate the line between encouraged and admired competence and
unsanctioned scheming and even cheating? I suggest that an interpretation may be made
through the Deweyian lens brought in earlier, the one which suggested that game playing,
in separating ends from means, makes activity mechanical rather than artful, leading to
competence but not to wisdom. This in mind, it can be proposed that the game is divided
from learning because that game is not about learning as learning is ideally deﬁned.
Students want to really learnz. Their teacher insists that the game is not enough for his
class. For each, the game, when it pops up outside of its accepted boundaries, threatens
what they are about. If students can play the game and succeed at school, then they know
that what they are doing is not the learning that they hope for, or at least have heard
about. And if they can succeed in Mr. Elliot’s class by playing, it tells Mr. Elliot that
what he is doing is something less than he would wish. The school game, operating out of

bounds,- raises the question of whether students really can get through school, in

Labaree’s (1997) words, “without really learning.”

 

2 Though they may not know just what “learning” is.

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For hi gh-achievin g students, competent professionals at student-hood, this
situation suggests an endless wading through murky waters. They are called upon to be
“good” students, and indeed it is necessary for them to do so. Yet, they must walk the line
between strategy and scheming, realizing that, if they must be “good,” they must not be
too “good.” In a sense, they have been put into a situation where their goodness can slip
at any moment and become something disreputable, even morally wrong if attitudes
toward cheating are any indicator. Furthermore, their position as high-achievers is a
matter of endless compromise, a point made by Pope (2001) but approached a bit
differently here. Pope emphasized that students know that what they are doing is not what
they would like to do, but they must do it to succeed. I would agree, but add that this goes
beyond even Pope’s concerns about workload and stress and the pressure to compromise
ones values. The very position of the hi gh-achiever, seen from this particular deﬁnition of
the “good” student as the “competent” student, carries within it a tension that makes
achievement within the system of the school an inherently conﬂicted and incomplete
accomplishment.

This is not a ﬁnal answer, but merely a suggestion, and not one that everyone
would ﬁnd agreeable. Indeed, the one person I spoke to at F airlawn who brought up,
acknowledged, and shared his views about the tension between strategy and scheming
would likely disagree with what I have written here. That person is Fairlawn’s principal,
Dr. Riveli, the enthusiastic, sharp, 28-year administrator who claims that he has “the best
job in the world” and can often be seen in the hallways between class periods, chatting
with his students. He brought up the tension of the game, and the “good” student as the

“competent” student, at the end of our interview when I asked if he had anything further

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to add. He began with a question of his own, rhetorically asking, “Do these kids really
wanna learn, or is it all about grubbing for the grade?” Giving an example of a student
who has a 96% on a test arguing to get a 98%, he noted that this can be “tiresome,” that
teachers just want to say, “That’s your grade. It’s a good one. Move on.” Dr. Riveli
insists, however, that such behavior, seeming to be grade-grubbing, is something that his
teachers must accept if they wish to work with Fairlawn students:

It’s a total package. . ..I continually have to make that argument. . .Some
don’t fully get that yet, and they will with time. . .they see how tiresome it
is, but it’s difﬁcult for them to understand, if you wanna work with bright
people. . .with challenging, bright kids that invigorate you as a teacher, ask
good questions, give you good answers, stimulate you as a teacher, do the
work, take it seriously, have goals, are looking for education, education is
not terminal at the 12th grade — you want all that, then you better be
understanding of the fact, that they’re gonna ask you why they didn’t get
98 rather than 96. It’s a part of the total package. You can’t say you want
one and not the other. They come together, so embrace it, enjoy it for what
it is. Accept it. (Interview with Dr. Riveli, 3-7-07)

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CHAPTER 5: THE GOOD CLASS

Opening - Lecture and Analysis

It’s half an hour into class. Mr. Elliot writes “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” on the
board, singing to himself as he does so. He says that their campaign song reminds him of
“Winnie the Poo.” He then strides over to the left side of his room, where he keeps his
CD player, and puts in a CD of old US presidential campaign songs. Seeing this brief
break develop, Allie and Cathy, Amy and Jim, Laura and Reilly immediately begin
chatting. The song comes on, and Mr. Elliot says “Take a listen. Shush. Shush.” The
students quiet down. As the song plays, it draws a laugh from Reilly and Laura, a
comment from Allie, chuckles from Rachel and Emma. Mr. Elliot asks if the 1840
election issues are obvious from the song, then notes that “hard cider” is big, also that
1840 is the election with the biggest percentage turnout. As he brings up points, Mr.
Elliot adds them to the board. Whenever something goes on the board, all the students
faithfully record it.

Mr. Elliot is joking around about the “Log Cabin Election” and alcoholic cider.
“Did I mention the log cabin?” he asks, then adds, of William Henry Harrison, “he kills
Indians, too. People like that.” This is going back to his Andrew Jackson lecture, when he
satirized Jackson’s campaign emphasis on his popularity as an Indian-Fighter by calling
out “I kill Indians!” Kids laugh, especially Reilly, who I can now see (since I’m sitting
right next to her today) laughs at everything. Mr. Elliot asks the class a question, which
he answers himself. Happens again. Then back to lecture.

Another campaign song. “This is the stuff right here,” Mr. Elliot tells the class. He

dances as the song plays, and Reilly chuckles once more. Mr. Elliot asks about the tune

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of the song, and Reilly answers “Yankee Doodle.” As the song repeats, he points out that
“Log Cabin” and “Hard Cider” are deﬁnite themes, “Just in case you didn’t remember.”
Laura, Candice, Reilly, Helen and Connor laugh out loud at the song, and Laura and
Candice are talking about it, pointing out funny parts to one another.

Mr. Elliot moves into a lecture on William Henry Harrison’s inaugural, which
Harrison gave outside in no coat or hat, after which he died of pneumonia. Then Mr.
Elliot moves on to John Tyler, Harrison’s vice president, who became president and who,
during the US Civil War, served in the Confederate Congress. Mr. Elliot does not seem to
like John Tyler very much. “John Tyler is a miserable bastard and I hate him,” he tells his
class. He also adds that he knows why Tyler did the things he did, and wants to do what
he can to “present him equally and fairly,” a comment which draws a pretty big laugh
from the students.

He then adds that Tyler, though elected as a Whig, was “a closet democrat” —
“What’s that I smell?” he asks. “Is it a closet democrat?” The animated lecture continues.
Allie’s hand is up. Mr. Elliot emphasizes that Tyler got into ofﬁce because Harrison died.
“On our next presidents quiz, if you write that John Tyler was elected, SHAME on you!”
Allie still has her hand up. Mr. Elliot cracks a joke, a few chuckle. Allie puts her hand
down. Then she puts it back up. Finally, she puts it down again, turns, and says
something to Cathy.

The lecture goes on a bit longer, swerves into Irish immigration. Allie is
eventually called on, and she asks a question about why Tyler was on the ticket. Mr.
Elliot connects the Harrison/Tyler ticket to the Kerry/Edwards ticket and talks about

ticket-balance, noting that “We still do this today, Allie.” A few more minutes of lecture,

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during which Mr. Elliot takes another shot at Texas, one of his favorite targets, which he
refers to as “Tex-ass.” Then he tells his class “let’s break” and shifts from a lecture to an
activity. He will project a political cartoon on the projection screen, and he wants the
students to “analyze as much as you can” about it. They will have ﬁve minutes. There are
ﬁfteen minutes left in class.

He asks students to “go up and take a close look” or they can do it from their
desks. He encourages them to get up, to stretch while they’re talking a look. Candice,
Laura, and Reilly half-stand, stand, hesitate, then pick their way up the backpack-strewn
aisles to the front of the room. They are the only students who stand. They kneel at the
big, teacher-style desk that sits at the front of the room, writing, looking for all the world
like supplicants at an altar. Nobody else moves. The class is silent. Mr. Elliot stands on
the left side, makes a comment to Sara about Tyler, which she acknowledges.

A few minutes in, Reilly asks a question. The class is beginning to talk. Eric,
Mike, Pete, Jim, and Seth are talking on one side, Laura, Reilly, and Candice on the
other. The conversations are on the cartoon. Mr. Elliot tells the class to try to ﬁnd 15
things in the cartoon. Students ask each other questions. One, Adam, looks to be asleep.
He puts his head down on his desk, and Mr. Elliot immediately moves to his side of the
room and asks him the meaning of the cartoon. Adam’s eyes pop open and he begins
spewing verbiage, random pieces of what Mr. Elliot had recently said. He is way off, and
Mr. Elliot mocks him a bit in a ﬁiendly way. Then Cathy adds a comment about the
picture, and LeAnne adds to Cathy’s comment. After these brief comments, Mr. Elliot

then takes over, begins pointing out features of the cartoon. He does this for three

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minutes, steps back, and tells them “this is a very, very pro—America cartoon”.
(Fieldnotes, 12-19-07)
Interview with Mr. Elliot - 1-30-07

MR. ELLIOT: I would like to see them critically analyze and consider — ultimately,
ultimately this is like the big goal — to synthesize, to critically analyze, take apart, um, the
different time periods, the different ﬁgures, the different theories, the ideas, that we’ve
had across time. I see some of the students doing that. I don’t see all of them doing that.
Um, the difﬁculty is those would normally be things that I would get a lot more time to
do during the hour, during the class time period.

SW: Hm.

MR. ELLIOT: And I’m still. . .to be honest I’m struggling a little bit right now to ﬁgure
out how to balance because they’re, they seem to be really having a hard time with the
base content, with that level 2 and even level 1, knowledge and comprehension. You
know, getting them to do application, when I whip out the docmnents, I put them on an
overhead, to be honest has been disheartening this year so far.

SW: Was it...
MR. ELLIOT: ...especially early on...

SW: ...1 was gonna say, I didn’t see it early on, did, was there, did you try it more early
on and it kinda...

MR. ELLIOT: ...I tried a lot more, early on, and I found that those lessons didn’t tend to
go very well. Or well at all, because it was like, ah, it would be like pulling somebody out
of the hallway who wasn’t in the class and ask them to analyze this cartoon, what are they
gonna say? You know, and so, we worked at the skills of cartoon analysis, document
analysis, we looked at those things. The problem comes, though, if. . .um, and, as I’ve felt,
accurately or inaccurately, that without the base content there it’s a lot of guessing, it’s a
lot of. . .which would be OK, only it’s not really OK. There is, like, a true historian knows
at least some of the stuff basically so then they can approach it with different eyes. They
approach the documents, the history, with informed eyes. And with the, with that
information, even if it’s bad information, even if it’s a, something you’ve read ﬁom a
history book that is, you ﬁnd it ultimately is untrue. That would be ﬁne, but you still have
to know what that ﬁrst theory is,.that ﬁrst idea is, and, I haven’t really seen that. And I,
that’s been probably my biggest ﬁ'ustration this year, that I keep feeling that I have to fall
back on base lectures of rote information and comprehension. And, I don’t know. My
fear is that, early on. . .and this, this has been probably true more in the past than in this
class. . .was that other groups were able to get more of that rote information, from reading
the text. And from of the other stuff that I would set up for them to do outside of class.

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SW: I see, and so you did not have to spend as much time on it.

MR. ELLIOT: I, I didn’t. And so we could do more interesting things. Like, you have no
idea. I’m not trying to say this just because you’re here or anything, but, I could show
you, some, some of the materials that I’ve used in the past that I’ve, I’m, I’m not even
getting, there’s just no time. Like, I can’t spend three weeks on reconstruction. We don’t
have time. Ijust don’t. It’s. . .we’ll never get past World War H. And then what? You
know, it’s like. . .and I can tell you then what. There’s, there’s a whole body of
knowledge, even if it’s just factual knowledge, that, they’re gonna hit on there, and I
don’t trust them, at this point, to get that information on their own.

SW: Hm.

MR. ELLIOT: And, what I think. . .if, if there’s anything wrong, that I think I’m doing,
it’s that, because I early on I think I didn’t see that happening, um, I think I fell back into
the very comfortable role of providing basically a very, very quick survey class. Moving
rapidly, but still at a survey level. Which is, which is to say, not that it’s not challenging
or anything, but it’s, it is challenging perhaps in a different way. Rather than cognitively
challenging them to constantly synthesize and analyze, it’s simply forcing them to learn
larger volumes of material in a shorter period of time. It’s a different challenge but it’s,
it’s not...

SW: ...yeah...

MR. ELLIOT: ...and I’m aware of that. I do think, um, what else was I going to talk
about? Oh, I was gonna say that, and I think that, when I say it’s like survey, it’s not like
a survey, it’s much harder than that. But it, but it is, force, it’s, I’m ﬁtting into their
learning styles that they used at a survey level, is what I meant by that.

SW: ...1 see...

MR. ELLIOT: Where, basically, traditionally is what students do is, we assign a reading.
They don’t do it, or if they do it they don’t really pay too much attention to it. And then
they wait for us to tell them in class, usually via lecture activity, especially lecture, 99%
of the time, what they’re waiting for. This is what you should remember, this is what you
should know. And then we might explore it a little bit via an activity, or some sort of
other in-class assessment. But, they, students are notoriously bad at using both video, or
other types of activity, and then, going from there and counting on that as the only form
of knowledge acquisitions.

SW: Right. Seen it, been there. Right.
MR. ELLIOT: Yeah. It’s, it’s frustrating. And I think that, if they’re anything that I’m
doing that is sort of survey it’s that I’m falling into what worked for them well at the

other levels, the lower levels. Um, which is hard, because there are people in here who
are ready for much more. For example, Rachel Early, Connor Imboden, Bill Newton,

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Helen Wei, um, Sara Pleasanton. They’re. . .and among others. . .there is, there are some
students who are ready for far more, far more.

High-Achieving Students in A Good Class

While Chapter 4 took a view of students as “good” students, trustworthy and
competent within the particular institution of schooling, Chapter 5 adopts a different
stance so as to get at some other aspects of hi gh-achiever culture. This stance begins with
the idea of the “good” class, the ways in with the students of AP US History, and the
culture of high-achievement, come out in the unique setting that is Mr. Elliot’s class. Mr.
Elliot is, by all accounts, a good teacher. His class, known for being interesting, rigorous,
and good practice for the AP, is a good class. In this study of the best-of-the-best, it is not
only the students who were chosen for their hi gh-achievement, but also their teacher. And
so this chapter looks at the view from his classroom, starting with Mr. Elliot’s skills and
style, his ideas and goals, his actions and deﬁnitions in structuring and running this good
class, and then looking, as always, at what it means for the students. What the students
think and do, how they see themselves and their position in relation to others, and how
they talk about history and their class-work are all shaped by this class and Mr. Elliot’s
running of it.

The structuring of AP US History, both as a class in and of itself and as one which
plays a certain role in the social studies department, is a big part of what I’m looking at
here. AP US History is not just a good class with a good teacher, but it is also an
“advanced” class, where students who have reached the AP level encounter history
differently, by their accounts and by their teacher’s, then they have before. This
difference, and the way it shows up in the facts and the work of AP US History, give a

perspective of the good students which shows them doing the sort of work for which they

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are ready. Free of the need to work with a mixed group of students, different in ability-
level and motivation, the hi gh-achievers of AP US History can take a class which moves
them beyond the realm of the standard history classes and into this class, one which is
portrayed as “advanced” and run accordingly. Here they are pushed to take on work
which is challenging, not only in volume, but in type and in their own relation to it. This
process is quite interesting from the perspective of hi gh-achiever culture.

The analysis of the “good” class touches upon ideas of what it means to teach
history, and so I will also address questions of how this class works, how it is positioned
among the history classes at F airlawn, and what sort of history Mr. Elliot’s students are
experiencing as they take this AP class. Recent work on social studies curriculum and
teaching identiﬁes the social studies as the place where we educate, not only students, but
citizens, and questions the ways in which students encounter social studies in relation to
how they will encounter society (Parker, 2003). Seixas (2000) and Segall (2006) examine
the ways in which history can be taught, identifying three approaches, the “collective
memory,” “disciplinary,” and “postmodern” (for Segall, this third is the “critical”). The
ﬁrst is teaching the story of history, with a mind toward giving an account of who we are,
the second an approach which adopts the view of the historian in analyzing and creating
history, the third takes a view of history in its political and rhetorical ﬁmctions, which
and whose purposes are served by the stories told. How these approachesand functions
of history come out in the “good” class that is AP US History tell us something about
what the high-achievers of AP US are achieving when they get to this elite level, and of

how they are prepared to view and to use knowledge and history.

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While all of this is situated in ISI hour AP US History at F airlawn High, these
cultural features touch upon themes which extend far beyond the walls of Mr. Elliot’s
classroom. The very ideas of advanced classes, good teachers, advanced students, and
different types of learning and knowledge for hi gh-achievers, are nothing new. They are,
however, very much a part of what makes a high-achieving student. In this chapter, I
examine the good and the advanced in such a way as to acknowledge how they are taken
in the context of F airlawn High School, but I also look to their place within the culture of
high-achievement, to read them in different ways from those commonly held. What these
deﬁnitions of “goodness” mean, how they play out within the structure of the school and
in the running of the class, and the ways in which the students respond to this class and
this teacher all come together to show another facet of high-achiever culture: good
students, yes, but good students in a “good” class, with a “good” teacher.

A Good Teacher

If the students of AP US History have a particular culture, and if this culture is
shaped and deﬁned by AP US History, then it is essential to focus for a bit on their
teacher, what he does, and why he does it. The students’ schooling experience, as seen by
me, was seen through the lens of one class, a class run forcefully and deliberately by Eric
Elliot, a social studies teacher for a dozen years, and an AP US History teacher for seven.
Thus, I aim here to have a look at the structure and workings of Mr. Elliot’s class, and
what these mean for the high-achievers of AP US History.

I begin with a bit about Mr. Elliot as a teacher. Mr. Elliot lectures most days in
AP US History, and he is an animated lecturer. He moves around the room, dances, sings,

yells, makes jokes, and adds a great many details as he goes along. He is enthusiastic and

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energetic in class, and his lectures are funny and full of anecdotes historical and personal.
His presentations are not dry and boring:

8:31 — Mr. Elliot illustrates [the post-Civil War campaign practice of]

“waving the bloody shirt,” picking up Helen’s pink and white winter

jacket, waving it around, yelling “Don’t vote for the democrats! They’re

traitors!” At this moment, Laura walks in, looks stunned. Mr. Elliot is

ranting. The class, watching Laura come in at this particular moment,

swivel their heads back and forth from Mr. Elliot to Laura. They laugh.

Mr. Elliot is into it. Laura says “this is weird” and takes her seat.

(Fieldnotes, 2-13-07)

8:44 — As Mr. Elliot lectures on the specie circular, all pens are now

rolling. Mr. Elliot gives an example with Emma running one of

[Andrew] Jackson’s “pet banks,” and Reilly and Helen laugh. Mr. Elliot

says “boom!” and “crash!” in a loud voice as he lectures on the results of

monetary policy at the time, in his enthusiastic style. Emma is grinning.

Connor is brought in as a debtor to Emma’s pet bank, and he smiles too.

Reilly and Helen laugh again. (Fieldnotes, 1-8-07)
The enthusiasm Mr. Elliot brings to his class, combined with an encyclopedic knowledge
of history, gives his lectures a richness to go along with their bounce. In giving his
lectures, he seldom uses notes. He had none even on the night he gave his AP US History
students a two-and-a-half hour review session before their fall-semester ﬁnal exam,
ﬁlling a classroom whiteboard three times over with timelines and details. Several
students praised him as knowing a lot about history. He is constantly making connections
between historical events and between history and modern times, and emphasizing
different interpretations of events, especially interpretations his students have not
encountered before.

Mr. Elliot is not afraid to provide alternative interpretations of history, even
radical ones, nor is he loath to express his own opinions. He claims that Abraham Lincoln

never wanted equality for African-Americans. He chides Guided Age politicians for

doing nothing in ofﬁce, but notes the advantages of the political machines that once ran

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big American cities like New York and Chicago. He compares the Masons to the Kiwanis
Club. Of the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, he states that both were good for
America, historically-speaking. He uses John Brown, the oft-maligned leader of a failed
slave revolt and a major ﬁgure in the bloody battles over the establishment of the state of
Kansas, as an example of the way America scorns radicals and makes them out as crazy.

His class is also full of connections between the “then” and the “now.” He
compared the end of the international slave trade in the 1800’s to the restriction of the
drug trade in America today. The Barbary Wars of the early 1800’s, undeclared wars, are
held up as early examples of something like the Iraq War. Speaking on presidential
power, he links Andrew Jackson’s views on the executive to those of George W. Bush.
Again tearing into the politicians of the Guilded Age, he points out how they were able to
invent non-issues to distract the public and to create meaningless debate, and compares
these tactics to modern politicians use of gay-maniage and ﬂag-buming. He links
Calvinist religious ideas in early America to debates over the Gay-Straight Alliance
student group at F airlawn High School.

Mr. Elliot himself ﬁnds joy in history, and he wants his students to feel this same
joy. Certainly, one of his objectives for AP US History is “college preparatory,”

...to continue to develop both their reading, writing, ah, listening skills

and interpretive skills. . .in history, ah, both in working with documents

and occasionally developing their own original interpretations. Um, I’d

love to see more of that. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 2-23—07)
Yet the other objective is much more about history as something to appreciate:

...it’s difﬁcult because there are so many different criteria and so many

different objectives that I have which sometimes conﬂict with each

other. . ..one of those is a genuine enthusiasm of, of history. . .I guess I kind

of approach it with sort of a humorous appreciation for, a genuine love of
the past. I really love it all from start to ﬁnish and the weirdest topics. . .I

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ﬁnd them intriguing on.. .the level of like intellectual puzzle” .One of my
big objectives 18 to get students to appreciate it on that same level.
(Interview with Mr. Elliot, 2- 23- 07)

The students pick up on Mr. Elliot’s enjoyment of'his subject, and they value it.
For the most part, they believe that they are in a good class, and at times a great one. Less

enthusiastic characterizations included “fair,” “pretty far up there” and “good” but “needs

” 6‘

work,” but most were positive, with characterizations like “excellent, great,” ”the best,”

and “I absolutely love it.”

I think Mr. Elliot does a good job being inspiring. . .he’s into it. And it’s
like, you feel bad if you’re not into it because he’s so into it. . .that’s howl
think an AP teacher should be. Like, they should love it and want to be
doing it. (Interview with Rachel Early)

...he’s a good teacher, his lectures are great, they’re very! engaging and he
makes history really interesting. I thought I hated historyf It’s always been
one of my least favorite classes and this year, it’s just been, it’s been
fascinating. I love it.. I took the class because it was an AP class, and it’s
become like my favorite, one of my favorite classes of the day. (Interview
with Emma Armistead, 2- 2- 07)

I get the sense in Elliot’s class right now that it is more, sort of, it’s
presented in a way that’s genuinely interesting, and I think, I think there is
a level of, you know, I think kids are genuinely, they are‘ engaged, I mean,
they still wanna do well, but it’s not exclusively for the sake of doing well.
(Interview with Adam Braff, 2-2-07)

I think a large part of it is Mr. Elliot’s, you know, interest for the subject.

Like, how he, you know, how he delves into it. It’s not just like he’ being

there for the sake of being there. He really enjoys US history and so he

gives very interesting lectures and, it’s just a very very lively atmosphere.

(Helen Wei, 3- 6- 07)
It is not only his students who praise him. Mr. Elliot is renowned throughout the F airlawn
High School, praised by every individual ‘I ran into -— the principal, the principal’s
secretary, the director of guidance, other teachers - had good things to say about Mr.

Elliot. In Dr. Riveli’s words, anything he could tell me about Mr. Elliot would be “all

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superlative,” and he also added that he has received consistently good reports about Mr.
Elliot from students, parents, and colleagues (Interview with Dr. Riveli, 1-8-07). Having
sat through more than a few of Mr. Elliot’s lectures myself, I also have an appreciation
for his work. I was a history major, and a history teacher, and I ﬁnd the lectures to be
informative and interesting. And, frankly, I marvel at the man’s output of energy.

All of this contributes to Mr. Elliot’s identity as a “good” teacher, but there is
more to this story. For when the students speak of Mr. Elliot, and praise him and his
class, much of their praise is phrased comparatively. It is not only that Mr. Elliot’s class
is good in and of itself, but that it is good when held up against their previous history

classes in high-school and even before:

I found other history classes to be bland and boring. (Interview with Jim
Schurz, 1-24-07)

It just seems like we’re getting, I don’t know, compared to, like, my 9th
grade class and like my 10th grade history class, which were so boring. It
just seems like we’re getting more, it’s more in depth and. . .it’s just way
more interesting than my other history classes. (Interview with Reilly
Howard, 3-1-07)

Um, well, it’s not always enjoyable. But. . .I ﬁnd that it’s interesting
because this class in particular is pushing me to always kind of take it one
step further and try and read into or ﬁnd insight on a lot of the things, um,
which is different from most of my other classes where you really do learn

a lot of the information and then just give it back to the teachers.
(Interview with Pete Reynolds, 2-2-07)

As to what the difference was between Mr. Elliot’s class and previous classes, Pete’s
comment taps into a productive vein: previous classes were just facts, memorizing, and
regurgitating. AP US History is something more:

SW: What exactly is it that makes [AP US History] more challenging?

PETE: ...the content that you’re required to know and the way you have
to know it. . .Like, you can’t just know the facts. . .you have to know the

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facts. Then you have to know how to apply the facts to, like, questions,
and concepts and, like, themes, and all that stuff. . .That’s much different.
Like, from, US History regular and world history, that was just like, know
these facts. . .the questions were. . .very easy. (Interview Allie Meredith, 3—
2-07) '

I just like the stuff we’re learning about. I just think it’s interesting,

like, ‘cause we had like our previous like US History class, but it didn’t

really go into depth at all, so you’re like, just learning like the basic stuff.

And this is, like, you’re learning like why things happened and that kinda

stuff. ...even in middle school we had like our US History, where you go

through, like, the basic, like, timeline. . ..the people, like memorize it. But,

you actually have to. . .know it for this class. . .go more in-depth than

just. . .the basic, like surface level. (Interview with Margi Doubleday, 3-7-

07)

...it’s not, just memorize everything. It’s deﬁnitely like, cause and effect,

you see this, and you can see how it leads up to this. . .I’d say this is the

ﬁrst year where we really learned it like that. . .Everything else, it was

more like, read it, memorize what happened, take the test, let’s move on.

(Interview with Laura Pender, 2-5-07)

Every student I interviewed in AP US History, all twenty of them, made some
reference to the difference between the knowledge and approach in their previous History
classes and the knowledge and approach in AP US History. The term that was used most
often, in nearly every case, was “in—depth.” Mr. Elliot’s class provides them with “in-
depth” knowledge, or previous classes did not provide “in-depth” knowledge, or both. As
it happens, this is not an accident. Mr. Elliot is aiming to provide a different sort of class
when he teaches AP US History. Furthermore, he regularly tells his students so. Their
responses are shaped by how AP US History is set up and positioned within the schools,

how the class is run, what the students have experienced in their time in class, and Mr.

Elliot’s own opinions toward it

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An Advanced Class

I did not observe any other history classes at Fairlawn High School, did not spend
any time in US History or World History, the classes that Fairlawn students take as
Freshman and Sophomores. I cannot verify the students’ claims on the superiority of AP
US History to previous classes, though I must note that complaints about previous
classes’ fact-based, memorize-and-reply style were widespread among the students of AP
US. And though I did not observe any of the regular history classes, I did get some
insight into how they work from Mr. Elliot himself. In the Social Studies Department at
Fairlawn, teaching responsibilities are spread around, and the teachers that teach AP
classes also teach regular classes. Mr. Elliot teaches and has taught regular US History
and World History sections as well as AP US History. His descriptions of the differences
between the required history classes and AP US History provide corroboration, and some
explanation, of the students’ comments. The idea of the advanced class is central to the
identity of AP US History as a good class, and so I take some time here to lay out just
what an “advanced” class is in the F airlawn Social Studies Department, and how this
positions high-achievers as special and different within the school.

As an advanced class, AP US History is something different. Advanced classes do
not have to work with mixed students. All three of the AP teachers that I interviewed,
both of the AP US History teachers and one of the AP Government teachers, expressed
the idea that working with AP students meant working with the best, separated out from
the herd of the average. Mr. Elliot referred to his students, in an interview and in class, as
the “top 10%.” He believes that his own class is made up of the best students around. Mr.

Schlieffen, teaching AP Government (as well as government and “studies in world

164

history,” an “adaptive class for low-level learners”), spoke of AP students in similar
terms:

...there’s the normal distribution. . .the difference with the AP class is that
there isn’t a normal distribution of kids, whereas my government class, the
required class, there is the normal distribution. There’s the high-achievers,
you know, the top 3rd of the class, and maybe that’s higher, a higher
percentage here than at a lot of other places. And they worry about grades
3 ton, and they’re very driven, and they know what it takes to work hard,
they have good family backgrounds, they’re willing to work hard, they
expect a lot of their teachers. . .they’re here to learn. Then there’s the kids
who are kind of in-between. They can do well, and they do well most of
the time. Grades don’t matter, having that top grade isn’t as important.
Having a decent grade is important, but not as much. And, then there’s
the, the kids who struggle at school, or their, their performance is at least
not as good and that can be for a variety of reasons. Maybe school’s hard,
or maybe that they just don’t care for a variety of reasons. But with the AP
classes it’s like all the extreme high end. (Interview with Mr. Schlieffen,

1 -27-O7)

All of this is enhanced by students’ going through an extensive application
process to get into AP US. This process includes a written application, a thorough review
of their records, a pre-test, and a meeting between Mr. Elliot and Mr. Brown to hand-pick
their next year’s students. A little more than half of those who applied last year were
accepted. The newly selected classes meet in the spring, work over the summer, prepare
intensively together and with their teachers, and use their own money to make class t-
shirts that demonstrate their membership. They wear their shirts to take the AP test. They
know, as Mr. Brown claimed, that they are getting more time and attention ﬁom their
teachers than the regular students:

Um, and at a school that has a, you know, a very academic culture, I think

they, I think they feed off that. And Eric [Elliot] and I contribute to it,

which probably isn’t healthy for the rest of the students in the school. The

rest of the students in the school know that Eric and I aren’t going to stay

until 10 o’clock at night just to help our regular kids study for their exam.
(Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-07)

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Mr. Elliot’s attitude toward his class as an “elite” comes out occasionally in
comments he makes to his class, as is shown in this classroom snippet:

Mr. Elliot says that, in this district, parents believe that every kid can get
an A. But, he notes, “some people are better at certain types of academic
pursuits.” He notes that they, the AP students, could get “one-hundred
plus” percent in a regular history class, that they’ve taken on the
“challenge” of AP history, working “outside their comfort zones.” They
are in the top 10%. What happens, he asks them, if you take the top 10%
and stop giving them tests for the middle? Start giving them work that is
more “interpretive”. Gives an example of a “middle” tests: “George
Washington was, a) a farmer, b) a soldier, c) a clown,” in a mocking
voice. (F ieldnotes, 3-6-07)

AP US History, as an “advanced” history class, works differently than the
required “survey” courses of World History and US History that students must take when
they are in the 9th and 10th grades. This difference goes right down to the structure of the
curricula for the regular and AP History classes:

I approach AP very differently then I do all of my other classes. Both
regular US History, which is a survey course, and world history, as a
teacher we have to, we are required to I would even say and even morally
and intellectually I think we’ve chosen to do so, to approach them from
that sort of survey standpoint, that there is a body of knowledge that we
think is culturally important for students to remember and know, and then
building on skills is important in those classes, but interpretive skills tend
to be less emphasized. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

The reason for this “survey” approach comes from the mixed student population of the

regular, required classes:

I think that the structure of that is created partly by the reality of who our
population is in that survey course, it’s every course is required to pass
these courses. And so, we have to provide them at a level that is both
challenging enough for our upper level students that we’re trying to
prepare eventually for advanced placement, and then, easy enough for
students who are of limited ability, I wouldn’t say low ability, but limited
ability, in some cases even low ability, to at least pass. (Interview with
Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

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This “survey” approach, where all students must be met in the middle, is contrasted,
negatively it seems, with just the sort of tracking that Oakes (1986) and Oakes et. al.
(1997) write about attempting to un-do and which Fairlawn will be implementing next
year.

...rather than creating different tracks, which is something we’re going to
be doing next year, ah, rather than creating different tracks we’ve had to
try to meet students, a huge variety of students, in the middle. And the
problem has come where, if I then create a class where you can get a C
with, um, doing basically completion, right, then followed by some
understanding. And where, where I would put like, you know, some-most-
all, like some will understand this, most will understand this, all will
understand this, and you really only, you have to make sure that the tests
are balanced enough so that you’re rewarding enough of those “all” people
that, it’s very difﬁcult to challenge the “some,” and it also means that the

“some 8 grades tend to be very, very inﬂated. (Interview with Mr. Elliot,
1-30-07)

The need for these advanced students to ﬁrst get through the survey courses in
history sometimes creates problems when they arrive in AP US. The grade inﬂation and
lack of challenge which Mr. Elliot says his advanced students experience in their survey
courses create difﬁculties for him, as an AP history teacher, because his students come in
unready for the rigors of AP US History, yet with the idea that they are ready. “They
sometimes come in with false expectations of their own abilities, false expectations of
what the course is going to entail, the challenges they’re going to face. And, um, we
spend a lot of our time and energy kind of dealing with that” (Interview with Mr. Elliot,
1-30-07).

...one thing that happens is that the kids that we are getting right now, are,

and I think [Mr. Brown] would back me up on this, there, there in an

essence they’re underprepared. It’s not that they haven’t been pushed, at

all, they’ve been pushed some. But I think, in some cases that they have,

they have both inﬂated expectations, that’s one problem, one barrier, and

you. . .it’s always a struggle, because a lot of what I do in AP ends up
being cheerleader, coping, helping them to realize where they’re at

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intellectually, how they’re developing, progress, looks very different.
(Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

Both Mr. Elliot and Mr. Brown, the other AP US History teacher, described the
problems that students often have when they start this “advanced” class, a class which
demands far more from them then they are used to. Compared to previous classes, AP US
History is far more work, for one thing. For another, Mr. Elliot’s AP class uses an open
structure in class discipline as well as homework and assessment, giving AP students
more ﬂexibility and freedom than regular students. Finally, as Mr. Elliot tells it, AP
classes make great demands on students’ abilities to synthesize and to analyze
information, and not just to take it in and spit it back out, demands not made on students
in survey classes.

I think students, especially at this level they, they have certain patterns of
learning that they have followed that have been very successﬁrl for them,
and if you ask them about those, I think, and they may come up in your
interviews, I don’t know, but I think that they’ll say, yeah this is
traditionally what I do and that usually works really well. But that hasn’t
worked very well here or maybe it is working well for them but for most
of them it’s not. The old systems and structures, patterns of study,
patterns of learning, some of those have really proven to be disastrous for
them in the ﬁrst part of the course. Then they were, and that’s, that’s
actually quite typical. That’s, that’s perfectly normal. I never even worry
about it, yeah that’s normal, that’s ﬁrst quarter, and that’s very normal.
That, and I’m willing to deal with hundreds of parents in my line during a,
ah, during a parent-teacher conferences, I deal with that too. And you
know, and I’m willing to deal with that, that that’s okay ‘cause I know,
I’m conﬁdent of where they’re going to be or they should be within
another month or two. Um, that they’ll have developed enough strategies
and, and have become more successful. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 2-23-
07)

Mr. Elliot’s ideas and purposes relating to the different structuring of AP US
History comes also out in the way he runs his class. Mr. Elliot does not always mark his

students tardy, and often he seems to not notice when they walk in after class has begun.

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If they come in late for a quiz, he will chide them, and they are allowed no extra time, so
they suffer for their lateness. These consequences, however, are phrased in the context of
responsibility —- if you show up late, you have to accept what occurs, and it is your own
fault. This idea ﬁts in with Mr. Elliot’s overall ﬂexibility of approach with his AP
students. He likes to think of himself as more of a “coach,” offering guidance and
encouragement rather than control.

Some of his students, however, do not do well with this ﬂexibility. If it can be
said that there is an area of discipline in which the students of Mr. Elliot’s class are
lacking, it is in their ability to come to class on time. This particular class is, according to
Mr. Elliot, one of his most frustrating in this regard. He likes to give his AP students a
little ﬂexibility, in this area and others, but several of them, a couple of seniors in
particular, have gone too far and are too late too often. This is not a problem particular to
Mr. Elliot’s class. Mr. Schleiffen, who teaches the AP government class that contains a
lot of seniors, and a lot of Mr. Elliot’s former students, puts a particular spin on it, stating
that in terms of “attendance and tardies,” the students’ attitude is “haven’t I proved
myself, I’m doing well.” He adds “I think a lot of them feel like they’re beyond that”
(Interview with Mr. Schlieffen, 1-27-07).

Mr. Elliot’s approaches to academics work in somewhat the same ways as his
approaches toward behavior. He works with his AP US students to develop their own
personalized methods of note-taking, offers them optional review activities, provides
leeway on due dates, and even allows the class to negotiate on dates for assessments. The
notes they take are taken in their own individual styles, developed with help by Mr.

Elliot, who believes that such things should be tailored to the needs of the individual.

169

Some notes pages look like outlines, others look like concept maps, one student did her
notes on a series of cards. His class also works differently in regards to homework.
Instead of having assignments every day, the class has weekly chapter notes which are
due as students read along with the progress of the course. Unlike classes with regular
homework, these notes are not due every day - another small bit of autonomy. Overall, he
wants them to participate in his class:

...part of what I try to do, and you’ve seen me do this many times, is
limited ﬂexibility to the students to try to give them some sense — and it’s
not meant to be a trick — but some sense of ownership over their own
schedule, within reason, always keeping in mind big goals, big objective,
you know, limitations that are really there...It’s almost like a new part of
the hidden cuniculum that I’m trying to teach them. . .(Interview with Mr.
Elliot, 1-30-07)

This sort of thing does not sit well with all of Mr. Elliot’s students, which also says

something about their other classroom experiences:

CANDICE: I would make the notes that we do, I would have them have a
due date. Because, often times I’ll say, yeah, I have to do history notes,
but I can just do that this weekend since they’re not really do, whereas I
have this other homework that I have to have done by tomorrow. So,
history is always my last priority because, it’s, the notes are never due. So,
I would have them due, I would have them due, like the other class, they
always have them due on Thursdays, and so they’re always, they’re
always on task and everything. (Interview with Laura Pender, 2-5-07)

SW: What makes that work more challenging?

CANDICE: Um, I think it’s just different than what I’ve been used to. It’s
not the same kind of, like, do your homework and you’ll get a good grade
kind of class. It’s more like, the homework isn’t really assigned, you kind
of just have to do it. And then, like, you have to ﬁgure out how it works
for you, and then, if it doesn’t, you have to change it. It’s more like self-
learning, rather than like the teacher telling you what you need to know to
be able to, like pass the class.

SW: Has, have you had to change your strategies, as a student?

170

CANDICE: Oh, yes, oh like ﬁve times. I still don’t-think I have the right
strategy. (Interview with Candice Andueza, 3-1-07)

All of this is done in the service of moving students beyond the level of their
previous “survey” courses, to get them to do work that is more demanding, not just in
sense of amount, but also in terms of intellectual challenge and engagement. Along with
relying on students to gather historical information on their own, Mr. Elliot purposely
misaligns his tests with class lectures. He is always lecturing a bit behind where the
students are reading, and where they are being tested. This has several effects. Students
must study on their own, and cannot rely on one of their old class strategies, which is to
just listen to a teacher’s lecture and then see what will be on the test. It is designed to
enrich the lectures and class activities so that students will have a base of factual
knowledge when they get to class, a base from which they can move on to higher-level
work. Mr. Elliot, in this regard, is rather a fan of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom, 1984), and
he states that one of his priorities in AP US History is:

Creating both assessments and activities that involve. . .escalating levels of

developmental thought, that are required, for example, maybe some deeper

inferential skills in history, the interpretation of documents, synthesis is

very important for them to try to get eventually. I have to say, in terms of

like pedagogical theory and educational philosophies and stuff like that I

am a big believer in Bloom’s taxonomy. I do. . .I refer to it in different

ways, and it’s not like a hobby horse that I ride or anything like that, but I

do always try to keep in mind, like, what level is this, at what level am I

challenging them, at what level am I asking them to recreate, or to

reconstruct, some of what they’re learning. And that’s difﬁcult, because,

when. . .I think, in that respect, I tend to be my own hardest judge.

(Interview with Mr. Elliot, 1-30-07)

To use the language of Bloom (1984), AP US History should demand analysis, synthesis,

and at times even evaluation. Not only does the AP US History class promote such

things, but so does the AP test itself:

171

...I think it’s a good exam, I think it’s a really challenging exam, and I
think it does a good job of testing where they students’ individual ability is
in regards to both, not just knowledge acquisition, but interpretation,
analysis, and ultimately synthesis, where is where the essay writing does
such a good job. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)

In this pursuit of higher levels of historical engagement, the students play an essential
role. In order for Mr. Elliot to get to the higher levels of history and historical work, the
students must be able to gather the information on their own, in their largely unscheduled
and personally tailored taking of reading notes. The ﬂexibility he gives them is meant to

promote this.

And I think that creating independent learners is always a big part of this
course. How to build sort of independent learners, putting more onto their
shoulders so that they can both feel strong and powerful about their
knowing their knowledge acquisition but what they can do with that and
then, um, helping to provide them with skills and sometimes sort of
insights into process and procedures in history. (Interview with Mr. Elliot,
2-23-07)

The problem with ﬂexibility and with demands that the students do work of a sort
that they have not previously been called upon to do is that they may resist such

demands, and so one of the effects of Mr. Elliot’s methods in AP US History is that they

, (6

get some of his students a bit cheesed off at him. In their critiques of Mr. Elliot s great”
teaching, his being “behind” on lectures came up more than once:

...there’s certain things I don’t like about him, how he’s, ah, behind on his
lecture notes, most of the time. And, so, that can be like, when we’re like
preparing for the test, I wish he had, like, gone over, like, all the content
that we’re gonna be tested on, you know. And he’s only gone through,
like, a quarter of it or half of it. But I mean 1, I’ve kinda gotten used to
that. (Interview with Reilly Howard, 3-1—07)

I don’t like the fact that he’s always behind what we’re reading. Like our
notes in class are about a chapter behind where we are in our reading. . .So,
like, the, reconstruction stuff, we didn’t do all of that, we didn’t get to all
of the effects of reconstruction in class, and yet that was what we were
tested on... (Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)

172

Maybe it’s just like me being privileged in having, like, teachers baby me
through my classes, but like, I really enjoyed actually knowing what
would be like on the test before I took it, you know, like sort of thing. At
least, like, a sort of review before we got up to, like, a certain, like, to the
test. . .I feel, like it’s just like we, we lecture and then, it’s just like, oh!
Test! And then we keep lecturing, and then, oh! Here’s another test! And
like, it’s not really, like, going along with the lectures, and so, it’s like,
after you’ve taken the test, you get the lecture notes for what you’ve taken
the test on. So, it’s like, how is this supposed to help me? Like, I know it’s
like all for the AP, like the ﬁnal AP, but it’s just a weird way of, like, you,
you teach yourself. You’re supposed to teach yourself the material, and
then you take the test, and then you kind of learn it after, in class. And it, I
don’t know, it’s kind of backwards for me. (Interview with Candice
Andueza, 3-1-07)

As with his students’ trouble with his ﬂexibility toward tardies, Mr. Elliot feels that this
class has been particularly challenging in regards to their academic preparation. Mr.
Elliot, the good teacher, would like to do more than what he’s been able to do in AP US
History this year.

As an advanced class, then, AP US History is designed to take the best history
students and push them to higher levels of work than were present, or possible, in survey
classes. Working with the best of the best, AP teachers, Mr. Elliot included, are able to do
more in these classes than they are with their survey students. Mr. Elliot [aims for a
higher-level class, and pushes his students to work to this level, even in ways to which
they are not accustomed, which sometimes creates problems. Yet, for all his wishes that
he could do more with his AP US History class, Mr. Elliot still sees them as something
special. “I admire them as an entire group, for taking on such a challenge. For grappling

with it, and growing” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-7-07).

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The Hierarchy of Knowledge
1 Playing off the idea of the good teacher and of the advanced class, several

interesting results come out for the culture of high-achievement. The ﬁrst of these I will
attend to is a view of classes, school work, and even of knowledge which is particularly
hierarchical and exclusive, and which I refer to as the hierarchy of knowledge. The
pervasive presence of hierarchical notions, at a variety of levels and in a number of ways,
neither begins nor ends with AP US History — the class itself sits in a certain place, yet
membership in the class, the achievement of getting into AP US, does not bring an end to
the need to continue moving up the ladder. The ways in which these various hierarchical
notions manifest themselves in AP US History, and what they might mean for the
students in terms of what they do and what it means to them, are thus my focus here.

There is a clear hierarchy set up in the structure of the classes in the social studies
department at Fairlawn High School. There are the regular, or “survey” courses which all
students must take, and the AP courses, AP US History and AP Government, accessible
to only a few. This is not “tracking” in the sense that different student tracks are set up
from the beginning, but it is a winnowing, a selective process by which some go on while
others do not. As characterized by Mr. Elliot, the mixed, survey classes, which must
serve all the students, have to be kept at a lower, fact-based level, so that everybody can
at least pass them.

The hierarchy in the class structure is obvious, but it can also be seen that this
hierarchical organization goes beyond a designation between “AP” classes and their
“survey” level brethren and into the realm of knowledge itself. AP and survey classes

address knowledge differently, a fact that is acknowledged by Mr. Elliot as a matter of

174

deliberate planning. Further, this difference in knowledge comes out in several ways.
First off, AP US History aims for a more information-intense version of history. There
are more facts and more links between facts, knowledge that itself is more in-depth and
more connected. Second, students in AP US History are supposed to have more
opportunities for analysis and synthesis and other “higher” thinking. The students of AP
US History, too, recognize these differences, and they claim that the knowledge they are
learning in AP US History is “in-depth,” by which they mean more rich, more connected,
more detailed, and even more interesting than the knowledge they have encountered in
their previous history classes. Third, this hierarchy of knowledge also manifests itself in
the different nature of the work, and the different demands placed on the students, in AP
US History. In AP US History, students are given far more responsibility for gathering
information on their own. The intent is that they are then asked to use this information, on
their tests and in assignments, in ways that are less focused on completion or on reporting
of factual knowledge and more focused on “use” of that knowledge.

These hierarchical notions then play out in several ways. Both the students and
their teacher do not merely speak of differences between classes, but of divisions that
exist within knowledge itself, divisions akin to good old Bloom’s Taxonomy. The very
act of knowing is separated into types and levels. Facts are at the bottom, and real
thinking is at the top. The hierarchy of knowledge says that one must learn the facts ﬁrst,
before one gets the opportunity to do the work of thinking. Combining this idea with the
class structure of survey and advanced classes, a division of labor emerges where some
students get the opportunity to think about knowledge while others only address it at the

lower, factual level. This'division of labor also comes out in the sort of labor demanded

175

of AP students — they must gather information on their own, and they must apply it. More
is expected of them in terms of autonomy from direct guidance and in their level of .

dedication to the purposes of the class.

All of this comes out in students’ attitudes toward their classes, their work, and
knowledge. As already emphasized, students’ characterizations of Mr. Elliot’s class,
while full of praise, also tend toward the comparative. AP US History is a “better” class,
and this is due in great part to the different sort of knowledge stressed at the AP level.
Students also, in their descriptions of knowledge and learning, tend to denigrate facts and

tasks which involve the gathering and reporting of facts:-

I think it comes from the different history classes I’ve taken before, like
you said, OK, these are the basic facts, and, like, on the essay questions
there you just have to list the facts. And then, I came in, OK, that’s how
a history class goes. And then you get to this history class, and you
realize OK this history class was just, facts, there was nothing to the

WWW
They use the term “boring” to describe this work, but their favorite term is “busywork.”.
Busywork was frequently and at times vehemently denounced, often in terms which
directly associated it with the sort of basic learning associated with survey-level classes
as described by Mr. Elliot. Of Mr. Elliot’s class, Eric said that:
I like it better. One reason, because there’s less busywork. There’s less

worksheets. It’s more like, you know the material, or you don’t, I guess.
Instead of, you get all these little poo poo points on Stupid worksheets that

don’t matter. '

When I asked him to describe “busywork,” he gave a description and some ~

examples:

ERIC: Worksheets that are just, like. . .sometlring that is obvious, that you
could just say outright, that a teacher knows, you know, material, but
decide that they want you to put it down on paper. Filling in blanks,
multiple choice questions, writing short answers.

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SW: Why do you think teachers assign work like that?

ERIC: To see if you know the material, I guess. (Interview with Eric
Morris, 3-6-07)

And when Reilly characterized her 9th and 10th grade history classes as having too much
“busywork,” I also asked her for a deﬁnition:

Like, were not learning anything new, it’s kind of usually just like review

stuff, it’s kind of just like. . .I usually feel like the teacher just doesn’t feel

like. teaching us. ...let’s give them a packet to ﬁll out. . .look for the answer
in the book and then like copy it down (Interview with Reilly Howard, 3-

1-07).

F act-gathering activity, then, is boring activity, and perhaps not even “learning.” Helen
had a similar and revealing take on this sort of work: “I think if you can, like, self-learn
it, then I think just pretty much taking the class is kind of pointless” (Interview with
Helen Wei. 3-6-07).

The fee] that runs through the descriptions given by the students is that factual
learning, the sort of work where the tasks amount to reporting of information given
through lecture or reading, is either boring or, in some cases, not really learning at all.
Furthermore, the sort of work that is associated with gathering facts, when assigned in
class, is perceived as a waste of time, a bunch of “poo-poo points.” The descriptions of
better knowledge do not, in the students terms, come out as analysis and synthesis, but
rather as a characterization of “use” rather than mere “gathering,” or, as one might put it,
working, in-class, on a different part of the process of knowing. This is consistent with
Mr. Elliot’s description of survey classes, and it leads to the idea that one of the big
differences between AP US History and the survey classes is that the students of AP US

History do not do information-gathering tasks in class, or at least not as many. Another,

177

of course, is that they must then do these tasks outside of class and on their own,
something they have trouble with, since they haven’t had to do it before, but something
they are willing to do.

Of course, the idea that the students of AP US History are not doing inforrnation-
gathering tasks in class seems to conﬂict, just a bit, with the fact that they spend quite a
bit of their time listening to lectures and — when the lectures are written on the board —
taking notes. But lectures, at least Mr. Elliot’s lectures, do not seem to inspire the bored
and fed-up response that students attribute to their other history classes. Part of this may
be attributable to Mr. Elliot’s skill and enthusiasm as a lecturer. Another part may have to
do with the little details and interpretations that Mr. Elliot throws into his lectures,
keeping them from being mere repletion of what they have read. More of this, though,
may have to do with their past reliance on lectures, noted both by Mr. Elliot and by the
students themselves. They are accustomed to lecture, and they are comfortable using it as
a primary resource. Seen this way, lectures ﬁt nicely into the hierarchical idea. Finding
facts by themselves may be a waste of time, but Mr. Elliot knows more than they do, he
is higher up in the hierarchy, and is thus worth listening to.

In all this, the social studies department at Fairlawn High School, AP US History,
and even knowledge itself are shot through with various hierarchical notions. They come
in through the position of the class in the school and the department, the position of the
students in the class, the ways that work and knowledge are treated, and student and
teacher attitudes. There is no getting around hierarchies, and even within AP US History

one does not leave them behind,-since, as Mr. Elliot’s views on his class and higher-level

178

thinking show, the students must show that they have mastered the facts and can be
trusted before other ways of working with historical knowledge can be attempted.
Interlude - The Sub

It is a Friday, and the students of AP US History have just spent three days taking
whole-school standardized tests. Today, Mr. Elliot is away, and his class is being run by a
substitute teacher. She is a retired hi gh-school AP English teacher from the Fairlawn
District, and her long classroom experience shows right away. She has a way of talking to
the students as a group that inspires them to respond chorally in the same high-tone to
low-tone phrasing that always accompanies such responses. Her name is Mrs. Wilson,
and if she asks them a question, they respond “Yes-Mis-es-Willllll-suuun.” She refers to
them as “boys” and “girls.”

She gives them their group work and suggests that they get into mixed groups of '
boys and girls because, in her experience, mixed groups are more efﬁcient. Near where I
am sitting, Connor and Thomas, who often work together, immediately begin doing so
again. They do not try to include a “girl” in their group. The sub remarks on this. Thomas '
looks around, says to Connor, “Should we ﬁnd a girl?”

Connor shakes his head. “Nah. Let’s be inefﬁcient.”

Already, I can sense that the students of AP US History are not treating their sub
with quite the same respect and admiration that they reserve for Mr. Elliot. Still, they are
working away. On one side of their worksheet is a political cartoon about the Panama
Canal, on the other, a poem by Pablo Neruda. Some conversations around the classroom

reﬂect these students’ usual involvement with their work. Bill turns to Helen and Sara,

179

with whom he is working, and says “You can tell this is Pablo Neruda, ‘cause it’s kinda
weird.” Helen and Sara give this a good laugh.

I sit in a student desk, watching the kids write. I’ve gone to sit by Bill, Sara, and
Helen, drawn by the Neruda comment. As I watch them work, Reilly calls to me from the
middle of the room, where she is working in a group with Laura and Emma. “Hey Mr.
Wojo!” Reilly calls out, “remember when you asked me what busywork is?”

“Yeah,” I reply, thinking back to our interview.

She holds up her paper. “This is busywork.” Laura and Emma hold their papers at
the same moment, making for an amusingly coordinated gesture. They are wearing
expressions that people wear when they sigh resignedly, expressions seem to say “can
you believe this stuff?” The sight of all three of them holding up their papers almost
cracks me up. They slap the papers on their desks, still in unison, and go back to work.

I walk over, ask them why it’s busywork. “Because it’s not even, like, analysis.
It’s like, what happened in the poem,” Reilly explains. Laura complains that the poem
isn’t even a primary source, that it was written a hundred years after the canal was
ﬁnished, and by a Chilean yet. Rachel, in the next group, weighs in and asks if Chileans
aren’t allowed to have opinions, but the group just shakes their heads.

Changing the subject, the group then launches into a litany of complaints about
the standardized tests that they just spent three days taking, reserving special mockery for
the vocational sections of the test. Disbelief is expressed at questions requiring that you
make change, ‘Vvith a calculator,” and another set of question that tested comprehension
of instructions for basic factory tasks. Laura explains how there was a memo telling them

to put the fan in the welder for 12 seconds, then a question about how many seconds to

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put the fan in the welder.

Thinking that Rachel might have a different view of the assignment, after her
question about the opinions of Chileans, I walk around the desk to where she and Janice
are working away. Rachel and Janice explain that this is just a ﬁll-in-the—blank
assignment. Rachel also notes, however, that you’ve got to expect busywork with a sub.
How could this not be busywork? I ask. Rachel responds that she’d like to see them read
and discuss it.

I work my way back over to Bill, Helen, and Sara eager for another point of view.
I ask them what they think about the assignment, and their impression is negative. Helen
answers that it is a learning opportunity, but says this in a mocking voice that tells me
that sarcasm is more her intention. Bill frowns, “I kind of feel stupid for complaining that
this it’s not harder,” yet this seems to be just the problem. “It’s just reading and
answering.”

This group then turns to impassioned complaining about their standardized test
experiences, focusing especially on the “work keys” section, the vocational questions. “If
you want to be a pig farmer, this will test your skills,” Helen says. I ask if there was a
section on pig farming, and they describe a question that used a farming situation to ask
what was a simple arithmetic problem. The presence of a calculator for these questions is,
once again, pointed out. The three of them chat for a minute about how easy most of the
test was, insultingly so. Bill also complains that the history piece hit on times that they
hadn’t gotten to in AP history. And the science part had no chemistry!

I move across the room and squat next to Matt’s desk. “What do you think of this

assignment?” I ask him.

181

“It’s stupid,” he says.

I grin in spite of myself. “Don’t hold back, Matt,” I say, “tell me what you really
think.”

He says that they already know this stuff, holding up his thick AP US History
book. There’s no need to do it again.

I move again, this time to Jim. When I ask him what he thinks, he responds “it’s
boring.” When I ask why it’s boring, he responds “It’s a poem.” I recall that Jim loves
math and science and being a smart-ass, so I press for a better answer. “There is no
thought that is required in the question,” he tells me. “Read the poem, write down what
the poem says.”

I sit by Jim for a couple more minutes, then stand and take a few steps over to
another group - a large one, made up of Candice, Adam, LeAnn, Allie, and Andy. I
watch them work for a bit, work that is liberally sprinkled with chatting about this and
that. Candice does not like the assignment, and looks rather exasperated with it, but
Adam is full of enthusiasm. Two times he raises his hand and calls Mrs. Wilson over with
a question, while Candice hisses “Adam! Don’t encourage her!” Adam’s tone seems
overly friendly to me, and I am fairly certain that he is acting cooperative and interesting
mainly to annoy the other members of his group.

Mrs. Wilson calls for the students’ attention and attempts to lead a brief
discussion on the political cartoon on the back of the worksheet. I sit down in the desk
next to Jim, and as the sub holds up the worksheet and asks for comments, Jim rants

about the ﬁrtility of the assignment and packs his bags. Matt is turned around and talking .

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to Eric, and when he turns back to face the front of the room, it is only to read the
newspaper that is open and spread across his desk.

Mrs. Wilson asks about different features of the cartoon, a picture of a gigantic
Teddy Roosevelt in a policeman’s uniform, striding across the world, surrounded by
smaller men of other nations. Bill gives her an answer that seems to draw from
information that is not in the cartoon, and when the sub asks where his answer came
from, he admits that he read it in the book. Focus on the cartoon, she tells him. Emma,
sitting on the ﬂoor, rolls her eyes and tells the sub that the instructions on the sheet say to
use outside sources, like the book, in their answers. The eye-roll surprises me; Emma is
usually so polite. Mrs. Wilson asks them to focus on the cartoon only.

Andy begins talking bout the light around Roosevelt’s head, how it shows that TR
was blessed by God. Also mentions the little Mexican ﬁgures, in sombreros, in the
picture. Mrs. Wilson seems pleased. She asks what people can tell her about the TR
ﬁgure.

“He’s fat!” Adam calls out.

“I know,” the sub responds, “but what is that telling you?”

“Powerful!” someone yells.

“Gluttony!” another calls out.

In my corner, Jim ﬁdgets while Matt continues to read his paper. Some students
have completely withdrawn from the discussion, and I have the uncomfortable sensation
that the students who. are participating are toying with the sub, throwing out answers
which they know will be acceptable, yet doing it a spirit, not of cooperative participation,

but of hidden mockery of their easy assignment. The discussion winds down, and the last

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few minutes of the class are spent in student chatter, waiting for the tone. (Fieldnotes, 3-
16-07)
Good Students, Better Students

Of the effects of the hierarchy of knowledge, one of the most telling is the ways
that these hierarchical notions shape students’ work, their attitudes toward it and, on top
of that, their attitude toward other students and even toward their teachers. The students
of AP US History, as members of an “advanced” class, are not just good students, but
they are “better” students, working at a hi gher-level, with different work, and different
knowledge, than students in regular classes. My particular focus here is on the ways that.
their identity as “better” students, the cultural meanings which surround their work and
their position, foster certain attitudes toward what they do as well as towards others who
do different work and who occupy different positions within the school.

After watching the students with their substitute teacher, I was quite curious about
the behaviors I’d observed, which were so far outside of those to which I’d become
accustomed. So the next time I observed Mr. Elliot’s class, I took a moment before class
started to share my observations on the students’ response to their substitute with Mr.
Elliot. I explained that his AP students, normally quite well-behaved and compliant, were
unfocused, rather snotty, frustrated, and even mocking toward their sub. Mr. Elliot
claimed that kids at this level can be “really, really aggressive” if they feel like they’re
being “talked down to.” When they feel this, the AP kids tend to respond in one of three
ways: they shut down and just sit with their arms crossed, they behave aggressively, or

they toy with the teachers (F ieldnotes, 3-20-07). Indeed, I had noticed responses much

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like these when I’d sat in with the substitute teacher. This set me to thinking about
ﬁ'ustration.

There was a certain connection between frustration, busywork, standardized test-
questions that seemed “beneath” the AP students. The complaints about the in-class
assignment centered around its fact-based nature, as did complaints about the
standardized test that they’d taken, and when the sub was asking strictly information-
checking questions, even excluding facts outside the worksheet, the students reacted by
becoming exasperated or mocking, or by simply refusing to participate. The striking thing
about all of this was the quick connection between “easy” work and anger, the instant
turn by which the well-behaved and even at times enthusiastic students I’d been watching
for over three months became disconnected or hostile. It was also interesting that this
hostility was directed at a person, the sub, as well as at the assignment. The sub, after all,
did not come up with the assignment — it was Mr. Elliot’s plan that she was following -
yet it was she, and not Mr. Elliot, who bore the students’ reaction.

My read of this class and the issues surrounding it emphasizes that, when AP
students were asked to work farther down on the hierarchy of knowledge, they were none
too pleased by doing so. One way of looking at this is to begin with the idea that, just as
AP US History can be seen as a “better” class, the students position as learners of more
than “facts,” of working hi gher-up on the hierarchy of knowledge, positions them as
“better” students. They work they do is something more than most are able to do, in at
least two ways: they are “able” to do this work because they are in AP US History, and
they got into AP US History in the ﬁrst place precisely because they are “able” to do this

work. As the elite students, they are seen as personally more talented and ready for work

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on a new level. It has already been seen how this all comes out in their teacher’s, and
other teachers’, attitudes toward them. In some ways it has also been seen to come out in
students’ attitudes toward AP US History, as they characterized AP as a “better” class
often in terms of the type of knowledge pursued there. The above slice of classroom life,
however, shows a bit more the students’ attitude coming out: as “better” students, they
are not only capable of better work, but also set above lower level work.

The way that the students interacted with the sub shows that this attitude is not
limited to a dismissal of certain types of work, but also to a negative attitude toward
certain people. The sub was the obvious target. Less obvious, perhaps, were those
students for whom the standardized tests might prove difﬁcult, particularly the students
for whom the vocational questions were meant to apply. In interviews, this hierarchical
view of work manifests itself also in students’ attitudes toward other students. The very
structuring of knowledge in a hierarchical fashion seems to feed into a hierarchical social
structuring. This sort of attitude toward other students was manifest in the reasons that
AP US History students gave for taking AP US History. Several of them claimed “better
students” as a top reason. Half of them expressed some desire to be with “better”
students, or disappointment with students in their regular classes. Indeed, a certain
frustration with fellow students comes through:

I like that I would be able to work with better students. Sometimes

I get annoyed with having to go over the same things over and over

again with weaker students that didn’t grasp the concept at the

beginning. (Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)

...there’s like, the really smart people who don’t try, you know ...I

don’t wanna like judge them. . .But, I think that. . .it wasn’t really

doing it for me, like, in my classes. . ..I was tired of just, like,

having people be like, you know, “wait, what’s the book about?”
like after we’ve read it. . ..I was just like, it’s not really worth it. . .to

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just sit in a class where. . .I understand everything, and. . .I’m not

really getting enough out of it. (Interview with Candice Andueza,

3-1-07)

...there’s always people that, like, work really hard to be where

they are, like, academically. . .And then there’s the people that kind

of just do it and it comes naturally. . .And then, some people are

like in-between. Like I think I’m kind of in-between, I guess. And

then, in normal classes, there’s people that just don’t care at all,

and don’t work hard. (Interview with Cathy Kilpatrick, 3-2-07)

1 was kinda hoping AP classes would, kind of, concentrate it, like, the

more ambitious students. Or. . .if there’s people who are. . .really focused

on a sport, say, and then they just like wanna maintain their C average to

stay in the sport. Like, that’s great for them, if they’re really interested in

sport but, I’m not, so I’d rather surround myself with other students that

are really academically focused. (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07)

Part of this view of other students likely comes from Mr. Elliot’s own
characterizations of this class, and the students in it, as “better,” yet there may be more to
it. Indeed, as some of the above quotes show, the high-achievers responses to the “other”
students that they have encountered — especially those in regular, non-AP classes, and
those portrayed as uninterested, unmotivated, or slow — show a tendency to qualify those
criticisms. In general, the high-achievers’ responses were not only criticism, but also a
mix of intolerance, kindness, ﬁ'ustration, understanding, explanation, and justiﬁcation,
sometimes tinged with guilt. At times they spoke of differences, of their own
achievement, with an underlying sense that their higher position was not entirely
something to brag about, and that perhaps something was not right.

This complexity might bear ﬁrrther exploration. Just as (in Chapter 4) modesty or
a reluctance to brag may be present in the hi gh-achievers’ claims that they are not hi gh-

achievers, so too might their comments on other students support readings which differ

from the one I propose here. The high—achievers’ disclaimers about high—achievement and

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their response to “other” students may even ﬁt together. Their widespread insistence that
they themselves are not high-achievers might be seen, not just as an indicator that they
are “never done,” but also as a desire to minimize their achievements so as to discount
the differences between themselves and the other students, students which are at the same
time portrayed as different nonetheless. If there is some guilt or justiﬁcation in their
references to other students, or a sense that the hierarchical differences are not alright,
such ideas and feelings might show more about hi gh-achievement, as hi gh-achievers
perceive it, than has come out in my particular treatment.

That being said, and while acknowledging the complexity present here and the
possibility of further interesting explorations of it, my focus in this study is on the
frustration and intolerance that came out, and not necessarily students’ deeper feelings
about it. And I think this is a warranted place to focus, not the least because the identity
of hi gh-achievers as “better” students came out in more than ways than merely the
students’ own words. Their actions in class, already described, support my reading. Also,
the hints of frustration, even of intolerance, that came through in the way AP US History
students spoke about other students at Fairlawn come out in other ways as well. The other
two AP social studies teachers I interviewed both’ provided interesting pictures of their
students’ behaviors that support what I saw in Mr. Elliot’s class. Mr. Brown, who teaches
the other AP US History class, spoke of his the special nature that students in AP US
History get from being selected, and of his students’ reaction when they come to class for
the ﬁrst time:

...we know in February who our kids are gonna be the next year, they’re

excited about it, we’re excited about it. It’s a kind of a big deal, you know,

to the kids when they get in, they’re like, wow. . .I’m gonna do this. The
ﬁrst day of class they walk in and they’re hi gh-ﬁving each other saying

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things like, it’s a class with all smart people, I can’t wait. There’s no
stupid people in this class. I’ve heard that all three years. On the ﬁrst day
of school they walk in ...if I’m standing out in the hall listening to what
they’re saying in here, this is gonna be awesome. There’s no stupid people
in this class. (Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-07)

Mr. Schleiffen, one of the AP Government teachers, is a ﬁrst-year teacher who is
working hi gh-achievers in the social studies department, many of whom [were Mr. Elliot’s
students last year. When I asked Mr. Schlieffen if there were any downsides to the high-
achiever experience, he described his students’ intolerant attitude as he’d seen it come out
in his class:

I think. . .and again, it’s my ﬁrst year, and so my experience could kinda

taint what I see as problems. . .what I’ve seen is they lose a little of the, I

don’t know if you wanna call it social aspects, or the humanity-

type. . .being tracked with similar kids like this. . .intellectual arrogance is

what I’ve seen, a lot of times. And they place a high values, on, it seems

very important to a lot of these kids to point out when they see stupidity,

or mistakes, or intellectual blunders, and to, like berate it. And, and in

some way, um, showing that they’re smarter than that, or. . .and maybe it’s

a, just proving that they’re intelligent. But there seems to be this greater

importance and value on, like, looking down on others, as far as

...illogical things or mistakes, stupidity, whatever you want to call

it. . ..they jump on it, more so, and it seems very important for them to

point out these, these things. They’re more critical, I guess. Overly critical,

at times, of others. (Interview with Mr. Schlieffen, 1-27-07)

Mr. Brown and Mr. Schlieffen also both expressed concern that their AP students were
being, in some ways, isolated from the other students.

Of course, the teachers themselves are positioned within the hierarchy of
knowledge and classes in the Fairlawn Social Studies Department, and the students’
reaction to the sub has something to say about this as well. As mentioned, the assignment
was Mr. Elliot’s, and I have seen his students work on similar fact-ﬁnding assignments

on a couple of occasions, though these were not common in the classes I observed. As

they did one such assignment, a computer-lab-based fact-ﬁnding sheet which required

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them to go to several websites covering the Progressive Era in US History, I walked
around the room and gauged their reactions. Some thought it was busywork, others
viewed it more positively, but none of them displayed the sorts of behaviors they showed
towards their sub. Mr. Schlieffen, a ﬁrst-year teacher of AP Government, and Mrs.
Wilson, their sub, see these students act in one way, but Mr. Elliot, a well-known, very
knowledgeable teacher and a forceful lecturer, does not, 'even in the midst of a worksheet
assignment similar to that carried out under Mrs. Wilson’s supervision.

The arrogance and frustration that seems to come out at times in AP students, and
the snatches of this that I saw and heard in Mr. Elliot’s students in particular becomes
more interesting when it is connected to the hierarchical nature of class organization and
knowledge, especially of knowledge, that runs through AP US History and the AP
program. As students have been successful on tasks which fall lower on the hierarchy,
and indeed as students who have — if their interview responses are any measure -— been
bored or frustrated in other history classes, it is perhaps understandable that such work
would draw a negative reaction. This is certainly eloquent commentary on the nature and
usefulness of the survey approach. Yet there may be more going on here then residual
anger over other classes. Their negative characterizations of other students, and the
variations in their responses to different teachers, add another angle. Perhaps, having
proven themselves by doing the work demanded of them, and having shown themselves
capable of completing work at the lower levels, they expect a payoff in the form of status.
And perhaps, seeing others who do not measure up, or work that is below them, they feel
compelled to approach this work and these students with a certain arrogance, to justify

the investment they have made in their own success. Or maybe, having been told that

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they are better, they after a while begin to believe it, and to believe it in a way that goes
beyond their grades and accolades as high-achievers.
Interlude - Reading from an Old Textbook

It’s 8:25 am. Mr. Elliot has been giving a rather feisty lecture on Theodore
Roosevelt, and now he switches gears, passing out a section ﬁom an old 1800’s textbook,
two facing pages photocopied onto a sheet of yellow paper. He does not give an exact
date for the textbook, but the lesson titles “The Races of Men” and “Manner of Living”
certainly indicate a less than contemporary approach. The lessons are divided into
numbered sections, and Mr. Elliot has the students read aloud, each students reading a
section. After each section, Mr. Elliot asks “do you agree?” The sections begin somewhat

innocuously:

70. You may wonder why anyone should care to live where it is very hot or

very cold, but such is the case. There are a great many millions of men

and they dwell in almost all parts of the earth.
“Do you agree?” he asks. Hesitant “yes” answers. As the lessons progress, however, the
students begin to become skeptical of them:

72. Men of the same color and appearance are said to belong to the same

race. There are ﬁve races. You are familiar with two of them — the white

and the black. The others are called the red, the yellow, and the brown.
This time the “do you agree” is answered with hesitant looks, shaking of heads.

Mr. Elliot stops the students’ reading and asks some of the discussion questions at
the bottom of the lesson, questions like “What is to be said of the white race?” and “What
has become of the Indians?” and notes that the “right” answers are the racist answers

drawn ﬁ'om the chapter. “That’s the correct answer. If you put anything else, I’d mark it

wrong.” This gets a good laugh from the class.

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The students read on. Mike reads lesson 75, on the “red race:”

75. Before the white and the black races came to America, it was

inhabited by the red race, or Indians. Once in a while you may see an

Indian in our towns and cities, but the white people have driven most of

them so far away that they seldom visit the settled parts of our country.
At the words “red race” and “driven most of them away,” the students chuckle. Seth
reads from section 76, on the “yellow or Mongolian race,” and Mr. Elliot points out that
the section uses the word “brought” to describe how members of this race came to
America, a vague passive voice usage that implies that they come over “as if they were
slaves, or an item, or a trade item,” adding that this vagueness is a reason to avoid passive
voice in their papers. He then points out the pictures in the middle of the page, where ﬁve
people are drawn, representing an example from each race. In the middle is a “beautiful
white woman,” while the others are portrayed with “very stereotypical, racist images.”

Cathy reads next, from section 80:

80. The greater portion of the world ’s people live in Europe and America,

and belong to the white race. They know more than other nations. This is

the reason that they are more powerful, and live more comfortably.
“Have you ever wondered that?” Mr. Elliot asks as she ﬁnishes reading. “That’s why.”
Again, laughter from the students. Mr. Elliot in quite clearly mocking the ignorant, racist,
textbook of earlier days. Students read on:

81. Half-civilized people have no railroads nor steamboats, and not many

books or schools. Some of them live in houses, and have towns and cities;

others have no ﬁxed homes, but live in tents and wander about from one
part of their country to another...

“They tend to wander, they like to wander,” adds Mr. Elliot. Laughs follow. Mr. Elliot

himself reads the next section:

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82... The Japanese and Chinese are the most advanced of the half-civilized

nations. They are excellent gardeners and farmers; they have many books,

and are very skillful in some manufactures.

He places special emphasis on the word “excellent,” and, as he ﬁnishes, he continues,
“They make nice pottery. We like their pottery.” More laughter.

Students read the next to sections, which describe the “savage” or “non-civilized”
peoples of the world. When Andy reads a passage that claims “they clothe themselves in
the skins of wild beasts,” laughter runs across the class once more. Mr. Elliot has them
ﬁnish reading the sections, drawing chuckles along the way. At the end, he asks Thomas
“How does this make you feel?”

“I’m not surprised,” Thomas answers.

Mr. Elliot then swings into a lecture on this textbook and the attitudes exempliﬁed
by it. He notes that, thanks to the Dawes Act, which provided for the education of Native
American children, little Indian kids would be reading textbooks like this. Describing
how this sort of thing led Americans do develop “attitudes towards immigrants, attitudes
toward others,” he ﬁnishes off by reminds students that President McKinley referred to
the people of the Philippines as “our little brown brothers.” Americans, looking at the
world, thought that everyone was “uncivilized,” and so “it’s out job to ﬁx them, because
we are superior to all” (Fieldnotes, 3-20—07).

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Here I shift my focus, staying within the context of the hierarchy of knowledge,
yet moving back to Mr. Elliot, his identity as a “good” teacher, the ways his students
deﬁne his class as interesting and worthwhile, and his own goals of creating a higher-

level, advanced class. A part of what makes these students hi gh-achievers is their

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presence in this class, and as an AP class, a better class, it has certain features which
make it stand out from the regular classes which the students have taken. AP US History
is an information-intensive class, a class with lots of work and lots of lecture, and it is
also an “advanced” class and a “better” class. All of this is framed in certain ways by Mr.
Elliot and by the students, and the ways that the class meets, exceeds, or contradicts its
portrayal by those who participate in it form another facet of the culture of high-
achievement. In particular, here I look at the “facts” of AP US History, how they are
supposed to be different from regular classes, how they turned out to be different as I saw
them, and the outcomes of these differences for the experiences of the students. This view
touches upon the purposes of AP US History as well as the purposes of social studies
classes in general, and gets at the meanings of descriptors such as good, advanced,

hi gher-level, and interesting. It also gets at how deﬁning the “good” class as a better
class, with better facts, deﬁnes the “hi gher-level” education of hi gh-achievers in ways
which contradict the picture of the critical, analytical nature of an advanced class.

Mr. Elliot deﬁnes AP US History as an advanced history class, different in scope
and in type from the “survey” courses that 9’11 and 10th graders take at F airlawn High
School. He is looking for his students to engage history at a different level, not just to
memorize facts, but to analyze and synthesize information, to bring it together and to re-
apply it to new situations, and to use it creatively. In aiming for this, he feels that he has
not done as much as he would wish. Indeed, he does not fully trust that his students will
get the necessary information on their own, information which would allow higher-level
class work. He wants them to work at a higher level on the knowledge hierarchy, but

wants them to get the “facts” ﬁrst.

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The facts play a complex and contradictory role in Mr. Elliot’s classroom. As
seen above, in-class work that involves fact-gathering is scorned by the students as
“busywork,” and indeed the very structure of the social studies classes at F airlawn
suggests that factual knowledge is a “survey” sort of thing. Yet there are many facts in
Mr. Elliot’s class, many more than in the survey courses, and these facts are seen as a
necessary ingredient to higher levels of though, so much so that they seem to operate in a
gate-keeping fashion. Complexifying this picture is Mr. Elliot’s own students’ attitudes
toward his class, which are in the main quite positive, and which are connected to the
“interesting” sort of information they are getting. They cite the in-depth knowledge, their
interest in the class, and even their ability to better remember the information presented
as positives.

The view of facts as elementary, and slightly or more than slightly negative, has
already been established through a review of students’ and teachers’ attitudes and in the
context of the survey vs. advanced structure of the history classes at F airlawn. The
positive side of the facts, has been seen as well -- they are a necessary step toward
“higher” thinking. The facts cannot be dispensed with:-

I hate the word “fact,” we challenged that in my grad classes, things like

that, and I know all the criticisms of it but there are still some sort of basic

knowledge things that are required before you can go further. (Interview

with Mr. Elliot, 2-23-07)

I’ve seen far too many, especially AP classes actually, where very little

actually gets accomplished in terms of content. And the kids are very

passionate, and they love it, and they’ll be lots of discussion and they have

lots of opinions, but the opinions are often based on stuff that is kind of

shallow, and, and not, um, I, you know that sounds so judgmental to say

shallow, but I think that, not based on a lot of factual knowledge and
background, and I guess I personally have more respect for people who

have an opinion based upon, and can connect it to some factual defense.
(Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)

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From Mr. Elliot’s point of view, they are getting a better brand of facts than they
have seen before. The above class, where the students re-read an old text, shows Mr.
Elliot leading his class, not so much through a critical reading of a text, but through an
“improved” reading, one in which the facts, as we have them now, are better than the
ones they used to be working from. Mr. Elliot’s already mentioned emphasis on the
strange and the different in history, his taking of different readings on historical events,
and his enjoyment of different and even shocking knowledge, can also be seen in this
light. One student even mentioned Mr. Elliot’s love of the shocking:

He told us that, like, the sharks migration has changed because of the slave

boats coming across from Aﬁica because they’ve been dumped over and

I’m like, I don’t believe that. (laugh). . .And like, I was talking to Cathy

Kilpatrick about this. And we just like think that, like, he wants to have an

effect on the class, so he just, like, chooses really outrageous things to

like. . .because after he tells us something, like really intense, like that like

shark thing, like, everybody’s like silent, and like, wow, that’s really

interesting. (Interview with Allie Meredith, 3-2-07)

When he claims that Abraham Lincoln never wanted equality for African-Americans,
tells students that their middle-class mothers would have been addicted to laudanum in
the 1800’s, or reveals how many immigrants to America returned to their home countries,
he is giving them facts they’ve never seen before, better facts:

Mr. Elliot is at the board, lecturing on Teddy Roosevelt and the Treaty of

Portsmouth. He describes the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” as it is known,

between the US and Japan. “Gentlemen my ass,” he tells the class. “This is

ugly. If you kinda scrape the veneer of Roosevelt’s presidency, you see a

lot of this.” Gives the example of Roosevelt’s inviting Booker T.

Washington to lunch, then denying it when there was an uproar. He then

criticizes the 9th grade textbook version of Teddy Roosevelt. “It doesn’t

give you the rest of the story.” (Fieldnotes, 3-20-07)

As this example shows, this emphasis on the strange and the different seems to

exist in a relationship to what has gone before. The facts in AP US History are more

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detailed, and less in line with the simple an accepted mainstream version of history, than
what they have previously learned. Indeed, Mr. Elliot often criticizes previous treatments
of history:

This is what separates the real AP kids from the ones who just took eighth
grade history. (Fieldnotes, 12-15-06)

7:56 — Mr. Elliot emphasizes the difference between [AP] scores 1 — 5 and

compares them to the difference between “freshman and sophomore” stuff
and stuff they’re working on now...

8:10 — Mr. Elliot mocks the “unit” approach that divides the [Civil] war
and Reconstruction along a hard line, calling it “middle school” stuff...
8:28 — “Wade-Davis Bill” is the subject...“you didn’t learn this in middle
school” (Fieldnotes, 12-1 9-07)

As with his lectures, Mr. Elliot’s comments in this regard were at times pretty

funny:

I don’t know a 5th grader alive who doesn’t know the cotton gin. It’s like
it’s the only thing we teach. (Field notes, 1-23-07)

The students, too, claim that they are getting better facts. They do not claim that
AP US History is a better class than their previous class because it is not fact-based.
Instead, they claim that the facts in AP US History are connected, interesting, detailed
and meaningﬁrl. Part of this comes from their enjoyment of the class, their interest in it,
and their own evaluation of the class as a good one. Undoubtedly, however, their views
of the facts of history are heavily inﬂuenced by Mr. Elliot’s own views which, as I noted
above, he shares with them. AP US History is portrayed as a higher—level, advanced class,
and Mr. Elliot is not afraid to emphasize this, to call on students to work at the AP level,
to point out to them that they are the top, and, going along with all this, to let them know

that the version of history they are getting is a superior one.

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Rachel, describing her study strategies, hits upon how the facts in AP US History

ﬁt into a context:

I tend to think in that sense, in like the big trends that, like, Elliot covers in
history. Just like cause and effect type stuff. . .I mean, I study for history,
but. . .there’s some people, they’ll just like drill the facts, or like the, just
like the names and places and dates. And, I think that that, I mean, even if
it works and you’re, like if you spend like three hours doing that, and then
you wind up with an A on the test, it doesn’t seem like you really learned
the material. . .I think if you get like the basic ideas and like the causes and
effects and the big trends, you can tend to like, infer the little facts more
so. (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07)

When Mr. Elliot teaches, Rachel says, he hits the “big trends,” the “cause and effect type
stuff.” This jibes with my own observations, and it even jibes with a complaint of two of
Mr. Elliot’s students, Adam and Candice, both of whom thought Mr. Elliot spent too
much time on connections and not enough on the events that are being connected.

I have noticed in his class that I sort of, he’ll stress something as very

important, as like critical, I mean there’s a sense of extreme sort of, like,

the most important event is like this compromise. If it wasn’t for this, the

constitution wouldn’t have been written, if it wasn’t for, this

rebellion. . .there would not be the constitution. . .And I remember the

signiﬁcance of an event, but I usually don’t remember what the event

is. . .Shay’s Rebellion is critical. But if someone said, like, what is Shay’s

Rebellion, I’d have no idea. (Interview with Adam Braff, 2-2-07)

It is the connections that students stress when they talk about the difference
between AP US History and previous classes, and they emphasize that what they are
learning is more than discrete facts memorized and regurgitated. Of the facts in her
previous classes, Janice says:

...there’s no meaning behind them. It’s just, you know like, know this

country, and, you know, the, some random person or, you know, there’s

no, like, face to go with the name, kind of.

And when I asked her, “And how does Mr. Elliot give it meaning or put a face on it?”

She explained,

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Well, he, I think he uses humor a lot of times and, you know, just, little

phrases that he, like, calls people. Or, you know, with presidents he’ll,

he’ll have some little story behind it, and, you know, it’s entertaining at

the same time. (Interview with Janice Warren, 3-5-07)

Reilly, too, complained about her previous classes and praised AP US:

It just seems like we’re getting, I don’t know, compared to, like, my 9th

grade class and like my 10th grade history class, which were so boring. It

just seems like we’re getting more, it’s more in depth and. . .it’s just way

more interesting than my other history classes...

I asked her to expand upon this: “Where do you think that comes from? What makes it
more interesting than other classes?” Her answer was telling: “Um, I think because it’s
like a story” (Interview with Reilly Howard, 3-1-07).

These comments add yet another level of complexity to the position of facts
within AP US History. On one hand, as mentioned above, they represent what students
think, and what Mr. Elliot has told them, about the facts of AP US History. But at the
same time, given what I’ve seen in observing this class, and what students have told me
about their learning in AP US History, it seems that Mr. Elliot’s lectures are interesting
and his facts are connected and more “in-depth” because Mr. Elliot is telling good stories.
This is the reason that the facts and dates in AP US History are not the disconnected,
boring, simply memorized facts of AP students’ previous classes. These facts rest within
a structure that links them together and gives each a place, a structure which makes the
whole picture more interesting and which even helps the students of AP US History to
remember the wealth of information that Mr. Elliot bestows upon them.

This would mean that Mr. Elliot’s class is “good,” that the knowledge in it is

better than in other classes, because Mr. Elliot’s teaching taps into the power of narrative,

a fundamental way that humans come to know the world. Jerome Bruner, who has written

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extensively the narrative mode of knowing, suggests that “narrative organizes the
structure of human experience” (1991, p. 21) and that “we organize our experience and
our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative” (p.4). Others take
similarly strong positions regarding the place of narrative in the human experience, and in
the study of people. Randal and Furlong (2005) call narrative the “primary mode in
which we operate each day” and contrasts it to the mode that “science espouses” (p. 15).
Connelly and Clandinin (1990), writing about why we ought to use narrative in
educational research, tell us that:

the main intellectual claim for the use of narrative in educational research

is that humans are storytelling organisms who, individually and socially,

lead storied lives. The study of narrative, therefore, is the study of the

ways humans experience the world. (p. 2)

This is not quite how Mr. Elliot talks about his class. Indeed, he seems to believe
that factual knowledge is proof against narrative:

Mr. Elliot goes into the ﬁlm “Birth of a Nation” calling it both “funny”

and “racist,” says it was Woodrow Wilson’s favorite movie and the ﬁrst

shown in the White House. He describes the movie, talking about its

portrayals of black legislators and black women, laying out a scene where

the legislators are laying around plotting to get at white women, an idea

that he says was a big source of fear in the south. Then he says that a lot of

people believe movies because of the “power of narrative,” but claims that

you won’t believe all that movies have to say if you “know your history.”
(Fieldnotes, 2-22-07)

It is possible that Mr. Elliot believes that the facts will save people from perﬁdious
narratives. He certainly does attempt to equip his students with a detailed picture of
history, including facts that are outside of the mainstream of the usual story. And he
deﬁnitely believes, as seen above, that the facts are necessary before one can get into
higher levels of analysis. and synthesis. Still, ifthis is what he believes, what he acts like

is a person who ﬁnds history fascinating and who wants to share that with his students,

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and he is that, too. And he does share it, by telling them the stories of history, including
the unusual and touching and shocking ones, and the ones they wouldn’t have heard
anywhere else.

This, in tum, may connect to the fact that the AP students are the sort of students
who ﬁnd such facts interesting, or, at the very least, are willing to sit and listen and do the
readings and pay attention. In other words, on top of all this, audience is also a
consideration. When Mr. Elliot describes the ﬂexibility he uses with his AP students, he
also mentions that it isn’t something he tries with his regular students. Mr. Brown notes
that his AP students show “automatic engagement” in their classes, and Mr. Schleiffen
notes that AP students are “driven.” One student even mentioned the relationship
between the teachers’ perception of AP students as “good,” the comparative nature of this
perception, and teachers’ attitude toward their classes:

I feel kind of like the teachers like their AP classes more than regular

classes, because then they feel like, even if it’s not true, they’re getting the

brightest and the best, the cream of the crop, these kids want to be here. So

if they, appreciate the fact that you are interested in their subject, and you

want them to teach you, and so, if a teacher is told, I want to learn about

this, they’re gonna, they’re gonna put their best foot forward and, and try

and do their best. So I think that has a big impact. I mean, you know, look

at Mr. Elliot, how he gets so, you know, energized and emotional abOut

history. (Interview with Andy Meade, 3-8—07)

Even though I have heard from Mr. Elliot that his survey classes are different, and
have heard from Dr. Riveli that Mr. Elliot is a good teacher in all of his classes at all
levels, I have not seen any of this ﬁrsthand and so I cannot say. What I can say is that his
AP students get a set of facts that is portrayed and conveyed as “better,” and that much of

this seems to be due to Mr. Elliot’s skill as a lecturer and his passion for the subject. It

has to be said, again, that Mr. Elliot is indeed a good lecturer. To watch Mr. Elliot lecture

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is to watch a teacher who really gives lectures, a teacher in whose hands a lecture is less a
recitation of information that could be just as easily read — such lectures occur far too
often, in schools - and more of a performance.

What these lectures cannot be called is participatory. Certainly, Mr. Elliot asks
questions, calls on students, and gives them a chance to speak. But this only goes so far.
A raised-hand is no guarantee of attention in Mr. Elliot’s class. Candice, who had Mr.
Elliot for a humanities class last year, shared her view of this:

...Elliot is more like a, dictator-ish lecturer, so he’s very, like. . .you can’t

really ask questions, unless you raise your hand for, like, ten minutes.

Which was like the same last year, which was really hard because when

you’re talking about art, and you have. . .an opinion about it, it’s really

hard to. . .not be able to say it. (Interview with Candice Andueza, 3-1-07)

The questions he asks to the class often require short answers which seem only to be
small additions to the ongoing ﬂow of the lecture rather than substantive comments. He
will occasionally cut off or talk over a student, and it is difﬁcult to tell at times whether
the questions he asks the class are rhetorical, since he often answers them himself if

, nobody jumps in. When he asks a direct question to one student, he may quickly move on
if the answer is not immediate. Either that, or he will ask progressively more narrow
versions of the same question until the student supplies and answer, at which point he
will jump back into the lecture.

Now, this is not to say that all Mr. Elliot does is lecture, and that he ignores his
students. This is to say that most of what I saw him do was lecture, and that when he
lectures, he does not like to slow down or interrupt once he’s gotten going. Part of his

tendency toward use of frequent and non-participatory lecture even as his priorities

include analysis and synthesis has to do no doubt with this particular class and its own

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strengths and weaknesses. Still, though I havenever watched him teaching any of his
other AP classes, it is hard to believe that he does not interact with other classes in a
similar way, as Candice claimed. He admits his tendency to move too fast for questions:

...my biggest I think weakness is being patient enough I think with kids to

give them time to process and think. And I think as an educator if there’s

any one thing I’d love to become better at, it’s probably that. . .Asking

them certain types of questions I feel pretty conﬁdent, I know what I’m

doing when I’m asking different levels and different kinds of things I’m

able to rephrase and reword things to try to help them, but, um, I tend to

be too impatient. And so, allowing them the time to think, process, and,

and I think that my patience is both just personal and also it’s, it’s, partly

schedule based. It’s because of other pressures. . .curriculum time, AP,

things like that. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 2-23-07)

The need to get to the AP, it seems, plays a part in all this as well. Mr. Elliot always feels
like he’s running out of time.

Not only are the lectures not overly participatory, but Mr. Elliot’s students don’t
seem to spend a terrible lot of time analyzing and synthesizing in class. Sure, they have
their tests, and they occasionally write answers to AP-style document-based questions —
they did six of these, during the fall semester — but this is not what I saw them spend most
of their time doing, and it is certainly arguable as to what sort of thinking is really
required by such tests as the AP. Even granting that the AP does test analysis and
synthesis, knowledge not as separate bits but in some sort of context, when do Mr.
Elliot’s students practice dealing with knowledge in this way? Even when Mr. Elliot
engages in analysis with his students, or speculates about alternative interpretations of
historical ideas, they don’t write any of it down. They only write down what he writes on
the whiteboard.

This adds one more layer to this cake. The knowledge in AP US History is

portrayed as analytical, but much of it is factual. Students spend a lot of time in acquiring

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this factual knowledge in class. This factual knowledge is not the factual knowledge of
earlier classes, however, but is of a better sort. Much of the better nature of this
knowledge seems to do with its narrative form, its detailed, contextualized, and even
interesting nature, rather than to practice which students get in analyzing or synthesizing
on a daily basis. The different and better nature of the facts in AP US History seem to be
related to the students who are taking it, their interest and their willingness to listen. They
have bought into the priorities of the school, doing well in classes, and putting in the time
and effort required to take AP US History. The students of AP US History don’t just get a
progression of names-and-dates, a lowest-common-denominator approach that leaves
them bored, as they claim to have gotten in previous classes. They get a glimpse of
history in a more raw and powerful way, as a story.

Great. How does this all ﬁt into the hierarchy of knowledge? One way has already
been hinted at: as the trustworthy, dedicated students that they are, AP US History
students get a “better” version of history, one that is not only more detailed and in-depth,
but also one that is contextualized and fun to listen to. Still, there is another way. By his
emphasis on “better” facts, Mr. Elliot is setting up a hierarchical view of a different sort,
one which emphasizes that better knowledge is a matter of knowing more facts, more
details, more inside information, and more of the “real” story than students know or have
learned in their previous history classes. This places Mr. Elliot — or, indeed, anyone who
knows “more” facts — at the top of the hierarchical structure, and leaves those who know
less behind. The students of AP US History are superior because they know “more” than

others, but they are inferior to Mr. Elliot who, after all, knows more than they do.

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There is more. Mr. Elliot’s passionate and interesting teaching is at once a great
and a questionable thing. Surely, getting a narrative view of history, an interesting,
connected view, is far, far preferable to the survey approach, the boring approach, the
way of doing history that is all too common in schools. Then again, a narrative view of
history is neither a critical view of history, questioning the story and the purposes it
serves, nor a disciplinary view of history, doing the work of historians by looking at
sources and ﬁguring out where history came from (Seixas, 2000; Segall, 2005). If
anything, a narrative view of history is a more interesting and detailed version of the
same old story, a version of history teaching called by Seixas and Segall the “collective
memory” approach, one which is geared toward producing a shared account of history,
rather than assessing the reliability of historical accounts or attempting to understand
their rhetorical or political uses.

Of course, such a narrative may be of a different story, may bring up new or
unusual facts which students have not seen before, and may even lead students to
question previous facts and stories. These are certainly parts of AP US History. And Mr.
Elliot, in bringing to light different versions of history, does teach in what at times in
ways which could be seen as disciplinary or critical. It is up for question, however,
whether learning a different or “better” story really leaves the students able to perform
critical or disciplinary analyses, to take on the role that Mr. Elliot performs for them. Like
Wineburg’s (1991) hi gh-achieving history students, who viewed textual analysis as a
matter of fact rather than subtext and interpretation, the students of AP US History may
know a lot about history, but very little about doing history. While listening to good

stories about history is a better approach than listening to boring lectures or ﬁlling out

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worksheets, it is not what Parker (2003) has in mind when he calls for participatory,
discussion—based, critical, and engaged pedagogy to foster the democratic citizenry.

The “best of the best,” then, are getting a better version of history when they take
AP US History, one with better “facts.” They are getting a narrative version, one in which
the previously disconnected knowledge of history is contextualized and made vibrant.
They will know more history, and know it better, than the students who never had a
chance to take AP US History. They may be engaged in it. They may enjoy it. But for all
this, they are still getting history as a practice of listening, of taking what happened,
remembering it, and using it to do well on exams. They may be analyzing and
synthesizing, examining history, taking it apart, bringing it together. But they are getting
little practice at questioning the history itself, where it comes from, whom or what it
serves. As a teacher and a researcher, I am torn by what I have seen in Mr. Elliot’s class.
For to see history taught well, in the traditional lecture style, is a ﬁne thing, and hard
enough to ﬁnd. But I also wonder, as I watch, if this is enough, or if these students are
being educated in a way that will inspire them to ask questions, or one which will inspire

them to believe any good stories which come along.

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CHAPTER 6: A GOOD SCHOOL

A Lesson on American Social Philosophy

First hour, Mr. Elliot’s class. The topic today is social ideas from late 19th century
America. In particular, on this day, Mr. Elliot is teaching the “Rags to Riches” ideal, the
notion that any poor person in America, a person in “rags,” can make their way to the top,
to “riches.”

Half an hour into class, Mr. Elliot stops a movie he has been showing and begins
a lecture. As he goes to the board, the notebook shufﬂe begins. Mr. Elliot asks a question
— do you get ahead by hard work or by advantage? Helen says it’s “part hard work and
part where you start out.” In response, Mr. Elliot asks the class if it would be alright to
take away Helen’ college spot and give it to a poor kid with a GPA half hers. The room
wakes up, and hands begin to rise. He asks about the role of natural talent, of hard work
vs. genetics, something they should be thinking'about “especially being AP students.” Is
it your hard work, or is it “the socio-cultural environment” that gets you ahead, he asks?

He gives an example, telling them that, if they grew up in Capital City instead of
F airlawn, they might just be average. Andy takes issue with this and speaks out, saying
that he knows people in Capital City who’ve done well. Mr. Elliot responds that Capital
City is just a stereotype, an example, that the point is one of background.

Andy is clearly becoming more agitated. “I think that’s bull,” he replies. “I think
that we’re just driven more. It’s not genetics.” He is completely against the idea that poor

people can’t get ahead. “The problem is that they don’t want it bad enough.”

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Around the room, pe0ple are sitting up, paying attention. Occasionally, hands go
up. Mr. Elliot says a bit about the socio-cultural view. To illustrate this view, he asks
Connor, “no offense,” if he will ever be a good basketball player.

“Maybe someday,” Connor says, false dreamyness in his voice.

Mr. Elliot makes his point anyway, that natural talent plays some part. Then he
links Andy’s ideas to the Horatio Alger myth, the belief that anyone can make it if they
try hard enough, and to Andrew Camegie’s idea that poor people are poor for a reason.
Then he goes back to NBA basketball. Mr. Elliot, who is about 5’10” and more of an
intellectual than an athlete, asks “Will I ever be a star?”

Andy won’t give up. “If you practice every day, every day,” he says.

Mr. Elliot disagrees, and asks what part talent plays. He goes back to the “Rags to
Riches” myth and its usefulness in keeping the poor down, allowing the rich to blame the
poor for their poverty. If the only thing that separates rich from poor is hard work, “who’s
fault is it, then, for being poor?”

“Poor people’s fault,” Bill says, analyzing the answer rather than agreeing.

Mr. Elliot throws this idea at them. If you agree that hard work is the only
difference, you are also saying that being poor is poor people’s fault. I think a lot of you
agree with Andy, Mr. Elliot tells them, more of you that you are willing to admit.

“I agree with Andy,” Allie willingly admits. She has been, as others talked, turned
around, animatedly expressing her views to Mary.

Andy gives a little, but mainly holds his ground. “I think there are certain
situations where they have the ability to improve themselves,” he says. He admits that

there are some places, other countries, where there’s nothing people can do to work

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toward things that are “better”. Environment does play a part, though not the deciding
part. “But I feel like they have the opportunity to do the same thing if they really want it
and they apply themselves.”

Emma, hand up, is called on. She begins to say that, for the average person, such
a climb is difﬁcult. Mr. Elliot seizes on the idea of the “average person.” Think of famous
people who’ve worked their way up, he says. Why do we know their names? Think about
that. How many are their, really? He says he’s not talking about people who worked their
way up from poverty to near-poverty. Besides, such success may reﬂect a change in
government, in programs, in society, or in the economy. He wants to know about people
who’ve made it to the top. Then, he asks, “Why do we make that rule, that everyone is
capable of it, when we have so few examples of that?”

He goes back to Emma, apologizing for cutting her off. She makes her point. The
average person, she believes, can go up. But the “super-gloriﬁed American dream” is'
“not possible by ethic alone,” by which she means ‘Wvork ethic.”

Matt is called on next. He believes that it is a matter of genetic capability, and he
actually does use the word “genetic.” Some people can’t achieve even if they do apply
themselves, others achieve without really applying themselves.

Mr. Elliot says that, in this district, parents believe that every kid can get an A.
But, he notes, “some people are better at certain types of academic pursuits.” He notes
that they, the AP students, could get “one-hundred plus” percent in a regular history
class, that they’ve taken on the “challenge” of AP history, working “outside their comfort
zones.” They are in the top 10%. What happens, he asks them, if you take the top 10%

and stop giving them tests for the middle? Start giving them work that is more

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“interpretive”. Gives an example of a “middle” tests: “George Washington was, a) a
farmer, b) a soldier, c) a clown,” in a mocking voice.

He then goes back to the NBA, and uses this as a transition to ask, again, if
parents really believe that all students are capable of getting A’s. We’re OK with
differences in physical talent, he notes, but not mental talent. Are their people who are
“naturally superior” at certain things, he asks? He notes that he shies away from
“genetically superior” because it seems to close to Nazi eugenics, a statement that draws
chuckles ﬁom the class (Fieldnotes, 3-6-07).

High-Achieving Students in a Good School
“When, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a ﬁction of the past -— as it is
to some extent a ﬁction of the present - the poets of the world will be inspired by
American mythology. ”
Henry David Thoreau
Much could be made of this slice of classroom life. This one discussion of the
“rags to riches” ideal is a commentary on American society on multiple levels, and not
merely as a history lesson on them. Andy favors hard work as an explanation for getting
ahead, and Carrie agrees. Emma mentions the “average” person, Matt cites “genetics.”
Mr. Elliot tries to show his students that hard work does not count as much as class
advantage, or perhaps that they believe that hard work is most important and that this
reﬂects their narrow experiences. But in doing so, he himself brings in ideas of talent and
genetics, and the whole thing got mixed up in a swirl of hard work, social background,
and natural talent. There is a feel of irony about it, the way that Mr. Elliot uses the “rags

to riches” idea in American history to probe this same feeling in his students, bringing it

into the open and challenging it, then takes an opportunity to make a point about natural

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talent and the elite nature of his AP US History students that sounds like another
variation on the “rags to riches” idea, one emphasizing intelligence instead hard work. By
the end of the discussion, the question of what makes for “getting ahead” remains
unanswered, and the mix of talent, environment, and hard work that swirled through the
discussion has no chance to settle out. Mr. Elliot had to cut the discussion off before it
was really over in order to get back to the business of the class, which is, after all,
learning history and preparing for the AP test.

'This chapter follows, after a fashion, the multi-layered, at times confusing,
progress of that particular classroom discussion. Having looked at hi gh-achievers as good
students in school, and as students in a good, and advanced, class, I now step back
another level to view them as students in a “good” school, itself immersed in larger social
and cultural contexts. F airlawn High is a middle-class, suburban hi gh-school with
excellent facilities and an excellent reputation, a “high-achieving” school (as in Carlone,
2003). F airlawn’s identity as such has a lot to add to my take on the culture of hi gh-
achievement. Again, the point is to view the “best of the best,” the high-achieving
students, the good teacher, and, now, the good school. Yet this chapter is about more than
the school, just as Mr. Elliot’s rags-to-riches discussion was about more than his own
students. Fairlawn High School is an American school, immersed in American ideas and
cultural values, and its very deﬁnition as a “good” school shows inﬂuences wide and
varied. The culture of hi gh—achievement is studied here in one classroom, but it neither
limited to, or formed solely within, that classroom, or even the school. Thus I look here

for high-achiever culture, for the lives and views of the students, but I also look more

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broadly, from the school and society on down, in an attempt to get at a third vital aspect
of high-achiever culture, that is, its larger context.
The Fairlawn Bubble

Probably the mix of ideas in the above classroom scene would not have settled out
if the discussion had gone on for the entire class period, or even for the rest of the week.
This class may show many things, but it can certainly be read as and example of
meritocratic ideology manifesting itself in the classroom, and not only on the part of
some of the students. The emphasis on getting ahead by “merit,” in the form of hard work
on the one hand, or natural talent or intelligence, on the other, runs through the entire
discussion. It is hardly startling to see such ideas appearing in a class discussion at an
American high school. Indeed, the role and presence of meritocratic accounts and
ideology has been documented and discussed in a host of works on American schools and
school culture (e. g., Apple, 1982; Applebaum,’2005; Bowles and Gintis, 1976;
'Brantlinger, 1993; Nicholson, 2003; Oakes, 1986; Oakes, Wells, Jones, and Datnow,
1997; Parker, 2003; Yu, 2004). Furthermore, Fairlawn is not just any American High
School. As Dr. Riveli put it:

I recognize that I’m living here, Steve, in the bubble. And you have to

recognize that as you’re doing your research. You’re not in just the typical

American high-school, if you haven’t ﬁgured that one out yet. (Interview

with Dr. Riveli, 3-7-07)
In a way, one might have guessed that these very ideas would manifest themselves at this
particular school since, if meritocratic ideals were going to show up anywhere, then
Fairlawn High School, a suburban school serving mostly white, college-bound children

of professionals, would be the place. These students, in this school, represent the

“mainstream” or “middle class” (Heath, 1983) that researchers write about when they

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write about tracking, hidden curricula, model student images, academic culture, and
cultural reproduction (e. g., Eckhart, 1989; Hemmings, 1996; Lareau, 2003; Mehan,
Hubbard, Lintz, and Villanueva, 1994; Vallance, 1983). As Dr. Riveli told me when I
brought up ideas of social class and reproduction in one of our conversations, “We teach
to this strong, professional, upper-middle class community. We talk their language”
(Interview, 3-7-07).

When Dr. Riveli refers to “the bubble,” he is touching upon a vein of feeling in
his school, one which says that F airlawn is exceptional, an example of what happens
when education works as it should work, with a good school, hardworking students, and
parental support. Indeed, the “Fairlawn Bubble” is a familiar phrase among students and
faculty. The students certainly seem, at times, to be living in a bubble, as the “rags to
riches” discussion might demonstrate, and as the following exchange in history class
certainly shows:

[Mr. Elliot asks] “What do you guys think is a good salary? What does a
teacher make?”

Matt responds. “Seventy?” [thousand dollars per year]

“I like how you think, Matt,” says Mr. Elliot. Then Mr. Elliot reveals that

a teacher starts at thirty [thousand dollars per year]. Matt looks genuinely

shocked. The class rumbles. (Fieldnotes, 2-23-07)

In ﬁlling in their view of the Fairlawn environment, or bubble, Students
mentioned or alluded to the hi gh-expectations that “everyone” has at Fairlawn, and

‘6

several also noted that, at Fairlawn, and unlike other places, it’s cool to be smart.”
Emma started our interview by telling me “it’s an interesting school.” When I asked her

what she meant, she explained:

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EMMA: There’s just. . .there’s really high expectations, and

everyone. . .has been raised to. . .well I don’t wanna say everyone, but a lot
of people have been raised, you know, like, upper middle class. . .everyone
wants to go to college. . .everyone needs all the credits and all the AP
classes to get where they wanna go.

SW: Do you feel like you were raised like that too?

EMMA: Yeah. I mean, but, it’s always been kinda natural. (Interview with
Emma Armistead, 2-2-07)

References to upbringing, class, and expectations in this comment point out an
important part of the F airlawn community, and the Fairlawn Bubble. Fairlawn is not just
a good school, but it is also a good school in a good place. i

I think, a, a lot of people here take AP’s. It’s not, um, it’s not like the

select few, because we’re like, middle of suburbia with like (chuckle) two

working parents. Like, it’s kind of the scene. . .the stereotypical, what’d

you’d expect. (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07)

Dr. Riveli praised the students of F airlawn and noted that “students are ﬁrst and foremost
a product of the home.” The “formula that works” at Fairlawn starts with parents and
continues onto the good school. The parents “nurture, they support their child, they have
high expectations” and “then, they [students] get put into the hands of some very able
teachers” (Interview with Dr. Riveli, 1-8-07).

The strong, middle-class corrununity is seen as a part of what makes F airlawn
High School work, and what makes students into high-achievers. The idea of a good
community, or a good background and home life, also mixes with notions of intelligence.
When I asked Dr. Riveli, the principal of F airlawn, what distinguishes AP students, what
sets them apart, he said there were “two things.” He described these as: “native ability,

and, and seeing yourself there. . .and the latter comes from your environment. Of the ﬁrst,

he claimed:

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They’re bright. . .They’ve mastered the fundamentals. . .To me, one of the

obvious answers to you question is that they have the intelligence to

pursue these disciplines at the most challenging levels that the high school

can offer, and so they do.

But intelligence is not the only factor:

The second factor is motivation, encouragement, nurturing from the

home. . .Sometimes, for a bright kid but not brilliant, that piece is the difference

for whether or not they end up in AP.

Students with the right sort of home environment will have:

High standards at home, parents who are successful, who are

professionals, who have advanced degrees. And they simply see

themselves there. (Interview with Dr. Riveli, 3-7-07)

Mr. Schlieffen, of AP Government, expressed views similar to those held by Dr.
Riveli, citing a mix of talent and background:

...the biological, the genetics of intelligence is there. But I think the

culture of high achievement, I think it really starts at home. It’s got to,

that’s what I see. (Interview with Mr. Schlieffen, 1-27-07)

Some additional words on background and intelligence ﬂesh out these views a bit
further. It is important to note that, when “background” is spoken of at Fairlawn High
School, there is a mix of cultural explanations and a explanations that seem to shade into
the moral, since background is equated with the notion of “encouragement.” This is not
the cultural matching sort of explanation put forth by scholars for success in school (e. g.
Lareau, 2003; Mehan et. al., 1994), but something that emphasizes responsibility and
worthiness - students who do well are those who are pushed, who believe they can do
well, who try, and parents are where all this begins. As for intelligence, it seems to be
related, in the words of both students and faculty, to the idea of “getting it” or learning

quickly, on one hand, and on one’s ability to carry on a good conversation, on the other.

Mr. Schlieffen’s views show this handily:

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...their natural IQ, just based on what you think would be their IQ. . .their

eloquence in speaking, and their efﬁciency in picking up new material, I

guess, you know, that’s probably what most people would agree on as

intelligence. That, they’re just working at a faster pace. (Interview with

Mr. Schlieffen, 1-27-07)

The moral tone of viewing “background” in this way is interesting. So, too, is the idea
that intelligence can be measured easily through seeing how quick someone is on the
uptake and how well-spoken they are. Both are consistent with explanations supporting
tracking, and connecting to a meritocratic ideology, as found in Oakes et. al. (1997), but
the connections between a certain set of values, certain shared experiences and ways of
speaking, and intelligence as perceived at Fairlawn contribute to the overall direction of
this work in identifying hi gh-achiever culture as something different from mainstream
perceptions.

Mr. Elliot seems to fall somewhere near, but not in the same spot, as his principal
and his colleague. When asked about views that attribute hi gh-achievement to issues of
“background,” he notes that they are common at F airlawn High School. When I asked
him how he felt about it, he replied, “I have mixed feelings about that. You know, I think
motivation is a controversial topic, that, um, is loaded with racial class bias.” Expanding
upon this, he claimed that people believe that “the reason that they’re [high-achievers]
working harder is because these classes [the middle classes] have a greater educational
ethic.” He calls this “the apologist’s defense” and muses, “You here that a lot here, I
think” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-7—07).

Yet, while Mr. Elliot claims to recognize race and class bias in explanations of

background, his view on intelligence, or natural talent, seems rather close to that of Dr.

Riveli and Mr. Schlieffen. When Mr. Elliot is structuring his AP History class, you may

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remember, he is building it for students who are more talented than the rest, who are
ready for, and able to do, the advanced work he will demand of them. Indeed, this is true
for all the AP classes — Mr. Schlieffen referred to his AP Government students as the
ones at the top end of the “normal distribution” (Interview with Mr. Schlieffen, 1-27-07).
They are, as Mr. Elliot mentioned, the “top 10%” and not “the middle.” While he
acknowledges that working hard and playing the school game can get his students into
AP US History, once they get there, he believes, their natural talents begin to show
through. Or not. Speaking of his students, the “top 10%,” he says:

...when you’re in the 10%, that means that there is a bottom of that

percentile and there’s a top of that percentile, and what happens, then, is

that I think that as you skim off that 10%, and that’s the group that you’re

working with, ability starts to make a big difference, and work ethic

becomes less of a factor. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)

As Mr. Elliot, and the rags—to-riches discussion, reminds us, intelligence and a
good background is not all that is required for achievement. Hard work, too, is a
necessity. Indeed, students’ accounts of achievement, as will be seen below, seemed to
focus on hard work as the main feature in school success. This valuation of hard work
also came out in one of my interviews with Dr. Riveli. When I brought up the centrality
of hard work in students’ accounts, and proposed that this idea might have some
unfavorable implications — much like Mr. Elliot’s point in the “rags to riches” discussion
- Dr. Riveli responded in this way:

I don’t know if I’m going to surprise you, shock you, or whatever. (pause)

Hard work is the central feature, in my view... I don’t know any formula

for success that doesn’t include hard work. . .I’m rather proud of the fact

that you would report that our kids see hard work as an important

ingredient in success. As opposed to, ah, you know, my dad’s rich and I
expect to be rich. (Interview with Dr. Riveli, 3-7-07)

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Adding to this mix of community, values, background, hard work, and
intelligence is the school itself, and the sort of education that Fairlawn aims to provide. It
is rather telling that Dr. Riveli, in describing the sort of education one gets at Fairlawn,
compared Fairlawn to Riverton Central Catholic High School, a private, all-boys prep
school in the state’s largest city. Riverton Central Catholic is, as it happens, the very high
school Dr. Riveli attended. Mr. Elliot, also a Riverton Central Catholic grad, made this
same comparison, but made it even more strongly, noting that people sometimes call
Fairlawn High School “F airlawn Central Catholic,” as a bit of a joke. This nickname
seems to show the attitude that, at Fairlawn, students are getting an education that, in
terms of quality and of mission, comes close to a private school. As Mr. Elliot put it, “As
a public school, we offer the best private school education a public school can offer, is
kind of like the school motto, unofﬁcially” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-7-07).

Mr. Brown, in describing his enthusiasm for the AP program and what they are
accomplishing, also expressed his view that F airlawn is a model school, and that the AP
history program at F airlawn can be seen as the pinnacle, the best at the good school:

I always tell people I wish they could. . .look at our AP classes, and, I think

most people get a kick out of watching them. And I think they’re an

example of what can happen, and 1. really do. . .I feel a lot of optimism

working in this department and teaching that class, because, part of you,

when you go into teaching, is you kinda picture yourself in this teacher-as-

hero movie, where you’re in the inner city, and you’re raising all these

poor little black kids up to go to college and believe in themselves. And,

and often I’ve thought about, what am I doing, what am I really doing at

Fairlawn, like. . .this is basically just like any other job. You know, I go, I

work hard, am I really doing what I set out to be a teacher for? Am

I. . .making an impact? Am I helping people become better and so forth?

But then at the same time I think there’s, and this has kind of always been

my justiﬁcation for it, is that I think there is something to be said for

showing, for showing the best of something that can be done. And I think,

you know, and that’s what I put a lot of pride in, is that like at this high
school should show the best that it can be done, and provide a model for

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all the other schools, and say like, listen, if you wanna do it, do it our way.

So, I guess those are kinda my closing thoughts on our whole AP US

History program that we have. (Interview with Mr. Brown, 1-27-07)

Putting all of this together, we have a good school, in a good community,
providing a good education, and a college-prep education too. Students and faculty cite
intelligence and hard work and game-playing as pieces of success. The already
emphasized idea of the “advanced” class ﬁts into all this as well, related to the notion of
individual rights in the sense that it is the right of the individual to rise as high as they are
able is cherished, and the notion of status, deﬁned by attendance at one’s chosen college
and an eventual professional career, is an important goal. the high-achievers in Mr.
Elliot’s AP US History class, as students at Fairlawn, thus hold a special place, not just as
good students, but as good students at a good school. As high-achievers, they are talented
and intelligent, they work hard, and they have the family support, the proper background,
that positions them to do well.

It must be mentioned, however, that amid all this talk of meritocracy, its features,
and its apparent presence at F airlawn High School, that the folks at Fairlawn are not
unidimensional ideologues. Certainly, they work at a school, and live within a
community, which can be connected with values associated with the meritocracy, the
values of the middle-class. Yet, as Mr. Brown’s comment reﬂects, with its questions of
work and purpose teaching at such as school, and as the idea of “the bubble” itself shows,
- there is an awareness of Fairlawn as a certain sort of place, and it is a conﬂicted
awareness. Mr. Elliot himself expressed this awareness on several occasions, even
relating to the “rags to riches” discussion. “It was very interesting to hear Andy argue so

strongly about work ethic being the only thing that mattered. And I think that that’s very

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much a cultural value in this community” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07). From his
academic training, Mr. Elliot is familiar with theories of inequality and reproduction, and
he takes it upon himself to attempt to provide other points of view to his students, and to
question their beliefs. “What am I doing to challenge this social reproduction that’s going
on?” he asked. Going on, he said:

Cause I’m a man in the machine, I’m part of the machine, and it’s like, I

don’t know. It’s interesting because, as much as I can complain about

those social structures, I guess, I see my role as, within, within this

context, within teaching some of the most advanced students that we

have, ah, to try to make them more cognizant, to try to make them more

aware and more critical. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-7-07)

Mr. Elliot’s own conﬂicted views led him, on the occasion that he described
F airlawn as “Fairlawn Central Catholic,” to bring out some of the negative aspects of the
college prep environment as it plays out at Fairlawn:

Now, how do you bring that into a public school context? Well, one way

you do that is by offering college preparatory classes, and making sure

that those students are protected enough so that the quality of their

education is on part with any other private school. So that means that you

have to exclude, or limit access to that environment, for students who

might take away from that environment, either because of lower ability,

they don’t share the same work ethic, they don’t have the same cultural or

family background, or racial background, perhaps even too. Although I

don’t think that that’s deliberate. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-7-07)
The “Hardworking” Students

The questions that drive this study, of course, are focused on the students of AP
US History, and their particular culture as high-achievers, and so this lofty discussion of
class, society, and school must also come back down to how they see and experience this
setting. Already, it has been shown how the students of AP US History, as students in an

“advanced” history class, are positioned as students who have proven themselves, who

are “trustworthy” in terms of their academic performance, behaviors, and attitudes toward

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school and achievement. They are also, as hi gh-achievers, “competent” students, a ﬁne
line to walk. Here, I explore how meritocratic ideas, in particular those of “hard work”
and “intelligence,” play out in students’ views of high-achievement, what it takes to do
well, and what it means to do well, in school and in AP US History.

When the “good” students of AP US History told me what high-achievement
meant to them, much of what I heard was similar to the deﬁnition of high-achieving that I
had gleaned from educational research (Eckhart, 1989; Gayles, 2005; Pope, 2001; Rizza,
1999; Wineburg, 1991). Some of them spoke of high-achievers as doing well in class,
participating in extra-curricular activities, and taking “challenging” classes, including the
college courses available to some Fairlawn students. High-achievement was, at times,
cast in a negative light, a matter of getting good grades and ﬁlling-up transcripts to the
detriment of interest and learning, but this part was not surprising, seeing as how this
interpretation, too, had made an appearance in the literature (Pope, 2001).

What was surprising, or at least unanticipated, was what else they said about high-
achieving students, and what else I heard as I listened to them talk about their
experiences. At times, it seemed, the students of AP US History were not providing me
with a “deﬁnition” of a hi gh-achieving student as much as they were telling me about the
ways in which someone becomes a high-achieving student. The strongest theme to
emerge from student deﬁnitions of high-achievement was not an attribute, such as
intelligence, but more of a disposition, namely, the willingness to work hard. When I
asked what makes someone high-achieving, I got answers like:

If they work hard. Like they push themselves to get that A or A+. That

they, and that they’re really into the subject that they’re doing, that they’re

willing to go that extra mile to do something. (Interview with Sara
Pleasanton, 1-26-07)

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I think it’s very, it’s very relative. It depends on the student. Like, each
student has. . .different standards and like different abilities and stuff, and
as long as you’re working hard, you’re high achieving. (Interview with
Helen Wei, 3—6-07)

One might think that some notion of intelligence would play a part in high-achievement,
and it did make its way into the conversations, though always in some connection with
hard work, drive, and the like.

...you have to have that hard work. . .you have the basic smarts and then

hard work just gets you to that next level. And I think that there are kids

that aren’t taking advanced classes that have the smarts to be, they just

don’t want to work as hard, and they just. . .are OK with being, OK I’m

just gonna take the normal classes, we’re at Fairlawn High School, it’s a

pretty good school, and that will get me where I wanna go in life.

(Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)
And intelligence did not always play a part. In one student’s words, hi gh-achievers are,
“Not necessarily smarter, just more motivated” (Interview with Laura Pender, 2-5-07).
Another explained high achievement in a way that clearly separated achievement from
intelligence, but not from hard work:

ERIC: I know some very, very smart people,‘who don’t work very hard at

all. And, so because of it, don’t really do that well in school. And I know

that if they applied themselves, they would probably be getting a four-

point. Um, and I also know some very, very, very not so smart people,

who I have difﬁculty carrying on a conversation with, who do very well,

who get A’s an A-‘s, B’s.

SW: How do they do it?

ERIC: Lots and lots of hard work. I mean, like, studying three hours for
each test, asking a lot of questions. (Interview with Eric Morris, 3-6-07)

As it happened, several students seemed to know people who were smart but unwilling to
put in the work necessary to be high-achievers.

I would say high-achieving is also, you have to have drive. Because, I
know many people who are very intelligent, and they could be in as many

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honors classes as they wanted, as they want to be. But they’re just not
drive, but it. So, like, they don’t like school, but they could, you know,
and so I would say hi gh-achieving, to be driven. (Interview with Allie
Meredith, 3-2-07)

I guess someone that’s, like, not just like good at school, because like

that’s kinda easy to do, but. . .who. . .can learn stuff really well, better than

just, like, doing the assignments, getting it done. . .Someone who’s like

smart, and. . .takes advantage of it. . .I know there’s a lot of. . .smart people

who. . .don’t do their work or anything. So they. . .don’t, like, get good

grades or anything even though they could. (Interview with Margi

Doubleday, 3-7-07)

It should be added that students’ explanations of how one comes to be a high-achiever are
roughly paralleled in their explanations of what makes an AP student. “Hard work” and
“drive” are, once more, frequent explanations, though Reilly Howard, a junior, did feel it
was important to state for the record that not all AP kids were “workaholics.” Several
students did mention intelligence or talent as important to being an AP student, though
one ﬂatly denied this connection. Again, though, hard work seems to be even more
important.

The centrality of hard work in students’ conception of achievement, and the
secondary position of intelligence, touches upon my earlier point about “becoming.” A
smart kid is smart whether they work or not, but a high-achiever is only a high-achiever
as long as they are working hard. Presumably, intelligence is an attribute that sticks
around- at least this would be true given the ﬁxed deﬁnitions of intelligence and talent
that seem to carry some weight at Fairlawn High School — but hard work, by deﬁnition, is
not. One could always just stop working hard. This means that hi gh-achievement
requires, not just personal attributes, but personal commitment:

...if you’re not gonna challenge yourself, you’re not gonna try and take an

AP and you’re. . .getting like a “C” average, then, you know, that’s
deﬁnitely not hi gh-achieving. But. . .part of it would be more like how

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much the student themself is putting in outside of class and how, like, their

personal interest and. . .personal goals for them. Because. . .there’s a lot

people that. . .the end of what they want is to get the A on their transcript.

And, I don’t think that’s high-achieving. That’s, like, doing the bare

minimum... (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07)

If high-achieving is a matter of hard work, it also is a matter of students’ willingness to
continue to work, to achieve, and to push themselves without stopping. The idea of hi gh-
achievement thus appears to be carrying around a hefty load of irony, since it is
something which is never quite achieved.

This idea suggests that part of hi gh-achievement is having to keep moving, all the
time. As it happens, some of these students do appear to be pretty high-speed. Connor
Imboden, a senior, has a 3.945, and is taking AP US History, AP statistics, and AP
English. He is also taking the AP exams for government, comparative politics, and
physics (B) on his own. Connor had been playing the guitar for 12 years, and wants to
study classical guitar in college. He is also in the school jazz band. During a class where
Mr. Elliot was showing part of an educational ﬁlm, I saw a light out of the comer of my
eye, and when I looked over it was Connor, using the movie time to study his notes. The
light was from his cell-phone, which he’d opened and was shining on his desktop
(F ieldnotes, 1-12-07). Laziness, Connor says as he reﬂects back on his early high school
career, is when you only work on things you like in school, and then just get by on the
rest:

I mean, ah, when it came down, it like, I did the classes I was interested

in. . .for the most part, I would just kinda let things fall where they were.

I’d study for the tests I really felt like studying for. If I didn’t wanna study

for it, you know, I would maybe study a little bit. Enough that I could get,
something I was happy with. (Interview with Connor Imboden, 2-13-07)

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This quote is more meaningful when one takes into account that Connor’s lowest grade in
school has been his B+ in Algebra III. The connection between laziness and doing what
one likes was made more strongly as he said more about that time, earlier in his school
career, when he’d taken a lazy approach toward school:

I was a lazy freshman. I was really lazy my ﬁrst two years. . .I mean, I got

good grades, but. . .if I had the motivation I did now. . .I believe I could be

a valedictorian person. You know, but. . .school wasn’t my focus I was

really into, I was in a band, I was really focused on that. So, you know, I

spent a little more time practicing my guitar, writing songs,

etc. . .etc. . .than, you know, the music. . .not the school. (Interview with

Connor Imboden, 2-13-07)

He also characterized this “lazy” time as very enjoyable and rewarding, and claimed that
he “loved” being in the band. I was struck by Ian’s seemingly conﬂicted attitude toward
his time in the band and his approach to school at that time.

Laura Pender, a junior, has a 3.9, is taking one AP class, and is in the orchestra,
the Spanish Club and the French Club and the Key Club. She plays the piano and the
violin, for 11 and 7 years respectively. She characterizes herself as having a poor “work
ethic” because she prefers working on school work she enjoys and puts off classes which
she does not care for. Some of her frustration with school also comes out in this
exchange:

LAURA: Well, what it should be, is I should be working more towards

math and chem because it’s my weakness level. But instead it’s more like,

yeah, I’m bad at those, I don’t really want to go do that, so I’m gonna go

do my lit homework and put off chem. And then, so that just kinda digs

me further into the hole, but, I don’t know, I don’t have a very good work

ethic.

SW: I see, and so you should have a better work ethic.

LAURA: It’s ever. . .everything is what I should have done. (Interview
with Laura Pender, 2-5-07)

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Helen Wei, a junior, has a 4.0 GPA. Her schedule, this semester, includes AP US
History, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, British Literature (advanced, for a junior), French
IV, and Orchestra. She has a full plate of extra-curricular activities, including quiz bowl,
science Olympiad, cello and piano lessons, and tennis. While I was observing the study
session for the fall semester AP US History ﬁnal exam, which took place in a school
computer lab, I observe two students, Helen chatting with Bill Newton, another junior.
Bill was teasing Helen because she is using the time that her computer is booting up, no
more than a few minutes, to study for her AP Biology test. As I watch this exchange, Bill
turns to me:

[Bill] tells me that, when they [Bill and Helen] went to the school play,

she was studying during the intermission. “She goes two minutes without

studying and she starts shaking,” he says. “This is 23 chapters of

information!” she cries, clutching a notebook. Bill tells her that he must

break her habit of constant studying. (Fieldnotes, 1-23-07)

And while most people have a positive opinion toward Mr. Elliot’s engaging lectures and
his willing to negotiate on deadlines and such, Helen is not as enamored of these features:

I like Mr. Elliot’s teaching. . .it’s very engaging, but. . .a lot of times, you

know, he’ll fudge deadlines and it’s really loose and free for all, and that’s

ﬁne but, there’s an AP exam that we should take. . .it’s important in that

case to just, be a bit more orderly just to make sure we cover all the

information so that we’re prepared for that exam. (Interview with Helen

Wei, 3-6-07)

Bill himself spent the time after this review session complaining superlatively
about his AP Spanish class, which he perceived as too easy. “We have parties, all day
long.” When I asked him what this meant, he added:

I know we have done a lot of speaking in class, for example. And, uh, like,

for example, our teacher is the only native speaker in the department cause

she’s from Mexico, and so we get a lot of actually listening practice just
listening to her but we haven’t even gone over any grammar structures any

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new vocabulary we’ve had like one vocabulary quiz up until this point.
(Interview with Bill Newton, 2-1-07)

Helen and Bill are on the quiz bowl team with Emma Armistead, another junior, a friend
of theirs although she sits with a different group in AP US History. Emma is also a pretty
busy kid, taking honors math and science classes, taking viola lessons and playing in the
orchestra, and showing her horse competitively. She can be found most mornings before
school in the cafeteria, studying, and when Mr. Elliot gives tests or quizzes she will be
one of the ﬁrst people in the room when he unlocks it. She has a 3.8. She gets all this
done by staying constantly busy:

Um. . .I really do think it just comes down, as far as getting stuff done, to

managing your time. You know, I have an hour this morning, you know,

usually, and I get stuff done then. I. . .you know, like, I take advantage of

every minute that I have. And, as long as you are always ﬁlling your blank

time with stuff, you know, you’ll get it done. (Interview with Emma

Armistead, 2-2-07) .
Emma also told me about a ﬁiend of hers who has free time, an account that implied the
negative aspects of such a thing:

I have a friend this year, um, this semester she has, um, studio art and

photo I, and she’s doing absolutely nothing in her spare time. I mean,

not. . .she has tons of spare time. You know, she has, she has basically

throw-away classes. You know. She can do whatever she wants, you

know, and she’s not conﬁned to anything. Which would be nice, in a

sense, but... (Interview with Emma Armistead, 2-2-07)
Indeed, the AP US History students who spoke of free-time and laziness, a quarter of the
ones I interviewed, spoke of them together. Several students mentioned that they liked to
“relax,” to take time to hang outwith friends or pursue hobbies, but relaxing, or taking

time off, was in each given a negative connotation, connected with “laziness”. The

connection between free time and the things one wishes to do, and between free time and

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laziness, seems to imply that students feel that their own chosen activities carry less value
than those assigned to them by their teachers, an interesting possibility.

The prevalence of hard work in AP US History students’ deﬁnition of hi gh-
achievement provides a frame for responses such as these and for the observations,
answers, and themes laid out above. One gets a feeling of constant activity from such
accounts, a sense that hi gh-achievers, in Laura Pender’s words, are “never done”
(Interview with Laura Pender, 2-5-07). This theme continued into students attitudes
toward achievement in relation to themselves. When asked to give a deﬁnition for a
“hi gh-achieving student,” Thomas, a junior with a 3.8 who is taking multiple AP classes
and whom Mr. Elliot calls “an extremely impressive kid,” spoke in a way that seems to
recognize something of the unachievable nature of hi gh-achievement:

I think every, for most people a high-achieving student is better than what

they’re doing... Like, I mean, I know, I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’m

a very hi gh-achieving student, I’m in all of these AP classes and getting

really good grades, but then again you see, other people who are doing this

and are balancing a job and NHS and a ton of other stuff and are like

amazing at a certain instrument or something and, that’s, I guess that’s

what I imagine as hi gh-achieving, when you can just take all these aspects

and balance them all together and you know you’re not sitting there,

you’re not stressed out about everything. (Interview with Thomas Ames 2-

13-07)

The idea of hi gh-achievement as an unapproachable ideal is quite interesting, and
becomes even more so in light of the way the students of AP US History talked about
themselves as high-achievers. Remember, all of these students ﬁt the deﬁnition of hi gh-
achievement that I started with, in that they have good grades, they participate in
extracurricular activities, and they are all taking at least one honors or AP class. That

being said, many of the students of Mr. Elliot’s AP US History class do not consider

themselves to be high-achievers.

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The question of their own hi gh—achievement, when it came up in interviews, was
always something like “do you consider yourself to be a hi gh-achieving student?” or “are
you a hi gh-achieving student.” Only one student gave a straight out “yes,” but he

qualiﬁed his answer:

Yes. But I don’t like the self-promotion, like ‘I’m the best I’m smarter
than you.’ I don’t go around like promoting myself like that. I like to have
this feeling that, to myself I’m a smart guy, and I know a lot of stuff. . .and
I do well in school, but I don’t go around like saying ‘oh, you’re really
stupid, you’re not taking this class and this class, and try and be a little
humble I guess. (Interview with Jim Schurz, 1-24-07)

Several other students of AP US History who talked about their status as hi gh-achievers
gave answers that fell, not into a “yes” or “no” category, but rather more into a “sort of”
category:

Um, I guess so (chuckle) I don’t know. I know they’re, they’re, especially
in this school there are a lot of people who, you know, are involved in
everything and still, you know, take like every AP class and, so, I don’t
really like to compare myself to everyone else, but, yeah. (Interview with
Janice Warren, 3-5-07)

I’d like, I’d like to think of myself as one. But I wouldn’t go so far as to
say that. . .F or me, things don’t always come easily. . .I ﬁnd that I really do
have to put in a lot of time and effort for some things. . .but I’m willing to
do so. So. . .I’d like to think of myself as one, yes. (Interview with Pete
Reynolds, 2-27-07)

Many AP US History students, almost half of those I interviewed, gave answers that
indicated that they did not, in fact, consider themselves to be hi gh-achievers

Ah. . .not really (laugh)...I mean, I, ah, I like to challenge myself. . .I don’t
know. . .I guess, yeah, I don’t. . .I like to be challenged intellectually and
emotionally, but, I don’t know. . .It’s like, my parents want me to be. . .the
ultimate like hi gh-achieving student, but, it’s not really, like, what I’m
into. . .(Interview with Candice Andueza, 3-1-07)

I push myself as far as I want to, and not really past that. So, I mean, if I

push myself past that I guess I would consider myself high achieving.
(Interview with Cathy Kilpatrick, 3-2-07)

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At times, I found these denials a little hard to believe, and even slightly
humorous. Helen Wei, one of the students already mentioned above, gave one such
answer. It should be re-emphasized that, aside from her three AP classes, she is
participating in quiz bowl, science Olympiad, the school service group, and the tennis
team. She takes private cello and tennis lessons. Also, she speaks three languages, two
ﬂuently. When I asked her if considered herself to be a high achieving student, the
following exchange occurred:

SW: Ok. Um, do you consider yourself to be a high-achieving student?

HELEN: Somewhat (chuckle).

SW: Somewhat. But not totally.

HELEN: No.

SW: Why not?

HELEN: Well, I guess I could be doing better. Um, I guess I could be

taking, well, yeah, I guess I could be taking harder classes or something, I

don’t really feel like I have, have to apply myself that hard yet, so I guess I

could achieve higher, so I’m not hi gh-achieving yet.

SW: Ok, um, what’s your GPA?

HELEN: Four-point.

SW: (laugh) OK. So, you’ve never gotten anything but an “A”?

HELEN: No.

(Interview with Helen Wei, 3-6-07)

To a great extent, then, these students do not seem to believe that they are hi gh-

achievers, at least not totally, and Thomas’ notion of the unapproachability of high-

achievement seems to represent a real possibility. The idea that high-achievement is a

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matter of becoming, of always moving, is reinforced when hi gh-achievers deny that they
are hi gh-achievers. Achievement becomes and end which lies beyond, always just ahead,
and students take on an asymptotic relationship to it, always approaching it but never
quite getting there. As with hard work, hi gh-achievement provides demands that can be
addressed but not satisﬁed.

Of course, these “good” students’ doubtful statements about their own high-
achievement invite multiple readings. The fact that the hi gh-achievers of AP US History
won’t come out and tell an interviewer that they are hi gh-achievers may simply indicate
modesty, or at least a desire to appear humble to outsiders. Several responses to this
reading are possible. First, when denials of high-achievement are seen in relation to the
centrality of hard work, they take on a meaning that suggests that more than modesty is at
work. This does not entirely rule out the possibility of modesty or reluctance in student
accounts, and I do not believe that such things can be ruled out in any case, since it
cannot be known in any deﬁnite way if modesty or reluctance played a role. It can,
however suggest that such modesty, if present, is more than a matter of a response to an
interviewer, and may be seen as a necessary feature of hi gh-achievers’ views. A
prevailing feeling of modesty may mean shyness, or it may mean that students are modest
in a larger sense, which is to say that modesty is a useful attitude when one must
constantly strive to achieve. Therefore, rather than denying the idea that modesty played
a role in these answers, I will propose that other readings of the students’ responses, and
even of modesty, are possible, and that the reading that sets hi gh-achievement up as

“never done” is warranted if not exclusive.

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Further warrant for this “unapproachable” interpretation, and its connection to the
idea of hi gh-achievement as “unﬁnished,” comes from the importance of “challenge” in
students ideas about work, classes, motivation, school, and grades. Challenge is very
much something desired by many of the students of AP US history, something shown in
part by Bill’s complaints about his Spanish class. They spoke of liking challenge, of
taking more AP classes because of feeling “underchallenged”, of seeking the challenge
of AP classes if you can succeed in regular ones, of taking AP US history for the
challenge of it and of liking that class precisely because Mr. Elliot “challenges” them.

Students frequent and angry mentions of “busywork,” a phenomenon I deal with
more extensively elsewhere, also indicate strong feelings about doing work that is useful
and meaningful, which is to say, it seems, work which is challenging. A lack of challenge
in classes was seen as a negative. thing, as can be seen in one student’s explanation for
why she doesn’t like her math class:

Ah, now, well like it’s just really easy this year, so it just, it doesn’t take

me, I feel like it’s a waste of a class. Because, I like have, probably like a

hundred. I have a very high percentage, ‘cause like, it’s very easy concept,

I think. (Interview with Allie Meredith, 3-2-07)

Other students called easy classes a “waste of time” (Interview with Janice Warren, 3-5-
07), or a “joke” (Interview with Rachel Early, 2-28-07). Helen spoke approvingly of the
workload of AP US:

Um, I guess that, I actually kind of like the amount of homework, ‘cause, I

feel that it makes the class like, yeah, really worthwhile to be taking and

not just some like blow off class. (Interview with Helen Wei, 3607)

This seeking of challenge which manifests itself in attitudes toward classes also

extends to larger ideas about life and meaning:

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Well, if something doesn’t challenge you, you’re not really progressing, or

like, making yourself any better. I think a lot of it is, if I didn’t take

anything, like any class that challenged me, I would feel guilty. (Interview

with Cathy Kilpatrick, 3-2-07)

Just as the meaning of a class seems to be tied in to amount of challenge in that class, so,
too, can the meaning of work be deﬁned in this way. Easy work, to the students, just does
not mean as much.

I myself always like to ﬁnd the source of whatever t is or kind of work

through it as opposed to somebody just handing it to me, ‘cause, I don’t

know. And it’s a, it’s a goofy line, but I’ve heard coaches say it, and it’s

kind of rubbed off on me a little bit. That, if it’s really easy, then it doesn’t

mean that much. Um, whereas, if you can work something, and it’s a

challenge for you, and you can explore and uncover it yourself, not to say

that you don’t get help from other people, or they don’t help you get there,

then it’s worth something. (Interview with Pete Reynolds, 2-27-07)

This is an important and valid view to take into account. It must be understood
that the point here is not to criticize challenge-seeking, or working hard, but rather to put
rather to put it into the larger context of achievement, and especially in relation to the
importance of hard work and hi gh-achievers attitudes toward themselves and what these
attitudes might mean for the lives they live and the work they do. Mr. Elliot, for example,
sees his students as willing to work very hard for success, but also sees how this can
handicap them in his class. AP US History demands different study skills than previous
survey courses, yet some students continue to use their old methods, doing more and
more without success. The students believe that “As long as they’re moving, they’re
moving forward. Which isn’t always the case” (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-22-07).

In adopting a critical view, and in approaching these “good” students thought the

lens of their “hardworking” nature, I am going beyond speciﬁc class outcomes. A look at

“good” students as “hardworking” encompasses the possibilities revealed thus far, the

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idea that hi gh-achieving is a matter of “becoming” rather than being, that hard work is
both central to students’ ideas of achievement and also never done, that hi gh-achievement
itself can be deﬁned as something that is elusive and beyond, and that challenge
contributes to this sense that there is always more. When one looks at this as a whole
picture, trying to grasp some idea of what high-achievement might mean, then good
grades, extracurricular activities, and advanced classes, the static deﬁning features of
hi gh—achievement, become ﬂuid, and even transitory - one is only a high-achiever as long
as one continues to get good grades, take advanced classes, and participate in ’
extracurricular activities. In this way, hi gh-achievement overﬂows the banks of the static
deﬁnition that emphasizes characteristics and washes over into to an active deﬁnition of
what they do, at times ﬂowing further into the more personal realm of who they are. The
connection between achievement, activity, and identity is, in and of itself, rather
interesting, in that it suggests something about the relationship between achievement and
the self that might be both ﬁightening and familiar to a graduate student. That being said,
the tidbit of wisdom contained in taking the deﬁnition of high-achievement as active and
changeable reveals an aspect of hi gh-achiever culture that has, in my observations,
interviews, and analyses, emerged as central: that high-achievement is essentially,
perhaps eternally, unﬁnished.
Addendum: Hard Work isn’t Quite Enough Either

Hard work is a central part of the high—achiever student existence, and trumps
intelligence, in the minds of the students, as an explanation for achievement. For all this,
however, intelligence is still piece of the story of high-achievement as it is told at

Fairlawn High School. In this section, I look at some of the ways that intelligence makes

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its appearance at F airlawn, the functions it serves, how it deﬁnes and sorts high-
achievers, and the effects it may have on how they live out their lives. The idea that high-
achievement is something never quite done, introduced in the notion of the trustworthy
students and continued in their portrayal as hardworking and challenge-seeking, does not
quite ﬁt with notions of innate intelligence, but rather than contradicting this unstable
deﬁnition, intelligence instead gives it a particular spin.

The way intelligence is talked about at Fairlawn is quite interesting. As already
mentioned, intelligence is associated with “getting it,” with quick understanding of
school topics, the need to be told things only once. In addition, intelligence is also
equated with conversation, with a certain eloquence, the ability to make points or express
oneself. Intelligence also came up, in speaking with students, in the form of “multiple
intelligences,” by which students meant that people are good at different classes — like
math vs. English — or that they have different interesting, such as academic vs. non-
academic pursuits. The example of being good at school vs. being a good auto mechanic,
for example, came up in three of the conversations in which multiple intelligences made
an appearance.

What “getting it” and multiple intelligences seem to have in common is that both
are ways [of talking about being smart, quick, or talented in terms that attribute
intelligence to something that lies within the person and makes it into a natural,
unchanging element. This idea ﬁts well with the meritocratic ideology as described
above. Where it does not seem to ﬁt, however, is with the above description, based on the
importance of hard work in achievement, of achievement as something that is never done.

If one is smart, or intelligent, or talented, and this is an innate feature, it is not a matter of

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something earned. And yet, it still is, because, as students’ comments about “hard work”
show, there are “smart” kids who don’t work hard, and thus they do not do well.
Intelligence, even when thought of as ﬁxed, is more of a potential than-a thing-in-being,
and this potential can only be unlocked by the sort of hard work and dedication that the
students of AP US History talk about. In this way, the idea that hard work is a primary
factor in being a high-achiever comes to make more sense.

The idea of intelligence or talent as potential also means something else for the
lives of the high-achievers of AP US History. To get at it, I go back to the comment made
by Mr. Elliot, far above, on the part that hard work and talent play in AP US History as a
class full of “top” students. I repeat the quote here for the readers’ convenience:

...when you’re in the 10%, that means that there is a bottom of that

percentile and there’s a top of that percentile, and what happens, then, is

that I think that as you skim off that 10%, and that’s the group that you’re

working with, ability starts to make a big difference, and work ethic

becomes less of a factor. (Interview with Mr. Elliot, 3-6-07)

AP US History is a class where, unlike other history classes, hard work is just not
enough. Those who have been getting by through hard work, but do not have the real
talent or potential needed to do the advanced work of AP US History, will be revealed.
This revelation will come, of course, when they fail to keep up or do well in the class.

Keeping in mind that high-achievement as a matter of hard work never seems to
end, we see here that there may, perhaps, be an end to the hard work. That end, however,
is not success, but failure. Like the military pilots working their way up the “Ziggurat” of
ﬂying achievement in Wolfe’s (1979) The Right Stuﬂ, high-achievers have two choices:

move forward, or step off and be “left behind.” Hard work will either earn a student

advancement — and thus the right to continue working hard — or will ﬁnally show the

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students’ intellectual limitations. In this way, achievement is still a never-ending process,
because the only end is not a satisfactory one. Furthermore, it is rather fear-laden process,
as achievers, if they buy-in to all this, are left waiting to get to that point where their
limitations are ﬁnally revealed.

Such an idea, while grim, is not all that far—fetched. Certainly, my own
experiences in graduate school, and with graduate students, reveal similar ideas at work,
the notion of a never-ending climb up the academic ladder and the fear that the next
hurdle — a particular class, or the practicum, or comps, or even the dissertation - will be
the one that cannot be cleared. Personal experience aside, such ideas are supported by
research ﬁndings that propose an “imposter phenomenon” among hi gh-achieving men
and women (Clance and O’Toole, 1987). As “imposters,” they feel that their work up to
that point has been a matter of luck, a ﬂuke, or some other factor that has allowed them to
become successful without anyone discovering how little they know or how unqualiﬁed
they are. While this phenomenon is spoken of in the realm of psychotherapy, and is
connected with notions like perfectionism, it can also be connected to cultural features

related to hi gh-achievement itself, at least in the interpretation used here.

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CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION

Introduction and Recapitulation

This study has told a story about the culture of hi gh-achievement. The story began
with the hi gh-achieving students as competent and trustworthy, good at school and
reliable, yet subject to the contradictions of competence and the need to maintain their
trustworthiness. Next the story moved to the good class, taught with passion, and at an
advanced level, by Mr. Elliot. The good class, better than previous survey history classes,
formed a context within which hi gh-achievers were portrayed as living within a structure
of hierarchies, of class types, schoolwork, and knowledge; hierarchies which shaped their
views of themselves and of others. The good class, where history is a story well told by
Mr. Elliot, is also put forth as a place where these high—achievers get “good” teaching,
which is interesting, detailed, challenging, though perhaps not so analytical as it is
described or so critical as some educators might wish. The view was then expanded to the
school, where the hi gh-achievers of AP US History are placed within the context of the
meritocratic assumptions of their middle-class, college-prep school environment. Here a
mix of intelligence and talent, hard work and drive, and encouragement and environment
are brought together to position and to explain high-achievers. The students themselves
place great stock in hard work and challenge, view free-time with suspicion, and do not
seem to feel that they are hi gh-achievers. By their position, they are confronted with the
choice of forward motion or failure.

My story is not the only possible one, and this is to be expected. The critical
qualitative frame I have adopted acknowledges the researcher’s role in creating a study,

and the goal here is not to produce a single, authoritative account but rather one that is

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warranted yet unique for the purposes and frames that I bring to it. That being said, a
different person doing this same study would do it differently. So, too, might the subjects
in this study, educators and students, tell this story in a way that does not follow my
account, and my use of a critical stance toward the status quo of high-achievement even
puts this study in a position of questioning some commonly held ideas about high-
achievement, what it is, how it works, and what it means for students. My work is meant
to reveal one way that the culture of hi gh-achievement can be interpreted, a way that may
demand some attention and action even as it does not discount or displace other readings
of the same setting.

An alternative narrative of the culture of hi gh-achievement might follow the lines
of the meritocratic ideology, and indeed this narrative seems to be present and in-use at
F airlawn and in AP US History. The way that hi gh-achievers are talked about and
portrayed includes the ideas of talent, intelligence, background, and dedication, of
readiness and willingness to work at an advanced level. High-achievers are naturally
gifted, they were raised in a way that allows them to take advantage of these gifts, and
they have the driven personalities that will keep them working hard and challenging
themselves. The hi gh-achievers of AP US History, with the possible exception of a few
who do not live up to expectations, are success stories at F airlawn High, students with
potential who live up to it, and they are well—prepared for what the future will bring - the
future meaning, in this case, college. As they move up in the hierarchies of school, work,
and knowledge, this movement is treated as a natural sorting process, where those with

talent and drive, the cream, rise to the top, leaving the less-intelligent and less-invested

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behind along the way. This, in turn, means that the best students will get the best
opportunities, which is, given the natural order of things, only right.

These opportunities include an advanced class with an excellent teacher who, in
an AP class, teaches in a way that goes beyond what is done in standard history classes.
AP US History, in this alternate story, is a higher-level class both in terms of workload
and in terms of the level of intellectual challenge, a class open only to those who can
handle it, and a class which allows those students to work to their potential, rather than
being stuck at an average level. It is an example of the best of what can be done,
dedicated and knowledgeable teachers with smart and hardworking students, all pulling
together to create a difﬁcult and rewarding class experience. Here, the best are pushed to
achieve, and this represents and ideal, what we all wish could happen in schools all the
time.

The AP US History version of the story of hi gh-achievement is not a new one.
The culture of hi gh-achievement, as I have seen it in AP US History at F airlawn High
School, seems to share much with the culture of schooling as it has been written about
time and again. From the level of knowledge up to the class structure and right up to the
meritocratic and middle-class ideals that pervade the class and the school, much of what I
saw seems familiar. Hi gh-achievers are dedicated to succeeding within the structure of
schooling, though their success is attributed to their intelligence, their backgrounds, and
their hard work. As an institutional structure, the school fosters compliance, game-
playing (in the particular sense of the “school game”) competence at school success. The
structure is hierarchical, from the work the students do and the way they do it to the ways

that the regular and advanced history classes work to the way knowledge is treated in AP

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US History itself. All of this is framed in talk of merit, of the best students rising to the
top in the classic liberal manner, freeing their innate abilities to do the best work and
leaving the others, less intelligent or less driven, behind. The corporate division of labor,
where the management does the thinking, the workers do the work, comes out here, yet
the concept of alienated labor does as well, as hi gh-achievers sometimes struggle to ﬁnd
meaning even in their advanced class.

Not only is this story familiar, it is itself much-questioned. Previous work ”on
school culture and school as an institution, on tracking and reproduction and the
connections between school and the market, has done much to open up new possibilities
in questioning the purposes of school and the meaning of success in education. The idea
that it is the most intelligent and talented who emerge at the top of the school system has
been reﬁamed, with success equated with culture, class, and race. The very concept of
intelligence is questioned, as is the working of the meritocratic system, with assertions
that it is not the smartest and best who rise to the top, but those who are positioned to be
good at schooling. On a side note, the pervasive presence of these already-critiqued
attitudes and ideas in AP US History at Fairlawn High is not only interesting for its own
sake, but as a commentary on how work on school culture, the hidden curriculum, and
social reproduction, some of it three— or four-decades old, has affected the structures and
attitudes of schooling in America. Or, rather, how it has not affected them, since there
seems to be little acknowledgement of alternative views of schooling, or hi gh-
achievement, at Fairlawn High School and in AP US History.

Yet my focus has not been so much on how the culture of hi gh-achievement

matches up with previous studies, not least because'the culture of hi gh-achievement has

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not been much studied, but instead has looked, in a Deweyian collateral learning sense,
on what the culture of hi gh-achievement means for the students who live it out. I did this
from a critical perspective, one which viewed the commonly accepted view of hi gh-
achievement with a questioning eye and which inspired me to write a different story of
what I saw. A return to the aspects of high-achievement which I picked out shows the
particular areas of emphasis in my approach, and so I go back to these aspects here,
focusing on my interpretations of them in a collateral learning sense.

Hi gh-achievers’ competence at schooling is seen as a necessary aspect of hi gh-
achievement, and at the same time a threat to the idea that school is about learning. This
leaves hi gh-achievers treading a difﬁcult line between that which must be done and that
which feels wrong, is frowned upon, or will bring down punishment. In this manner,
hi gh-achievement can be seen as unstable, a culture of contradiction. Trustworthiness,
too, is unstable, demonstrated to get into AP US History, yet requiring ongoing proof. It
is not a matter of the disappearance of control and the granting of freedom, but something
more like the removal of overt control in favor of a system of class work and discipline
that operates because the high-achievers themselves buy into it.

Mr. Elliot’s good class, while interesting, lively, and acclaimed as “better” than
survey history class, is itself fraught with meaning and complication for hi gh-achievers.
The high-achievers of AP US History are seen as ready for a higher level of work, for
greater control over their participation in class, for less overt behavioral control, and
indeed the “advanced” class can be seen as matching the “trustworthy” student of earlier.
And, as with trustworthiness, high-achievers must keep moving forward. The various

hierarchies in which they participate are described as relating to frustration, intolerance,

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and separation come out in their views and actions relating to AP US History, other
classes, other students, and themselves. The hierarchical structure of class, work, and
knowledge does leave them at the top, in an advanced class, and yet the “better” nature of
this class seems to reside, not so much in analysis, nor criticality, but in better facts, a
more detailed story, told with passion, to students who are willing to listen and to put in
the time necessary to make sense of the story.

The high-achievers of AP US History are the intelligent, the hardworking, the
encouraged students, but these seem to equate with their ability to pick things up quickly,
and their desire to do what is demanded of them — to some extent, competence and
trustworthiness again. The ways that hi gh-achievers are portrayed show quite a bit about
Fairlawn High School and the community within which it operates, and shape what it is
to be a hi gh-achiever. As with trustworthiness and “advanced” work, hard work, a key
piece of hi gh-achievement, is something which is never done. Intelligence, which is
innate, may someday fail, making hi gh-achievement as unstable and contradictory as it
seems when looking at competence, and perhaps for similar reasons: as competence must
be limited to maintain the idea that school is about learning, so intelligence must be
portrayed as existing in varied amounts in different students, so as to justify different
student outcomes, yet as still being important, so that school is not just about hard work
but also about some sort of intellectual attainment. In the end, hi gh-achievers are left as
unﬁnished as the culture which creates them, at once deserving of their position and
always called upon to do more, not quite high-achievers in the end.

The above at once exempliﬁes my focus and summarizes, very brieﬂy, the ideas

which were brought forth in chapters 4, 5, and 6. For the students, the culture of hi gh-

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achievement makes for a difﬁcult position. The contradictions of hi gh-achievement,
coming out in the maintenance of the discourse of learning and intelligence combined
with and set against the demands of doing well, play out in the culture in which these
students are immersed. They must be smart, dedicated, and willing, but they must also
continue to achieve, playing a role that at times is opposed to intelligence, and a
commitment to higher intellectual pursuits, which has brought them to where they are.
There is a confusion inherent in all this, and some questions about what school and
learning are all about, and hi gh-achievers must struggle with an ever-shifting sense of
identity because they must ﬁt all of these roles, even as the roles conﬂict. They seem to
feel this confusion, knowing that they are hi gh-achievers, gazing from this position at the
workings of school and their fellow students, yet at times looking for something more,
something they have yet to see, or have perhaps glimpsed in AP US History and expect to
see more of in later days.

This is the culture of hi gh-achievement as I have portrayed it, but still, in this ﬁnal
chapter, there is a bit more to do. I intend to ﬁnd links between these ideas, give a
broader and more integrated picture of hi gh-achiever culture, and speculate further on
what the culture of hi gh-achievement means to the students who live within it. I aim to
ﬁnd a few key ﬁarnes which touch upon all that has come before yet capture some
essential bits of the culture of hi gh-achievement, the schooling experience, the collateral
learning present for the students of AP US History. I also will take a step back, working
on the philosophical level to talk about the culture of high-achievement as something
created and sustained by the practice of schooling. Finally,,l will consider some possible

responses and recommendations that could come from this study. While this is a critical,

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qualitative, ethnographic work, and is as such not wedded to the idea of “proving”
anything or of creating speciﬁed, research-based practices, it is also a study based on the
Deweyian notion that educators are bound to consider their whole school environment
and to act accordingly. That being said, it is only ﬁtting that I should take a few moments
to consider how this work might inform the ways educators might think about their role
in the particular institution of schooling.
High-Achievement and the Disciplining of Advanced Students

In re-examining and re-combining the facets of hi gh-achiever culture as I have
studied them, I begin with a return to two of the frames which have informed, though not
always explicitly, much of the way this study has been carried out, interpreted, and
written, namely, the Deweyian account of the features and purposes of education, and the
postmodern ideas of discourse and discipline and the creation and control of the
individual as subject. I use these frames to bring out several themes in hi gh-achievement,
both in the ways that the culture of hi gh—achievement shapes students and what this may
mean for their learning in the collateral sense, or, at least, what sorts of learning are
present in the culture of hi gh-achievement itself. Some of this has come out in previous
chapters, but here I take that which has come before into new directions, delving more
deeply into what the culture of hi gh-achievement may mean for those who live it.

Trustworthy and hardworking, having earned the opportunity to take AP US
History and working to adapt to the new demands of that class, the hi gh-achievers of AP
US History participate in a bargain. They are given a more open structure in class work
and discipline, and are expected to make use of that openness in approved-of ways. The

self-monitoring demanded of hi gh-achievers is echoed in their position as hard—workers,

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as kids who will put in the time and effort necessary. It comes out also in the structure of
the advanced class, where more responsibility is put on their shoulders in terms of notes
and reading, and a higher level of engagement with the class and the material is expected.
Their bargain, as I portray it, is not the bargain of concern in educational literature, doing
what is required so as to be left alone. It is rather the bargain of those who buy-in to the
achievement structure of the school, doing well in exchange for greater freedom and
responsibility. The bargain comes with expectations, however, and that which they have
earned is constrained by that which they must- now do to live up to their position as
students of AP US History. There is pressure in high-achievement, but the expectations
come, it seems, much from the students themselves.

Going beyond the bargain, the students of AP US History can be seen as
“advanced” students, and the term advanced, as it happens, is not just one which I have
borrowed from the Fairlawn social studies department and descriptions of AP US History
as a class. It also ﬁnds use in Rose’s description of “advanced” liberal democracies,
which operate, not by governing in the sense of exercising power of society, but rather in
the disciplinary sense of governing the priorities and choices of autonomous, empowered
citizens. Of “advanced” liberalism, Rose writes:

The regulation of conduct becomes a matter of each individual’s desire to

govern their own conduct freely in the service of the maximization of a

version of their happiness and fulﬁllment that they take to be their own,

but such lifestyle maximalization entails a relation to authority in the very
moment as it pronounces itself the outcome of free choice. (Rose, 1996a,

p. 59)
The idea that students discipline themselves, in a sense, ﬁts Rose’s (1996b) account of

subjectiﬁcation at work in democratic rule:

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To rule citizens democratically means to rule them through their freedoms,

their choices, and their solidarities rather than despite these. It means

turning subjects, their motivations and interrelations, form potential sites

of resistance to rule into allies of rule. It means replacing arbitrary

authority with that permitting rational justiﬁcation. (Rose, 1996b, p. 20)

This additional stress on these advanced students’ role in their own regulation, or
discipline, opens up a different way of looking at “good” students, one that goes beyond a
simple trade-off of compliance for freedom-and-learning. As members of an advanced
class, hi gh-achievers are governed in a new and different way from that employed in
more structured regular history classes. Foucault (1982) uses the term “government” to
describe, not political systems, but rather “the way in which the conduct of individuals or
of groups might be directed” (p. 788). He noted that “to govern,” in the sense implied by
this broader deﬁnition of govermnent, “is to structure the possible ﬁeld of action of
others (p. 789).” As Rose (1996b) puts it, democratic rule governs by this very
structuring, allowing freedom to citizens who are constrained by their own wants and
desires and thus who will do what the government wishes.

In AP US History, students are given more responsibility, are supposed to take
ownership over their work and learning strategies, are expected to go beyond fulﬁllment '
of assignments and take an active role in their class. Mr. Elliot’s AP students, ﬁ'om the
way they quiet down when he begins lecturing to their general good behavior to their
impressive records, show that they are on board. They have proven that they are
dedicated to school work, and thus arrive in AP US History, but at this new level
dedication and compliance are not enough. The students themselves must be active

subjects, and, of course, subjectiﬁcation occurs through activity, and regulation through

empowerment (Foucault, 1979; Usher and Edwards, 1994).

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As advanced students, then, they are empowered in that they gain additional
freedoms and opportunities, different instruction and different work, and chances to
continue to advance. Taking control of their own work, high-achievers can create
themselves as good students. They are free to work in ways that work best for them, to do
their reading when they wish, to go beyond factual work in their assignments and class
time. They are constrained, however, in that requirements and expectations have not
disappeared. They have, instead, taken on a different form, one which is in fact more
controlling for it relies less on overt discipline and guidance and more on the students’
own desire to take on the role of high-achiever, of motivated and on-the-ball AP US
History student. From an institutional point of view, the result of this is rather interesting.
Those who are given more freedom and responsibility are those for whom such freedoms
will be used for institutionally-approved ends, and such responsibilities met. They are, it
. seems, no more free than if they had stopped at the level of their regular US History
class, with its facts and worksheets, though their work is different, more varied and more
interesting by their accounts.

All this suggests that hi gh-achievers, students who are seen as capable of
advanced work, thinking, and analysis, and who are describes as being given
opportunities to take advantage of their talents by moving up within the school hierarchy,
are also moving up within a hierarchy of regulation, one which controls them more
effectively by harnessing their own purposes. They do have the opportunity for more
advanced work, analysis and synthesis and even evaluation, as Mr. Elliot puts it, and in
this sense they do make use of their empowerment. But they must earn this, must prove

that they can be trusted to do this analysis in the ways Mr. Elliot wants. They have to

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justify their teacher’s faith in them, do their readings, and come to class ready to
participate in new and more demanding ways. They are given leeway in when they arrive
for class, as long as they do not really push this. They are given control over when they
do their work, as long as they get it done. They have some say in when their tests and
assignments take place, but there are boundaries on this control, as shown by Mr. Elliot’s
reaction to their attempt to use a later test to answer fewer questions per chapter. Overall,
they are hi gh-achievers as long as they continue to show the hi gh-achievement is
something they are invested in, something that is a priority of theirs — they work hard,
they seek out challenge in the classroom setting, they deﬁne themselves according to an
idea of achievement that is based in schooling, and they align their notion of drive with
the doing of schoolwork.

Bringing in the idea that high-achievers are students with the potential go on to
college and the professions, the hi gh-achievers of AP US History are not only advanced
students in their school, but are positioned to take on advanced roles in society, and this
must be addressed. If the meritocratic ideal extends beyond the walls of the school, if
high-achievers continue to participate in a bargain where they gain greater power by
disciplining themselves, they will earn the freedom to do ever more interesting and
creative work, but always with the caveat that this work must fall within the parameters
of the discipline. The same apparent freedoms, I speculate, may thus be a feature of
achievement far beyond high-school.

Educational researchers could, in one example, be looked at through this lens.
They advance by “buying in” to the structure of academia and the ﬁeld, earning the

freedom and openness of academic positions. Yet, if they are to keep those positions, to

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advance, to get tenure, must use their time and opportunities to meet the expectations put
upon them. The same could be said of those in business who have the chance to work
creatively, to plan and to control their jobs, always with the understanding that they will
do so according to the purposes of the company. For government, one might see the
process of advancement as one where a person acquired greater power and prestige, yet
must focus much effort and energy on the maintenance of that power and prestige, acting
in ways demanded by the position. In each case, freedom, control, creativity, choice, and
opportunity are available as long as they are put to use in approved of ways, rather like
the culture of hi gh-achievement writ large. In each case, the point of doing the work
becomes continuing to do the work, rather than an end beyond it. While this is admittedly
speculation, it is certainly an interesting idea, and one which calls into question the
amount of freedom and control that is “earned” by those who have achieved
management, professional, academic, and governmental positions.

Back to the idea that hi gh-achievers are actually more, or more effectively,
controlled within schooling by their apparent freedoms, it is also important to remember
that the empowering and controlling notion of discipline applies broadly. Indeed,
anything we learn to do, see, or think could be seen as at once opening us up and limiting
us. Illich (1973) warns that the tools used by humans carry with them the danger that the
tools will themselves structure the purposes and practices of life, and the idea shares
some parallels: that which gives also takes away. One cannot make a critique of the
disciplinary function of hi gh-achievement without realizing that the same disciplining is
at work all around. The same could be said of “playing the school game,” of doing what

needs to be done to succeed. Game-playing, using the system, knowing how to get ahead,

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conforming to the practices of one’s discipline; these things are not absent in any pursuit,
job, or career. The idea that disciplining is not a process speciﬁc to high-achievement,
and that the structuring of life embodied in game-playing is also ever-present, raises
doubt as to why one should question this disciplining, the making of advanced students,
since it is bound to happen, in some sense, one way or the other.

Reasons to question this process may come in several forms. From a postmodern
perspective, the idea is to realize the disciplinary nature of subjectivity, and thus to
attempt to stand always in a position of criticality towards it. As Blake, writing from a
F oucaultian perspective, (1998) puts it:

Education should support a refusal to restrict ethnic-political choices to the

dictates of scientiﬁcally regulated norms and a regimen of cost-beneﬁt

calculations, and foster the courage, skills and patience to shape creative

and liberating alternatives. Freedom is practiced by interrogating our

games of truth. Through the exercise of freedom, a refusal to identify in a

deep ontological way with fabricated subject categories, one learns and is

led to rely on oneself alone to make sense of one’s experience. Freedom

requires one to be critically pragmatic. (pg. 70)

Disciplining and subjectivity cannot be escaped, and in fact, as the above reference to
Illich is used in an educational sense, may be seen as the natural consequence of learning
anything at all. For advanced students, however, the advanced nature of discipline brings
in questions not only of learning, but of purpose and intention, of shaping desires and
priorities so that learning goes deeper than meeting requirements and takes on the
workings of subjectivity. When priorities and intentions are derived from the discipline
which also provides openings and opportunities, the possibility arises that that discipline
will be approached uncritically, hence Blake’s call for a critical effort.

The notion of criticality towards disciplines applies, in a way speciﬁc to AP US

History itself, to the discipline of history. Knowledge and knowing of history are thus

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constructed as hierarchical and limiting. “Advanced” students, having gotten “the facts,”
get to do history in ways that are more demanding, interesting, and analytical than
students in survey classes. In this structure of history, “better” historical accounts, and the
opportunity to “think,” dependent on one’s position in the hierarchy of classes and
knowledge. Also, knowing history is very much a matter of familiarity with what
happened in a detailed way, with analysis directed at telling what happened - the
“collective memory” approach (Segal, 2005; Seixas, 2000). Thus learning history is not
learning to create or to critique historical accounts, or view the workings and purposes of
such accounts, but a matter of getting the story down. The better story gives the person
who knows it advantages over others whose knowledge is not so complete, connected,
and in-depth, and thus those who “know” their history are positioned above, and
approach learning differently than, those who do not. Instead of fostering a critical view
either of history or of their places within the hierarchy of history classes, the discipline of
history as practiced in this AP class shapes students, and even history itself, into a
hierarchical system of advancement and advantage.

One could go further. Putting history into the context of schooling, and especially
in an AP class with a huge test waiting at the end of it, history itself is something which is
engaged in for purposes which are not necessarily related to using history for anything
but proving that one knows it for testing purposes. The use of history, in AP US History,
is “performative” in the sense that it resolves around demonstration of knowledge and
skills. This connects back to the hierarchical notions surrounding history, since those who
know “more” are higher up on it, but it also connects to the “why” of history. Learning is

a matter of demonstration to those in charge that one knows, rather than a matter of the

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use of knowledge to other ends, chosen by individuals or related to other uses to which
history could be put, discovery of something about the past or the present, social analysis
and critique, and such. This way of leaning, the discipline of schooled, AP-level history
remains largely unquestioned, which is a cause of concern for what these advanced
students are taking with them regarding the ways to do history, the reasons to do it, and
the ways it can be put to use.

Going in another direction, I now turn to the Deweyian perspective, which
focuses on the purposes and consequences of learning and doing. Rather than
recommending a critical stance toward discourses and their disciplinary functions, Dewey
prods us to ask about the source of purpose, the “why” of what is done. A Deweyian look
at the culture of hi gh-achievement then takes a different view of the subject, putting forth
the possibility of intelligent or aesthetic activity that, while it does not work outside of
either a medium or a social context, is Carried out with an awareness of what one wishes
to do, and why, and how (Bernstein, 1966; Dewey, 1916; 1934; 1938/1997; Feffer,
1993). As already discussed, Dewey does not posit a pre-existing subject in the classic
liberal sense, and puts forth an account of the social nature of the self that makes
questioning of collateral learning necessary. That being said, his analysis, indeed his
vision of school and of democracy, centers around a certain vision of full and fulﬁlling
individual activity. In using Dewey, then, the focus shifts somewhat from discourses to
individual purposes, from the disciplining function to what this function means for the
quality of life and learning. Thus the postmodern view of subjectivity, of governance
through the control of desires and intentions, raises questions as to whether, from a

Deweyian perspective, the action of the disciplined subject is intelligent action, that is,

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whether it is carried out with an awareness of purpose and consequence, or according to
purposes pre—determined and according to consequences assessed by others.

For the culture of high-achievement, then, we may be tempted to ask two
questions. The ﬁrst, from the postmodern perspective, is whether in the culture of hi gh-
achievement these advanced students are learning a questioning stance toward the
discipline which is forming them as subjects and pulling them into the world of
achievement. The second, from the Deweyian perspective, asks where the purposes and
meanings of work and activity come from, why the students do what they do, or what
they are learning about such ‘Vvhy” questions as they participate in their hi gh-achiever
culture. This study, having put forth the idea that high-achievers can be seen as
“advanced” students in their position as trustworthy, hardworking, AP-level, intelligent,
hi gher-level students, did not gaze deeply into the purposes and intentions that lay behind
the students’ work, focusing instead on hi gh-achievement as a cultural phenomenon. That
being said, questions of purpose can still be address through this cultural lens, by asking
what sort of purposes and reasons are present in the culture of hi gh-achievement itself,
why and how work is done, how it is perceived and talked about, by hi gh-achievers and
their teachers. 0

Thus I will take a new direction here, drifting away from the idea that high-
achievers are advanced students in the sense of how they are governed, but keeping with
the emphasis on purpose and “why” questions in the culture of hi gh-achievement. In
pursuit of these questions, I will return to more of the ideas which came out in chapters 4,
5, and 6, addressing them in and of themselves and in relation to the themes established

here. I will start by taking a step back to the broader view of the culture of high-

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achievement, brieﬂy recapitulating some of what has come before, and then re-focusing
my analysis on one particular feature of the culture of high-achievement, one which has
arisen before, namely, its inherently unﬁnished nature. In pursuit of questions of purpose,
then, I am heading off to have a look at how high-achievers are, in some ways derived
from their cultural milieu, never done.

No Child Ever Gets There"

In stepping back to address the culture high-achievement as a whole, I must begin
with a bit about which points I am not going to be making here. First, in spite of my
critical view of ideas such as achievement, hard work, challenge, drive and the like, I am
not claiming that such things are without value, nor that they are, in and of themselves,
automatically and entirely negative. This is important to keep in mind. The question is
not one of whether individuals should work hard or push themselves, or whether they
should achieve anything. Nor is the question whether students should “play the game” of
school since, in line with the point about the inevitability of the workings of disciplinary
processes, there are always games we must play. Rather, the question concerns what this
all means, which is to say, to what ends such efforts are directed.

As already seen, both Deweyian and postmodern analyses raise such questions.
The postmodern account puts forth the notion of a critical view toward the disciplines
which shape hi gh-achieVers even as they make possible new ways of engaging in
schooling. Dewey’s notion of intelligent, esthetic, fulﬁlling activity is bound up with
purpose and consequence. Dewey does not believe in a lack of discipline, as some would

no doubt claim, but instead portrays discipline as the natural consequence of engagement

 

3 I thank Dr. Avner Segall for the inspiration for this section title.

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in meaningful activity (1916, 1934). The question for the culture of hi gh-achievement,
then, is what is has to say of purpose and of the nature of learning.

That being said, I can now turn to the theme which I wish to address, namely, that
hi gh-achievement is not something which can be achieved. Hi gh-achievers are “good”
students, in the sense that they are competent and trustworthy, but their competence
forever teeters on the edge of scheming, and their trustworthiness must be continually
proven. They have access to a “better” class, yet even within this class they must prove
themselves in order to continue on to the real work of higher-order thinking, analysis, and
the like. They are seen as intelligent, talented, of good backgrounds, but they are called
upon to take on greater levels of challenge, to work hard and demonstrate dedication, and
any faltering in this will mean that they will fall behind in the achievement process, or the
achievement race. One can always stop working hard, stop acting in a trustworthy
fashion, and if this happens the hi gh-achiever status is endangered.

As mentioned in Chapter 6, the “never done” phenomenon puts a different spin on
the “imposter phenomenon,” where hi gh-achieving individuals attribute their
achievement to luck or to the failure of those in charge to realize that the high-achiever is,
in fact, not really all that bright, smart, or talented (Clance & O’Toole, 1987). In the
greater scheme of things, the options available to the high-achiever include 1) doing well,
which earns one the right to move on to the next level where they must continue their .
striving to do well or, 2) failure. The position of a high-achiever can thus be that of a
person waiting for the insurmountable challenge, waiting for the moment, or the class, or
the assignment, that will ﬁnally be too much to handle. Aside from the pressure this puts

on high-achievers, noted especially in Pope (2001), this also canies with it the idea that

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people who stop at the lower rungs of the achievement ladder are themselves failing. The
smart kid who could do better, a familiar character in the hi gh-achiever story, is an
example of this, as is Mr. Elliot’s insistence that AP US History is the place where hard
work ﬁnally gives out as a strategy, leaving some revealed as less talented.

Yet, even if they never do reach that point of failure, even if it is more of an idea
of a reality, it is a powerful and deﬁning idea in the culture of high-achievement. The
hi gh-achievers of AP US History do not feel that they are themselves hi gh-achievers.
There is always more one can do, it seems. This treadmill-like piece of hi gh-achiever
culture puts hi gh-achievers on a endless quest, one which might be called “No Child Ever
Gets There,” though it is still quite possible to be left behind. Hi gh-achievement is thus
something that is always in-process, always becoming, and there is no arrival at a place
of stability, or of rest.

This, in turn, reconnects back to the disciplining of hi gh-achievers, their
regulation according to their freedoms, desires, priorities, and actions. Since one can
never “arrive,” there is never a point where hi gh-achievers can step back ﬁom the
demands of the discipline. They have taken achievement as a goal. It is a goal that is
never reached, however, and thus they have taken upon themselves to continue striving
for that which always stays ahead. Perhaps it can be said that failure is not the only
option, since one could simply opt out of the continual pursuit of achievement, yet this,
too, would be failure, since the achievement lies in the continual striving. If students wish
to achieve, they must keep going, and thus they are controlled by- their own desire to
achieve, a never-ending desire which can only be fulﬁlled within the parameters provided

by the discipline.

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Perhaps this is not such an odd thing, though. Really, everyone makes progress, in
school, at work, even in hobbies people grow in skill and knowledge and advance in
position. Again, just as ideas like hard work are not inherently negative, neither, one
might argue, is advancement. The question, then, is not one of advancement itself, but of
why one advances. The suggestion that there is no end to advancement, no goal beyond
moving forward to the next stage, implies that advancement, or rather achievement, is
itself a goal. This ﬁts in with the idea that students are controlled through the disciplinary
function of achievement, as laid out above. Such an idea is further supported by the moral
overtones that suffuse the culture of hi gh-achievement, and so it is to these that I now
turn.

High-Achievement and Morality

Moral overtones are not hard to detect in the discourse of hi gh-achievement and
in hi gh-achiever culture. Descriptors such as hardworking, challenge-seeking, dedicated,
and trustworthy are not neutral terms. Even reading them, one forms a picture of a
student who deserves approbation and advancement, who is taking advantage of their
talents and opportunities, just the sort of student one would want in one’s class. Hi gh-
achievers are indeed “good” students, and not only because they comply with
institutional requirements — though this is also a telling reading of what they do — but
because they are good people, willing to put in the time and effort necessary to be the
best. When the students and faculty I studied talked about high-achievers, there was an
overwhelming feeling that they had earned the right to be advanced, that they had been '

tested and found worthy, though, of course, this means worthy of more testing.

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The idea that hi gh-achievement is not just a good thing, but is also a right and
proper one, dovetails with the myth of meritocracy, the American Dream and the
materialistic myth in American culture, and the Protestant Work Ethic. Meritocracy
works on the idea that those who are at the top have earned the right to be there, by their
natural talents and by using those talents well. Pursuit of the American Dream, and the
materialistic myth in American culture, also tie in personal worth, a sort of pioneer-spirit
of self-reliance and gumption that brings success to those who deserve it. The Protestant
work ethic (Weber, 1905/1952), a part of the materialistic myth in Fisher’s (1973)
account of it, brings a spiritual aspect, as ascetic dedication to working hard for the sake
of working hard, because it is the morally correct thing to do. The Protestant work ethic
additionally brings its own emphasis on salvation, a notion that the work one does is
done, not for the present moment, but for eventual eternal reward. While high-achievers
may not be working for an eternal reward — or at least, we didn’t talk about it — they are
working for eventual rewards such as the right college and the good job, and before they
arrived in AP US History, they were working to get there too.

The moral, Protestant Work Ethic feel to high-achievement also manifests itself in
the students dissatisfaction with their regular classes and other students, there sometimes
dissatisfaction with their AP US History class, and their desire for “something more.” It
also comes out in the never—done felt that accompanies hi gh-achievement. The idea
which brings these together in the notion of “salvation,” the promise of reward for the
worthy, who have proven their worth by their ascetic dedication to their schoolwork. The
idea is that, some day, they will get “there,” whether “there” is an AP class, the college of

their choice, the professional career. As Pope (2001) puts it, high-achievers operate with

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“deferred” goals, working hard now with the notion that they will get there some day.
The hi gh-achievers of AP US History, too, are pushing for goals which lay ahead,
sometimes over the horizon. And, as the dissatisfaction that some students show with the
class hints at, seeking the “end” of the achievement ladder may be something like trying
to get to the end of the rainbow; it always stays ahead. Competence, trustworthiness, hard
work are unstable, never done, and the eventually rewards are invitations to demonstrate
more dedication and to work ever harder. The choices are to keep moving or fail, and, as
with the imposter phenomenon, this leaves hi gh-achievers constantly working toward an
unreachable goal. The manifestation of this even at my level of work — once I ﬁnish my
dissertation, once I get tenure, etc... - certainly lends to my thinking on this.

The link that brings together these varied views of the value of work and
achievement is that work and achievement, in all these cases, are seen as things good in
and of themselves, and as things which imbue those who do them with a certain inherent
value. Challenge and hard work provide meaning. Taken to its extreme, one who works
hard, who looks for challenge, who uses their talents to their greatest extent, and who
seeks advantage and advancement at every level, is to be commended regardless of the
ends to which their efforts are directed. In simpler terms, it does not much matter what
you are doing, as long as you are doing your best. Achievement becomes its own
justiﬁcation. Such ideas can be seen in the hi gh-achievers of AP US History, for whom
challenge and hard work provide purpose and make classes worthwhile. Even if the work
of AP US History can be seen to have a purpose beyond working hard, such as the AP
test itself, achievement on a standardized test for college-credit is as deferred and self-

justifying a goal as any.

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.Thus the moral overtone of high-achiever culture puts hi gh-achievement makes
hi gh-achievement good for its own sake. This suggests some potentially unfortunate and
rather disturbing consequences. First off, as mentioned above, what one achieves is not a
matter of question. This means that hi gh-achievers are, being immersed in the culture of
hi gh-achievement, learning to put their shoulders to the wheel without necessary asking
where it’s rolling. From a critical standpoint, and a Deweyian one, there is little or no
impetus to question, on the part of the students or their teachers, why they are doing all
the things that they do. Purpose and meaning rest, in research terms, in method. This is
not just a question of the way that AP US History is taught, with little critical
examination of the purposes and uses of the story of history, though this comes into it.
Mr. Elliot is not blind to the uses of history, but for all that, and even for his efforts to
provide alternative and at times critical perspectives, his class is about learning history,
not learning to question it. The culture of hi gh-achievement goes beyond this, however.
One does well. Asking why, or to what end, are not supported endeavors, beyond
climbing to the next level on the achievement ladder.

This is not to say that students and teachers do not ask themselves why, do not
struggle with their roles, or leave all unquestioned. As this study shows, Mr. Elliot and
his students, and Mr. Brown and Mr. Schlieffen as well, are not blind followers. The idea
is not to posit that those who participate in the culture of hi gh-achievement are mere
automatons. The question, instead, is one of meaning, and the meaning of high-
achievement is shot through with a moral sense that seems to overwhelm questions and
conﬂicts and leave, at the most basic level, the idea that achievement is good and that

those who achieve are also good. And this, I repeat, has a tendency to make high-

261

achievement, challenge, hard work, drive, and the like goals to be aimed for, rather than
pieces of activity for which purpose is something considered and chosen, something
beyond the means which can be used to achieve it.

The moral overtones of hi gh-achievement, and the notion that work it its own
justiﬁcation, have effects that exceed the boundaries of work and meaning. First, there is
the already mentioned “never done” aspect of achievement, alluded to in the results
chapters as well as above. The moral overtone of hi gh-achievement leaves high-achievers
in a position of needing to avoid failure, because failing is cast not only in an intellectual
sense by also in a moral one. The results for learning are of interest. If learning occurs
through the making of errors, through trying new things and seeing how they work, there
is little support for this in the culture of hi gh-achiev-ement. There is not much room for
mistakes, embodied as they are in poor grades, in a system which requires constant
forward motion. Indeed, as Mr. Elliot put is, his students come to his class with the idea
that putting in the time will be what is needed to succeed. They may get past this idea,
seeing that different sorts of work are necessary for success in AP US History, but in a
larger sense they remain within a culture where work, effort, drive, and challenge are
placed on a pedestal, separate from ends.

This brings up additional critiques from Dewey’s perspective. If learning requires
mistakes or, from Dewey’s perspective, if the process of learning and activity require not
only doing but undergoing (Wong, Packard, Girod, & Pugh, 2000), a certain reﬂective
piece is included which could be absent in the ever-moving high-achiever view of
learning. People have a certain potential, a certain talent, as the story goes, and one is

duty bound to live up to that potential and to use, one might say fully exploit, that talent.

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Those who do not live up to their potential are not merely making a choice, they are
doing wrong. This leaves little time, to put it in familiar terms, for stopping to smell the
roses. In Dewey’s terms, the action piece of learning is brought to the fore, the reﬂection,
which also may include reﬂection on ends and purposes, is shufﬂed off to the rear. This
goes beyond the role of reﬂection in learning and activity in a philosophical sense. Free-
time, taking breaks, even pursuit of fulﬁlling activities of personal interest are
marginalized in the face of the need to keep going.

The implications of these moral overtones for students who are not hi gh-achievers
can be equally troubling. If high-achievement is a moral matter, then students who are not
hi gh-achievers are obviously lacking in moral ﬁber. The smart kid who does not care, a
popular ﬁgure in the hi gh-achiever story, is lacking, not in the sense of natural
intelligence, but in values, discipline, motivation, or gumption. As for the students who
just don’t “get it,” who may not be driven but aren’t all that bright either, placing high-
achievement within a moral framework puts these students, too, into a morally inferior
category. This is not something plainly stated, and indeed there are efforts, using ideas
like different intelligences, or talents, to reduce the stigma of non-achievement. Yet the
attitudes revealed by high-achievers, who consider fact-based work beneath them and
openly mock easy work (and by extension, those for whom easy work is hard),
demonstrate that there is something to the idea that the less-academically inclined, if
placed into the moral hierarchy that is associated with achievement, are on the low side of
this curve the same way that they are on the low side of the intelligence curve.

This, in turn, brings back the specter of intolerance and ﬁ'ustration that can be

demonstrated by hi gh-achievers toward teachers, students, or work that they feel are in

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some way beneath them. Again, this is a phenomenon given context by a look at the
moral overtones in the culture of hi gh-achievement. High-achieving students, in being
placed within a moral framework, are naturally separated from others, and not just in
matters of objectively determined intelligence, even if there were such a thing. They are
more worthy, and for these students destined for college and the professions, perhaps
even for leadership roles in business, society, and academia, such positions are not just
achievements, but of entitlement. They are equipped to lead, to make policy, to be
managers and professors and doctors and lawyers and such because they have proven
their worth. With worth, it seems, comes the potential for authority, and in viewing
themselves as above certain pursuits and certain people, high-achievers can be seen as
well-prepared to give orders to those who have not, in the ladder of achievement, been
able by their own talent and work ethic to climb so high.

Taking such speculation even farther, we can combine the position of high-
achievers at the top of the school hierarchy with the idea that achievement itself is rather
self—justifying to paint a picture that, for its speculative nature, still demands our attention
as educators. Getting to the top does not, it seems, require one to ask those pesky “why”
questions, whether these take the form of the purpose of achievement or of one’s own
interest or intentions in regards to that which is being achieved. Thus, the culture of hi gh-
achievement is one which prepares individuals, as well as potential leaders and
professionals, trained to take an inherently conservative, unreﬂective stance toward their
work, doing what is required, and doing it very well, without necessarily wondering
about the nature, purpose, or effects of that work. The critiques of schooling as producing

willing consumers and cogs for the economic system fall into this category, but I wish to

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approach this from a slightly different direction. On the societal side, I believe that there
is little question as to whether hi gh-achievers are going to participate in the economic
system of this country and the world, unless they move to mountain cabins and live off
deer meat and berries. As to whether they will occupy inﬂuential positions, one cannot
say, but they are positioned to do so. The question, then, is on what terms they will
participate in the economy, and in government and business and academia. A look at

hi gh-achiever culture seems to suggest that, taking high-achievement as a self-justifying,
moral goal leaves hi gh-achievers shaped into inherently unreﬂective and uncritical stance
toward school, work, and society. On the personal side, this may mean a similar stance
toward the choosing of what one does, how one spends one’s time, and who decides what

is worth doing and when.

Purpose, High-Achievement, and Some Philosophical Speculation on Education
Having gone into the never-done nature of high-achievement, and 'the moral
overtones which accompany it, we can return to the question of critical stances or
questioning of purpose from high-achievers who are advanced students. From a
postmodern standpoint, one must step back from the discourses in which one participates,
to critique the disciplinary process and see the control that comes with empowerment.
From a Deweyian perspective, learning, and activity in general, must be undertaken with
an awareness of purpose, of ends, and of the “why” of what one is doing. My analysis of
the culture of hi gh-achievement, and the hierarchical, always advancing, morally-
weighted notions that run all through it, suggests that questions of purpose, of ends, of

“why,” are self-contained. Hi gh-achievement is the goal and the way of reaching it. The

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means are also the ends, and this is reinforced by reference to ideals of merit and
morality, which place value on the doing of achievement.

If such inﬂuences are present in the culture of hi gh-achievement, and I certainly
have come to think that they are, then this culture, in the sense of collateral learning, can
be said to be producing students which are unprepared, from either a postmodern or a
Deweyian sense, to act critically and with considered purpose. If the function of
schooling is to educate students as both people and as citizens of a democratic nation, as
Dewey and others (e. g. Parker, 2003) hold, then the culture of hi gh-achievement seems to
provide little support for reﬂective and meaningﬁrl action on the part of individuals or to
promote a critical stance toward society. As with studies of achievement and motivation,
the culture hi gh-achievement takes that which is being achieved as given, justiﬁes it
through various ideological and moral narratives, and produces students in this mold. If
the question is one of collateral learning, the answer is that the best of the best are trained
to use their talents in ways which, for whatever opportunities they have for more
interesting and challenging work, still fall within certain circumscribed boundaries which
do not extend to critique, reﬂection, purpose, and meaning.

Going off somewhat farther into the philosophical realm, the culture of high-
achievement can be placed into the context of narratives of education from both the
postmodern and Deweyian standpoints. Modernism promises answers, truth, objective
knowledge, and guidance on how we should live, but has not delivered any of these.
Instead, there is a never- ending quest, which has been termed the failure of modernism,
or the postmodern condition (Gergen, 1992; Kvale, 1992; Lather, 1992; Lyotard, 1984;

Polkinghome, 1992). One ﬁnds only hierarchies of better and worse knowledge, justiﬁed

266

through different discourses which count varied things as knowledge and truth. In
seeking ends, modernism has only found differences and justiﬁcations. Like the culture
of hi gh-achievement, the project of modernism is never done, but it can justify certain
structures and ways of doing things. Education, as the “Child of the Enlightenment,”
(Usher & Edwards, 1994) can be seen as putting forth the promise of getting there, and
shaping students into such a quest, without delivering an end.

For Dewey, all of this goes back to his concern about the potential downsides of
formal, institutionalized education in complex, literate societies. Dewey’s goal of uniting
the subjective and the objective, the moral and the scientiﬁc, is one which has at its base
a rejection of the idea that knowledge can be decontextualized and separated from
activity and meaning. Once knowledge is decontextualized and set up as an ideal, as with
the modernist project, it becomes reiﬁed, static, set into a hierarchy, and the goal of
knowledge becomes, not use, but accumulation. In either view, there is still a sense of
never being ﬁnished. But Dewey also takes this down to the level of what it means to
learn, and to act. From his account of the “reﬂex arc” (1897) and throughout his
philosophy, he put forth a concept of uniﬁed activity, in which means and ends are
progressively brought together, and in which considerations of purpose and consequence
must always be included. This same recursive relationship between ends and means
forms the basis for his account of educative, intelligent, and aesthetic activity (Bernstein,
1966; Dewey 1916, 1934/ 1980, 1938/1997; Feffer, 1993). His vision of meaningful
social activity, that which preceded formal education as a mode of learning the
knowledge of society, is difﬁcult to achieve in the context of schooling, and so educators

must look to the educational power of environment, the whole context and activity of

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learning. If this is not done, if education in schools is treated as the way in which learning
works, then the best of education is the best of the acquisition of knowledge out of
context, without the uniﬁed, purposeful features which he insisted were necessary for
personal growth and a democratic mode of living. Speculating from Dewey’s standpoint,
then, one might say that the culture of hi gh-achievement carries within is some of the
very dangers of schooling which preoccupied Dewey and led to his calls for a progressive
sort of education in which interest, purpose, and meaningﬁrl activity lay at the center of
teaching and learning.

This philosophical pondering is intended to connect to the picture of high-
achiever culture which I have created here. This is a study of one classroom at one
school, of course, aiming at meanings and stories and culture and not at a national
assessment of the state of education. Such things may be portrayed as limitations of the
study, a denial of its applicability outside of a narrow context, and indeed the qualitative
and Deweyian frame I have adopted would preclude my taking this study and pointing to
it as any sort of ﬁnal word on the culture of hi gh-achievement in an all-encompassing
sense. There is something here, though, themes and pieces, ideas and ideologies, which
can be taken and used to examine and think about other classes, other schools, education
itself, and the culture of high-achievement more broadly. My recourse to philosOphy is
carried out in this spirit, and in the critical spirit as well, an attempt to pull out those parts
of the culture of hi gh-achievement which should be examined, to work and stretch them,
and to try to bring a different view to that which is taken as the good, the advanced, the

best of the best.

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Conclusion

As a critical study, as a Deweyian study, this work is not disinterested and neither,
as a qualitative and ethnographic project, does it claim the status of an absolute and
authoritative account. It does not, thus, proceed from an assumption of objective research
ﬁndings presented as a proven basis for educational practice. This stance makes the idea
of “recommendations” a problematic one, since such a notion is rooted, in part, in a
different tradition of research. Still, Dewey’s work was ever-directed toward his goals of
fostering intelligent, aesthetic, fulﬁlling, and democratic activity in school and in society,
and with this in mind, no study which claims Deweyian roots can get by without putting
forth some ideas about what could be done in the schools. Neither can a critical study
come out with ﬁndings, or ideas, without looking at how they relate to the status quo, the
thing being questioned, the issues being opened up for discussion. Thus, as I conclude
this study, I undertake to say a bit about what I believe this study means in relation to the
culture of hi gh-achievemen't, and the roles and responsibilities of educators in connection
with that culture.

Before I move more deeply into my conclusions, it is important to say a bit about
why anyone might want to listen to them. Clearly, this is not the ﬁrst study of school
culture, and with a long tradition of critical work on the hidden cuniculum and similar
ideas, this study is, in some ways, nothing new. Yet the emphasis here is different in
several key ways. First, there is the speciﬁc emphasis here on the culture of high-
achievement. This culture has itself been little studied, and there is in current educational
policy debates a decided lack of questioning of the successﬁrl in our educational system.

And these successful students, prepared to take important roles in society, should be the

269

focus of study in their own right, as well as for what their success says about the priorities
of the educational system.

From another direction, previous work in the area of school culture has not
employed Dewey as a theoretical or normative framework, and the unique spin that a
Deweyian frame puts on this study and its ﬁndings distinguishes them from work in the
functionalist, critical, Marxist, and postmodern traditions. Yet, for all its Deweyian roots,
this study makes use of a wide variety of concepts from these various traditions; this open
and democratic approach to theorizing is another distinguishing mark of this piece. In the
Deweyian spirit of applying philosophy to the “problems of men,” I have made use of
perspectives, ideas, and frames which I have found useful, leaving aside their differences
and instead focusing on how they might illuminate the setting at hand. Because of this
approach, this study might appeal to educators from a variety of backgrounds.

As for my conclusions, I begin with the idea that from the start of this work, with
its emphasis on culture and on collateral learning, the idea has been that what we teach in
schools goes beyond the formal and, indeed, that “school culture,” the ways of living and
working in schools, is much of what students learn in educational institutions. As a study
of the culture of hi gh-achievement, then, this work is a look at what hi gh-achievers are
learning in school, as well as the contexts, narratives, and practices that come into this
learning. From the idea of collateral learning also comes the notion that educators bear
some responsibility for school environment, hidden, implicit, and null curricula, and
culture. The frame of this work also included the notion that students play an active role
in the creation of their culture. Putting all this together, the ﬁrst recommendation 1 can

come up with is one which is inherent in the frame I have used, namely, that those who

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participate in the institution of schooling, educators and students both, must approach
school with a wider awareness of what happens there, where it comes from, what
meanings are implicit in it, and where it aims to go.

As I said in my introduction, many pages ago, culture is an inherently democratic
concept, contingent as it is on local meanings and experiences. Research like this study,
while informative, is in a sense not really the answer when seen ﬁom such a perspective.
My carrying out this study is helpful, interesting, potentially useﬁrl, but these are really
the sorts of questions that educators and students should themselves be asking. Therefore
I believe it would be valuable, in terms not only of how history is taught but indeed of
how schooling is approached, to ﬁnd a role for teachers and for students in the
engagement of questions of purpose in education. This is not necessarily just a matter of
taking a critical stance toward history or schooling, or more discussions about such
subjects, though this may be a part of it. It also means looking again at Dewey’s
contention that meaningful activity in schooling, work with some purpose which engages
the students, is a route toward developing a ﬂexible intelligence, skills in judgment, and
awareness of what one is about. This is also a challenge toward the Wider hierarchical
structure of education which places teachers in the position of those who carry out the
work and researchers in the position of those who think, and leaves students out of the
equation entirely.

A great deal of work is needed, not only on the part of educators who operate in
the realms of research, but of those who spend their days immersed in the concerns of
practice, to approach education critically and with a mind toward purpose. Our students,

too, should be treated as worthy of confronting and wrestling with these questions of how

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and what they are learning, and to what ends it is directed. All of us should confront
questions of what schools should be aiming for, and should work toward answers and
toward action from those answers. The high-achievers of AP US History are certainly
learning some things which could be called valuable, including the ability to focus and to
work hard, skills in getting along in schools and institutional settings, quite a bit of
historical knowledge, the idea that history can be interesting and lively, and a sense of
their ability as students. At the same time, however, they are picking up quite a few other
lessons, some of which I have highlighted here, which are of questionable value for
reasons already stated. Without going further into what is or is not desirable in terms of
educational goals, it can be said that it seems less than ideal for educators and students to
participate in a system of schooling which directs their activities and ideas in ways which
are unexarnined. It is a radical idea, really, stating that the operation of schooling should
include a constant questioning of the ‘that” and ‘ﬁvhy” and “how” of teaching and
learning, but the other choice seems to be mere acceptance, closing off critical, even
intelligent, activity.

This focus on student and teacher participation in the purposes of education
should not be mistaken for a merely instrumental, “how can I use this?” approach to that
which is learned in school. Indeed, such an approach is already present in the culture of
hi gh-achievement, as students do what they need to do, play the game, and strive to get
ahead. That which they learn can certainly be used, but these uses fall within the conﬁnes
of achievement itself, again leaving the getting-ahead as the self-deﬁning purpose. The
questioning of use, of purpose, of the “why” of education is the focus here, and such

questioning takes knowledge out of the realm of instrumentalism when the answers can

272

be found outside of achievement itself. Deﬁned this way, instrumentalism may be said to
be use deﬁned by use, the purely instrumental approach which puts means as ends.
Criticality, in expanding purpose through questioning, makes knowledge richer,
employed for considered purposes and avoiding the trap of limiting and unthinking use of
means as ends-in-themselves.

As for additionally recommendations, they are somewhat limited by the fact that I
did, not, as some have, take Deweyian principles into the classroom and test how they
might work. I did not try to implement a different vision of education. Therefore, I am
not well-prepared, within the conﬁnes of this work, to make concrete suggestions for
what should happen next. This is a natural result of my chosen frames and methodology,
for if the strength of critique is its questioning of what is happening, its weakness is in
taking the next step and putting forth alternatives. Still, Dewey’s ideas, and recent work
on implementing Dewey in classrooms, may give some direction to speculation about
what might be done.

Just what might a different sort of education, constructed along Deweyian lines,
look like? A promising answer is that they may look like new Deweyian approaches to
pedagogy, variously known as “idea-based” (Cavanaugh, 2005; Pugh, 2000, 2002), “big
ideas” (Smith and Girod, 2003), “aesthetic understanding” (Girod and Rau, 2000; Girod
and Wong, 2002), or “realist-constructivist” (Cavanaugh, Prawat, Bell, and
Wojcikiewicz, 2005). These approaches operate with a focus on students’ using the ideas
they have learned to “re-see” the world. In getting students to appropriate these ideas for
their own use in ways that change the students’ perspectives, and themselves, these idea—

based approaches are aiming for the Deweyian educative experience. Students carry out

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assessments as in their normal lessons, and these Deweyian lessons have been
constructed with state content standards in mind. Yet the focus in not solely on the
fulﬁllment of classroom requirements; students are encouraged to make use of these
ideas, in and out of school, to change the way they perceive and act upon the world. The
results of these studies have been encouraging. When students appropriate science ideas,
often in the form of metaphors, they report that this learning process changes the way
they look at themselves and their surroundings.

From the point of view put forth in my study, such approaches are encouraging
precisely because they emphasize the students’ participation in the use of their learning
on their own terms. In focusing the purpose of the learning on changing students’
perceptions and realms of action in the world beyond the classroom, these new Deweyian
pedagogies may be able to bring in the realm of purpose and meaning in a way than more
achievement-focused educational practices do not. Put this way, the self-justifying,
morally-charged nature of the culture of hi gh-achievement could be addressed by
providing justiﬁcation that goes beyond achievement itself, setting value instead on
seeing the world anew, and acting upon it in new ways.

Additionally, these Deweyian pedagogies, implemented in classrooms where
tests, grades, and standards are all still present, also hit upon a point made earlier: that
achievement, hard work, and participation in the discourses of which we are all a part are
not themselves automatically and entirely negative. All of these are, and are likely to
remain, important parts of the picture of schooling. In keeping with Dewey’s idea that
philosophical work should be directed toward educational and societal change, it seems

important to here make suggestions that have some hope of implementation in today’s

274

educational institutions. These Deweyian pedagogies indicate that change may not be a
matter of unrealistically broad and sweeping reform as much as a re-alignment of purpose
and practice of existing classrooms so as to make achievement a means rather than an
end. That being said, it seems that such approaches, while not the focus of the present
study, may hold promise for addressing the points raised here.

The focus on purpose that has inhabited this study, and which make the new
Deweyian pedagogies promising from my point of view, also bring up some other
recommendations which touch upon issues which were not directly confronted in this
study. If teachers and students are to be brought into the consideration of the purposes of
education, this may, for example, have some implications for the practice of teacher
education. In my experience much of teacher education is focused on the technical
aspects of teaching, and less on the moral aspects of purpose and consequence. This is
indeed the concern expressed by Field and Latta (1994), who claim that teacher education
aims for “competence” but not for “wisdom.” The question, it seems, is whether the focus
is on preparing teachers to take their places in the existing system, on getting a deﬁned
job done with skill, or whether it is on training them to participate in the determination of
what their work is, and why and how it is carried out. A critical stance, or one which
emphasizes intelligent and aesthetic action in a Deweyian sense, demands more than
technical skill and familiarity with a smattering of educational research. This is, deep
down, a very Deweyian goal, reﬂecting the same sort of discomfort with institutionalized
education in a way which relates to Dewey’s objections to the lack of control and purpose

in industrialized work. A real focus on the “why” of schooling, and of teaching, seem to

275

be topics in need of greater consideration, or at least of work along these lines in the
study of teacher education.

Getting back to what I have found in this own study of the culture of hi gh-
achievement, there are some pieces which seem to demand further attention. For the
students themselves, their collateral learning as hi gh-achievers emphasizes many ideas
already held up for critical examination in educational research, from assumptions about
meritocracy and intelligence to their positioning in the school and society. The place of
such ideas in school and in hi gh-achievement raises questions not only about how school
is talked about by teachers and students, but also the uses and effects of this educational
research. For all the work that has been done in examining the culture of schools, it
seemed that there was little evidence, in AP US History or at Fairlawn High School, that,
such work had been inﬂuential in the ways that educators and students approached their
schooling experiences.

As for hi gh-achievers themselves, the possibility that they are caught up in a
morally-charged system of constant forward motion toward always-distant ends is as
disturbing for their own search for meaning as it is in their position as citizens of a
democracy. The same can be said about their status as high-achievers, the role they play
in the school and in their advanced class, and the attitudes these can foster toward work,
learning, and toward other people. If there are recommendations to be made here, one is
to pay greater attention, not only to what is being done in education, but why. Another is
to examine, and re-examine, that which is taken as good, as “the best,” to treat
achievement not as an end, but as a means toward ends which are, if not agreed upon, at

least taken into consideration. As Dewey claims that democracy is not a ﬁnished

276

product, but must be re—imagined and re-built in every generation, so, too, must education
and achievement. And this is vital, both for hi gh-achievers as individuals and in their
potential role as professionals and leaders in society.

Another role played by high-achievers is that of examples of what it means to be
successful in schooling, and how this relates to students who are not high-achievers.
Students who take advanced classes, get good grades, participate in extra-cunicular
activities, and ﬁnd favor with their teachers are doing what they are supposed to do. They
are the best of the best, the cream of the crop — you may take your pick of hackneyed
descriptions — and are thus also the model for other, less successful students. This means
that efforts to improve the academic performance of average students, low-achievers,
under-achievers, and the many poor and minority students can be seen as efforts to bring
all students into this very culture of hi gh-achievement being questioned here. While this
study does not directly address any programs such as the No Child Left Behind Act and
corresponding attempts to raise achievement levels, it may have something to say about
them, since achievement which is the point of such efforts. If achievement is a troubling
goal for hi gh-achievers, it could just as easily be seen as a troubling one for other
students. With this in mind, the ideal of raising achievement should itself be brought
under scrutiny.

Such questions might also be asked about other educational settings aside ﬁ'om
the one studied here. While this was not a study of university education at any level, the
possibility of correspondence between the seeking of achievement in AP US History
class and similar approaches to schooling at other levels suggests that the culture of high-

achievement may be found in colleges and universities as well. Indeed, the idea that the

277

high-achievers of my study will go on to college and career with the same ideas and
attitudes they have formed in high school implies that this culture exists at multiple
levels. If this is so, my call for attention to the issues raised here applies to all of those
levels. In addition, my own experiences in college, in graduate school, and in the world
of educational research, suggest that achievement is very much a goal in itself even
among those who study education. While I do not seek here to make any claims about
these settings, the parallels I have witnessed, which have contributed to my own ideas
and purposes in carrying out this study, suggest that the features of the culture of high-
achievement may be found, and should be looked for, in places besides high-school
classrooms.

As I ﬁnish this work, my stance is a hopeful one. As an active deﬁnition of
culture holds forth the potential for change, as culture is a democratic idea, so too does
the role of responsibility in collateral learning and culture put critique, awareness, and
even reform in the hands of all involved in the project of education. As a participant in
the discipline of academia and educational research, I wrestle with questions such as the
role of research, our reasons for educating, how schools might be structured, how
teachers might be trained and how their work could be deﬁned, and my own part in all
this. I do not, however, believe that these are questions which, as in the hierarchy of
knowledge and academic work, should be conﬁned to those of us who have reached a
certain position. In that spirit, I end my observations, analysis, and ponderings, not by
calling for this or that in particular, but by putting forth my own vision of a democratic
approach, one in which high-achievement and schooling are taken to task by all involved,

and come out better for it.

278

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