Schooling as a Ritual Performance

Reviews / Votes

Those who have been waiting for a successor to Jonathon Kozol may find in this book an alternative source of anthropological criticism of schooling. -- Richard Fenn * Journal Of Ritual Studies * As a writer, (McLaren) combines the rare gifts of the astute theoretician with that of the storyteller in the manner celebrated by Walter Benjamin. . . . An impressive and original contribution to critical educational theory and practice. . . a startling insight. -- Henry Giroux McLaren's study. . . stands at the pinnacle of ethnographic works. -- Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY Graduate Center, author of From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America's Future Where (Paul) Willis draws his interpretation from culturalist Marxist work, McLaren incorporates some of these interpretations within a framework of analysis taken from the anthropological work of Victor Turner and others who stress the importance of symbol and ritual in the organization of institutions and culture. . . . McLaren is the first to apply these insights in such a thorough and detailed manner to the ordinary working of the school. The results are always illuminating. -- Michael Apple . . . He helps us to see more clearly the nature of our lostness and the barely visible sparks of liberation. -- David E. Purpel * Educational Theory * Groundbreaking. . . brilliant. . .a tour de force. -- Stephen Ball * London Times Higher Education Supplement * McLaren's pioneering discussions of the physicality of oppression moves beyond his predecessors. -- Deborah Britzman * Journal of Curriculum Theorizing * A serious and important contribution to classroom ethnography. -- Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo * Harvard Educational Review * Schooling as Ritual Performance is an important book, not because it shows us once again how schools work to reproduce the present social arrangements, but because it illustrates the subtle way in which universes of symbolic meaning are realigned and then imposed on the consciousness of students through the medium of ritual. -- Thomas Shearer * Orbit * Since 1983, Peter McLaren has released a torrent of books, articles, and rejoinders that have altered the landscape of educational discourse. . .his writing contains dizzying examples of raids made into fields previously untried and untested in educational analyses. . . .The Coda is vintage McLareniana. -- Phillip Roth * Educational Studies (Usa) * There is simply nothing in the educational literature that invites sustained comparison to Schooling as a Ritual Performance. -- Colin Lankshear * From The Foreword *