Schooling as a Ritual Performance: Towards a Political Economy of Educational Symbols and Gestures

by Peter McLaren

Originally published in 1986, this book offers the educational community an original and unusual approach to the analysis of contemporary schooling. This revised edition has been published in response to demands from sociologists and educationalists. It contains a new postscript which extends and deepens McLaren's original analysis.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Professor in the Division of Urban Schooling, the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles (United States). He is the author and editor of forty-five books and hundreds of scholarly articles and chapters. His writings have been translated into 20 languages.

He is known as one of the leading architects of critical pedagogy and for his scholarly writings on critical literacy, the sociology of education, cultural studies, critical ethnography, and Marxist theory. He has developed a reputation for his uncompromising political analysis influenced by a Marxist humanist philosophy and a unique literary style of expression. His scholarship and political activism have taken him throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Reviews

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An detailed, ethnographic study to examine rituals in Catholic school students that transfer back and forth from street-corner and student states in Toronto schools in the early 80s. Great book for understanding the transformative dynamics that students embody as they enter in and out of structured settings.