The (Dis)Order of U.S. Schooling: Zygmunt Bauman and Education for an Ambivalent World

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Eric Ferris

The (Dis)Order of U.S. Schooling

Zygmunt Bauman and Education for an Ambivalent World

Eric Ferris

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Paperback

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English

Routledge
29 November 2024

Social theory; Moral & social purpose of education

Series: Routledge Research in the Sociology of Education

This book critically interrogates the function of schooling in the United States of America using the writings of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Asking whether the function is to produce citizens, workers, a combination of the two, or something altogether different, it argues that the designs of schooling are part of a carefully crafted ordering, illustrated via an analysis of the ways in which schooling introduces students to various forms of coercion and seduction that socialize students in particular ways: ways that support an order.

By engaging with the prolific and insightful works of one of the most prominent social thinkers of the 21st century, this book considers schooling and its contributions to order. Be they solid or liquid modern ordering mechanisms, ordering through repression and seduction, or supporting ordering through the creation of boundaries separating an “orderly inside” from its “disorderly outside,” schools imperfectly support the construction of order and in doing so, privilege some representations and individuals over others. To order is to harness ambivalence and steer it in directions that privilege the “in” group at the expense of the “out” group; and schools, from the curriculum they teach to the values and ideas they promote, are desirable captive marketplaces instrumental in steering this ambivalence.

The author ultimately suggests that the function of schools, whether recognized or not, are not so much to educate students to be free thinkers, but rather to be orderly cogs in a particular functional social machine. As such, the book will be of interest to faculty, scholars, and postgraduate-level students with interests in the sociology of education, schooling, sociology, and social theory.

By: Eric Ferris
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032450650
ISBN 10: 1032450657
Series: Routledge Research in the Sociology of Education
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 29 November 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Eric Ferris is a High School Mathematics Teacher. He graduated from Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA.

Reviews for The (Dis)Order of U.S. Schooling: Zygmunt Bauman and Education for an Ambivalent World

“Immensely textured, The (Dis)Order of U.S. Schooling affords the reader permission to sense our contemporary times offering a systematic intervention into Zygmunt Bauman’s considerable oeuvre and examines its potential for the study of Education […]. Hope for a self-reflexive, and self-mediated, Educational Institution may be on the horizon if Ferris and Bauman are taken seriously by activists, young scholars, by teachers longing to process the harms invoked by Institutions of separation, and critical researchers looking to embolden their understanding of power’s margins.” - Matthew Myers, Review of Education, Pedagogy and Culture in Society