MULLOOLY, James (Teachers College, Columbia) THE PERFORMANCE OF MIDDLE SCHOOL SUCCESS OUTSIDE OF CLASSROOMS: A DISCUSSION OF ACTIVITIES THAT CHARACTERIZE BEHAVIOR

In anthropology of education, the term "culture," like learning, has been used so promiscuously that its theoretical usefulness must remain an open question. There is however reason to continue to work with the term to understand educational processes within particular political fields. I report here on fieldwork at "Loyola Middle School," a Catholic school for Latinos of low socioeconomic status. It states its goal as to "Educate Hispanic Youth for Christian Leadership and Service". Through an ethnomethodological analysis of the performance of Deck Time (a ritual enacted at a summer camp the students must attend) I show how the students are continually reframed as "doomed to succeed." Leaving aside whether such reframing will produce individual success, I emphasize the patterning of a social field according to specifically "cultural" principles and, in the process, suggest how the Boasian tradition of cultural analysis might be revived. Deck Time occurs eight times a day and punctuates all other activities of the summer camp. All camp members meet at a central location (the Deck) and are expected to describe students' noteworthy deeds (or students' deeds as noteworthy) during the previous activity. Suggesting that these accounts of behavior become characterized as successful through their telling, I argue that members of the camp cannot help but become participates in activities that "do success".

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