Divide and School

This book is concerned with how comprehensive schooling can act as a social system of class and gender differentiation. Based on a critical synthesis of feminist and sociological literature on secondary education, Abraham develops a theoretical and methodological framework for ethnographic research into the central gender and class dynamic of a comprehensive school. These include: the differential impact of streaming on middle class and working class pupils; the gender dimensions of deviant pupil's value systems: teachers' sex-stereotyping and ideologies; the construction of subject options; and the sex roles in curriculum texts. He argues that the comprehensive school does not necessarily challenge dominant class and gender divisions in society, and can serve to reproduce them. To further the ideals of comprehensive education the author proposes that streaming should be minimized; subject option processes should be intervention and counter-hegemonic; breadth of gender identities amongst the pupil population needs to be better appreciated; teacher trainees should be allowed sufficient time to develop a good awareness of the gender and class divisions in society; anti-sexist pedagogies should be systematically developed. Abraham concludes, however, that recent government reforms in education are more likely to hinder than further these proposals.

John Abraham is Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology, University of Reading, UK.