The Work of Nonwork: Value, Alternative Education, and "Real" School

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Violence, Deservedness, and Law Enforcement in the Social Contexts of Schooling

Abstract

Drawing on our work as co-teachers in a California continuation high school--an alternative school for young people critically behind in units toward graduation--over the course of five years, this paper considers how value/anti-value and deservingness/undeservingness are mapped onto traditional and alternative schools and the young people who attend them. Approaching the question of the relationship and interconnections between alternative and traditional schools through value and anti-value enables us to interrogate the systemic investments in the production of failure. We bring a unique interdisciplinary focus to education scholarship that troubles the ideological boundaries between work and nonwork, deservingness and undeservingness.

Authors

• Chrissy Anderson-Zavala, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Kyle Beckham, Stanford University