Producing Success

Demerath Peter

ISBN 10: 0226142418 / ISBN 13: 9780226142418

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2009

About this Item

pp. 224.

Seller Inventory # 8248925

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Producing Success
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226142418
• ISBN 13: 9780226142418
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as Producing Success makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead.

Demerath undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. Producing Success reveals the many ways the community’s ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as Demerath shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful. Insightful and candid, Producing Success is an often troubling account of the educationally and morally questionable results of the American culture of success.

About the Author

Peter Demerath is associate professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota.