This innovative portrait of student life in an urban high school focuses on the academic success of African-American students, exploring the symbolic role of academic achievement within the Black community and investigating the price students pay for attaining it. Signithia Fordham's richly detailed ethnography reveals a deeply rooted cultural system that favors egalitarianism and group cohesion over the individualistic, competitive demands of academic success and sheds new light on the so...

This anthology introduces some of the most influential literature shaping our understanding of the social and cultural foundations of education today. Together the selections provide students a range of approaches for interpreting and designing educational experiences worthy of the multicultural societies of our present and future. The reprinted selections are contextualized in new interpretive essays written specifically for this volume.