A School Is a Lousy Place To Learn Anything in

1 This chapter was originally published in American Behavioral Scientist (1972): 85-105, and is reproduced in BURGESS R G (1995) Howard Becker on Education Buckingham: OU Press (which includes the sources for his references, not reproduced here because of course they are very old) nstitutions create myths to explain to their participants and the public generally what they do, how they do it, why society needs it done, and how successful they are. Every institution fails in some measure to do the job it promises, and its functionaries find it necessary, to explain both that they are trying to do better and that the disparity between promise and performance does not exist, is not serious, or occurs only rarely. Institutional apologias divert our attention from the way the very organization of an institution produces its failures. Further, they divert us from comparisons which might show how others, under a different name and rhetoric, actually perform the institution’s characteristic function more effectively.