School rules: Obedience, discipline and elusive democracy

Rebecca Raby is interested in young people's experiences, their perceptions about adolescence, gender, race, class and sexuality.Her new book on school rules provides a critical investigation of contemporary codes of conduct and rules, their creation and enforcement, and staff and students' understanding of these rules.The author focuses primarily on the rules themselves rather than on the issues related to classroom management and school administration.She argues that school rules are not simply common sense; rather they reflect and create cultural, developmental, gendered, racialized and class-based beliefs about human nature, adolescents, and the purpose of schooling.In her analysis of creation and enforcement of school rules and resistance to them, Raby draws on diverse theoretical perspectives including critical pedagogy, governmentality studies, concepts of cultural and social capital, and sociology of childhood.By challenging assumptions about rules, authority, control and governance, she invites readers to examine their own ideas about adolescence, school discipline, and student behavior and resistance.She discusses school rules by relying on existing research and employing original data from numerous Canadian school districts.More specifically, Raby has examined codes of conduct and provincial education policies, interviewed teachers and administrators, and conducted focus groups with secondary students from two Ontario school districts.Considering that student voices are seldom heard in the creation and implementation of school rules, this book gives readers an opportunity to learn how school rules and codes of conducts are perceived by students and what impact they have on their daily life.The book is divided into ten chapters addressing the issues of obedience, authority, discipline and students' participatory rights.The author starts her discussion with the in-depth examination of codes of conduct from seventy Ontario schools, pointing out a number of common features found in codes of conduct across North America.Codes of conduct typically include academic stipulations, safety concerns, dress codes and behavior policies.School rules contain "big" and "minor" rules.While big rules that ensure the safety of students and staff are considered 'givens' by most students; it is the minor rules, especially those related to etiquette, dress codes, and obedience, that are often criticized and challenged by students.Raby analyzes the contested nature of the rules themselves, reminding us that certain rules are not value neutral; they reflect the dominant Western, middle class ideas about 'proper' behavior and morals.These ideas are explicitly articulated in the Ontario Education Act (1990) which requires teachers "to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues."In chapters five and six, using students' and staff comments, Raby illustrates the complexity arising from a seemingly simple idea of consistent enforcement of school rules.She indentifies a significant gap between the views of staff, who often idealize and attempt to enact consistency of rule enforcement, and students, who recognize and value flexibility of their application.By drawing on the concept of cultural capital and focusing on class and ethnic differences, Raby describes how school rules and their application produce discrimination and reproduce inequality.She concludes that staff understand students' rule breaking without