ABSTRACT
In previous chapters, we have explored the complexity of schools and colleges as social and cultural environments. We have examined the relationships between teachers and students in different ways, analysing, for example, how power is exercised and experienced. It has emerged that teachers, even the most benign and vulnerable of them, have institutional power, while students, even the most influential and aggressive of them, are susceptible to authority. The latter may resist or rebel, and, in extremity, teachers may call upon external agencies or even risk their lives to restore the traditional hierarchy in which staff have at least notional power over students. However, the relationship between teachers and students is not the only structure operational in education. If we step back and move away from the staff room, we enter a complex and confused environment where young people establish and maintain, experience and endure their own social and cultural networks. In the closed world of young people, meaning, knowledge, control and authority are not mediated through prescribed formulae, although, routinely, such factors as affluence, age, appearance, attractiveness, articulacy, class, gender, height, intelligence, race, size and even musical preference may all be significant.
