ABSTRACT
We said in the opening chapter to this book that we planned to focus on a range of discourses about education that could be found in popular culture. We have attempted to link these to wider professional, public and political debates about educational issues. These have included such issues as teacher performance, standards and expectations, social class and gender, and the effect of these on teachers’ experiences and behaviour. We have looked at the connections with discourses about pupil behaviour, control and management; bullying and violence in schools; young people’s moral and social education and their values and beliefs; and students’ opportunities and attitudes towards education. We have also considered the way popular culture intersects with debates concerning curriculum content and control, particularly the vocational academic divide and the inflexibility of state-determined programmes. In so doing, we have attempted to show how popular culture both reflects and constructs our experience of education in ways that sometimes reinforce official educational perspectives and sometimes resist, challenge and undermine these in surprising ways. This can best be summarised, perhaps, by considering the treatment of teachers, students and the curriculum in turn.
