ABSTRACT
Chapter 12, ‘A Compartmentalised Experience of School’, uses ethnographic data such as interviews and observations to reveal secondary school students’ dislike of school as a period that is distinct from the rest of their lives. It shows that compartmentalising schoolwork and the experience of school more generally into something abstract from the rest of their existence means that it lacks meaning and relevance. It is argued that students following a vocational curriculum, for who this problem was addressed to a degree, ultimately came to see their curriculum as an obstacle to their success since it failed to provide them with adequate opportunity to gain the qualifications needed to move on to further education. The chapter goes on to argue that this compartmentalisation of school is experienced as a denial of adulthood, described here as an ‘enforced neoteny’. A pragmatic attitude is eventually adopted by students, representing a desire to take something from school, accepting that qualifications are of use when they have left school.
