| This study investigates student alienation and resistance to schooling. Twenty-two students who have left their home schools to enroll in an alternative vocational school in upstate New York, Career High School (CHS) are interviewed, and participant observation is conducted in CHS classrooms. Perceptions of students are triangulated with observations and perceptions of adults (parents, teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors). The interviews reveal students' perceptions of why they left their home schools and enrolled in the alternative (vocational) school. Three factors pushing students out of their home schools are identified and discussed: student academic failure/poor grades in the home school, suspension due to individual misbehavior, and social exclusion at the home school. Six factors pulling students into the alternative (vocational) school are also identified and discussed: structures at the alternative school, caring teachers, good relationships with teachers, a meaningful curriculum, a sense of belonging to a community, and the opportunity to construct a new identity. Forms of alienation experienced by students are derived from these findings---alienation from academic knowledge, alienation from teachers and from authority, alienation from students and from community, and alienation from self. "Alternative education" is conceptualized: alternative education must connect students to academic knowledge, to teachers and to authority, to other students and to a sense of community, and to a sense of their own identity. The efficacy of the students' resistance (Everhart, 1983; Fine, 1991; Giroux, 1983; Ogbu, 2003; Valenzuela, 1999) is then evaluated by analyzing the extent to which the alternative school ameliorates the students' alienation from education. This evaluation uses the students' criteria of alternative education and criteria of "transformative education" developed by critical theorists and practicing teachers (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1983 and 1999; hooks, 1989 and 1994; McLaren, 1994; Shor, 1992). Theories of identity formation (Belenky et al., 1986; Collins, 2003; Erikson, 1959/1980; Goffman, 1963; Ogbu, 2003) are integrated into the evaluation and the research is placed within a context of current school reform movements and a changing local economy. |
