Quiet Riot: The Culture of Teaching and Learning in Schools

Diane Hoffman

Dec 2015 · Rowman & Littlefield

About this ebook

Quiet Riot offers an anthropological critique of teaching and learning in two U.S. high schools over a twenty-seven year period. Based on the author's experiences shadowing two average students in 1983 and 2009, it presents detailed observations that powerfully capture the reality of student experiences in school. Despite many changes in schools over this near thirty year period, observations show a remarkable continuity in what goes on in classrooms. This is because the culture of teaching and learning in classrooms has remained relatively unchanged. While teachers are sincere, they also undermine their own efforts in a variety of ways. Students are disengaged not because they do not care, but because the instruction they receive systematically prevents them from engaging at a deep intellectual level with subject matter. Observations in high schools are supplemented with elementary school observations that demonstrate the early trajectories of disengagement that capture many students. The book illustrates the powerful patterning of the culture of teaching and learning in schooling that undermines the true goals of an authentic education.

About the author

Diane M. Hoffman, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Social Foundations of Education at the Curry School of Education, University of Virginia. She conducts anthropological research on education in the United States, East Asia, and Haiti.