Rhetoric, Embodiment, and the Ethos of Surveillance

Student Bodies in the American High School

By (author) Jennifer Young

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 June 2017

Length of book:

158 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9781498556002

Rhetoric, Embodiment, and the Ethos of Surveillance: Student Bodies in the American High School investigates the rhetorical tension between controlling student bodies and educating student minds. The book is a rhetorical analysis of the policies and procedures that govern life in contemporary American high schools; it also discusses the rhetorical effects of high-security, high-surveillance school buildings. It uncovers various metaphors that emerge from a close reading of the system, such as students’ claims that “school is a prison.” Jennifer Young concludes that many of the policies governing contemporary American high schools have come to rhetorically operate as a “discourse of default” that works against the highest aims of education, and she offers a method of effecting a cultural shift for going forward. Specifically, Young calls for an explicit application of intentional rhetoric to match discourse to audience and suggests that the development of empathy as a core value within the high school might be more effective in keeping students safe than the architectural and technological approaches we currently employ.

Chapter 2: Just Show Up (Or Else): Overzealous and Under-meaningful Attendance Codes
Chapter 4: The “Strange and Paradoxical”: Comedy and Contradiction in Student Handbooks
Appendix A: CDA Questions Derived from Gee’s “Tasks” and “Tools” (generic)
codes)
Appendix C:School Mission Statements
Appendix D:Ohio Revised Code Regarding Mandatory Attendance
Bibliography
About the Author

From dress codes to lockdowns to discipline policies, this book provides an insightful look at the modern-day high school and its increasingly troubling practices. The author’s experiences provide her with a unique position to not only survey these practices but dissect them as well with penetrating results.