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Neighborhoods, Campuses, And NamesA description of the programs that were studied begins with a description of the schools and communities in which they are embedded, and the names given each school require an explanation. Urban High is in south Los Angeles in an area the school website describes as having high unemployment, a high proportion of single family homes and families receiving AFDC, and many multi-family homes. Walking around the neighborhood, the discrepancies were striking: There were many houses that appeared to be single family homes with well tended, if small, yards, and among these were many small apartment houses—usually less well taken care of. Most of the windows had bars on them, but across from the school was a large apartment complex that was new and attractive and without bars. A few other such complexes were in the area. Within sight of the school was a large public sports complex (which caused me to get stuck in traffic more than once) and parking was complicated by the usual urban problems of street cleanings and insufficient accommodations. The school provided a small parking lot for staff and a smaller parking lot for students, which was locked during classes, but there was not enough room to accommodate visitors. The majority of students rode school buses or city buses. The run-down gas station across the street and the half empty storefronts directly in front of the school gave a distinct feel of poverty, even with the new apartments rising up from behind the stores. The lack of foliage, constant stream of cars, proximity with the few tall buildings to be found in Los Angeles, and the unevenness in the age and condition of buildings make the neighborhood distinctly urban. Suburban High, on the other hand, is not in a distinctly suburban neighborhood, having some urban qualities. A definition of suburbia can be difficult (see the website www.turnmeondeadman.net, Beneath the blue suburban sky: Images of suburbia in American movies, for a discussion of the definition in relation to movies), but the term is used in part because of the neighborhood. The school is surrounded on three sides by modest, single-family homes, each having yards, driveways, and garages. Across the busy street in front of the school were a number of small apartment buildings with more houses beyond them. There were no businesses within sight of the school and none that students could easily walk to. The school is, however, in a city—a city at some distance from Los Angeles. It is a city that only recently has acquired LA commuters as the price of houses has forced people to move farther and farther out. The neighborhood the school is in, however, is not composed of the large, luxurious suburban homes some LA employees are fleeing to; the neighborhood is distinctly less wealthy than these, being in an older part of the city and showing the more modest incomes of their owners through small signs of decay and more modest cars in the driveways. The school is not a wealthy suburban school. The title of Suburban, however, is also earned because many students drive to school, and a “culture of cars” is more prevalent as students discuss mechanics and show off keys and other car accessories in class. The school has two large parking lots, the one in front of the building having a section reserved for visitors and a section for staff and the larger parking lot in the back of the school being reserved for students. Thus Suburban High seemed an appropriate name, describing many of the characteristics that contrast those of Urban High. Evans reported that schools are “isolated in park-like settings” (1979, p. 32), but this is clearly not always the case as urban schools tend to have a distinct shortage of room. New York City high schools rarely have outside places for students beyond the athletic fields. In contrast, most southern California schools are able to make greater use of and have more outdoor area: Many schools, including Urban High, have lunch tables outside to supplement indoor cafeterias. This use of the campus allows schools to send all their students to lunch at the same time. Urban High’s outdoor eating area was always full at lunch time (see in Illustration 1, Still 3), while as the indoor cafeteria rarely had more than a few students in it. The areas between buildings and indoor hallways were also busy at this time. Urban High’s grounds, therefore, have some elements of a park. In addition to tables, there is grass and flowers around the entrance and a grassy area with benches and trees in the middle of campus, but most of the campus is paved and the whole is surrounded by a high fence with signs telling passerbys to watch out for crime. The campus has 14 separate buildings—the largest and oldest of which have two floors—and several more trailers, including one that is a police sub-station. The quality of the buildings vary. The four biggest buildings looked solid and had professional murals and display cases inside; they contained most of the traditional courses. Other buildings looked flimsy and dirty; many of these held vocational classes. Much of the outside areas, with additional fences to separate them from where students traverse, is devoted to tennis, basketball, football, and track but are easily seen as one walks from building to building. The campus occupied three city blocks. Suburban High, on the other hand, occupies a nearly 60-acre plot of land with tall trees, large lawns, and picnic tables sprinkled throughout the middle of the campus. The athletic arenas cannot be seen from the main campus, being hidden by the gymnasium and sheer distance. A pool is immediately behind the gym. There is even a community park at one end of the property. The school has 24 brick buildings and a few trailers, though none of the buildings are more than one story high. The campus is pleasant and large. Stills from student works demonstrate the differences between the campuses in Illustration 1. The classrooms also have different connections to the campus. All of the classrooms at Suburban High have doors facing outside, whereas at Urban High, the classrooms of the three main buildings and the offices in the administration building face internal hallways, leaving the less substantial and less academic buildings with immediate access to the outside. Illustration 2 has examples. Suburban High thus has no hallways—the place described by Hemmings as student spaces (2002). The impact on student activity is mixed: Suburban students have more physical space, but in line with Foucault’s (1980) comments, the large open areas afforded heightened surveillance, which constrains activity in a less direct but more thorough manner than having less space. The smaller spaces in hallways, stairwells, and between or behind buildings at Urban High facilitated many “elicit” actions (Hemmings). I was surprised that students were allowed to occupy hallways and stairwells during lunch with little supervision, contributing to a sense that students owned these areas at Urban High far more than students at Suburban High were able to own their large park-like areas. On the other hand, the newer and cleaner condition of the buildings and campus at Suburban High indicated a difference in resources or resource allocation. At Urban High, the maintenance and attractiveness of the material environment declined as its distance from the administrative offices increased, suggesting through condition and distance which places in the school were priorities. Another contrast between Urban and Suburban Highs is the buildings’ dates of construction: The main buildings at Urban High were built in the 1930s, while the buildings at Suburban High were built in the 1950s, reflecting therefore a more traditional notion of suburbia. Both schools reflect history, however: They each had information about their histories on their websites that provide messages consistent with my reading of the campuses. Urban High described the earthquakes that required reconstruction, and Suburban High told the story of the land on which it was built. Urban High’s history was a story of obstacles that were overcome, and Suburban High told the story of property and generous gifts. Boarding High is unlike the other two schools in two significant ways. First, it is a boarding school; students go to their dorms after school rather than to their homes in the community. There is a relative disconnection from the surrounding area for this reason. Boarding High is additionally different from Urban and Suburban Highs and “normal” boarding schools because it is for Native Americans and governed by the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. It also has a long history—commemorated in an on-sight museum. The original school was a place for Indians to be assimilated into European-American culture, where they were not allowed to speak their native languages or participate in traditional activities. Disease and extreme poverty led to the death of many students. Now the school works to preserve that history and to maintain Native cultures, but there are reasons to doubt the sincerity of these efforts as one writer on the internet indicated that traditional ceremonies had been replaced by Christian ones. Most of the staff seemed to be Native American 8, and artwork throughout the buildings had Native themes, but the school was in the midst of urban sprawl rather than on a reservation. And the buildings themselves were distinctly contemporary, built some time in the late 1970s, when the old buildings failed to meet new earthquake standards. These school buildings and the dormitories, however, had distinctly different characters: The six school buildings (including gymnasium, auditorium, and pool) were large, solid, new looking buildings made of brick. Their halls were full of colorful murals, painted by students during the 1990s. The dormitories, which I never saw inside except through one student video, were built in the 1960s and were considerably more modest. The school is on approximately ten acres, estimated to be almost twice the size of the Urban High grounds and one sixth that of Suburban High. There was no issue of students driving to school, but the parking lot was much larger than what the staff needed. The school was surrounded by apartment complexes, a church, small businesses, a Christian school, a small shopping center, a grocery, and—a little farther—a freeway. The teacher reported that students’ favorite place to go--when they were allowed to leave—was a large shopping mall two miles away. The school, however, was cut off from the community by a large span of grass that separated it from the main street, and the parking lot put distance between it and the street it faced. There was a chainlink fence around the perimeter, but it was not imposing and would not be difficult to climb 9; there were also several openings in it. Refer to Illustration 3 for pictures from student work. The grounds were park-like with perfectly paved paths cutting across mowed grass and between buildings. A sculpture stood in front of the main door (visible in Still 1), and a large square was between the school buildings and most of the dorms. Plots of grass surrounded the concrete square, and along one side was a shelter with picnic tables beneath it. The shelter was the only part of the campus clearly marked by studentwork: The names of senior class officers and other adornment were imperfectly painted there. By comparison, the murals around the school seemed flawless. While both Boarding and Suburban Highs had attractive, park-like grounds, the Boarding High park was incredibly manicured by comparison, having recently been re-landscaped. At Suburban High, tree roots had cracked blacktopped paths, but the tall trees of Boarding High stood like an oasis—set back away from the buildings—while the near trees were still too young for shade. The immaculate appearance suggests a strong concern with appearances. The names of the schools, Urban High, Suburban High, and Boarding High, therefore reflect two major characteristics. They reflect the communities they are in and the relationships with those communities: High fences versus low fences, grass versus concrete, and the amount and use of land; and they reflect the mode of arrival and departure: automobiles versus buses, daily versus once a term. At all schools, the sterility of the institution dominated, but only at Urban High was this softened somewhat by pink (coral?) walls and sheer decay, and only here did the students make a significant material presence through regular signs about activities and murals that were clearly student creations. A student presence was always detectable bodily as well at Urban High but strangely absent on the grounds of the other two schools. Perhaps students should not have been moving around campus during classes, but somehow it gave the grounds a life that did not exist at the other two schools. But of course, these descriptions are only the beginning of the story, being the most observable characteristics. Though perhaps not much deeper, the official stories are told next as obtained from web pages and school “report cards.” |
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8Statistics
were
unavailable, but the art teacher indicated that she
was one-eighth Native, despite any identifying characteristics, and
many staff members had names and appearances suggesting Native
identities. 9In fact, one student project that was never completed showed girls sneaking off to climb the fence. |
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