In chapter five Sherry B. Ortner examines American High Schools; she commences by reviewing the shootings at Columbine High School that had a teacher, fourteen students dead with the two perpetrators committing suicide. High Schools are crucial in the process of American cultural immigration. This is considering that most of the American people have been a part of the high school systems and remember the exposure to those experiences as a crucial part of the preparation for later life. Ortner considers high schools as social systems that seek to “force” particular identities upon their students. Nonetheless, this system is often unsuccessful in imposing itself on some students. This chapter examines the system in the context of high schools in general throughout America as opposed to the specific class of ‘58.
Weequahic is the title of the sixth chapter and focuses on the author’s high school whose class of ’58 is the subject of her study. In this chapter, Ortner seeks to discover how people related to the identities set up by the high school system as identified in the previous chapter. Therefore, she shifts the focus to the social categories and recognizing that in addition to their purpose of labelling they also operate as packets of desires and their motivation. Furthermore, the labels also then are the guidelines that a student will adhere to in order to fulfil their desires. She uses a table system to categorize the different labels; the top of the table are the high capital students and their popularity, and the lower half of the table are the low capital students. The seventh chapter tracks seems to be a continuation of the sixth chapter but with a greater emphasis on college as a cultural system. Considering that this is the final chapter of the first half where she explores the lives of the class of ’58 it is clear that Ortner seeks to develop a complete profile that could be used to explain later lives of the class of ’58.
Works Cited
Ortner, Sherry B. New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ‘58. New York: Duke University Press, 2003. Print.
