A story of everyday life in an American junior high school, originally published in 1983, this book demonstrates the ways in which the school culture of early adolescence both supports and denies the cultural and economic requirements of the parent society that surrounds it. It explores this school culture in relation to the local and national in political economy, to class, race and gender, and to the needs of the state.

The author approaches the work of students in school as a labor process in the context of an advanced capitalist society. He describes such typical junior high activities as 'goofing off' and 'bugging the teacher' by examining the meaning of these activities to the students engaged in them, and brings acute observation and sensitivity to bear on the forms of resistance that arise among the students, showing that this resistance is a form of power which students exercise in the face of their estranged status. The nature and consequences of this resistance are examined in detail, especially as they relate to the context of a society in which estranged labor, in one form or another, is the dominant characteristic for most members. Throughout the book, the subtle pressures, the cliques, the vitality, the boredom and the ever-present humor of school life are explored.

By integrating the insights of Habermas with the theories of Marx, the author is able to examine the tension between the 'reified knowledge' of the school and the 'regenerative knowledge' of the students in a sensitive ethnography which captures the student world in ways which have been missed in the past.