School Story

Aitchison examines how present-day novelists, filmmakers, and critics depict school life, and how those depictions help set the common understanding of what school is. Most of the works he discusses were written for children and teenagers.

Among the books he considers are Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Faiza Guène's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, both serious novels for teens. He also looks at the lighter middle-grade novels of Andrew Clements and Tommy Greenwald, and at Malala Yousafzai's autobiography adapted for young readers, I Am Malala. Other works place young people at the center of the story, including Sapphire's novel Push and the films Battle Royale and Cooties.

Although these works differ widely in how they portray young lives, Aitchison argues that they reflect a growing sense of trouble in education worldwide. He focuses on equity, meaning whether students from varied backgrounds have a fair chance at a good education, and on empowerment, meaning whether those students are helped to build strength, confidence, and a sense of self as learners. He pays particular attention to how neoliberal policies shape everyday school life, and asks what changes when learning and success are judged more and more by entrepreneurship, competitive individualism, and gains in the marketplace. Throughout, he traces how power, institutional routines, school spaces, and social relations appear in contemporary school stories, and he presents the genre as a lens on education's uncertain position in the present century.