Schools Under Surveillance

Schools under Surveillance gathers together some of the very best researchers studying surveillance and discipline in contemporary public schools. Surveillance is not simply about monitoring or tracking individuals and their data - it is about the structuring of power relations through human, technical, or hybrid control mechanisms. Essays cover a broad range of topics including police and military recruiters on campus, testing and accountability regimes such as No Child Left Behind, and efforts by students and teachers to circumvent the most egregious forms of surveillance in public education. Each contributor is committed to the continued critique of the disparity and inequality in the use of surveillance to target and sort students along lines of race, class, and gender. Special topics covered in this title include: security systems; police officers; audit cultures; standardized tests; marketing research; and, military recruiters.

Schools under Surveillance raises a set of important and critical questions about how public schools have become one of the most surveilled of contemporary spaces. Monahan and Torres have put together a fine collection of provocative work that captures the essence of these new school accountability regimes. - William G. Staples, author of Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life

TORIN MONAHAN is an associate professor of human and organizational development at the Peabody College of Education and Human Development and an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University. He is the editor and author of several books, including Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life. RODOLFO D. TORRES is a professor of planning, policy, and design, Chicano/Latino studies, and political science at the University of California, Irvine. He is coeditor of several books and the coauthor of Latino Metropolis (forthcoming, Rutgers University Press).