Includes bibliographical references and index.

I: The social construction of adolescence / Kenneth J. Saltman -- From Adolescence / G. Stanley Hall -- The role of pubertal processes / Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Edward O. Reiter -- The American child and other cultural inventions / William Kessen -- "Teaching our sons" / Gail Bederman -- Denaturalizing adolescence : the politics of contemporary representations / Nancy Lesko --The invention of the sexual adolescent / Jeffrey P. Moran -- "Bashing youth" and "wild in deceit" / Mike Males -- Nymphet fantasies : child beauty pageants and the politics of innocence / Henry A. Giroux -- II: The middle school concept and the purpose of education / Enora R. Brown -- From The emergent middle school / William M. Alexander -- Turning points : preparing American youth for the 21st century / Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development -- The future of middle level education : optimistic and pessimistic views / John H. Lounsbury and Gordon F. Vars -- Back to the future : middle schools and the Turning points report / Nancy Lesko -- Schooling in capitalist America / Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis -- Rivers of fire : Amoco's iMPACT on education and other corporate incursions / Kenneth J. Saltman and Robin Truth Goodman -- From Pedagogy of the oppressed / Paolo Freire -- III: The construction of identity / Kenneth J. Saltman -- Identity : youth and crisis / Erik H. Erikson -- Racial identity formation and transformation / Janie Victoria Ward -- Freedom for some, discipline for "others" : the structure of inequity in education / Enora R. Brown -- From Representation : cultural representations and signifying practices / Stuart Hall -- From Bad boys : public schools in the making of Black male masculinity / Ann Arnett Ferguson -- Asian Americans : the absent/silenced/model minority / Stacey Lee -- Lesbian and gay adolescents : social and developmental considerations / Dennis A. Anderson -- Canal Town girls / Julia Hall -- Subtractive schooling and divisions among youth / Angela Valenzuela -- English only : the tongue-tying of America / Donaldo Macedo -- IV: Curriculum, assessment, and critical pedagogy / Enora R. Brown -- A special kind of unity / James A. Beane -- Critical pedagogy and the social construction of knowledge / Peter McLaren -- Social class and school knowledge / Jean Anyon -- Teaching and learning mathematics for social justice in an urban, Latino school / Eric Gutstein -- "You can't just say that the only ones who can speak are those who agree with your position" : political discourse in the classroom / Melinda Fine -- "How come there are no brothers on that list?" : hearing the hard questions all children ask / Kathe Jervis -- Standardization, defensive teaching, and the problems of control / Linda M. McNeil.

A unique interdisciplinary compilation of readings that challenge and refocus our basic assumptions about the policies and practices of middle school.