Skip to content
Description
By: Jonathan Taylor | Series: Goldsmiths Press / Unidentified Fictional Objects
On bullying, discipline, and power in school and beyond.
What does it mean to be a bully? What does it feel like to be bullied—to be a victim, a pariah, a scapegoat? What are the techniques, patterns, and languages of bullying?
Intermingling memoir with literary criticism, philosophy, and sociology, A Physical Education attempts to answer these questions. A highly original examination of the uses and abuses of power in the education system, it explores how bullying and discipline function, how they differ from each other, and how they all too often overlap.
Taylor interweaves his own experiences with reflections on well-known literary representations of bullying and school discipline, alongside sociological, psychological, and philosophical theories of power. He discusses the transition from corporal punishment to psychological forms of discipline that took place in the UK in the 1980s, and he also investigates the divergences and convergences of physical, psychological, and linguistic bullying.
Above all, A Physical Education sets out to understand bullying and discipline from an experiential perspective: what these things feel like from "within," rather than "above," for all those involved. There are horrors, tragedies, and cyclical traumas, certainly—but there are also absurdities, contradictions, grotesque comedies. Sometimes, beneath the Gradgrindian tyranny, there is trickery, laughter. And sometimes there are chinks in The Wall, through which other possible worlds might be glimpsed.
On bullying, discipline, and power in school and beyond.
What does it mean to be a bully? What does it feel like to be bullied—to be a victim, a pariah, a scapegoat? What are the techniques, patterns, and languages of bullying?
Intermingling memoir with literary criticism, philosophy, and sociology, A Physical Education attempts to answer these questions. A highly original examination of the uses and abuses of power in the education system, it explores how bullying and discipline function, how they differ from each other, and how they all too often overlap.
Taylor interweaves his own experiences with reflections on well-known literary representations of bullying and school discipline, alongside sociological, psychological, and philosophical theories of power. He discusses the transition from corporal punishment to psychological forms of discipline that took place in the UK in the 1980s, and he also investigates the divergences and convergences of physical, psychological, and linguistic bullying.
Above all, A Physical Education sets out to understand bullying and discipline from an experiential perspective: what these things feel like from "within," rather than "above," for all those involved. There are horrors, tragedies, and cyclical traumas, certainly—but there are also absurdities, contradictions, grotesque comedies. Sometimes, beneath the Gradgrindian tyranny, there is trickery, laughter. And sometimes there are chinks in The Wall, through which other possible worlds might be glimpsed.
You may also like
熱銷中 Top Trending
Dog Man 13: Dog Man: Big Jim Begins: A Graphic Novel (Dog Man #13)
Sale priceHK$79.00
Regular priceHK$150.00
In stock
Treehouse, The (正版) Boxset / Bundle with QR code Audio (Andy Griffiths)
Sale priceFrom HK$169.00
Regular priceHK$673.00
In stock
Dragon Masters #27 (正版) Haunting of the Ghost Dragon (Branches) (Tracey West)
Sale priceHK$47.00
Regular priceHK$69.00
In stock
Harry Potter (正版) Children #1-7 Collection (7 Books)(J.K. Rowling)(printed in UK)
Sale priceFrom HK$459.00
Regular priceHK$799.00
In stock
Press Start! #14 Super Game Book! Special Edition (Branches)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$80.00
In stock
Press Start! #15 Mega Mole Girl Digs Deep! (Branches)
Sale priceHK$48.00
Regular priceHK$98.00
In stock
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Wrath of the Triple Goddess International Edition
Sale priceHK$92.00
Regular priceHK$140.00
In stock
Dog Man (正版) #11 Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea (Dav Pilkey)
Sale priceFrom HK$59.00
Regular priceHK$90.00
In stock
Inheritance Games, The #4 The Brothers Hawthorne (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)
Sale priceFrom HK$79.00
Regular priceHK$126.00
In stock
