| Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism Subjects: Educational change -- New York (State) -- New York; Educational technology -- New York (State) -- New York; Educational anthropology -- New York (State) -- New York; Community and school -- New York (State) -- New York; Social change -- New York (State) -; In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic foundations, it promised to reinvent the classroom for the digital age. Ethnographer Christo Sims documented the life of the school from its planning stages to the graduation of its first eighth-grade class. Disruptive Fixation is his account of how this "school for digital kids," heralded as a model of tech-driven educational reform, reverted to a more conventional type of schooling with rote learning, an emphasis on discipline, and traditional hierarchies of authority. Troubling gender and racialized class divisions also emerged. Christo Sims is associate professor of communication and a founding member of the Studio for Ethnographic Design at the University of California, San Diego. |