Achievement Ideology and Alienation in School: Precarious Worth, Impossible Dreams, and Living Another’s Life

Drawing on over two years of the first author’s ethnographic fieldwork in two suburban high schools, the authors show how alienation is inextricably linked to an achievement ideology common in many forms of American schooling. In contrast to previous work that either no longer studies alienation or emphasizes alienation as a cause or result of student’ lack of achievement, the authors develop a theoretical defense of alienation to show how achieving students can still feel alienated. They describe three forms of alienation using the first author’s fieldwork: precarious worth, impossible dreams, and living another’s life. They close with the research’s political and sociological implications, especially the relationship between the achievement ideology and the study of schools itself.