Breaking Bad Habits of Race and Gender: Transforming Identity in Schools
reviewed by Sue Ellen Henry
 Title: Breaking Bad Habits of Race and Gender: Transforming Identity in Schools Author(s): Sarah Marie Stitzlein Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham ISBN: 0742563596, Pages: 144, Year: 2009 Search for book at Amazon.com
Sarah Stitzlein’s book Breaking Bad Habits of Race and Gender draws on long-standing Deweyan tradition of social problem solving while also utilizing some more recent work by Judith Butler to elaborate on the notion of flexible identity(ies). Combining these generative traditions offers readers a thoroughly new way of conceiving of behaviors relative to self-identification and thinking about identity(ies) of others, particularly those who have been historically marginalized in our society. The argument also gently builds toward powerful and important insights into the potential for schools to serve as sites of social change. The reasoning is sophisticated, and the writing is exceptionally clear. The primary argument of the book is that cultivating flexible habits that allow individuals to self-reflect and to resist the “sedimentation” of bad habits provides a procedural framework for reducing prejudice and racism, particularly in schools. This is a theoretically sophisticated and compelling argument, one that scholars interested... (preview truncated at 150 words.) Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record, 2010, p. -
http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 15900, Date Accessed: 9/10/2010 1:01:05 AM
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