Young people and high school in Mexico: subjectivisation, others andreflexivity

Eduardo Weissa*, Irene Guerra Ramırezb, Elsa Guerrero Salinasc,

Joaquın Gonzalez Hernandezd, Olga Grijalva Martıneza and Job Avalos Romeroa

aDepartment of Education, Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV),

Mexico City, Mexico; bCentro de Estudios Tecnologicos Industriales y de Servicios No. 37,

Mexico; cSchool of Science and Humanities, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,

Mexico; dUniversidad Pedagogica Nacional, Ajusco, Mexico City, Mexico

This article is based on the finding that for many students, high school is a place

for young people’s life and living together, a place for subjectivisation. The

process of subjectivisation is approached through a discussion that questions

conceptions of students as strategists of their school trajectory, as well as

conceptions of youth life as the excitement of vibrating together. The claim is

made that young people’s life at school is a process of finding meaningful Others:

other styles, other friends, and the other gender. Faced with options and risks,

students also develop reflexivity. These topics are examined in three different

scenarios: a general high school that is part of the university system in Mexico

City, a technical high school in the metropolitan area, and community

intercultural high schools in an indigenous rural zone.

Keywords: youth; high school; students; identity; reflexivity; Mexico

Socialisation, sociability and subjectivisation

Research in Mexico has recently begun to overcome the division between studies that

focus on students with regard to academic aspects, and studies that centre on young

people outside of school in terms of countercultural aspects; current research

increasingly seeks to explain student experience by looking at students as actors

immersed in various cultural practices (Guzman and Saucedo 2005). Our line of

research attempts to understand students as young people.

According to a group of authors (Bauman 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim

2002; Dubar 2000; Giddens 1991), modern societies are experiencing the decline of

institutions and their ability to regulate individual behaviour. These societies are

characterised by a high level of complexity and uncertain institutional structures,

which in turn lead to further difficulties in providing meaning to experience and

identity construction. According to Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002), the modern

individual has become a social institution required to self-coordinate, plan time, and

maintain multiple memberships in a society of options. Giddens (1991) emphasises

that self-identity is a reflexive project even when the individual is attempting to

choose among lifestyles that are prefabricated by the media. Self-identity is especially

reflexive in intimate relationships.

*Corresponding author. Email: eweiss@cinvestav.mx

ISSN 1745-7823 print/ISSN 1745-7831 online

# 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17457820801899025

http://www.informaworld.com

Ethnography and Education

Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2008, 17�31

Since such trends permeate schools, there is a need to study how young people

construct subjectivity in school settings. Also of interest is individuals’ appropriation

of the resources of local and global culture, and their agency in cultural practices in

which they participate.

The book by Dubet and Martuccelli (1996), A l?ecole. Sociologie de l’experience

scolaire questions Durkeim’s ‘functionalist Paideia’ which seemed capable of

forming, in a single movement, integrated social actors who comply with norms,

and at the same time are autonomous, critical and rational citizens. Dubet and

Martuccelli focus in parallel form on the process of socialisation and individualisa-

tion, and present three logics of interaction: the interiorising of norms and the role of

student (socialisation); the development of personal tastes and interests which leads

students to establish a distance from their socialisation and to gain a sense of person

(subjectivisation); and the instrumental or strategic act based on a calculation of the

usefulness of the investment in school tasks, with an eye to future projects,

considering resources and the previous school trajectory (strategy). They emphasise

that the construction of the school experience combines and articulates these diverse

logics of action, as they underline the successive rise of one of the logics of action in

the different stages of the school trajectory: primary school children are socialised,

secondary school students develop their subjectivity by means of a conflictive

process with school, while high school students act mainly as strategists. This article

emphasises that high school students also must work through processes of

subjectivisation.

Our earlier research showed that from the young people’s perspective, high school

is a place for a youthful life. In this sense, it is a place of sociability and even sociality.

The latter concept was coined by Maffesoli (1988) in opposition to the concept of

socialisation, and also to counter theses of growing individualisation. ‘Sociality’

emphasises the rebirth of the community, referring to joint action guided more by

emotion than by reason, the predominance of an ‘aesthetic paradigm’ in collective

sensitivity, and the importance of fun and Dionysian elements in the communal

vibration of neo-tribalism. Our study found elements of this new ‘community’

culture: young people gather in groups, huddles and gangs. Yet, we believe that

youthful life is not experienced solely by the pleasure of being together.Getting to know others is a relevant part of young people’s lives. We approach

that Other, different and meaningful, using the hermeneutic conception of Dilthey

(in Gadamer 1960), Gadamer (1960), Ricoeur (1996) and Taylor (1989), who

emphasise the dialogue between the other and the self in life settings as a

fundamental part of all processes of communication, interaction, experience and

construction of identity; the dialogue between the present and history (biographical

and collective) as the basis of a possible future; and the dialogue between one’s own

cultural resources and those of other cultures as part of the process of creating new

cultural practices.

Friends have special meaning for young students, and conversations among

fellow students allow young people to become familiar with other opinions. In

conversations with close friends they can speak intensely about their experiences and

feelings. Equally important is the encounter with the ‘other’ gender. Such encounters

undoubtedly begin at the end of elementary school and last throughout secondary

school, but they acquire more mature characteristics during the high school years.

18 E. Weiss et al.

Affective and sexual contact with another person creates enormous possibilities for

reflexive processes, self-awareness and expression.

While life beyond schooling is of enormous relevance for young people, and may

cause them to delegate their schoolwork to a secondary position or even drop out of

school, we also find that young people reflect on the importance of staying in school.

In their narratives, the reflexive process reveals an internal conversation that

incorporates various voices � a concept we take from Holland et al. (1998) and

Bakhtin (1973).

In summary, we believe that the subjectivity of young people in high school is not

reduced to negotiating time and effort at school, or to an empty individualism.

Neither is it simply a momentary communal vibration. Subjectivity includes the

experience of finding ‘other’ meaningful young people, and developing processes of

reflection and self-regulation through conversation and interior dialogue.

The arguments presented up to this point do not consider personal, social and

cultural diversity. Mexico is a nation of enormous economic and social injustice, with

an interweaving of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern structures with great

cultural diversity. Formal employment has always been scarce. Even outside of

agriculture (in manufacturing and services), informal employment and self-employ-

ment are on the increase, expanding from 39.6% of the work force in 1992, to 43.4%

in 2004. Cultural diversity ranges from urban youth immersed in global lifestyles, to

indigenous youth in rural villages, where the notion of community conserves

portions of its ancestral meaning. Young people do not live in isolation: they migrate

within Mexico and to the USA, they watch television and listen to CDs, and they are

beginning to access the Internet. Such elements in three different school and

sociocultural scenarios will be addressed in a second line of argumentation in this

article.

How this article was constructed

This article is the product of a collective effort by Eduardo Weiss, thesis supervisor,

together with his students in the master’s and doctoral programmes of the

Department of Educational Research (DIE-CINVESTAV). This line of research,

known as ‘Young People and High School’, began with the master’s thesis by Irene

Guerra and Elsa Guerrero (2004), a study of the meaning of high school that

compared the perspectives of students in a university high school in Mexico City,

with those of students in a technical high school in the metropolitan area. At present,

both are finishing their doctoral theses: Elsa is writing about the student experience

in two general high schools, and Irene is studying the educational and work

trajectories of graduates from a technical high school. Joaquın Hernandez is

completing his doctoral thesis on the construction of identities and morals among

students, Olga Grijalva is focusing on the topic of young people’s consumption and

appearances, and Job Avalos is near completion of his master’s thesis on student

conversation. The article also includes observations and interviews carried out by

Eduardo Weiss during a qualitative evaluation of three intercultural high schools

and their Indian students in rural communities in the state of Oaxaca.

Each study has its own objectives and categories, yet we share our results and

theoretical referents. At a seminar held every three weeks, we discuss the

bibliography we find relevant, along with progress made on theses. The focus of

Ethnography and Education 19

this article, the process of subjectivisation, has been a central topic of our

discussions; recently we have consolidated our central arguments developed in the

theses’ research and by examining comparatively different sociocultural scenarios.

Thesis supervisor Eduardo Weiss wrote the initial outline for the paper as well as its

final versions. The finished product attempts to present both a review and a

discussion of our line of research. Because it is based on the results of several

research projects, the empirical evidence is uneven and not always comparable. Most

of the research was carried out at a general high school affiliated with the National

University in Mexico City.

In methodological terms, the research projects in process are inspired by the

hermeneutic tradition (cf. Weiss 2005) and the ethnographic focus of the Educational

Research Department (DIE) at CINVESTAV (cf. Rockwell 1998). As a research

perspective, hermeneutics attempts to understand the configurations of meaning in

others’ discourse (both written and oral). Dialogue and narration are central

elements in the construction of social life and identity of social actors. Meaning is

always meaning in context. The part and the whole, or the text and the context, are

mutually constitutive. Hermeneutics aims at reaching understanding by means of

dialogue between the researcher and cultural productions or social actors. The

ethnographic focus of DIE-CINVESTAV has its origins in the conceptions of

everyday life found in Schutz, Gramsci, Heller, and Berger and Luckmann, and

currently emphasises the appropriation of cultural resources � an appropriation that

considers culture as simultaneously constrictive and enabling, with an emphasis on

agency (Rockwell 1996). In contrast with much of US ethnography that focuses on

minorities, the DIE centres its attention on the school life of the lower classes (‘clases

populares’ in Spanish) in a broad sense. In Latin America, the lower classes

constitute the majority of the population (Rockwell 1998).

The studies on which this paper is based use various techniques, ranging from

one-semester observations at schools (non-participative observation in the case of

Joaquın Hernandez’ fieldwork, and participative observation in Job Avalos’ work as

a quasi student), to narrative autobiographical interviews lasting from 1 to 3 hours,

as in the case of the theses of Elsa Guerrero (35 persons) and Irene Guerra (18

persons), and more dialogical forms such as the open interviews and conversations

carried out by Joaquın, Olga Grijalva and Job. Eduardo Weiss produced the

qualitative evaluation of the intercultural high schools by making three-day visits

(with a team of six people from the central offices of the new school system) to three

communities and schools, using observations, qualitative interviews (semi-structured

and open) and questionnaires.

Context in three types of schools: socioeconomic and cultural scenarios, and the

meaning of schooling

The only institutions that are expanding in Mexico are schools. High schools have

shown notable growth, with enrolments rising from one million to three million

between 1980 and 2003. The preceding level � secondary school � was declared

mandatory in 1993, however only 59% of the population aged 16�18 is currently

enroled. At the national level, almost all secondary school graduates enrol in high

school, but a high percentage does not finish high school in three years (36% in the

general high schools and 44% in the technical high schools). Many students drop out.

20 E. Weiss et al.

Sixty percent of all high school students attend general high schools. The Mexico

City high school studied in this article, referred to as a university high school, is part

of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. Established in 1971, as an

alternative to traditional preparatory schools, it has an enrolment of approximately

5000 students in the morning shift and 5000 in the evening shift. The curriculum,

centred on introducing students to languages and methods of science and the

humanities, has been extended to many other schools in Mexico. The parents of

the students at this school are workers, employees, self-employed or small-scale

merchants within the formal or informal economy; approximately 20%

are professionals. In the Mexico City metropolitan area, students applying to free

public schools take an entrance examination that measures their academic knowl-

edge. The test results and their secondary school grades are the basis for assigning

them a place in the different types of high schools. Many of the best students aspire

to attend the university high schools such as the one just described.

Technical high schools receive 30% of the national enrolment. In the Mexico City

metropolitan area, a substantial number of the students with less encouraging results

on their high school entrance examination are channelled into the technical high

schools. The technical school in the metropolitan area referred to in this article has

1500 students in each shift. Dropout rates are high after the first year. These schools

offer the possibility of earning a high school diploma (a requirement for applying to

higher education) while receiving training for technical jobs. The students’ fathers

tend to be construction workers, taxi drivers or mechanics, and some are low-level

government office workers, while the mothers are housemaids, seamstresses and

peddlers in the informal economy.

The presence of high schools is quite recent in small indigenous towns (1000�2000 inhabitants) in mountainous regions of difficult access. The economic reasons

for not attending secondary and high school have been overcome in large part by a

programme of governmental support. Families living in extreme poverty receive the

peso equivalent of approximately 50 US dollars for each child enroled in school; the

amount per child is equal to one-half of the minimum monthly wage. The state of

Oaxaca has a new system of 18 intercultural high schools with enrolments ranging

from 90 to 130 students. Most of these schools were built thanks to the efforts of

entire communities, often motivated by a struggle for progress and status among

municipalities, and especially for status with regard to Mestizo municipalities. The

three schools visited are in areas where Mazatec, Zapotec and Mixe are spoken. The

language of instruction is Spanish. During the first three semesters, however, several

subjects emphasise the indigenous culture and language, both oral and written.

At the present time, high school is where most Mexican youth make decisions

about whether to leave or stay in school, whether to dedicate more time to school or

to work and aim for higher grades to enter certain professional fields of study, or

whether to enjoy a youthful life.

The results of the study by Guerra and Guerrero (2004) show that students at the

university high school had generally been good students in secondary school.

Continuing on to high school was a ‘natural’ step when they finished secondary

school � a step towards entering the university and obtaining undergraduate and

even master’s degrees. Diverse expressions of the value of school as a place for youth

and as a place to encounter classmates and friends appeared in the study with equal

Ethnography and Education 21

strength. Less frequent were expressions related to the meaning that pedagogues tend

to attach to high school as a place for acquiring academic skills and knowledge.

According to the students at the technical high school, the principal purpose of

attending school is to obtain a diploma, and to be able to continue on to higher

education (generally in technical or administrative fields). Many students, however,

are unsure about being able to reach this goal: ‘My dream is to enroll in higher

education. It’s my goal.’ Yet: ‘We do not graduate from this institution very

well-prepared for enrolling in that kind of school [of higher education]’. Or: ‘I may

not have enough money.’ A high school diploma is also important for finding a

formal or better-paid position, and strongly associated with overcoming social and

economic conditions, whether on the personal level or as part of a family effort. The

age of these students often does not correspond to their school year. Several students

did not enrol in high school immediately after finishing secondary school. Entering

and attending high school does not occur as a ‘natural’ sequence, but as ‘encounters

and mishaps’. Educational trajectories are present as ‘repetitive efforts, fragmented

passages’ (Guerra 2006).The situation in the indigenous schools in the poor rural areas could be expected

to be more difficult, but our recent evaluation shows the opposite to be true. Various

factors explain the phenomenon: the recent existence of rural high schools as a

community asset, the absence of employment opportunities (beyond migration), and

economic support for school children’s families. Cultural patterns have changed.

Contributing to the family income by staying in school is equivalent to a boy’s

fulfilment of his role as a ‘man’ by supporting the family; and for a girl, being able to

attend school represents an escape from the traditional domestic role, a motivation

also found in technical high schools in urban areas. In the municipal seats, practically

all secondary school graduates, both male and female, enter high school.

At the community intercultural high school, where arduous homework often

requires students to do assignments until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, we repeatedly

asked students and parents if they considered the workload excessive. The adults’

responses to our middle-class urban question tended to be: ‘Here we work in the

fields all day and they study.’ The meaning of schooling is associated in the first place

with expressions of progress and social mobility, as an individual but also as

community. Approximately one-third of the student population believes higher

education will be the next step, and another one-third is unsure, depending on the

results of their entrance examinations and economic situation. Most of the students

plan to work while in school and some hope to obtain a scholarship. Those who are

not considering higher education will use their high school diploma to migrate to the

city and find a job in a store instead of working as a servant (in the case of the girls),

or will find better jobs than the traditional temporary agricultural work or masonry

(in the case of the boys). The reasons for attending high school are related to ‘being

someone in life’, ‘having a better life’, and ‘supporting my parents’. Various students

mention that their communities ‘lack doctors and lawyers’, the need to overcome

‘injustice’, and some think that even without higher education they will be able to

contribute to local production and government: ‘But I say, how do we prepare

ourselves to face all that (globalization)? And the Indian communities, well they need

the leadership of someone who is coordinating activities, on the side of the

(traditional) authorities’ (Reynaldo, sixth semester, interview by Eduardo).

22 E. Weiss et al.

We believe, along with Dubet and Martuccelli (1996), that attending school is

instrumental � a means to obtain a diploma. Most students expend only the effort

necessary to achieve their goals. We emphasise, however, that high school still has

significant ends for many in Mexico: studying a profession for some, or getting a

better job for others; a means of personal progress for many, with a sense of family

progress for urban migrants, and even a sense of community improvement for Indian

towns.Part of the Latin American literature, especially in Argentina, emphasises the

‘crisis of schooling’ of low-class students who have massively enroled in high school �which has ‘conserved the objectives and codes of origin of the middle class’ (Falconi

2004, see also Duschatzky 1999; Tenti 2003). Such students, on seeing the decreasing

value of diplomas in the labour market, have developed practices of ‘resistance’ that

lead to their dropping out of school. These processes undoubtedly occur in Mexican

schools as well (see below), but the results of our studies do not coincide with the

overall verdict of a ‘crisis of schooling’ � perhaps because our studies are not centred

on the most marginalised urban sectors (the focus of most Argentine studies), or

perhaps because access to high school is more recent in Mexico and still valued by

the general population and the young people we interviewed.

School as a place for youth

The students’ narratives of their experience at the university high school emphasise

that they view school as a place to meet other young people. Meeting and making

friends, ‘flirting,’ entering ‘cliques’ or changing friends, ‘getting along’ in a ‘heavy’ or

‘light’ way, joining and standing out are some of the activities students carry out

daily at school (Grijalva 2006; Hernandez 2006).

Encounters are not limited to recesses. They also occur in the classroom. In the

university high school, during the reading and writing class, while students are

supposed to be discussing a book and writing a group report, they hold other

conversations:

They talk about the most recent party and if they should go to the next one. Fernanda

and Haydee talk (a conversation that the rest of the group overhears) about losing an ID

in the library and then about a boy who is interested in Haydee. . . . They ask Octavio

about his football practice and the bruises he got. From there the conversation moves to

the use of prohibited substances in sports, and then to drugs, their effects and

consequences. Haydee is curious about how it feels to kiss being on drugs. (Participative

observation at CCH by Job).

These conversations generally begin spontaneously, and cover unplanned topics

based on students’ comments of individual interest. And although any location is

good for talking, the classroom seems to be ideal. In such conversations, the

observed students share part of their biography, discuss musical groups or sports

events, or express their sexual or emotional concerns and experiences (Avalos 2006).

The scenario at the university high school, which shows school as a place for

youth, is not repeated in the same way at the other two types of high schools. Space

and time for youthful encounters and conversations vary, in addition to the young

people’s behaviour and school norms.

Ethnography and Education 23

The university high school has gardens for rest periods and is relatively

permissive with the youth culture present at school, whether global or regional in

style:

. . . The esplanade is populated by different groups that occupy ‘set’ places on and

around the area: the ‘cholos’ are near the entrance; the ‘pachecos’ (marijuana users) are

on the right; ( . . .) on the left side are the ‘cubos’ (political activists) and the ‘hippies’ and

‘artists’ (playing the guitar and bongo drums); beyond are some ‘darks’ wearing

black . . . (observation by Joaquın).

In contrast, most of the technical high schools offer only small spaces with poured

cement slabs, basketball courts and a few metal benches for sitting down (Guerra

and Guerrero 2004). At the end of the school day, they attempt to remove students

quickly from the school property, to avoid having to deal with gangs, alcohol and

drugs on the premises (Weiss forthcoming). Differences also exist in the availability

of free time for students. More than one-half of the students at the technical high

school work while attending school, from the age of 6, 10, 12 or 15: ‘I’ve never ever

stopped working’ (Guerra 2005). They may begin as helpers in a tire repair shop or

at a taco stand, or as street peddlers, and then advance to jobs as seamstresses,

waiters, taxi drivers or aids in clinical laboratories. They rush from school to work,

or from work to school if they attend the evening shift. Their friends are usually from

their neighbourhoods, and do not attend school.

In the technical high schools, we often encounter narrations of conflict between

youth culture and school culture. Such is the case of Ricardo, who joined a gang of

approximately 15 boys when he started high school. As a result, he began to skip

classes, paint graffiti on the school building, rebel against the educational

authorities, and earn failing grades.

[When I started coming to the technical high school] I dressed grungy! And all that . . .

[he was in a gang of ‘skaters’] We are from over there in Chimalhuacan . . . We were

called the ‘ABC’ . . . We were about fifteen guys . . . We even had some fights . . . We

marked up the bathrooms . . . then the prefects caught us about five times, six times

there . . . painting! . . . At that time, we even had fights [with other groups]. We ended up

fighting on the basketball courts . . . because we were covering up their stuff [painting on

top of other gangs’ painting], in other words . . . that’s why we had a fistfight, and all

that! Right? (Ricardo, interview with Irene).

Gangs � of ‘cholos’, skaters, darks or punks � are a cultural model that provides an

alternative to school and work, and young people use the models to give meaning to

their lives. During this stage, many young people construct their identity in a

countercultural sense (Guerra 2006).

The students at the intercultural high schools include young people from other

communities who live in the same town as the school during the week. The students

appear to be closely supervised: one community has set a curfew for eight o’clock

each evening, and another for 10 o’clock. The communities have a serious problem

with adult alcoholism � alcohol is the primary ingredient at all festivities � and an

incipient drug-dealing problem, according to the mayor, the school’s director and the

physician at the rural clinic. In both communities, any young person found in

the street past curfew spends the night in the community jail. The young people are

24 E. Weiss et al.

relaxed about the curfew, as one student comments: ‘After that hour, there’s nothing

to do outside of the house.’The intercultural high schools are creating places for young people to meet that

were not previously available in the community � even situations for contact with the

opposite gender, both inside and outside of school. In all three of these schools, the

girls and boys have practice sessions on certain afternoons (in the plaza in front of

the city hall rather than at school) of the traditional dance that they will perform

representing their municipality at Oaxaca’s state celebration of the Guelaguetza. At

one of the schools, the boys and girls organised a traditional band that is invited to

play in other towns almost every weekend. The band is always accompanied by

mothers from the committee, but as one girl states: ‘It’s nice, you can talk to girls

from other communities.’ The school’s basketball team also competes against teams

from other towns. The school appears in all of these examples as a place that

facilitates encounters and fun among young people.

The time available for youthful encounters and conversations varies as a function

of the sociocultural environment, the type of school, the teacher, and the type of

assignment, but students will always take full advantage of their opportunities to

interact. As one teacher at the community intercultural high school stated: ‘That’s

why you have to limit the time for group discussions. If not, they keep talking.’ The

students at this school speak Zapotec among themselves, a language not understood

by the teacher.

Meeting meaningful others

Martuccelli (forthcoming), referring to Maffesoli (1988), emphasises the importance

of young people’s sociality: their enjoyment of being together and interacting on the

same level, without hierarchies, and with easily flowing emotions. In the universe of

adolescents, ‘the practice of communication becomes autonomous, even to the

message itself. A careful look reveals that communication takes place for the pure

pleasure of communicating.’ However, we emphasise that talking for young people

also implies an exchange of viewpoints and the forming of opinions on topics of

interest to them.

Students at the university high school value the diversity of young styles and the

possibility of experiencing them. Sofıa, a fourth-semester student, tells Joaquın, the

observer, that she likes CCH:

Everything. The truth is that I like the atmosphere. I like how there are so many

different atmospheres: the atmosphere of the darks, the atmosphere of the pachecos

(laughs). It’s really nice that there are a lot of different atmospheres. And you realize

that [before] you were in a sector that was really tiny [a private junior high school], in the

atmosphere where I was living.

Outstanding in all the observations and student interviews at this high school is the

tolerance for the diversity of young people’s styles. Diversity within the school allows

students to experiment with styles, or affiliate and disaffiliate, as shown by Olga’s

interview with Emilia (first semester) in a general high school in the port town of

Mazatlan:

Ethnography and Education 25

Her friends are Paola and Pamela. She admires Che Guevara. She likes Reggaeton and

the Rasta style. Pamela shares her admiration of Che. Paola likes the popular music of

Northern Mexico, and more conservative clothing, but they spend time together because

they enjoy each other’s company. They talk and listen to each other. Emilia is curious

about darks and would like to dress in black; she had an argument with her mother

when she painted her nails black, but later obtained her mother’s permission to go to a

concert with a high school boyfriend in this apparel.

This case shows that the girls’ close friendship is not based necessarily on having

similar tastes in music and style.

Students’ cultural experience is broadened by their recognition of different

groups of young people, and by being able to converse with them. The existence of

various styles at school can be interpreted as sources of identification for students.

Holland et al. (1998) believe that a characteristic of the social world is dialogue as a

form of communication among the ‘voices’ that respond to identity and position in

cultural practices; they interpret identity as a process in forming one’s own voice.

The most important others for young people are their friends. When ‘talking

privately’ with friends, students may say more about themselves and discover points

of view different from their own. This phenomenon can be seen in the conversation

with Emilia (above), as well as in other interviews: ‘ . . . because my friends, girlfriends

� I only have two, two or three I know . . . Well, I’ve known them since secondary

school . . . and well, in other words, I can tell them everything I feel and everything.’

(Ana Marıa, interview with Joaquın Hernandez). ‘And if you’re doing something and

you’re messing up, well, they’ll tell you so that you realize it’ (Norma).

School is also a space where students learn to relate to the other gender: at first

by ‘roughhousing’ (e.g., throwing water balloons and getting wet), and then by

flirting or starting a relationship, described as ‘cholocate’ (holding hands),

‘amigovio’ (friend/boyfriend), ‘free’ (casual erotic or sexual encounter), or ‘novio’

(boyfriend/girlfriend). The interviews conducted by Joaquin show that talking to

members of the opposite sex and sharing sexual experiences form part of a person’s

practical knowledge of others. Sexual experiences include corporal sensuality: ‘many

times you start with a girl because you’re horny’ (Eriseo). Other underlying motives

are a desire to share � ‘you have company, you have someone to spoil you, someone

to talk to, you’re not by yourself’ (Aldo) � and reciprocal support (Josue).

Relationships imply opening up to another person: ‘Up to now we’ve been getting

to know each other, it’s very cool to be open with someone and for him to be open

with you’ (Viridiana); or in sexual matters, ‘You start to get to know what you like

about a person’ (Yolanda). Other implications are learning to protect one’s self (from

pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases), and to protect the other as well.

(Observations and analysis by Joaquın).

In Mexico City, students often express their emotions ‘publicly,’ up to the point

of ‘extreme’ petting. At the community intercultural high school, relations between

the sexes are more reserved, but still observable:

In the classroom, the boys and girls are sitting in a semicircle in no special order . . . In

the traditional sampalilu dance, they included a new choreographic scene in which

various boys form a pyramid and carry a girl . . . While working in the basket-making

workshop, two boys are surrounded by three girls, and although I don’t understand

what they are saying in Zapotec, they use obvious gestures of teasing and flirting.

26 E. Weiss et al.

(Observation by Eduardo). In the afternoon, Ernestina sits on the bleachers and

watches the basketball game, very observant of the boys circulating around us. She says

that she likes to spend her afternoons at school, that ‘it’s very fun because there’s a lot of

horsing around’. When I ask her if she has a boyfriend, she says no, but laughs very

slyly. . . . At the end of the interview with Rosalıa (4th semester, 17 years old), I tell her

that I have asked her a lot of questions, and inquire if she would like to ask me anything.

She asks me if it is true that you can tell if a girl has had sex. (Interviews by Marıa del

Carmen).

Compared with the university high school in Mexico City, these excerpts may seem

harmless, but they represent a gigantic step in the cultural atmosphere. A few years

ago, contact with the opposite sex was permitted only in formal relations of going

steady. An earlier study found a high dropout rate in girls starting at age 13; their

parents no longer allowed them to attend school because they were of a marrying age

(Ezpeleta and Weiss 2000). Even today, meeting a girl outside of the school building

is serious business, as told by Reynaldo (sixth semester, 20 years old): ‘If they (the

boyfriend and girlfriend) are in a public place where there are people talking, and

you know that they are a couple, well, you really don’t say anything. Or they might

go to the girl’s house or the boy’s house and they are with the parents. And that’s OK

with them.’ (Interview by Eduardo).

Meeting the opposite gender and sex is an important part of young people’s lives

because it allows them to establish links, explore the couple relationship, and to use

that relationship to discover their own feelings by participating in dialogue with the

other person.

Freedom, risks and turning points

School allows young people to discover different perspectives on living, and to

experience these perspectives together with their inherent risks � and risks have

always attracted young people. The numerous forms of freedom require the

assumption of responsibilities:

A whole lot, a whole lot [of freedom]. For example, here you see people smoking . . . For

example, if you want to, you go to class. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to go in,

because here there are no prefects. Here it is you. It is your responsibility. If you want to,

fine, and if you don’t, well it’s your problem. (Fourth-semester student at university high

school, interview with Elsa).

The most frequent risk in the university high school is the failure to do assigned work

and attend class. A student may enrol with high expectations, yet triggering

situations tend to occur � a boring subject, an unfair grade, a failed subject � and

a group of friends suggests skipping class. ‘The environment, right? It pulls on you,

you like it. Well, being around friends and everything. And well, you sort of say, ‘‘Ay,

I won’t go to my class today!’’’ (Danae). The student has the ‘freedom’ to choose:

‘Well I’m a little bit free now, let me take advantage of that’ (Javier). A kind of chain

reaction begins: ‘‘‘Ay, well today is Monday!’’ And like that, right? And it was one

after another. When I realized it, the time had gone by and I couldn’t do anything

about it, right?’ (Danae, fourth semester). Several of the interviewed students in the

fourth, fifth and sixth semesters have failed subjects and now feel pressured to finish.

Ethnography and Education 27

Some regret not having considered the dilemma at an earlier point in time, since now

it will be very difficult for them to attain a grade point average high enough for

acceptance in the most competitive areas of study in the university. (Interviews with

Elsa and Joaquın; further details in Guerrero 2006; Hernandez 2006).

The students’ use of words like ‘acquiring responsibility’, ‘reflecting’ and

‘maturing’ is significant. The most meaningful lesson for some students seems to

be ‘becoming more responsible’, as Javier mentions (sixth semester, CCH-Sur): ‘All

these experiences helped me because they made me more responsible . . . It helped me

a lot because � wow! � it was when I became responsible.’ Taking charge of one’s self

and one’s life indicates individualisation (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002).

Some students (most often in the technical high school) are trapped by alcohol,

gangs, drugs or pregnancy, but others are able to construct more mature criteria by

conversing with their peers. Ricardo, the student at the technical high school who

joined the gang of graffiti painters (seen above), dropped out of school and

interrupted his education. At the present time he no longer ‘hangs’ with the gang.

Five years after first enroling in high school, he is almost finished. Ricardo

comments:

Then I redid my . . . I said, well I want to study, I want to know . . . I don’t want to spend

my whole life in a gang, and always be drunk, and I might even die like my friend . . .

That’s when I got scared. That’s when I said, when I felt that, when I saw this guy die in

my arms, well I said No! That is not what I want for myself, really. I grabbed the

opportunity to return to school. I kept working, and now I am finishing high school.

(Interview with Irene).

Jose Luis points to another frequent reason for returning to school � the

impossibility of obtaining decent work:

I started ironing, and well, first because, oh sorry, first we started washing cars. And yes,

well, I thought it was very, very cool! . . . There was no employment agreement, nothing!

Everything verbal, I’m going to pay you . . . fifteen centavos for each pair of pants you

iron, and twenty centavos each dress. How many can you do? . . . So go ahead! But it was

nine, ten at night, until six, seven in the morning. All night! . . . Oh man, oh man, oh

man! In other words, it wore you out. (Interview with Irene).

Following Elder (1994), we have used the term ‘turning points’ to refer to those

moments that produce modifications in the direction of one’s life. Exhaustion of the

life course, experienced as conflict or suffering (cf. Riemann and Schuetze 1991), and

the possibility of an alternative lead the individual to a process of reflection and

commitment to a viable project. (See details in Guerra 2006; Guerrero 2006.)

Young people’s reflections on the importance of schooling reveal an internal

dialogue (see Holland et al. 1998). For instance:

Javier’s family began to suffer the setbacks of the economic crisis, making it increasingly

difficult to obtain the resources necessary for staying in school: ‘I would say, wow, my

dad, well I don’t know how he gets the money for me to come to school, and I go to just

one class and I’m still picky, and say, ‘‘No, I don’t like how that teacher gives the class.

No! No, I won’t go in!’’ . . .’. That year, some of Javier’s friends and classmates entered

the university. They showed him their new IDs. Meanwhile, he felt depressed, useless

and unproductive.

28 E. Weiss et al.

This excerpt reveals an internal dialogue with a polyphony of voices (Bakhtin 1973):

voices of family and previous schoolmates � voices different from those of the

reference groups that helped cause the crisis.

Conclusions

We have shown that in all three scenarios, school assumes the meaning of being aplace for young people?s life and living together. Spending time together, talking,

joking, and ‘horsing around’ are undoubtedly ingredients of young people’s lives at

school. At the university high school, students have more time and space, and styles

and transgressions are treated with tolerance. At the technical high school, students

have less time and expressions of young people’s styles are often in conflict with

school rules. In the indigenous communities, school � although viewed as a kind of

work � creates a new space for young people to meet and allows them the

opportunity to form relationships with the opposite gender.The importance of spending time with other young people may be interpreted as

living in emotional communities, as forms of sociality (Maffesoli 1988). These

emotional communities tend to be more interactive and mutually tolerant at general

high schools, and more segregated and mutually aggressive at technical high schools.

We believe, however (in accord with Bauman 2000; Giddens 1991), that reflexivity

continues to be characteristic of modernity.

We have found that getting to know the Other is a relevant ingredient in young

people’s lives. Young people are attracted by styles they see as different from their‘normal’, usual environments, and high school represents an opportunity to

submerge themselves in such styles partially or completely for a certain time. Daily

conversation among fellow students, even about seemingly trivial topics, allows

young people to become familiar with other opinions, other ways of seeing things.

Close friends can express their thoughts and feelings openly, and can understand,

advise, and reprimand each other. Young people who form relations with the

opposite sex also learn to disclose their intimate feelings and protect the other.

Knowing others generates processes of knowing one’s self, developing personalreflexivity, and appropriating cultural resources.

An important process of subjectivisation is expressed in students’ narratives in

reference to maturing and becoming responsible. Such narratives may be interpreted

in terms of the subordination of youthful life to the strategic interests of adult life. In

our opinion, however, they express the ability to measure risk and to balance

pleasure with need � an ability acquired in reflexive processes. Young students are

not simply ‘strategists’ in an instrumental sense: they also learn to become more

reflexive and responsible.

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Young people and high school in Mexico: subjectivisation, others and reflexivityEduardo Weiss a; Irene Guerra Ramírez b; Elsa Guerrero Salinas c; Joaquín González Hernández d; OlgaGrijalva Martínez a; Job Ávalos Romero a

a Department of Education, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV), Mexico City,Mexico b Centro de Estudios Tecnológicos Industriales y de Servicios No. 37, Mexico c School of Science andHumanities, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico d Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, MexicoCity, Ajusco, Mexico

Online Publication Date: 01 March 2008

To cite this Article Weiss, Eduardo, Ramírez, Irene Guerra, Salinas, Elsa Guerrero, Hernández, Joaquín González, Martínez, OlgaGrijalva and Romero, Job Ávalos(2008)'Young people and high school in Mexico: subjectivisation, others and reflexivity',Ethnographyand Education,3:1,17 — 31

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