Imagine standing on a box in the middle of a busy city, dressed as a white-faced bride, and silently using your eyes to ask people for money. Or touring Europe in a punk cabaret band, and finding a place to sleep each night by reaching out to strangers on Twitter. For Amanda Palmer, actions like these have gone beyond satisfying her basic needs for food and shelter - they've taught her how to turn strangers into friends, build communities, and discover her own giving impulses. And because she had learned how to ask, she was able to go to the world to ask for the money to make a new album and...

First published in 1998, this volume is based upon an ethnographic study of white and black in a mixed comprehensive school conducted during the 1980s and explores differentiation in the classroom, looking at gender, colour and class differences within groups of students. The findings are discussed in the light of the strong debate within the sociology of education that took place during the 1970s and 1980s concerning academic achievement and underachievement. Amanda Palmer reveals, in contribution to this debate, that class origins played a primary role in the formation of pupils’...