Ebook: Schooling as Uncertainty: An Ethnographic Memoir in Comparative Education

In today’s uncertain world, few beliefs remain as firmly entrenched as the optimistic view that more schooling will inevitably lead to a better life. Rich or poor, black or white, we fervently await higher wages, better health, and greater happiness from our advanced degrees. Though this may be true in the aggregate, how do we explain the circumstances when schooling fails to produce certainty or even does us harm? Schooling as Uncertainty addresses this question by combining ethnography and memoir as it guides readers on a 25-year journey through fieldwork and familyhood in Tanzania and academic life in the USA, Vavrus reflects on her quest for certainty, beginning as a graduate student and young mother and continuing to the present as a tenured professor.
Using reflexive, longitudinal ethnographic research the book simultaneously examines how African women employ schooling to counter the uncertainties of marriage, child rearing, employment, and HIV/AIDS. Adopting a narrative approach, Vavrus tells the story of how her life became entangled with a community on Kilimanjaro and how she, and the women around her, sought greater security through schooling and, to varying degrees, succeeded. She also examines how our successes have been circumscribed by economic and social inequalities that disproportionately affect daughters, mothers, and professional women the world over.