A consideration of traditional and dominant notions of literacy education and schooling from the perspective of contemporary cultural ideologies such as feminism and poststructuralism. Kelly uses examples from her own experience, classroom practices and popular media materials such as To Sir with Love.

Ursula A. Kelly draws on radical theories of literacy, culture, identity and pedagogy to frame the culture of pedagogy as it relates to human desire. Examples from (auto)biography, classroom practices, and popular media provide the means by which the author highlights some of the pedagogical dilemmas facing literacy practices which often work to silence the cultural politics of identity and desire.

"...raises vitally important questions about the ultimate purposes of education." -- Educational Theory, Fall 1999."...this book has much to offer graduate students in curriculum studies, literacy education, and feminist studies in education." -- Canadian Journal of Education"Schooling Desire elaborates a transformative vision of education committed undermining oppressive sociocultural relations through the interventions of critical literacy. The seven chapter volume does not offer a lingering or gentle read, though it is well informed, creatively structured, and charged with flashes of poetic sensibility. Explicitly grounding her work on the theoretical terrain of feminist poststructuralism, cultural studies, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Kelly ambitiously combines an exegetical and deconstructive aim with a critical and constructive one. Her expressed hope is to lay out a vision of progressive movement in education, a vision attentive to desire's slippery provocations and problematic performances in schooled subjects." -- SIGNS, Autumn 2000