The Mixed Effects of Schooling for High School Girls in

Jordan: The Case of Tel Yahya

FIDA ADELY

Introduction

Access to schooling for adolescent girls in Jordan is still relatively new. It has
been only in the past generation that girls have gone on to high school in
significant numbers, and outside of urban areas this phenomenon is even
more recent.1 Given a near universal rate of high school entry today, it is
important to investigate the effect of this access on adolescent girls, partic-
ularly given the continuing limits on their access to other places outside of
the home. This article addresses access to schools as a new social space and
examines the opportunities and tensions that are posed by this access. Look-
ing primarily at the experience of girls in one school in Jordan, I try to
understand how access to school has affected the boundaries that shape the
lives of adolescent girls, asking: In what ways does school reinforce existing
boundaries and notions of respectability for young women? In what ways
does it extend or create new controls? In what ways can school open up new
opportunities and potentials for change?

The Research and Methodology

The information presented here is based on research in Jordan con-

ducted in May through July of 2002. Most of this work was focused on a girls’
secondary school in a town called Tel Yahya.2 As a miniethnography, I “at-
tended” school every day. I observed classes and the day-to-day activities of
teachers and students. Through daily informal and unstructured interviews,
I learned about their experiences of and perceptions about schooling and

This research was made possible through the generous support of the Center of American Overseas
Research Councils and the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. I would like to
thank Lila Abu-Lughod, Lesley Bartlett, Fran Vavrus, and Hervé Varenne for comments on earlier
versions of this article, as well as colleagues in the Anthropology Colloquium at Teacher’s College,
especially Todd Nicewonger. I would also like to thank the editors of this issue for their helpful feedback
on an earlier version.
1
In the 1995–96 school year, the proportion of the population in eligible age groups enrolled in
secondary education was 67 percent for boys and 73 percent for girls (with a total of 70 percent).
National enrollment rates were just below 90 percent for those who are age 16. They began to drop
off to 72 percent at age 17 and 62 percent at age 18; Jon Hanssen-Bauer, Jon Pedersen, and Age Tiltnes,
Jordanian Society: Living Conditions in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Oslo: Fafo Institute for Applied
Social Science, 1998).
2
Tel Yahya is a pseudonym for this town in north Jordan.

Comparative Education Review, vol. 48, no. 4.

䉷 2004 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.
0010-4086/2004/4804-0003$05.00

Comparative Education Review 353

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life in Jordan. In addition, I conducted formal interviews with seven members

of the current staff, two former principals, two teachers who were graduates
of the girls’ school in Tel Yahya, the principal of a local elementary school,
and seven educators from the neighboring city. I also facilitated 15 classroom
discussions early in my work and distributed a questionnaire to 139 students
at the school in Tel Yahya, as well as to 85 students in the neighboring city.3
The topics covered in the questionnaire included perspectives on the purpose
of education, future plans, and mobility or access to different spaces.
I also visited and interviewed members of five families who had girls in
the local school, as well as several families in the neighboring city.4 In Tel
Yahya, I visited the local government-sponsored youth group for girls and
the female branch of the Society for the Conservation of the Qur’an, where
I interviewed staff and participants who were enrolled in the high school.
Both of these institutions emerged in discussions and debates at school.

Organization of the Study

After a review of some key theories about schooling and the literature
on schooling in the Middle East, as well as some background on Jordan, I
describe Tel Yahya and its girls’ secondary school. The body of this article is
interspersed with a series of scenes and vignettes developed from the eth-
nography of the school. For each, I will explore what Afsaneh Najmabadi
refers to as the “regulatory and emancipatory” effects of education for
women.5 In these scenes the effects are intertwined and meanings contested.
Through the ethnography, I try to understand and identify the parameters
of this contestation and some of its implications. Finally, I conclude with a
summary of my analysis and its implications.

School and Society

Social reproduction theorists argue that power relations and domination

underlie formal education systems.6 In this theoretical framework, schools
3
When I first arrived, teachers offered me the opportunity to speak with their classes. Class dis-
cussions resembled focus groups but with less structure. These initial classroom discussions helped me
to identify commonly shared attitudes and beliefs, as well as issues of contention among the students.
I distributed the questionnaire to all of the tenth and eleventh graders in attendance on a particular
day, as well as half of the ninth graders (twelfth graders were not in session by this time as they were
to stay home and study for the upcoming national high school completion exams). I surveyed only half
of the ninth graders as I decided to focus my research on tenth and eleventh graders because they
were more adjusted to high school and were a bit more mature. The same questionnaire was distributed
to tenth- and eleventh-grade girls in a neighboring girls’ high school.
4
In the case of three of these families, I visited them several times and got to know them quite
well.
5
Afsaneh Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” in Remaking Women, ed. Lila Abu-
Lughod (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
6
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Con-
ditions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Jean Anyon, “Social Class and the Hidden Cur-
riculum of Work,” Journal of Education 162 (Winter 1980): 67–92.

354 November 2004

 HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN JORDAN

serve to support existing power relations and to socialize young people to

play their class and gender roles in these relations. Such theories are typically
founded on a “total” or all-encompassing concept of a hegemony.7 Feminist
social reproduction theorists in turn argue that schools serve to preserve
patriarchy and dominant gender relations that relegate women to a subor-
dinate role in society.8 These perspectives have been criticized by cultural
production theorists for being too deterministic.9
Cultural production theorists argue for an examination of schools as sites
of social interactions where meaning is constructed in a particular cultural
context. Speaking about the development from reproduction to production
theories, Bradley Levinson, Douglas Foley, and Dorothy Holland describe
cultural production as “an ongoing process which could occur independently
of, but enters into complex relations with, processes of social and cultural
reproduction.”10 In other words, despite the obvious and complex ways in
which regulatory elements of formal schooling are tied to reproductive struc-
tures, possibilities may be opened up for change by schooling and education.
This work draws on cultural production theory. Although I am skeptical
of the belief in formal education as a panacea that would liberate women
(and men) from ignorance or oppression, I have always suspected that the
transformative potential in sites such as schools, and the contradictions or
tensions often produced in such spaces, meant that more deterministic social
theories were too limiting.11
Recent work by feminist scholars on the Middle East is relevant. Najma-
badi and Omnia Shakry contend that access to education for women in Iran
and Egypt has historically served to exert further control over women, cre-
ating more rigid boundaries around what was private and devaluing their
“traditional” practices (e.g., religious and child-rearing practices).12 However,
both authors argue that the access to school and literacy opened up new
spheres of opportunity and potential even if the “positive” effects of this
schooling were not immediately apparent. Discussing the apparently contra-
7
See Sherry Ortner’s discussion of hegemony in Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture
(Boston: Beacon, 1996). She draws on the conception of hegemony proposed by Raymond Williams in
Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
8
Michele Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis (London: Virago
Press, 1980); Fiona Leach, “Gender Implications of Development Agency Policies on Education and
Training,” International Journal of Education Development 20 (2000): 333–47.
9
Paul Willis, Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1977); Dorothy Holland and Margaret Eisenhart, Educated in Romance: Women, Achieve-
ment and College Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
10
Bradley Levinson, Douglas Foley, and Dorothy Holland, The Cultural Production of an Educated
Person (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 9.
11
Levinson et al. discuss the important contribution of ethnographic research to the emergence
of cultural production theories. Specifically, they argue that by elucidating contradictions in educational
settings, ethnography forced scholars to question the assumption of social agents as “passive bearers of
ideology” (see their discussion of Paul Willis, p. 9).
12
Najmabadi; Omnia Shakry, “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-
the-Century Egypt,” in Abu-Lughod, ed., Remaking Women (n. 5 above).

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dictory effects of the modern education project, Najmabadi argues that “the
modern education regimes, deeply gendered from the start, were central to
the production of the woman of modernity through particular regulatory
and emancipatory impulses. . . . These two seemingly conflictive impulses
in fact enabled each other’s work. For women the emancipatory possibilities
of modernity and its disciplinary ‘technologies’ were mutually productive.”13
Despite its important contribution, work such as that of Shakry and Na-
jmabadi has been largely historical, and there is limited contemporary work
examining the meaning and impact of formal schooling in the region, es-
pecially at the local level. Andre Mazawi argues that research on the Middle
East and education has in large part been focused on national factors and
the “reproductive dimensions of educational processes.”14 Such an approach,
he argues, has neglected the complex and often confrontational dynamics
between states and civil society groups.
Gregory Starrett’s work on government schools and the construction of
Islam in Egypt, although still primarily concerned with the macroperspectives
of the state and its interlocutors, does present an important contribution to
the scholarship on the productive effects of schooling.15 Starrett argues that
the Egyptian government has tried to “domesticate” and control Islam
through mass public education. Paradoxically, he contends, access to edu-
cation and the way in which religion is presented in schools has actually
given people greater autonomy to shape Islam to their realities and needs.
A similar argument is made by Dale Eickelman in his work on higher edu-
cation in Morocco.16 Through schooling, he argues, the government has
given people greater access to and control over their religious beliefs.
Linda Herrera’s work on Egyptian schools is an important departure
from the top-down and more deterministic analysis of schooling in the re-
gion.17 She examines state policies and pronouncements about Islam in
schools but, through four case studies of Islamic private schools, demonstrates
that the reality of Islam in the schools is much more nuanced. Herrera argues
for the importance of religion to a critical perspective on schools in the
Middle East and the valuable contribution of research on schools for un-
derstanding the practice of Islam: “Schools . . . serve as stages for shifting
cultural practices and politics, and reflect broad changes in society. Multiple
factors, including state policies, the agency of students, parents and teachers,
13
Najmabadi, p. 91.
14
Andre Mazawi, “The Contested Terrains of Education in the Arab States,” Comparative Education
Review 43 (1999): 332–52.
15
Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics and Religious Transformation in Egypt
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).
16
Dale Eickelman, “Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab
Societies,” American Ethnologist 19 (November 1992): 643–55.
17
Linda Herrera, “Scenes of Schooling: Inside a Girls’ School in Cairo,” monograph 1 in Cairo
Papers in Social Science, vol. 15 (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1992), and “The Sanctity of
the School: New Islamic Education and Modern Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2000).

356 November 2004

 HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN JORDAN

and changes in the market, converge in complex ways to mediate between

education and Islamization.”18 This work looks at these complex convergences
in the context of a public school in Jordan.
In this article, I explore the effects of schooling on adolescent girls in
Tel Yahya, arguing that school is the scene of competing discourses and
practices, which in some respects mirror inconsistencies and/or conflicts in
the society at large. I show that the effects of school are mixed. Although
the regulatory and reproductive effects are clear, they are not all-encom-
passing. Access to school in and of itself provides a legitimate forum for
participation in public life, a forum for debate and discussion about a girl’s
place in society. This opens up opportunities that might not otherwise be
available to girls.

Jordan

The expansion of public education for boys and girls has been at the
core of the nation-building process in Jordan. Transjordan was created in
1921 by the British, and Amir Abdullah of the Hashemites was given nominal
leadership over the newly created nation. Given the combination of externally
imposed boundaries, the importation of a ruling family, and the novelty of
the nation-state, the task of creating a national identity was particularly chal-
lenging. Betty Anderson, in her study of Jordanian textbooks published be-
tween 1950 and 1975, argues that school textbooks were a key part of “con-
structing a national narrative for the new country.”19 Furthermore, she argues
that the texts mirror the efforts of the regime to take the credit for mod-
ernizing Jordan—enabling Jordan to progress—while at the same time em-
bedding this narrative in familiar allegiance to tribe, clan, and family. After
national independence, the drive to expand mass schooling persisted as a
central tenet of a Jordanian national development discourse. By the 1990s
“education for development” became a recurring theme in high school text-
books such as is expressed in this passage from a tenth-grade text, National
and Civic Education:
The spread of education and the continuous decrease in illiteracy levels is a result
of compulsory education through the 10th grade. As a result Jordan became a
pioneer in this arena, which has helped the development and progress of our
society and enabled the members of the society to be qualified, providing them
with skills which they could use for work in agriculture, industry and services.20

As a result of the drive toward mass public schooling, Jordan has made
18
Herrera, “Sanctity of the School,” p. 189.
19
Betty Anderson, “Writing the Nation: Textbooks of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” Com-
parative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21, nos. 1 and 2 (2001): 5–14.
20
Thoqan Abdullah Obeidat, National and Civic Education: Tenth Grade (Amman: Ministry of Ed-
ucation of Jordan, 1994), p. 60.

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major strides in enrolling girls and boys in school. A 1996 survey of Jordanians
age 15–64, which examined the highest level of education completed, found
that the proportions of men and women with basic, secondary, and higher
education only varied by 1 to 3 percent, with the biggest differences found
among women over 35 with respect to higher education. In contrast, there
are significant disparities between rural and urban areas, where there is a
consistent gap of about 5 percent in proportion of people with secondary
education and a roughly 10 percent gap in higher education.21 For those
currently of school age, gross enrollment rates for girls are equal if not higher
at all levels of education. Thus, in terms of access, girls fare quite well,
particularly in comparison to other countries in the region.
Despite increasing access to education, women’s participation in other
public spheres of life in Jordan is limited. Women’s formal labor force par-
ticipation was only 15 percent as of 1996. This is partly a result of sociocultural
factors; however, as Rebecca Miles discusses in her recent piece on women’s
employment in Jordan, this is also driven by state- and employer-controlled
factors, as well as by structural adjustment policies and a chronic unemploy-
ment problem since the late 1980s.22 Unemployment among women has gone
up considerably as well (from 11.7 percent in 1979 to 35 percent in 1994),
reflecting the increase in the number of women seeking work.23 Thus, there
is an increasingly educated pool of women who do not have access to jobs.
Furthermore, the large majority of women in the labor force are under 25,
and the reported unemployment rates of 16–25-year-olds is 78 percent.24 This
reflects a prevailing sentiment that once a woman marries her primary focus
should be on caring for children and the home. However, it remains to be
seen what the impact of widespread education will be on women’s labor force
participation and their desire to work. In my research, most adolescent girls
viewed work outside of the home as an option, and many felt the current
economic climate required it.
More broadly, a recent study found Jordanian women’s freedom of move-
ment to be severely restricted to close proximity to their homes, even when
they sought to visit relatives in another town.25 My own research confirmed
this. For the vast majority of adolescent girls I spoke with, school was typically
the only place they were allowed to go. Given girls’ limited access to other
spaces in Jordan, examining schools in the lives of adolescent girls seems of
particular importance. Schools represent a new place to congregate, new

21
Hanssen-Bauer et al. (n. 1 above).
22
Rebecca Miles, “Employment and Unemployment in Jordan: The Importance of the Gender
System,” World Development 30, no. 3 (2002): 413–27.
23
Laurie Brand, Women, the State and Political Liberalization :Middle Eastern and North African Experiences
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
24
UNICEF, The Situation of Jordanian Children and Women: A Rights-based Analysis (Amman: UNICEF
Country Office, 1997).
25
Hanssen-Bauer et al.

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 HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN JORDAN

interactions and influences. Schools also offer one of few opportunities to

develop nonkin relationships and participate in a somewhat public arena.
The impact of such access, and the meaning it holds for girls, will be the
focus of this article. Before moving to a discussion of the school itself, I begin
with a brief description of the town of Tel Yahya.

The Town of Tel Yahya

Tel Yahya is a town of about seven thousand inhabitants in the north of

Jordan. It is a town of fertile hills, and olive trees can be seen throughout
the community. Some of Tel Yahya’s residents still farm and raise goats and
sheep, but for the large majority this has become a secondary means of
livelihood, supplanted by jobs in the military, the civil service, or as merchants.
The inhabitants of Tel Yahya are from the Beni Hasan tribe. Beni Hasan
villages and towns are found throughout the region. The Beni Hasan of Tel
Yahya consider themselves to be part of the same subdivision of the tribe,
but they are in turn divided into at least five major branches. About 15 percent
of the town residents are not Beni Hasan.
Tel Yahya’s residents have a reputation for being more educated or for
valuing education more than other towns and villages in the area. This sen-
timent was shared by outsiders as well as town residents. Interestingly, people
specifically asserted that Tel Yahya residents were “advanced” in terms of
educating their girls. This was articulated in various ways such as: “They began
educating their daughters sooner than other villages” or “Their daughters
were the first to go to the university.” On some level the reputation Tel Yahya
enjoys is juxtaposed against a more general stereotype of villagers as people
who don’t value education. Tel Yahya’s reputation is articulated then as some-
thing that goes against the grain—they, the people of Tel Yahya, are unlike
other villagers or small town people.
Whether or not the residents in Tel Yahya were in fact historically or are
currently more educated than comparable communities, it is significant that
so many people held this perception of Tel Yahya and that this was deemed
something positive.26 It points to a contemporary acceptance of the value of
formal education for both boys and girls, which, in part, can be traced to
nationalist discourses of modernity and development, as well as to the belief
that formal education is necessary for success.

The Emergence of Public Education in Tel Yahya

A school for boys was established in Tel Yahya in 1952. This was the first
public school in the community. Prior to this, boys could study at a local
mosque or travel to other towns or cities if they had the means. This was
26
This perception of Tel Yahya was one that I began to test out in subsequent interviews. None
of my informants ever disputed this reputation.

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not an option for girls. Classes for girls were first offered in 1956, with grades
for girls initially ending at the fourth or fifth grade. As time passed, other
grades would be added. Around 1978, at the urging of the principal at the
time, a full secondary cycle was made available for girls.
Throughout Jordan, during this time, formal schooling was a very new
phenomenon for the large majority of the population. The drive to bring
public education to areas outside of the major urban centers took time. In
communities where a semipastoral and/or an agrarian economy predomi-
nated, children were needed at home to help with the family’s work. Also,
in earlier decades the number of schools in rural and semirural areas was
limited, and the costs in time and money of getting to and from school had
to be calculated.27 Typically, throughout Jordan (and this was corroborated
in Tel Yahya) the family’s resources would be devoted to educating one of
the sons. Older brothers might join the military or work with their fathers
and help to support the education of a younger sibling.
As public school expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, the education of girls
was still a subject of controversy. Girls were needed to work at home. They
would marry young and would rarely work outside of the home, and thus
education was viewed as unnecessary. A conversation I had with a teacher in
Tel Yahya recalls some of the sentiment about girls’ schooling at that time.

The girls’ school was opened in the ’50s. My mother was in the first class. At the
time it was still new. I know that there were people—the grandfathers—who would
say “Don’t let the girls go beyond the fifth grade because then they will start learning
English and they will say things without your understanding.” There were some
who thought that education would open up the world to women, make them more
knowledgeable and make it more difficult to control them. My aunt was pulled out
of school in the fifth grade. They say she lived near the school and would watch
the girls go in and leave and she would cry the whole time they were in school.
Eventually, she went back to school, studied and took the high school completion
exams.

In Tel Yahya, it was not until the 1980s that young women began completing
high school, and the number of girls who went beyond high school was still
limited. For example, in 1984, only about 10 girls went on for further edu-
cation beyond high school.28 Many of the current teachers in Tel Yahya are
from among these first groups of girls to complete high school.

The Girls’ Secondary School in Tel Yahya

The Girls’ Secondary School in Tel Yahya sits on top of a steep hill. At
the bottom of this hill is the main road, which runs through the center of
27
For some more isolated communities this continues to be a barrier, particularly to secondary
education. See Hanssen-Bauer et al.
28
Interview conducted by author, July 7, 2002.

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 HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN JORDAN

the town. The school is housed in an old building, which served as the first
public school in the community. A new school building, initially intended
for the girls’ secondary school, had been built recently but was subsequently
made into the boys’ secondary school. According to the principal, some
townspeople felt the new school building was too far; proximity to the center
of town may have been the basis for this decision. The school is surrounded
by a wall that had recently been extended from about five to seven feet so
that the girls would have greater “privacy.”
At the time of my research there were 298 students (all female) enrolled
in grades 9–12. The staff of 37 (31 teachers and six administrators) was all
female as well. About 75 percent of them were town residents (originally
from the town or married to someone from town). All the students lived in
town with the exception of girls from nearby settlements officially considered
separate hamlets.
All Jordanian schools follow a standard national curriculum, using the
same textbooks and state-determined grading procedures. The girls all take
math, Arabic language and literature, English, religion, history/civic edu-
cation, and science. After the tenth grade, based upon a calculation of grade
point averages from eighth to tenth grades, students are placed in one of
two tracks: the academic track, which has two substreams—humanities or
science—or the vocational track.29
Although the school in Tel Yahya is a government school, religion plays
an important role in the school and in Jordanian society more broadly. The
girls, like all Jordanian students, take a religion class, and this is where the
formal learning about religion takes place in school. However, religion is also
integrated into other subjects. For example, in a seventh- grade civic edu-
cation textbook there is a lesson on the rights of women and children (part
of a more general lesson on human rights) that makes reference to ahadith
(sayings and/or actions of the prophet Muhammad) that are meant to sup-
port the ideas about women’s and children’s rights put forth in the lesson.30
All of Tel Yahya’s residents are Sunni Muslim, and religion is integrated
into the daily lives of the students and teachers at the Girls’ Secondary School.
In class discussions I facilitated and in one-on-one discussions with the stu-
dents, religion did not often come up, with some important exceptions I
discuss here. However, in discussing why they did certain things or did not,
they talked about “culture” and “tradition” and this encompassed religion.31
There are those who say that Tel Yahya, like much of Jordan, has become

29
In Jordan the basic cycle, first–tenth grades, is compulsory. Eleventh and twelfth grades are the
secondary cycle. Nationally, there are several vocational substreams, but the only one offered in Tel
Yahya is domestic sciences.
30
Thoqan Obeidat, National and Civic Education: Seventh Grade (Amman: Ministry of Education in
Jordan, 2000), p. 31.
31
Brand (n. 23 above) argues that tribalism and tribal customs are inextricably linked with Islam
in Jordan.

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more conservative and religious in the past two decades. When I interviewed
a former principal of the girl’s school, a Christian woman from a nearby city,
she remarked,
Up until the 1980s Tel Yahya was more [socially] progressive. They used to send
girls camping to other towns. The girls participated in sports and wore gym clothes
and people accepted this. Now they have become so religiously conservative that
girls can’t wear gym clothes. Today teachers will even say to girls don’t do this don’t
do that because it is sinful. They have preachers who go around and preach about
things like music is sinful. In the ’70s and ’80s they would travel with girls to
competitions and this would not be a problem.

It is difficult to distinguish when what restricts girls is people’s understanding

of religion or more broadly “tradition” as people have constructed it. How-
ever, there have clearly been changes in terms of what people interpret to
be religious restrictions on what is proper for girls, and this has had an
impact upon girls (for example, on the kind of extracurricular activities in
which they are allowed to participate). Through the ethnographic examples
I refer to below, it is clear that the interpretations of religion are varied and
that they are employed with different effects in the school setting.

Scenes from School

In what follows I have selected a number of scenes from the Girls’ Sec-
ondary School in Tel Yahya to show the mixed effects of schooling. The four
sections describe scenes I observed, dialogue I heard, and conversations in
which I took part. The first section begins with an analysis of some of the
competing discourses evident in the day-to-day discussions in school, in the
textbooks, and in the debates and struggles that were enacted in school. I
lay out the parameters of these discourses and explore how the discussion
about education is intertwined with a state ideology of being both “modern”
and “traditional” and the multiple meanings this had for the girls and staff.
Then, I describe the ways in which this was manifest in the school in dis-
cussions about the importance of education. In the next section, I describe
how a conflict between the teachers and the principal played out in part via
contrasting ideas of what were acceptable activities for girls in and outside
of schools. In the third section, I argue that schooling has created new
controls through a tracking system with gendered implications and use a
scene from school to demonstrate the effects of such controls. Finally, I
describe and analyze the way in which the girls resisted the school schedule
and the policy of pushing girls to go home immediately at the end of the
day, in order to make the most of their time in school. Again, my intention,
through these scenes and vignettes, is to demonstrate the complexity of the
school and the range of influences that are at work there. It is this hetero-
geneity that enables the “emancipatory possibilities” to which Najmabadi

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refers.32 Given the importance of school for the lives of adolescent girls in
Tel Yahya and Jordan more broadly, these possibilities are significant.

Competing Discourses in School

The tensions caused by nation building and national development pro-
jects have typically been framed by scholars and policy makers alike as strug-
gles between “tradition” and “modernity.” According to Joseph Massad, the
platform of the anticolonial struggle in Jordan was twofold: modernization
and the creation of a “traditional” national culture; women were seen as key
to this process of creating a nation with traditions.33 In fact, since the colonial
period, women have been used as the “markers” of tradition throughout the
Middle East and women continue to be its “guardians.” As a result, women’s
issues have been highly politicized.34 Speaking about Jordan, Laurie Brand
argues that “placating, or at least not challenging the forces—tribal, Islamist,
or simply socially conservative—upon which the legitimacy of the regime
rests has been the most constant feature of palace policy [toward women].”35
This policy in turn intermingles with a discourse about nation building,
development, and education, with the education of women commanding a
particular place.
In the subsection that follows, I explore the ways in which this ideology
“lives” and is practiced in school, namely a national ideology about being
both “modern” and “traditional” that has women at its center. In school, I
would argue, we can see localized manifestations of tensions at the national
level created by Jordan’s drive to “modernize” or “develop” and the concom-
itant effort by the regime and others to legitimize this push by “maintaining
tradition.” In the regime’s discourse of being modern or developed and
traditional or authentic, women are held up as the symbol of this balance.
The local manifestations of this discourse can shed some light on the am-
bivalent effects of Jordan’s national process of modernizing and tradition-
alizing and the limits of this as a hegemonic ideology.
The importance of education.—When I spoke with the girls in Tel Yahya
about education and what they saw as the purpose of education, most fre-
quently they gave practical reasons such as getting a job and making a living.36
Students also talked about education and its role in making them more

32
Najmabadi (n. 5 above), p. 91.
33
Joseph Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2001). Massad also argues that the creation of Bedouin and tribal national “traditions”
was part of this process as well.
34
Deniz Kandiyoti, Women, Islam and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).
35
Brand, p. 149.
36
This was true in the responses to the questionnaire I distributed, as well as in the facilitated
class discussions. Such practical motivations for education were always the first to be mentioned.

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attractive marriage partners.37 This was explained in economic terms; men

could no longer support their families alone in the current economy and
thus a second salary was needed. Related to this was the emphasis upon the
importance of an educated and “aware” mother. They also spoke about the
importance of education for society, for participating in a “modern” society
and for making people more “aware” or not ignorant. One class of eleventh
graders expressed this in religious terms. In other words, all Muslims were
called upon to educate themselves; it was a religious duty. But typically all of
this was expressed in more “secular” terms—relating it to the “development”
of society and the country and the importance of education for one’s own
well-being and livelihood. This resonated with the discourse on education
found in school textbooks, as the following passage from a twelfth-grade text
exemplifies.
Education is considered one of the pillars in the cultural and intellectual devel-
opment of the state for the purpose of preserving the nation’s heritage and its
values and accomplishments. Education in itself is an investment for the state.
Through it, intellectual and scientific knowledge becomes available to the members
of the state so that they will be able to live in dignity and they will be able to
participate actively in the development of their countries and in enhancing their
standard of living.38

It was evident from everyone with whom I spoke in Tel Yahya, as well as
from others I have spoken with about the topic throughout Jordan, that the
education of girls is acceptable and desired, with some families finding high
school to be sufficient and others hoping their daughters would have the
opportunity to go on for higher education. However, beyond school, going
to and being in other places outside of the home was limited and could
damage a girl’s reputation in the community. This reality was conveyed in
the following conversation I had with a group of tenth-grade girls about the
importance of education.
FJA: Where are you allowed to go besides school? Do you visit each other outside
of school?
GIRL 1: No.
GIRL 2: It depends.
GIRL 3: Sometimes. On special occasions.
GIRL 4: No, not really.
FJA: Where do you go?

37
Debra Skinner and Dorothy Holland point to a similar phenomenon in Nepal: “Schools and
the Cultural Production of the Educated Person in a Nepalese Hill Community,” in The Cultural Production
of an Educated Person, ed. Bradley A. Levinson, Douglas E. Foley, and Dorothy C. Holland (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1996).
38
Mahmood Ahmed Al-Massad, General Knowledge (Amman: Ministry of Education in Jordan, 2001),
p. 57.

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KAFA: Markaz Al-Shabat. [This is a youth group for girls administered by the Ministry
of Youth, subsequently referred to as girls’ youth group. The students have a dif-
ference of opinion about the girls’ youth group.]
AMAL: [regarding the problems associated with the girls’ youth group] Parents and
family start talking. They hear things and they say boys and girls mix there.
AYESHA: There are no boys there.
AMAL: But people see you walking in the street and they say where is she going
and boys start talking about you.
KAFA: We can’t always pay attention to people’s talk. What if people see us walking
to school and talk about us? Should we stop going to school?
AMAL: That’s different. Going to school is necessary and acceptable but these other
things people will say are not necessary and they will talk. Some parents also feel
like this is neglecting your studies. Going to extra academic classes is fine but this
other stuff is not necessary.
AYESHA: If we hear and listen to all of people’s talk we would never even leave the
house.

Many issues are raised by this dialogue among these tenth graders. What is
relevant here is the perception of education as something “acceptable.” For
girls, going to school will not give one a bad reputation. Being out in public
to go to and from school is appropriate behavior for an adolescent girl; in
fact it is necessary. However, other, extracurricular activities are not necessary,
so people will talk badly about girls who partake in such activities.
Girls also talked about education as a “weapon.” In the questionnaire I
distributed to girls in Tel Yahya and a high school in the nearby city, this was
the second most common response girls gave for the goal/purpose of ed-
ucation. It was also mentioned in every class discussion I facilitated. After
several inquiries, I learned that “education as a weapon” is a commonly
repeated cliché that implies a source of strength or a resource needed to
secure one’s future—an oft-used cliché utilized for everyone and not just
girls. However, the students emphasized that this was “a weapon in the hands
of girls.” So they might have been using an oft-repeated and gender-neutral
cliché but it seemed to take on a gendered dimension in their conversations.
The school girls would say,
It is a weapon for women in this society.

Education is a weapon, especially for women.

This made even more sense when coupled with other remarks like:
It (education) shows that there are no differences between boys and girls.

(Women) need an education to be able to stand up to men.

Education is the most important thing for a women.

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Education then is something that makes women stronger, more independent.

Education also helps to legitimize their work and presence in new spheres.
Thus, not only has education for girls become accepted in the society at
large, it is also perceived of as a tool for security, independence, and possibly
improved status of women by girls themselves. However, as the following
dialogue demonstrates, the opportunities afforded to these girls by education
were debated as they struggled with the terms of the state discourse about
being both modern and traditional.
AMAL: Women should have a greater political role and guaranteed seats in parlia-
ment.39 Only women can be sensitive to women’s concerns.
JIHAN: Women should have more say in daily life in their families.
MANAL: Education is the most important thing for women.
ANOTHER STUDENT: Teaching/education is the best profession for women. There
is no need for women lawyers and why would anyone go to a woman lawyer anyway?
[Some of her classmates object to this.]
ANOTHER STUDENT: Women are weaker than men. [Some of the girls in the back
disagree, but another student refers to a Sura from the Qur’an that she insists
confirms that women are weaker.40 Another student interjects and offers a different
interpretation of the same Sura. Others say it depends on the situation.]
SABA: Women can be emotional and thus might not make decisions rationally.
MANAL: And where would we be without our brothers to take care of us?
ALIA: Not anymore. Now we can depend on ourselves, safeguard our own futures.
There are women who are the best engineers—better then men—building impor-
tant structures.
MERRIAM: Where are they? Show me.

Many of the girls believed education would help make a place for them
in new spheres and enable them to depend on themselves. Education and
the benefits of education for women, and for the society at large, were cited
in school textbooks and supported by most people I spoke with, but with
limits. The debate above shows a group of girls struggling with these “limits.”
One student uses religious references to make her point, and others are
clearly in agreement. However, there are girls who question this interpre-
tation and use the language of a more secular modernist discourse. I re-
member clearly that the last statement “Where are they [the women engi-
neers]? Show me” conveyed skepticism not about the appropriateness or
39
This refers to a debate going on within Jordan at the time about the merits of a quota system
for getting women into the parliament. A quota system has subsequently been put in place and was
utilized in the 2003 parliamentary elections.
40
This is in reference to the fourth Sura, Ayat 34, “Surat al-Nissa’a”: “Men are the protectors and
the maintainers of women because God has given the one more strength than the other”; Abdullah
Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an, (Elmhurst, N.Y.: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 1934).

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 HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS IN JORDAN

ability of women to be engineers but a sense of cynicism about whether

Jordan could ever get to such a place.41
Here we see a glimpse of the girls’ daily experience in school—an ex-
perience enabled by a largely successful policy of mass public schooling that
interacts with the discourse about education, women, and the nation. This
scene also reveals the heterogeneity of religious ideas, their relation to ques-
tions about women’s education and role in society, and the debates to which
this leads. The role of brothers as protectors also points to the complexity
of family relations and the way in which changes in this arena are a source
of debate and, as I often saw, negotiation.42 It might be useful to think of
this dialogue and other episodes like it as evidence of a process of shifting
dispositions—habitus—a process of adjusting to new conditions and the sub-
sequent lag or “hysteresis effect” in the habitus to which Bourdieu refers.43
Conflicts among the Staff
The competing discourses were also evident among the staff, although
this was intertwined with what appeared to be institutional power struggles.
At the school, there was significant tension between the principal and the
teachers. A bloc of teachers had formed that resisted cooperating with the
principal even in fulfilling their own responsibilities such as proctoring exams
(e.g., through foot-dragging). One impact that this had was to decrease the
number of extracurricular activities at the school, because teachers would
not cooperate with the principal to make these events happen.44 The students
were aware of this situation as well, and some felt like pawns in the struggle
between the administration and teachers.
There were competing explanations for the source of this tension be-
tween the principal and staff. Teachers claimed that the principal was rude
to them and did not respect their opinions. The principal felt some teachers
resented her because of her career success. She also felt that she was still
treated as an outsider despite her having lived in the town for over 25 years
and being married to a town native. Finally, she suspected that a few teachers
did not like her and rallied others against her, exploiting kinship ties. What
is most relevant here is how this power struggle manifested itself in the form
of a battle over the meaning of “respectable” activities for girls.
The principal encouraged certain activities that were deemed “not re-
spectable” by some teachers and community members. These were typically
41
There are many women engineers in urban areas, and women are well represented in the
engineering faculties at the universities (although not for all types of engineering), so this comment
may reflect a more local experience. However, it also reflects the reality of a large majority of women
in Jordan.
42
Suad Joseph’s work on the relations between brothers and sisters and “relationality” in the family
more broadly is relevant here. Suad Joseph, “Brother/Sister Relationships: Connectivity, Love and Power
in the Reproduction of Patriarchy in Lebanon,” American Ethnologist 21 ( January 1994): 50–73.
43
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1980).
44
The other major reason cited is lack of resources.

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activities sanctioned by the Ministry of Education and the government more

generally (specifically at the local government-run youth group for girls). On
one occasion the principal said to me,
There is the problem of people’s conservatism and the influence this has had on
participation in places like the youth group. There are people that look down on
the activities of the youth group—things like singing and dancing. And some of
the teachers talk badly about the youth group. They even criticize girls who go
there and say things like, “Don’t let me hear that you have been going to the youth
group.” I am a religious person and I pray but I don’t believe in extremism, es-
pecially for young people—becoming more religious is fine but during this period
of adolescence they are still developing and such activities [nonacademic] are
important for building their character.

The youth group is an interesting case as it often emerged as a source

of tension in my discussions with girls (see dialogue above) and was also a
source of tension between the principal and more conservative teachers. The
principal supported the activities of the youth group and had a good working
relationship with its director. At the same time, some of the teachers would
reprimand girls for going to the youth group because it involved some coed
activities and, in the case of the more religious teachers, because of singing
and dancing. The way in which this tension played out is even more significant
when one considers that the youth group is a government institution run by
the Ministry of Youth and that many of the activities that take place there,
particularly the more public events, are strong displays of patriotism and
loyalty to the king. At an Independence Day event I attended in Tel Yahya,
a government official who came to the podium remarked, “Women have an
important role to play in society. They are half of society. The king supported
their participation in Jordanian Society. Women are partners of men in so-
ciety, in family. The girls’ youth group is an important part of supporting
this role.”
The conflict between the teachers and the principal revealed the multiple
layers at work in the school. There was some sort of local/institutional power
struggle between these two groups whose roots were varied. This manifested
itself through contested notions of respectability for the young girls who were
the students at the school. This in turn intertwined with the official discourse
about women’s participation in society, as was discernible in the debates about
the girls’ youth group and other struggles that emerged around government-
sponsored extracurricular activities. Finally, this in turn conversed and col-
lided with competing interpretations of religion.
I have demonstrated in this section, through scenes and conversations
from the Tel Yahya Girls’ Secondary School, the complexity of the official
discourse about women’s participation in society and the real struggles that
take place in school among girls and staff to make sense of the shifting
parameters around the “issue” of women and their place in Jordanian society.

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I will now discuss the way in which school, as it is structured in Jordan, creates
a new hierarchy with strong implications for adolescent girls.

The Tracking System and Girls Who Are Labeled “Not Smart”
In their study of schools in Nepal, Debra Skinner and Dorothy Holland
describe school as a “paradoxical tool” that, while providing an opportunity
to equalize unequal gender and caste relations, creates a new hierarchy of
the educated and uneducated.45 The way school is organized in Jordan creates
such a hierarchy, which has real consequences for girls who are labeled as
“not smart.”
Academic success is closely linked to a student’s placement in one of two
tracks in the tenth grade: academic or vocational.46 The vocational track is
in turn divided into different trades, with higher grades getting a girl into
the more prestigious vocations such as nursing, while girls with lower grades
might be placed in the domestic sciences.47 In Tel Yahya, domestic science
is the only vocational track, so girls must go to another town for other
placements. Those girls who are placed in the vocational track are labeled
the “not smart.” A girl who is “not smart” will most likely sit at home upon
finishing high school; she may even be pulled out before that because her
family or even she herself reasons that there is no point in proceeding with
her secondary education.
Both official and unofficial sources put the dropout rate at about 3 per-
cent. Of those girls who I did learn had dropped out of school, most were
considered “not smart” and intended to get married.48 The majority of the
educators and students with whom I discussed school dropout (I discussed
this in all interviews with educators) accepted this as appropriate and prac-
tical.49 If, however, a “smart” girl was made to leave school to marry, more
people spoke about this disapprovingly. This is exacerbated, and in many
respects enabled, by a tracking system by which girls who are placed in the
vocational track at the end of the tenth grade are labeled “not smart.”50 Being
placed in the vocational track was one of the more frequently cited reasons
45
Skinner and Holland.
46
Students are placed in either of these tracks based upon their marks in grades eight through
10.
47
Boys are subject to the same tracking system but have different options for vocational specialties
(e.g., carpentry).
48
One exception was a girl who, according to the teachers who informed me of her situation, was
taken out of school for “moral” reasons.
49
There were a few exceptions. For example, the principal of the school in the neighboring city
found the tracking and testing system to be too rigid and complained that it created high expectations
among parents. The fate of girls placed in the vocational track was one of the outcomes of this system,
which she pointed to as a concern. Each of the guidance counselors I interviewed (one in Tel Yahya)
shared similar concerns.
50
Most families will try hard to use their wasta, or connections, to get their daughter out of the
vocational track and into an academic track. Many succeed. For example, in a school I visited in a
neighboring city, only about half of the girls originally assigned to the vocational track stayed there.

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for pulling a girl out of school. This system also has repercussions for boys,
but a boy who is “not smart” has more alternatives. He may work, join the
military, or go abroad to study or work. There is also the possibility for him
to learn some sort of trade. A girl’s options are much more limited. The
continued investment in her education appears less worth it, and most of
the types of work available to an “uneducated” girl are deemed unacceptable
for girls. Thus, her best option is to find a good marriage partner while she
can.
As a result of this system, there is a tremendous amount of pressure
around the exams, and some girls get physically sick from the exam-taking
process. The following description of an incident I observed during exams
relays the depths of anxiety related to exam taking.
The ninth graders were the last to exit from their exam. I was in the yard talking
to Sameera, a tenth grader, when they came out yelling. Someone yelled, “I swear
that there were questions that I saw for the first time in my life.” They were in a
few groups and one group stood in the main yard in front of the principal’s office
yelling such things. At least one girl ripped her math book and flung it in the
schoolyard. They made their way to the gate and remained just outside of the gate,
continuing to yell. Suddenly there was a commotion and Sameera said they were
fighting. Some girls said the exam was not that difficult and the others started
fighting with them. No teachers or administrators intervened. Later one of the
teachers said the girls were cursing at her.

The exam-related stress, vividly depicted in this incident, is directly related

to the way in which the institution of school is structured by the state with
particular repercussions for girls. Thus, although school provides new op-
portunities for girls, new “hegemonies” are imposed as a result of the tracking
system, which relies heavily on exams. Parents with connections resist this
system; this represents another source of power at play here—a very dominant
one in Jordan (see n. 50). Because of these pressures and the fact that the
students have bought into the promises that doing well affords (getting a
good job, being a good marriage candidate, getting out of town to go the
university, etc.), the reaction to what seemed to be an unfair exam was
intense.51
Breaks and Other “Unstructured” Time
There are small, creative, and subversive ways in which students every-
where try to disrupt the order that is meant to reign in school, even if the
motivations are different. Paul Willis’s ethnography of working-class boys in
England is a classic portrayal of this, with a groundbreaking discussion about
51
Lila Abu-Lughod points to the contradictions that are posed by such expectations in the case
of Egypt and questions why it is accepted without question given economic realities. Namely, she points
to the fact that education is not meeting expectations; an education does not guarantee a job, and for
those with little means it is even difficult to get to the university; Lila Abu-Lughod, “Television and the
Virtues of Education,” in Directions of Change in Rural Egypt, ed. N. Hopkins and K. Westergaard (Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press, 1998).

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the implications for the reproduction of the working class.52 The girls in Tel
Yahya were no exception. The school day was short at Tel Yahya, and a 20-
minute break was the only time officially set aside for socializing. The girls
sought every opportunity to talk, laugh, and “mess” with the schedule. They
were constantly milling about, not being where they were supposed to be.
There were even more opportunities to do this because it was the end of
the school year and many teachers had “finished” teaching. Enforcement of
the schedule and rules was not consistent, but there were occasional outbursts
by teachers or the principal, particularly when the girls were milling about
at the end of the day.
In some respects this seems quite typical of adolescents and school any-
where. However, I would argue that there are two ways in which this behavior
was different in Tel Yahya. First, given that most of the girls did not see each
other outside of school and would not see each other all summer, they valued
this time to socialize enormously. Often when we talked about whether they
liked school, I would get responses like “It’s better than sitting at home.” Yet
they often complained about the rigidity of school and spoke about the
monotony of their days—school, studying, and housework. They wished that
school could be more fun. “We need more field trips.” “We need more parties,
more assemblies.” In light of limited opportunities for such extras, they tried
to “steal” time throughout the day.
The “milling about” or lingering was also significant because of the way
it was perceived by staff and even by some other students. On my first day
at the school, I was trying to figure out when I could find time to just “hang
out” with the girls as I was anxious to talk with them in a less formal setting
than the classroom. I asked a teacher if girls remained after class to socialize.
I was somewhat surprised by her response when she said the “good” or well-
mannered girls went straight home. I was not referring to hanging out in
town but to staying on the grounds after school. However, it became clear
that among many of the staff, girls who lingered after school were suspect
as girls who did not take their studies seriously and were too distracted with
socializing. During the regular part of the school year, parents knew when
to expect their daughters, and so the opportunities to stay after dismissal
were limited. However, toward the end of the year, when different classes
finished exams at different times and the day ended much earlier, the girls
managed to remain at school and tried hard to do so. The principal and
any of the teachers she could enlist made considerable efforts to prevent
this.53
When I asked a group of eleventh graders about the reason for this, they
52
Willis (see n. 9).
53
Herrera (“Scenes of Schooling” [n. 17 above]) points to a similar preoccupation with tardiness
in a girls’ school in Cairo. The staff at the school worried that girls might do something inappropriate
on the way to and from school and so guarded the gate to the school vigilantly.

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said, “They are afraid we will meet boys.” On one occasion, when I saw some
boys slowing down in front of the school and inquired as to the frequency
of this, girls told me it was a persistent “problem” and that the boys were
around much more during exam time because they were released from
school earlier. They mentioned that the previous year the boys became such
a problem that the principal called the police. Given this history, it seems
plausible that the staff wanted to get the girls home quickly so as to decrease
the chances of an incident.
The potential for “scandal” is increased as girls reach adolescence because
family honor rests so heavily on the actions of unmarried women. Hence
significant effort was exerted to monitor their movements. The teachers and
the principal felt a great deal of responsibility given who their charges were.
The principal, who had a contentious relationship with the teachers and, as
a result, with many in the community as well (see discussion above), seemed
particularly concerned with preventing any mishaps at the school. She worked
hard to ensure the proper behavior of the girls even when her own ideas
may have differed with more conservative beliefs among some of the teachers.
Although the school day was structured to allow little opportunity for
what were viewed as mishaps and unnecessary socializing, this was not always
effective. Students resisted such constraints, and the staff was not always
vigilant about enforcing the regulations. However, efforts to regulate the girls’
movements were more frequent at the end of the school day, when the
principal and sometimes the teachers insisted that the girls go home and
not linger. Thus, the school staff worked hard to limit unnecessary extension
of time in this space, while most of the girls tried hard to get the most out
of access to it. In this sense, the female staff of the school tried hard to
enforce a particular gender hegemony, one the girls pushed at the edges.

Conclusion

Through scenes and conversations from the Tel Yahya Girls’ Secondary
School, I have demonstrated some of the complexity of what goes on in the
daily life of school—the competing discourses, meanings, and practices that
exist there and that are constructed through interaction, debate, and some-
times conflict. Real struggles take place to make sense of the shifting param-
eters around the “issue” of women and their place in Jordanian society. The
complexity of the interacting forces means that the effects or impacts of
school are multiple and not always consistent.
Girls in Tel Yahya become increasingly restricted in their movements and
activities as they reach adolescence. The restrictions are sometimes loosened
if they should have the chance to go the university, and so most are very
anxious to do well in school in order to have this opportunity. School is
typically the only place they can go for a break from housework, to see and
meet different people, and to participate in activities independent of their

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families. It provides opportunities for new and potentially different relation-

ships and exposure to some different ideas. The importance of this access
to a different social and, in some respects, public space cannot be under-
estimated for adolescent girls, who can become quite isolated.
Yet, in many respects, school serves to reinforce the messages girls receive
about respectability and their role in society, with the staff and teachers
regulating this respectability. In this article, I discussed how the staff sought
to maintain respectability by insisting that the girls go straight home rather
than mingle with friends on the school grounds, as well as the way in which
girls who lingered were labeled. Also, some teachers reprimanded girls who
went to the local youth group. In these ways, school was regulatory and
reproductive.
Schools also create new controls and regulations. I have pointed to a few
here. The tracking system, an institutionalized system of labeling students
“not smart,” serves to limit the opportunities of girls as early as the tenth
grade. Also, the school is the primary venue by which young people are
exposed to the state ideology, an ideology in which gender plays a central
role. The official discourse in school and surrounding it is that “we want to
be educated and to modernize, but we also want to maintain our ‘tradition’
and our culture.” Girls are central to this maintenance.
School is also a site where the discourse about education, modernity,
schooling, and the maintenance of “tradition” is negotiated. The girls fre-
quently struggled with the issues of respectability and their place in society.
Their struggle often was articulated through the terms of the “modern/
traditional” discourse but it varied in its orientations. Some of the girls ques-
tioned whether it was real. Did they really have such opportunities in this
“new” Jordanian society? Some questioned the state’s commitment to tra-
dition and resisted “representatives” of the state such as the girls’ youth group.
Debates sometimes took on religious terms, reflecting the complexity of
religious interpretation and practice in the community as well as in the school.
Finally, school was never so controlled as to limit its potential as a site for
debate, diversity of opinion, and, in some cases, forms of resistance.
The lives that girls in Tel Yahya lead are drastically different from the
lives of their mothers (most of the mothers I spoke with had minimal edu-
cation, if any). Jordan has been impacted by several decades of major change
in the political, social, and economic spheres since independence. The im-
plications of such change for young women are not always clear. Access to
different spaces and opportunities continue to be negotiated and contested.
Schools represent one relatively new space where transformative opportu-
nities may reside.

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