Issues in Applied Linguistics

This paper, based on a three-year participant observer study in a southwestern inner city elementary school, holds that understanding the dynamic nature of the struggle between desire and discipline in an elementary school setting is crucial because those competing forces and the ensuing struggle are a majorforce in a child's secondary socialization. Our observations suggest that even very young children acquiesce to and resist authority in many ways, and in doing so learn lessons often more complicated than most of our assumptions will allow. We argue that these lessons, which are often contradictory, are born out ofthe tension between institution and inclination, between deference and autonomy, and between respectfor authority and self-respect—a tension that is not resolvable, but that can be collectively lived with in better and worse ways.