Ethnographic field research done with a group of working class girls in upstate New York examined the structures of schools that maintain gender and class distinctions and the culture of the girls themselves. Most of the field work was participant-observation at after-school and summer programs at a Girls Incorporated site in a mid-sized industrialized city over four years. The field work concentrated on 25 girls. These students tended to see their learning experience as adversarial, being yelled at and told to be quiet. The subjects doubted their abilities and felt no real sense of involvement in their educational process. Findings also show the extent to which working class girls and women find themselves trying to catch up in a constantly changing world of middle-class standards, behaviors, and attitudes. Children, and especially girls, who attend schools that still stress rote learning, adherence to authority, and do not demand more academically of students, cannot compete for jobs and careers that require abstract and critical thinking skills. (Contains 15 references.) (SLD)