Work Studies In Schools is an artist book by Darcy Lange, published by the Museum of Modern Art Oxford in 1977. This artist book coincided with a highly acclaimed conceptual project by Darcy Lange in which he filmed several school classrooms in Birmingham and Oxford in order to investigate teaching as work. Lange calls this effort “researches” and deliberately intends for the project to be open ended and not an end itself, as many artworks are. After feeling isolated from the “real world” as a sculpture student in Auckland at the School of Fine Art at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and later at the Royal College of Art in London, Lange set out to find a way in which his work as an artist could in fact bring him closer to reality. In the making of this project, Lange sought to illustrate the skills of the teacher through visual and gestural communication, to illustrate the process of teaching and learning in the classroom, and to illustrate the social breakdown in each class. Lange used a strict methodology of documentation, in which the camera made subtle movements as the focus in the classroom shifted and often played back the tapes immediately for students and teachers to witness. What emerges is an opening up of the documentary film category as a realm of fine art as well as a visual metaphor between the classroom and the factory.
Work Studies In Schools begins with a text by critic, curator, and lecturer Guy Brett. This book contains photographs taken of the students and teachers in the process of learning and photographs of Darcy Lange’s other work which reproduced the work of lower class laborers, such as gutting cattle. Reflections from teachers involved in the project are included as well as a biographical timeline of Darcy Lange’s life and work