Journal of Education

This essay examines the mechanisms used by the public school for socially adjusting an underclass of Italian, Polish, and southern black children who immigrated to Buffalo, New York, in the 1920s. It describes in some detail the activities and goals associated with the institutionalization of mental testing and tracking programs in those public schools serving these young members of an underclass. This essay suggests that as a tool of social control, testing and tracking into special education classes may have discriminated against the unassimilated newcomers who teachers and administrators feared were destined for a life of crime. Finally, the essay illustrates the reactions of interest groups to the school's tracking program, in order to show that members of and advocates for this underclass did not all passively accept the school's treatment of these pupils.

The place of writing in the curriculum has recently increased in importance under a series of new approaches based on a processing model of how writers write. An overlooked aspect of these new programs in the schools is the degree to which they parallel aspects of an earlier, popular literacy. In a brief recounting of incidents in the history of literacy with a focus on Renaissance Europe, 17th- and 18th-century England, and the 20th-century United States, three historical elements are brought to light which now play a strong part in the new programs. In these programs literacy (a) is sociable, (b) has its roots in nonstandardized language, and (c) places a premium on performance and publication. Insofar as the new writing takes up these aspects of popular literacy, there is reason to feel that it will work to some degree in meeting the current literacy crisis. However, the traditions of popular literacy have both political and social ramifications which warrant our attention. Popular literacy in the past has been entangled in the sensational and subversive and has not always been well received. This history raises questions as to what can be expected and what is desired of this new thrust in writing. The advocates of the new writing programs need to confront the potential of this increased voice, this latest form of popular literacy, which they have begun to encourage.

Definitions of literacy are explored as tropes which invariably express a social relationship between self and other. Hence, definitions project the cultural terms on which the literate members of a society wish to live with those deemed to be illiterate. The essay raises questions about the illiterate other being defined by current definitions of adult literacy.

A great deal of conceptual confusion still surrounds the meaning of the word “ritual.” Consequently, ritual continues to have an ambiguous status in social science research. This is especially true of studies which attempt to analyze modern institutional life and contemporary cultural formations. This paper critically reconsiders the concept of ritual, particularly in the light of anthropologist Victor Turner's discussion of root paradigms. The author draws from recent work in ritual studies to analyze classroom instruction in a junior high school in downtown Toronto, Canada. Classroom instruction was discovered to be part of an intricate ritual system and was differentiated along religious and secular dimensions. Pervading all of classroom life, two root paradigms—which the author calls “becoming a Catholic” and “becoming a worker”—nested the values of the larger society. Corporate capitalist values associated with “becoming a worker” were discovered to complement closely those values associated with “becoming a Catholic.” Furthermore, the dialectical relationship between the root paradigms served to create the “ritual charter” of the school known as “becoming a citizen.”

Drawing upon classroom discussions in high school women's history courses and follow-up interviews six years later, this article addresses three central questions: “What impression does viewing our history from primarily a male perspective, with the authority of the school behind it, make on students?” “What impression does viewing our history from a female perspective, with the authority of the school behind it, make on students?” “How can a gender-balanced history help female and male students to think about the concerns they have in shaping their own lives and in judging their society?”

Although Pierre Bourdieu is easily the most important current French sociologist of education, his work has largely been neglected by American educationalists. Part of this is undoubtedly Bourdieu's fault, for his writing is both jargon-ridden and and convoluted, but it would be a pity if this stylistic barrier impeded a critical and balanced analysis of his research. Beneath the jargon lies an astonishingly comprehensive and systematic sociology of French education, informed by a carefully selected and uniquely articulated integration of classical sociological theory and statistical analysis, To contribute to the critical reception of Bourdieu's research and social theory the author isolates and explicates key terminology in Bourdieu's work, links these concepts with each other within the totality of his sociology of education, and differentially appropriates and criticizes Bourdieu's work from the vantage point of the philosophy of praxis.

The current social and political climate presents the possibility of substantial reform in educational theory and practice. At the same time, continuing developments in epistemology and social theory are bringing into question some of our most basic and cherished assumptions about knowledge, certainty, and the legitimacy of social contexts within debates over claims to knowledge. These latter critiques offer the potential of wide-ranging transformations in education. This article explores these epistemological inquiries and their relevance for curriculum and teacher education, pointing out how it may be possible to take advantage of the current clamor for educational reform to revitalize both of these aspects of educational studies.