This article briefly reviews the evolving role of major institutions thought to form, reproduce and transform individual as well as collective identities and values, with an emphasis on the impact of state vs market forces via educational systems. This is accompanied by a discussion of various pressures against the state to exert social control on…

It is often argued that as "consumers" of higher education, students, parents and leaders need objective, comparative information generated through systematized assessment. In response, we critique this trend toward reductionist, comparative, and ostensibly objective assessments in the United States. We describe how management has…

The research question was "What dress norms and related rationales are found in teacher dress policies?" Data were 102 school employee handbooks. Eighty-two handbooks (80.4%) provided one or more rationale, most frequently being "To project a positive image in the community" (n = 56). Dress norms, categorized as broad and itemized, were determined…

Contemporary social transformations of the body are essentially mediated by medical discourse. With the body conceived of as "soft and modifiable," we are witnessing an unprecedented rise in recourse to medicine in order to validate primarily social conditions. In this context, plastic surgery functions as a modality of social control and…

A rebellion against a work of literature in a course on women's literature and feminist criticism appeared to be censorship. Questions are raised about several topics. They are the following: (1) censorship and the selection of literature; (2) the literary versus the stock response; and (3) humanistic assumptions underlying the educational value…

Examines the attempts of the New York Manumission Society, a white anti-slavery group, to monitor and influence the behavior of free blacks in the decades following the Revolution. Identifies chief characteristics of the Society's relationship to New York's black community. Argues that the Society's wealthy white leadership probably imposed its…

Resistance to schooling of characters in 10 works of fiction was analyzed and findings applied to traditional literacy/adult basic education (ABE) programs. The results suggest that resistance occurs when values clash. Since ABE programs tend to reproduce the values of the dominant culture, they contribute to the resistance of those outside the…

This article provides an empirical test of the widely accepted assumption that migration contributes to union instability. The data come from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) data base MMP93. We use multilevel discrete time event history analysis to specify the odds of union dissolution for male household heads by individual- and…

A proposed equity model outlines a school-transformation process by questioning tacit cultural beliefs and pondering how education aims are realized in daily practice. The process honors best teaching practice and serves as a stepping-stone for inquiry into the outcomes, values, and criteria guiding curriculum and instruction decisions. Democratic…

Reviews Freud, Foucault, Eco, and critical theorists to examine features of postmodern society: a culture of violence, pervasive hidden forms of social control, voyeurism toward life, the sovereignty of instrumental rationality, and threats of fascism. Suggests the need for critical practice in education that values rational self-clarity,…

In this study, student liberalism is examined longitudinally to determine whether it changes as the result of being exposed to different educational environments. The effect of college on liberalism and the relative efficacy of different measures of the college environment are also addressed. The main focus is on the effect of student peers. Data…

Project Adventure's adventure-based counseling text, "Islands of Healing," uses language and simplistic conceptions of individualism and community to create an ecology of ideas. In this framework, moral and social complexities of modern life are exchanged for an artificial cyberspace-like microworld where unthinking acquiescence to group…

A content analysis of 21 elementary and secondary software programs reveals the nonneutrality of educational software. The software is heavily biased and exposes pupils to dominant explanations, values, beliefs, assumptions, and ideologies that are projected as objective and legitimate. Content-specific software is deeply enmeshed in cultural…

Before there can be an understanding of politics, policy, and action in education, there must be an understanding of the value systems of policymakers. Policymakers, in their talk, in their choices of symbols and metaphors, in their choices of strategies for dealing with conflict, reveal their own needs, their role orientations, their group…

Defines one aspect of liberation theology as emphasizing its own particular social experiences to question universal claims of theology and to unmask oppressive particularities of those universal claims. Argues that religious educators can answer the culture of disbelief with calls for greater tolerance and understanding of diverse belief systems.…