The scene of urban desolation and social despair captured by the cover picture of 63rd Street, one of the ghostly thoroughfares transecting Chicago's collapsing black ghetto at century's close, invites everyone to reflect on the link between the built environment, social structure, and collective psychology. More precisely, it points to the need…

Few people realize the impact that high school dropouts have on a community's economic, social, and civic health. Business owners and residents--in particular, those without school-aged children--may not be aware that they have much at stake in the success of their local high schools. Indeed, everyone--from car dealers and realtors to bank…

From August 2006 through August 2007, Elvira Arellano, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, lived in a church on Chicago's West Side with her U.S.-born 7-year-old son, Saul, to avoid a deportation order. Her plight played out in Chicago-area and national media, piggybacking on a nationwide debate on immigration. This study focuses on one piece of…

Although we may claim our students are developing a sociological imagination, it is quite another to realize this in our teaching and our students' performances. Through a professional move from teaching in Chicago to Maine, I was led to rethink how I teach the sociological imagination. I argue that if we are to teach the sociological imagination,…

Public schools have historically embedded mechanisms for control within their policies and procedures through a variety of means. This article investigates a moderately sized integrated public school system in an upscale to low socioeconomic Big Ten university community in Illinois. Through descriptive measures, the author examines the racial…

Discusses the findings of a comparative field study of 15 elementary districts within the urbanized area surrounding the city of Chicago, undertaken to generate information on the structuring of suburban school district government. (Author/JM)

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF A SAMPLE OF 48 SUBURBAN COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SYSTEM INVESTIGATED THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THREE MAJOR VARIABLES--COMMUNITY STRUCTURE, COMMUNITY LEVEL OR POPULAR DECISION-MAKING AND INSTITUTIONAL DECISION-MAKING. DATA UTILIZED IN THE STUDY WERE VOTES CAST IN DISTRICT BOARD ELECTIONS AND REFERENDA,…

One aspect of Project REDY (Rural Education-Disadvantaged Youth) was to explore the degree of upward social and occupational mobility which society might realiztically expect from residents of a rural economically depressed area. Social class structure was identified as a related factor and examined in a rural, Southern Illinois county. It was…

To explore the degree of upward social and occupational mobility which could be expected from residents of rural economically depressed areas under existing circumstances, interviews were conducted with a random sample of 85 families from an economically depressed county and 30 severely disadvantaged families. Some findings were: (1) The majority…

One aspect of Project REDY (Rural Education-Disadvantaged Youth) was to identify elements of family living which were satisfying to residents of an economically depressed rural area in Southern Illinois. McVoy's Wants and Satisfaction scale was administered to 115 family heads to determine the degree to which certain wishes and interests of…

Implicated in contributing to the problems youth today face in trying to claim an education, an informed active participation in the social order, dominant discourses of desire in education foreclose formal, critical analysis of social structures that construct, police, entreat, and deny desire. Looking at the ways in which desire is encoded in…

The culture in a female-managed residential college that focused on communication studies was examined. The college, which was opended in 1981, is a unique living unit under the supervision of a head and associate master, in which 107 students live in a collection of suites representing the academic disciplines of journalism,…

The major issue in urban education is class conflict. The polarity of the "haves" and "have-nots" limits the schools' services to the latter group because of the generally moderate stance of most liberal school board members and their insufficient zeal in pressing the grievances of the have-nots. Bureaucratic resistance and the…