This article discusses the myth and reality of the ubiquitous one-room school in Canada. A marker of civilization, it bespoke a desire to spread the merits of education to the rugged laborers and their families in even the most remote areas of rural Canada. This historical vestige, particularly in the early-to-mid 20th century, painted a…

There is a strong tendency for evidence-based approaches to social practices to view these practices as imperfect devices for delivering social services. Practices are regarded as in need of repair by evaluation (and research) that can deliver the necessary science-based solution to the problems of practice. This article presents a different view…

This article examines the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). There are many WTO Agreements, but TRIPS is likely to have significant implications for areas such as information, education and libraries. The article provides an overview of TRIPS in general. Various intellectual…

This article reads the educational implications of "intellectual property" that are found in the double meaning of "property", as the word refers to an economic right and a quality of being. It briefly visits the seventeenth-century origins of this double concept of intellectual property (IP), with particular attention paid to…

In this article, the authors detail the conditions and patterns of academic capitalism and the new economy in US higher education. Subsequently, a conceptual model is offered for considering the international reach and national and local patterns of academic capitalism. Further, a distinctive Mexican case of entrepreneurialism is offered. The…

This article is the first of two which will give an account of the history of the education departments of the kibbutz movements in Israel and highlight their uniqueness and achievements. They dealt with all types of educational activities at all ages and in all spheres: kindergarten teachers, teachers, "metaplot" (plural form of…

The uniqueness of the Kibbutz Artzi "social movement" of educators is illustrated and summarized in two articles: (1) The first (previous) article, "The Education Department of the "Kibbutz Artzi" as leader of "a social movement of educators" (1926-2000) influencing the environment in the sphere of formal…

This article argues that the opportunity in Phase I of the IEA's Civic Education Study to include the new democracies' experiences of citizenship education have not been sufficiently exploited. "Borrowing" citizenship education from abroad and citizenship education for "civil society" have been chosen as examples of problems in…

The role played by family background in educational opportunity is a central focus in the sociology of education and stratification. Scholars have long recognized the importance of families in determining their children's educational success and, thus, in reproducing status over the generations. In the United States, children from single-parent…

People have enough trouble defining themselves and determining what they want in life when they operate within a single language and culture, but the job gets trickier when they live in a world of multiple lexicons, grammars, histories, cultures, audiences and social systems, where identity and perceptions vary by language context. This paper…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to show that changes in social systems do not occur randomly. They are consistent with what has gone on before, with the history and identity of the system. As long as the organizing principles of a dominant culture remain unchallenged, behavior of all the social-units originating from this culture will remain…

This study was conducted in the framework of the study "Cultural Capital and the Reproduction of the Intelligentsia in Poland and Russia." The authors undertook an attempt to test the hypothesis advanced by authors such as P. Bourdieu and G. Eyal, I. Szelenyi, and E. Townsley concerning the return of the dominating role played by…

Unrealistic as they may have been, television shows like Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet served important social purposes during an age of tumult and anxiety. The domestic sit-coms of the 1950s played an educative function by reinforcing and disseminating traditional values at a time when forces of change were becoming quite disruptive.…

Democracy has always been prone to self-destruction, and it was only after the American Civil War that democracy--or at least constitutional representative government--acquired a respectable reputation. There are two very different types of democracies each with its underlying philosophy, value system, and view of human nature. These are…

The mass media as interdependent parts of a larger social system both control and are controlled by other subsystems. The various combinations of control, in turn, determine the functions the media system will serve. In the 1960's, the Cuban mass media underwent frequent change that reflected the volatility of the revolutionary process. Today,…