School prayer is a "politics of life-style concern" issue, i.e., a group of traditionalists is attempting to reinstate prayer as an affirmation of their cherished and once dominate values, and a group of modernists is attempting to maintain the ban on prayer as an affirmation of their cherished, contemporary values. (RM)

Flawed social policies have led to the high cost and the failure of human service institutions. The inclusion of local community associations in the creation of these policies would change the focus from control to consent thus allowing target populations to be supported within a more suitable context. (VM)

Compared the sociocultural characteristics of pregnant adolescents (N=129) of low socioeconomic status with a nonpregnant adolescent group (N=100) from the same area of Santiago, Chile. Found several differences between the groups including less schooling, lower level of aspirations, and a tendency to live in "the present" among the…

Stresses that understanding the impact of interaction with mass media requires conceptualizing media as an institutionalized social form. A critical feature of this process is the grammatical character of media interaction in the form of rhythm and tempo, because these rhythms and tempos become established in everyday routine. (SKC)

Three trends that are pervading society are an increased emphasis on quality of life, demand for continued learning opportunities, and an increase in personal responsibility. These trends are the basis for a need for programs in career/life development or planning. (JOW)

Analyzes new estimates of elementary education enrollment rates for 126 nations and colonies from 1870-1940. States that the expansion of elementary education was more uneven, tentative, and varied in this period, suggesting that social, economic, political, and religious conditions greatly affected the extension of schooling before World War II.…

Discusses development inadequacies of recent scholarship on professionalism. In the last four decades historians and social scientists have developed increasingly negative opinions of and approaches to the professions. They falsely attribute historical trends to the ascendence of professions in American society. (PS)

This study examined how changing social conditions in the West Germany influenced the "educational trajectories" of survey respondents born in 1929-31, 1939-41, and 1949-51. Concludes that different birth cohorts were affected to a different extent by the same historical developments because of vulnerable and less vulnerable phases of…

Explores the relationship between Herbert Marcuse's theory of "surplus repression" and Freud's theory of the "unconscious" with respect to latent, hidden, covert, or subliminal aspects of racism in the United States. Argues that unconscious racism, manifested in evasion/avoidance, acting out/projection, and attempted…

Average household size in the United States fell steadily throughout the 1970s due to decrease in the size of family households during the first half of the decade, and proportional decline of married-couple households during the second half of the decade. The slower rate of decline in the 1980s represents a continuation of these trends.…

Demonstrates specific exercises designed to show students how popular cultural materials can be used as historical documents and the potential pitfalls inherent in this process. Examines Warner Brothers cartoons, relating the plot to the socio-historical roots of the cartoons. Concludes that this technique helps students better understand…

Describes trends and developments that are influencing child day care. (HOD)

Social trends of the last 35 years are traced through an examination of Newbery Medal winners from 1951 to 1985. Idealism and realism in children's literature, the sex of the main characters, and the effects of changes in the publishing industry on children's books are discussed. (EM)

Theorist William J. Wilson proposes that the increasing problems of inner-city minority groups stem not from a ghetto culture of poverty, as some contend, but from growing social isolation of poor Blacks and Hispanics and from changes in the economy. (MSE)

Offers an analytical model to assist teachers and students in decoding social and cultural meaning embedded in the visual track of any given television program. To illustrate the model, the Public Broadcasting System's production of "The Scarlet Letter" is analyzed. (MBR)