FOCUS QUESTIONS

1. What rituals and routines shape classroom life?
2. How is class time related to student achievement?
3. How does the teacher’s gatekeeping function influence classroom roles?
4. What is tracking, and what are its advantages and disadvantages?
5. Why has “detracking” become a popular movement?
6. How do peer groups influence elementary school life?
7. In what ways does the adolescent culture shape teenage perceptions and behaviors?
8. What impact do changing family patterns and economic issues have on children and schools?
9. How can educators respond to social issues that place children at risk?

CHAPTER PREVIEW

School is a culture. Like most cultures, it is filled with its own unique rituals and traditions, and its own set of norms and mores. In school, even the familiar, such as time, is made new. Time is told by subjects (“Let’s talk before math”) or periods (“I’m going home after seventh period”). Students are pinched into passive roles, following schedules created by others, sitting still rather than being active, and responding to teacher questions but seldom asking any of their own. Such a system challenges and confines both teachers and students. Peer groups create friendships and popularity, a strong subculture that makes winners and losers of us all—at least for a brief time. Adults pick up where children leave off, assigning students to what amounts to an academic caste system through de facto tracking or ability grouping. While adults focus on academics, many adolescents and preadolescents are focused on relationships and sexuality.

Economic and social factors are also powerful forces in today’s classrooms, and have reshaped the family unit. New family patterns abound, challenging the traditional view of the mother, father, and two children (did we forget the dog?) as the “typical” American family. With these changes, economic and social problems threaten our children and challenge teachers. We will describe these challenges so that educators can work to create schools that are safe havens and institutions of hope.