Official and popular culture in the schooling process

This article analyses the schooling process in rural areas of Galicia (Spain) from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, considering educational initiatives promoted by both the state and the rural population. The former, which were governed by the official school culture, were driven by a moralistic approach; the latter, within the framework of popular school culture, were essentially aimed at literacy. The confrontation that arose between the two initiatives was finally resolved in favour of the official school. Our main goal here is to analyse how popular schools (ferrado schools) were perceived by official culture (school administrators and education experts) as well as by those who were directly involved as protagonists, i.e. the schoolteachers who ran these schools (escolantes) and their pupils.     

The paradox of virtue: (re)thinking deviance,anorexia and schooling

In this paper we posit a radical retheorization of anorexia as a form of deviance. We examine how the disciplinary practices and moral technologies typical of contemporary secondary schooling signify and enter into the articulation of three ‘virtue discourses’ (discipline, achievement and healthism), and tease out how these ‘virtue discourses’ play into the formation of the ‘anorexic’ subject. Informed by Foucauldian theory, our analysis draws on our life history interview study with teenage girls diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and their parents. We argue that anorexia can be understood not as a form of deviance but as a ‘paradox of virtue’ involving zealous compliance with and taking up of socially and culturally sanctioned ‘virtue discourses’ that are immanent in schooling and wider society.     

Economies of scale in schooling

A model of optimal school size is developed which predicts that schools will minimize total costs by operating in a region of increasing returns to school inputs. Two sources of estimates of the economies of scale coefficient emerge from the optimal school size model, and two rich data sets are used to generate estimates of this coefficient. These estimates support the model and are shown to imply sizeable differences in the cost of schooling between urban and rural areas.     

Trust and schooling in the United States

I investigate the effects of trust on human capital measured as average years of schooling in U.S. states using data from the 1980s and the 1990s. I find robust evidence that an increase in trust increases schooling across U.S. states. According the results of the seemingly unrelated regression estimation, a 25 percentage point increase in Trust increases the average years of schooling by approximately 1.5 months. This is not insignificant since more than $5000 increase in per capita income (in 2000 prices) is needed to have the same effect on schooling.     

Primary schooling in West Bengal

With his Nobel Prize award money, Amartya Sen set up the Pratichi Trust which carries out research, advocacy and experimental projects in basic education, primary health care, and women’s development in West Bengal and Bangladesh. Professor Sen himself took active interest in this work—helping set the agenda, looking at the evidence from research, and engaging in advocacy. The present article is based on Sen’s introduction to a Pratichi study of primary education in West Bengal, released in December 2009, which compares the results of surveys conducted at an interval of almost a decade. Sen’s significant findings and insightful observations and recommendations have relevance much beyond West Bengal.     

Language and schooling in Morocco

The prevailing language situation in Morocco is quite complex due to the presence and interference of three Berber dialects, three variant forms of colloquial Arabic, two foreign languages (French and Spanish) and one national language, classical Arabic. This article seeks to examine the educational implications of this multilingualism. For this purpose, a three-step analysis is carried out, involving a summary presentation of the linguistic setting in Morocco, an outline of the language situation in the schooling system and an assessment of the pedagogical impact of these factors. Two main conclusions are reached on the basis of this analysis. First, it appears that the language policy constitutes a major source of wastage in educational terms. Second, there is a close relationship between socio-cultural origin and the vehicles of instruction used at school, which introduces an element of social bias in the educational process. The object in which power has become inscribed, in all human eternity, is: language. Roland Barthes     

Christian home schooling in China

The literature focusing on Christian home schooling has been entirely ignored in the educational context of China, because practising home schooling is illegal and such families have strong religious beliefs. In particular, in China, studies grounded in empirical research and dealing with the development of Christian home schooling are negligible. The findings of this study were generated by an analysis of qualitative data: they provided in-depth information about the motivation of those who practice Christian home schooling, types of existing Christian home schooling, teaching content, and teaching methods and outcomes. It was found that Christian beliefs and values philosophically support Chinese Christian families in the process of their practice of home schooling.     

跨文化交际中英语“离格”现象剖析

本文以跨文化交际离格的语用含义为切入点,着重探讨了离格现象产生的三个原因,即地域差异产生的词汇差异、文化背景差异和交际环境的不同,并阐述了运用语用移情来解决离格的策略,通过该策略实现交际的和谐与成功。     

Urban schooling and the National Curriculum

The 1988 Education Reform Act requires every maintained school in England and Wales to provide for all pupils aged 5–16 years with a basic curriculum that includes a National Curriculum, comprising three core and seven foundation subjects, and provision for the teaching of religious education. While there are a number of good reasons to support the principle of a National Curriculum, the Thatcher government's version of what such a curriculum should look like is disassociated from any attempt to define systematically what kind of general, universal education is of most value in a rapidly changing world. As such, it is likely to fail the majority of children, and particularly those attending inner-city schools.     

21世纪世界军事院校教育体制的发展趋势

军校教育作为现代教育的一个特殊领域，它的发现体现了当代世界科学技术和教育发展的内在要求。适应新时代的变化，军事院校的教育体制有其共同的发展趋势。表现在：拓宽基础，培养适应性强的复合型人才；加强继续教育，提高军官素质；力求用最尖端的科学技术武装军队，以及为此建立“开放型”的教育体制。     

Family process and peer deviance influences on adolescent aggression: longitudinal effects across early and middle adolescence

Beginning in sixth grade at an average age of 11.9 years, 416 adolescents and their parents participated in 4 waves of data collection involving family observations and multiple‐reporter assessments. Ecological theory and the process‐person‐context‐time (PPCT) model guided the hypotheses and analyses. Lagged, growth curve models revealed that family hostility and peer deviance affiliation predicted adolescent aggression in the subsequent year. Family warmth played only a minor role in protecting against adolescent aggression. In hostile or low‐warmth families, peer deviance affiliation linked to a declining aggression trajectory consistent with the arena of comfort hypothesis. The longitudinal findings suggest a nonadditive, synergistic interplay between family and peer contexts across time in adding nuance to understanding the adolescent aggression.     

Social trust and the growth of schooling

The paper develops a simple model to examine how social trust might affect the growth of schooling through lowering transaction costs associated with employing educated individuals. In a sample of 52 countries, the paper thereafter provides empirical evidence that trust has led to faster growth of schooling in the period 1960–2000. The findings are robust to the inclusion of a set of control variables and being estimated using an instrumental variables approach.     

The imagined subject of schooling in the logic of policy

ABSTRACT

National education policies reference a representation of an imagined subject of schooling derived from a broader social imaginary that underpins the projects of the state, in a process which I refer to here as ‘the logic of policy’. I offer an account of how this representation is derived and propose three conceptual elaborations of this view. I then consider ways in which shifts occur in this social imaginary, especially at moments of substantial social, economic and political change, and ways in which these shifts are communicated. This imagined subject is referenced in processes involving both state and non-state entities, mediated by historically specific governance instruments.

The main part of this paper offers an illustrative historical example of the working of this logic in the context of the Cape Colony and apartheid South Africa, where the instrument of governance that was central to this process was the commission of enquiry. The concluding section briefly considers whether the logic of policy works in much the same way in a contemporary policy environment, where new policy technologies have largely displaced the commission of enquiry