School and Society: Learning Content Through Culture

A central theme in anthropoligical research is the socialization process. Yet, when applied to student life, the literature tends to neglect a frequent phenomena of student life: that students are uprooted from their home countries and resettled in culturally different areas. The contributors to School and Society provide a comparative assessment of how cultural knowledge relates to learning. Part I discusses qualitative research and national politics as they relate to cultural education. Part II explores American and Japanese day care centers, Peruvian schools, and the effects of Asian refugees on American schools. Part III examines peer socialization among Iranians, Israeli adolescents living on Kibbutzim, and other ethnic and cultural groups. In a final analysis, the editors attend to the very conception of culture and the need for cultural therapy: an understanding of one's own culture in order to study another's.