Examines ways in which current United Kingdom school-choice policies interact with parental pressures on their children to achieve excellence and how these pressures affect the emotional health of their middle- and working-class children as they make the transition from primary to secondary school. Finds serious emotional consequences (exam…

Even though enrollment in elementary schools and national literacy rates have increased greatly in India since its independence in 1949, the number of dropouts and illiterate individuals will also continue to increase unless the needs of the socially disadvantaged are identified and met. The majority of the dropouts and the illiterates belong to…

Personal narratives of 20 middle-class Japanese preschoolers, half of them 4 years old and half 5 years old, and their mothers were analyzed using stanza analysis and high point analysis. The patterning in stanzas yielded the following: (1) with regard to the proportion of three-verse stanzas, there were no differences between the groups of…

Brazil's education of its emerging middle class is compared in this paper with the U.S. community colleges' education of their middle and lower class constituency. First, introductory comments argue that, just as there are stratified technological levels within the labor market, levels of knowledge can also be distinguished, pointing to access to…

Examines the French Immersion program in Northern Ontario, Canada, against the correspondence theory of Bowles and Gintis. Suggests that schools both reproduce class stratified society and promote social inequality. Explores the English-speaking middle-class motivations and actions in controlling French Immersion programs to benefit their…

To determine whether preschool education benefits middle-class elementary school children, a study was conducted which compared the social, motor, and academic progress of kindergarten and elementary school children who had attended a Montessori preschool, another kind of preschool, or no preschool. The sample was chosen according to age,…

Male and female subjects from low and middle-upper socioeconomic groups were asked to explain their academic success or failure. Few sex or social class differences were found, with most subjects attributing success to internal, medium stable, and controllable causes. (GC)

Concerned about working-class failure, argues that recent (British) government policies have insufficiently considered sociological studies on how social class affects educational success or failure. Social-inclusion policies must address forms of middle-class self-exclusion from mainstream public education as well as working-class social…

Two experiments were conducted in Israeli elementary schools to test the assumption that disadvantaged students perform poorly on ability tests because of situational factors related to the testing process. Testing atmosphere and examiner status were examined with respect to verbal and nonverbal ability and intelligence. The assumption was not…

Measured physical and cognitive development of 7- to 10-year-old Brazilian children in 3 social groups. Domestic servants' children were taller and heavier than children in slums, and shorter than middle-class children. Domestic servants' sons scored similar to slum-dwelling boys on cognitive measures. (BC)

University education should be more widely available to people who are older and less traditionally qualified than the matriculated, predominantly middle-class students of most universities. Two institutions with open admissions policies, the British Open University and the University of Paris Vincennes, are discussed. (MLW)

A study of the effect of teachers' asymmetric perceptions of girls and boys on 147 Jewish Israeli second and sixth graders' (78 males and 69 females) perceptions of student prominence in school relevant categories found that students judged more boys as prominent. Same-sex peers were also judged prominent. (JB)

Recent attempts of the British government to shift its student aid programs from grants to loans are discussed, along with parallels between developments in student aid policy in both Britain and the United States. Great Britain's higher education structure, access to education, and enrollments are briefly described. In Britain over 90 percent of…