ABSTRACT

The environment, like cultural geography, is a matter of relationships, with and between people. 'Place' or 'environment' is not an abstract concept but the ground of social development. Schools also demonstrate the transmission of values through the environment. There is a great deal of emphasis placed on groups and the behaviour of groups, whether these are small, for the purpose of working together, or large, as in assemblies. The formal and informal social systems associated with school overlap. The ways in which children test the formal system in their relationship with teachers shows how powerful and influential is the alternative one and how aware all children are of their own culture as well as that of the school. School, in fact, provides for an intense social and emotional life that enters through competitiveness and working with friends and being distracted by others from the formal curriculum. Schools create a connection between shared relationships and the formal social curriculum.