ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on certain aspects of the problem of schooling and social and economic meaning. It aims to look at schools as institutions that embody collective traditions and human intentions which are the products of identifiable social and economic ideologies. The social definitions internalized during one’s initial school life provide the constitutive rules for later life in classrooms. Children are introduced to their roles as elementary school pupils in kindergarten classrooms; it is understanding and mastery of this role which makes for the greater success of kindergarten-trained children in elementary school. Observation and interviewing of the participants in one particular public school kindergarten classroom, one that was considered by many other school people to be a model, revealed that the social meanings of events and materials were established remarkably early in the school year.
