ABSTRACT
We regard education as a calculated interference with learning. This applies to all edu cation but particularly to that which is the most massive interference in learning in Western society, and except for total institutions in Goffman’s (1961) sense, such as prisons and monasteries, the most massive interference crossculturally-namely, the school. What we intend to convey is that schools teach selected materials, skills, and ideas. They also carefully exclude a great deal of cultural content that is being or could be learned by the students. Schools define what is not to be taught and what is not to be learned as well as taught and learned. A great deal goes on in schools other than calculated “intervention” (which we will now use rather than “interference”) in learning. The calculated
interventions themselves have unanticipated consequences. The students learn a great deal from each other that teachers don’t control. Students also bring to school a lot of learning that teachers would rather they hadn’t acquired. A combination of what children bring to school and what they learn from each other causes teachers trouble. It is this “trouble” with which we are concerned in this chapter.
