ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the classroom as a social setting for engaging in thinking. Studies of teacher behavior in the classroom reveal a striking stability. Sanford Dornbusch and W. R. Scott argue that there appears to be: “a relatively clear connection between the type of task to be performed and the work arrangements appropriate for regulating a task”. In order to achieve a better understanding of the limitations of the school classroom as a place for thinking, a limitation reflected in the findings just cited, one can need to understand the classroom environment from a sociological perspective. The school has few penalties that constitute severe deprivation. Students will then be unlikely to interpret scores on tests and homework that are based on considerations other than objective performance. The vulnerability of the school and its classrooms to loss of social control depends on several obvious features of schools: The students vastly outnumber the adults and their attendance is coerced.
