ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the social worlds of the young middle class boys at South Park Primary School. Schools also depend upon the parents to be compliant and to accept and support the way that they, as schools, educate their children. The key issue, and the one that differentiates South Park and North Parade, is how these two terms to educate and to be compliant are defined and understood in practice. The chapter focuses on how parents and the school define these terms in South Park. First they give a sense of the highly motivated nature of some of the parents, the emphasis they give to education and the way in which they can successfully make use of their professional skills and training to deal with teachers. Second, while their active interest is clearly experienced as a pressure by the teacher, her final comments suggest that it is not entirely unwelcomed.
