The Schoolyard Gate: Schooling and Childhood in Global Perspective

Abstract

The spread of Western-style schooling, in spite of the very different ways in which it is practiced on the ground, means that children growing up around the globe have a more uniform experience of socialization than in the past. That is because, varied as it is, schooling is a more uniform experience than family socialization, which has taken several different forms. Schooling has partially displaced other socialization patterns, including sibling care, gender segregation, and the learning of local knowledge through formal or informal apprenticeship to elders. It has brought new kinds of age grading, including micro-age-grading of the early years, and new conceptions of intelligence and maturity. Because of school’s sorting function, the performance of young children will determine their future (and perhaps that of their family)—in contrast, for instance, to situations where success depends on events in adolescence or young adulthood, such as making a good match or on starting out one’s farm or business well. By sorting, schooling blocks the mobility of many in the North, contrary to its alleged purpose. However, schooling probably sorts more fairly than many other systems in stratified societies—caste, rank, or wealth. As scholars from the South remind us, it promises mobility as well as intellectual liberation, and it sometimes makes good on its promise.