How Schools Induce Norms.

"When I was at school they expected big things of me."


There is an argument which proposes that schooling contributes not just to the students' repertoire of knowledge and skill, but to the acquisition of norms that are valued by adult society.

Schools, through their structural arrangements and the behaviour patterns of teachers - teachers assign the same or similar tasks to all pupils in a classroom . . . and evaluate performance by formal testing’.providing pupils with certain experiences largely unavailable in other social settings, and these experiences, by virtue of their peculiar characteristics, represent conditions conducive to the acquisition of norms. Norms such as 'achievement' i.e. '...am I doing as well or better than the 'other'?
 ‘ . .