School Cultures: Universes of Meaning in Private School

(Hardback)

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Focusing on private schools, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of schools as social settings, illustrating their potential to create alternative cultures. Intriguing comparisons are made between the Waldorf School, a clear example of holistic education, and St. Catherine's, a traditional, elite college-preparatory school. The characteristics of each school are examined and compared. On the one hand, the Waldorf School, embracing an holistic model, advocates an aesthetically enriching life in harmony with nature for its students. Its emphasis on natural materials, as well as its developmental view of the child and curriculum focused on music and the arts, is unique. The Waldorf School asserts a romantic and progressive view of education that is relevant in a world that is becoming increasingly alienating and dehumanizing. On the other hand, St. Catherine's represents an academic elite model of education and faces the problems of our modern society in a different way, by teaching students to compete and excel in a competitive world while holding onto moral and ethical values. The schools' meanings are shown to be imbued through five cultural domains: history and myths; curriculum; rituals; time and space; and social relationships. The analysis reveals the schools' quite different responses to the world, to others, and toward the individual self.

Reviews

Henry finds ways of telling the detailed fabric of life lived out in these very different North American cultures, embedding them in their very specific legal and historical contexts.-Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education
School Cultures is a successful effort to "deconstruct the familiar and to think about alternative cultural possiblities," This book should be included on any list of essential readings in holistic education, and I hope it will be the first of many such inquiries into the phenomenology of holistic education.-Holistic Education Review
This review focuses on a chaptr on time and space in Mary Henry's book on school cultures....She offers us her keen perception that the use of time and space in a school reflects deep seated beliefs about individuals and their social relationships.-Curriculum In context
"Henry finds ways of telling the detailed fabric of life lived out in these very different North American cultures, embedding them in their very specific legal and historical contexts."-Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education
"This review focuses on a chaptr on time and space in Mary Henry's book on school cultures....She offers us her keen perception that the use of time and space in a school reflects deep seated beliefs about individuals and their social relationships."-Curriculum In context
"School Cultures is a successful effort to "deconstruct the familiar and to think about alternative cultural possiblities," This book should be included on any list of essential readings in holistic education, and I hope it will be the first of many such inquiries into the phenomenology of holistic education."-Holistic Education Review

Author Bio

nry /f Mary /i E.