The Material Culture of Public School Classrooms: The Symbolic Integration of Local Schools and National Culture1

Abstract

Yehudi Cohen (1970; 1971; 1975) has suggested that socialization and enculturation into national society and culture are symbolically reinforced by the integrative functions of customary public school classroom decoration and artifacts. This paper describes the material culture of classrooms within an elementary school in the rural midwestern United States. In support of Cohen's argument, it was found that classroom material culture symbolically represented national, rather than local community, sociocultural orientations and traditions. Cohen's thesis is expanded through (1) content analysis of grade-to-grade variation in classroom material culture and (2) by suggesting a hierarchy of local school integration, as represented in classroom material culture, with the national society and culture. It is concluded that classroom material culture reinforces the symbolic integration of heterogeneous local school communities into a national society and culture. Classroom material culture is an index of the relative degree of symbolic integration between local school communities and national society and culture.