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Anthropologists studying children in their own society may tend to assume that children and adults speak the same language and have shared knowledge; children's values reflect what they learn at home, their school experience is much like the anthropologist's school experience, and school is primarily a place where knowledge is passed from teacher to student; desegregation is working if there is no reported incidents of violence, multicultural training is provided, and desegregation is begun with young children; and schools can solve social problems. A year long study of children's social relations and communication in a desegregated urban "magnet school" challenges these four assumptions. Data indicate that children's play, body language and trust in adults influence schooling; the contingencies of a new era of youth and black assertiveness must be recognized; and successful desegregation requires more than a public record of nonviolence, multicultural education training, and interracial mixing in the early grades. Anthropologists must understand that children's perceptions and experiences of what it is like to be a student may present a reality that mocks adult ideals and the policies meant to realize them. (Author/WI)

A study of communication patterns in a desegregated school, located in an urban middle class black neighborhood, revealed "meddlin" (verbal and nonverbal aggression) to be a key area of cultural dissonance. This pattern is more common among blacks. Name calling, rumor mongering, body bluster, verbal intimidation, taking or destroying others' property, and physical assaults are some of the manifestations of individual and group attack. Reasons for this aggression include: (1) racism and the need to earn respect; (2) socialization to violence; (3) inadequate academic work and the need to save face; (4) responding to the self-fulfilling prophecy that blacks are more physical; (5) poor impulse control of anger; (6) sexual competition; (7) desire to test one's strength and establish position in a peer hierarchy; (8) peer pressure; and (9) desire for attention. "Meddlin" occurs more in the classroom than the playground and also in the hallways and especially the bathrooms. Both blacks and whites are targets of aggression and most fights are intra-racial. The long term negative consequences of "meddlin" outweigh the positive gains in self-esteem sometimes made by individual aggressors. (Author/EB)