This study combines the theoretical approaches of political anthropology with those of critical theory in education. I bring these perspectives to bear upon the understanding of family strategies for education and socialization – drawing from the work of social historians as well as from that of Pierre Bourdieu. In my attempts to understand schooling in Lavialle, I have been influenced by what Ortner (1984) has usefully labelled the “practice” approach in anthropology. I chose to study rural French education because this topic seemed well suited to the study of the interaction between social actors and social structure. Most policy in the French educational system originates in Paris at the National Ministry of Education. At every level, teachers are national employees, hired by regional educational authorities, who follow a national curriculum. Primary and nursery schools operate at the level of the commune, the smallest administrative unit in France. Thus, almost every French town and village has its own primary school for children up to the age of 11 or 12. Although the curriculum and the hiring of teachers are organized at the national level, the local government maintains the building and grounds of its school. This system has been in place for over a century, ever since the Ferry Laws of the 1880s making French primary education secular, mandatory, and free.

The centralized French system of primary education, superimposed upon diverse regional populations, provides an opportunity for the study of the manifestation (through social practices) in different local circumstances of a fairly uniform structure.