In choosing the educational setting, we have not been completely arbit- rary; a number of points can be made in support of this choice. First, of all the areas to which sociolinguistic study is relevant, education is clearly one of the most intrinsically important. As an institution of the middle class, school is one of the obvious places in which to investigate language and class contact. Second, home-school and teacher-pupil interactions can be seen as microcosms of wider social interaction. Here, we might think of the school as an arena in which minority-majority relations are reflected, in which general issues of social mobility are first encountered, and in which social policy of the broadest kind (cultural pluralism or assimilation, for example) is first brought to bear upon individuals. Third, many general sociolinguistic matters are particularly susceptible to interpretation in educational terms. Issues like the validity and acceptance of dialects, the posi- tion accorded to standard usage, and the relationships between language and identity can all be profitably explored and, to a certain extent, under- stood in educational terms.