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 position
accorded to standard usage, and the relationships between language
and identity can all be profitably explored and, to a certain extent, understood
in educational terms.