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Studies on families and inequality in education have largely focused on the family as a preparatory institution for school, but have ignored the dynamic process of engaging with learning at home. This qualitative study of impoverished Israeli families uses a tug-of-war model to describe three distracting factors which alienate children from learning on the one hand, and four competing instructional strategies and arrangements, which either engage children with learning or neutralize the chaotic home environment on the other. The large size and density of the observed families, however, causes the distracting factors to prevail, thus producing recurrent alienation from learning. By opening the 'black box' of learning at home, this study extends Goffman's general theoretical insights about alienation from interaction into the explanation of reproduction in education. Furthermore, the study casts doubt on the ability of home intervention programs to supply a panacea for inequality in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low priority given to surveillance of Islamic extremists in Germany before the September 11 attacks in the United States, coupled with the country's fragmented and decentralized structure of law enforcement, contributed to the failure of the German intelligence services and the police to prevent the planning and plotting of these attacks in Hamburg.Consequently, in the aftermath of 9/11, the shocked and embarrassed country enacted anti terrorist legislation that has provided greater freedom to law enforcement to act against suspected terrorists. In Germany, as in the United States, the war on terrorism has aroused opposition as it is regarded by some as threatening basic civil liberties.This paper describes the major shifts in the investigative priorities undertaken to enhance the abilities of the authorities to counter the post-9/11 terrorist threat in Germany as well as some of the anti-terrorist raids mounted by the police in recent years. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]