This book examines how boarding schools have influenced their societal contexts. It shows that the view of boarding schools as agencies stabilizing or conserving social status and cultural traditions is not always valid. On the contrary, boarding schools may be educationally integrative and socially innovative, breaking up social structures by accelerating processes of mobility and change in society. In various historical periods and cultures, the boarding school took part in processes that concerned its societal contexts: establishing, strengthening, or changing political-cultural agenda. To support this assertion, three social-historical case studies are presented: (1) in 16th- and 17th-century Transylvania and Hungary, the Protestant Kollegium helped to create a new social status, the intelligentsia, which was foreign to traditional feudal society; (2) in the 19th century, British "public schools" promoted social mobility for middle-class youth, orienting them to upper-class culture and norms; (3) and during the 1920s-50s, the Israeli Youth Village, or kibbutz, aimed to meet the major challenge of nation-building by socializing and preparing immigrant youth for roles in Israeli society. (Contains 88 references, chapter notes, and an index.) (SV)