Anthropologists studying children in their own society may tend to assume that children and adults speak the same language and have shared knowledge; children's values reflect what they learn at home, their school experience is much like the anthropologist's school experience, and school is primarily a place where knowledge is passed from teacher to student; desegregation is working if there is no reported incidents of violence, multicultural training is provided, and desegregation is begun with young children; and schools can solve social problems. A year long study of children's social relations and communication in a desegregated urban "magnet school" challenges these four assumptions. Data indicate that children's play, body language and trust in adults influence schooling; the contingencies of a new era of youth and black assertiveness must be recognized; and successful desegregation requires more than a public record of nonviolence, multicultural education training, and interracial mixing in the early grades. Anthropologists must understand that children's perceptions and experiences of what it is like to be a student may present a reality that mocks adult ideals and the policies meant to realize them. (Author/WI)