First published in 1975, this book offers a critique of some of the ‘new perspectives’ in the sociology of education. This is achieved through a case study of a progressive child centred school.
The book suggests that a liberal approach to education fails to appreciate how thoroughly a complex, stratified industrial society penetrates the school. It argues that the practice of ‘progressive’ education may be a modern form of conservativism and an effective form of social control both in the narrow sense of achieving classroom discipline and in the wider sense of contributing to the...