Asking fundamental and often uncomfortable questions about the nature and purposes of formal education, this book explores the three main ways of looking at the relationship between formal education, individuals and society:

* that education improves society
* that education reproduces society exactly as it is
* that education makes society worse and harms individuals.

Whilst educational policy documents and much academic writing and research stresses the first function and occasionally make reference to the second, the third is largely played down or ignored.