The Schooled Society

“Path-breaking . . . offers a rich, encompassing, global perspective on education . . . articulates an educationally-grounded vision of contemporary society.” —David John Frank, University of California, Irvine Only 150 years ago, the majority of the world’s population was largely illiterate. Today, not only do most people over fifteen have basic reading and writing skills, but 20 percent of the population attends some form of higher education. What are the effects of such radical, large-scale change? David Baker argues that the education revolution has transformed our world into a schooled society—that is, a society that is actively created and defined by education. Drawing on neo-institutionalism, The Schooled Society shows how mass education interjects itself and its ideologies into culture at large: from the dynamics of social mobility, to how we measure intelligence, to the values we promote. The proposition that education is a primary rather than a “reactive” institution is then tested by examining the degree to which education has influenced other large-scale social forces, such as the economy, politics, and religion. Rich, groundbreaking, and globally-oriented, The Schooled Society sheds light on how mass education has dramatically altered the face of society and human life. “One of the most important books in the sociology of education in quite some time. . . . It will solidify [Baker’s] reputation as one of today’s leading sociologists of education and comparative and international education.” —Alan R. Sadovnik, Rutgers University “David Baker explores formal education as a social-cultural force in its own right. . . . The Schooled Society offers a powerful alternative perspective on the global educational revolution.” —Maria Charles, University of California, Santa Barbara

Series: a href="http://www.oupcanada.com/tcs/"Themes in Canadian Sociology/aExploring how education plays a significant role in both modern society and our development as social beings, this text applies classical and contemporary theoretical approaches to study the relationship between school and society. Featuring a Canadian focus and up-to-date statistics and research,The Schooled Society offers a comprehensive examination of schooling at all levels from a sociological perspective.

Capricorn (Cap) Anderson has never watched television. He's never tasted a pizza. Never heard of a wedgie. Since he was little, his only experience has been living on a farm commune and being home-schooled by his hippie grandmother, Rain. But when Rain falls out of a tree while picking plums and has to stay in the hospital, Cap is forced to move in with a guidance counselor and her cranky teen daughter and attend the local middle school. While Cap knows a lot about tie-dying and Zen Buddhism, no education could prepare him for the politics of public school. Right from the beginning, Cap's weirdness makes him a moving target at Claverage Middle School (dubbed C-Average by the students). He has long, ungroomed hair; wears hemp clothes; and practises tai chi on the lawn. Once Zack Powers, big man on campus, spots Cap, he can't wait to introduce him to the age-old tradition at C-Average: the biggest nerd is nominated for class president—and wins.

Whilst learning is central to most understandings of what it is to be human, we now live in a knowledge society where being educated defines life chances more than ever before. Learning Beyond the School brings together accounts of learning from around the world in organisations, spaces and places that are schooled, but not school. Exploring examples of learning organisation, pedagogisation, informal learning and social education, the book shows not only how understandings of education are framed in terms of local versions of schooling, but what being educated could and should mean in very different social and political contexts. With contributions from scholars based in Australia, Europe, the USA, Latin America and Asia, the book brings together accounts of learning outside of school. Chapters contain rich and detailed case studies of innovative projects, new kinds of learning institutions, youth, peer-driven and community-based activities and public pedagogies, as well as engaging with the dimensions of an argument about the place and nature of learning outside of the school. It challenges dominant versions of school around the world, whilst also critically discussing the value and place of non-institutionalised learning. Learning Beyond the School should be of interest to academics, researchers, postgraduate scholars engaged in the study of comparative education, youth work, education systems, digital culture, sociology of education and youth development. It should also be essential reading for practitioners and policymakers who are interested in youth and education system reform.

The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the rising production of credentials and job requirements was brought about by the expansion of high school and then undergraduate education, with consequences including grade inflation, rising educational costs, and misleading job promises dangled by for-profit schools. Collins examines medicine, law, and engineering to show the ways in which credentialing closed these high-status professions to new arrivals. In an era marked by the devaluation of high school diplomas, outcry about the value of expensive undergraduate degrees, and the proliferation of new professional degrees like the MBA, The Credential Society has more than stood the test of time. In a new preface, Collins discusses recent developments, debunks claims that credentialization is driven by technological change, and points to alternative pathways for the future of education.

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupil nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupul's lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education - and also to those who seek alternatives to other establisehd service industries. Ivan Illich was born in Vienna in 1926. He studied theology and philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome and obtained a PhD in history at the University of Salzburg. He came to the United States in 1951, where he served as assistant pastor in an Irish-Puerto Rican parish in New York. From 1956 to 1960 he was assigned as vice rector to the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, where he organized an intensive training center for American preists in Latin American culture. Illich was a co-founder of the widely known and controversial Center for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and since 1964 he has directed research seminars on "Institutional Alternatives in a Technological Society," with special focus on Latin America. Ivan Illich's writings have appeared in The New York Review, The Saturday Review, Esprit, Kuvsbuch, Siempre, America, Commonweal, Epreuves, and Tern PS Modernes.

Drawing on current scholarship, Education and Society takes students on a journey through the many roles that education plays in contemporary societies. Addressing students’ own experience of education before expanding to larger sociological conversations, Education and Society helps readers understand and engage with such topics as peer groups, gender and identity, social class, the racialization of achievement, the treatment of immigrant children, special education, school choice, accountability, discipline, global perspectives, and schooling as a social institution. The book prompts students to evaluate how schools organize our society and how society organizes our schools. Moving from students to schooling to social forces, Education and Society provides a lively and engaging introduction to theory and research and will serve as a cornerstone for courses such as sociology of education, foundations of education, critical issues in education, and school and society.

Abstract:. - http://www3.openu.ac.il/ouweb/owal/new_books1.book_desc?in_mis_cat=111625.

With over 70,000 copies of the first edition in print, this radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers’ bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years in New York City’s public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. This second edition describes the wide-spread impact of the book and Gatto’s "guerrilla teaching." John Gatto has been a teacher for 30 years and is a recipient of the New York State Teacher of the Year award. His other titles include A Different Kind of Teacher (Berkeley Hills Books, 2001) and The Underground History of American Education (Oxford Village Press, 2000).

A trenchant interpretation of the rise of vocational education. It explains how Americans turned to public schools for answers to the problems of an increasingly urban, industrial society, and offers a perspective on the meaning of public education and the transition from school to work.