School and Society

by Walter Feinberg, Jonas F. Soltis

Overview

This widely used text has been expanded to include the most important issues in contemporary schooling, including:

• New end-of-chapter sections for Further Reading.
• New references added to the useful Additional Resources section.

School and Society, Fifth Edition uses realistic case studies, dialogues, and open-ended questions designed to stimulate thinking about problems related to school and society, including curriculum reform, social justice, and competing forms of research. Written in a style that speaks directly to today’s educator, this book tackles such crucial questions as: Do schools socialize students to become productive workers? • Does schooling reproduce social class and pass on ethnic and gender biases? • Can a teacher avoid passing on dominant social and cultural values? • What besides subjects do students really learn in schools?

School and Societyis one of the five books in the highly regarded Teachers College PressThinking About Education Series, now in its Fifth Edition. All of the books in this series are designed to help pre- and in-service teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Praise for Previous Editions!
“I have been surprised and pleased by the relevance of this particular book to the lives and work of my beginning teachers.”
—Teaching Education

“[This series] does a masterful job of bringing together the basic issues and teaching methods that should frame social and philosophical foundations curricula.”
—Educational Theory

Walter Feinbergis Professor of Educational Policy Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Jonas F. Soltisis William Heard Kilpatrick Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807771211
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	04/26/2013
Series:	Thinking About Education Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	242 KB

About the Author

Walter Feinberg is Professor of Educational Policy Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jonas F. Soltis is William Heard Kilpatrick Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
Part I	The Relation of School to Society	1
Chapter 1	What This Book Is About	3
	Factory Prep	3
	An Imaginary Society	4
	Three Schools of Thought	6
	The Form of the Book	8
Part II	Schooling As Socialization and Progress	13
Chapter 2	The Functionalist Perspective on Schooling	15
	Functionalism	15
	Equality of Educational Opportunity	20
	Educational Reform: Three Cases	22
	Assimilation, Political Socialization, and Modernization	24
Chapter 3	Functional Theory, Policy, and Problems	29
	Historical Impediments and Compensatory Education	30
	Intellectual and Cultural Impediments	31
	Poverty	35
	Problems with Functionalism	36
Part III	Schooling as Legitimation and Reproduction	41
Chapter 4	Marxist Theory and Education	43
	Conflict Theory and Functionalism	43
	Marxist Theory	46
	Class Consciousness, False Consciousness, and Hegemony	49
	Marxism, Neo-Marxism, and Education	53
	A Neo-Marxist Interpretation of Schooling in Capitalist Society	56
Chapter 5	The Hidden Curriculum Revisited	59
	A Theory of Cultural Reproduction	62
	Student Subculture and the Working Class	65
	Puzzles, Problems, and Prospects	68
	Foucault and the Post Modern Move Beyond Marxism	70
	Feminism as a Form of Conflict Theory	74
Part IV	Interpretation and the Social Function of Schooling	79
Chapter 6	The Interpretivist Point of View	81
	An Argument for the Interpretivist Point of View	84
	The Active Quality of Mind	86
	The Role of Interpretation in Social Science	87
	Interpretive Scholarship in Education	93
Chapter 7	Meaning and Messages; Schooling and Socialization	98
	Hermeneutics and Interpretation	102
	Interpretation and Socialization	104
	Interpretation, Socialization, and Legitimation	107
	Objections to the Interpretivist Approach	109
	What Is at Stake?	110
Part V	Cases and Disputes	113
Chapter 8	Cases and Disputes	115
	Student Government	117
	The Roots of School Failure	119
	The Hidden Curriculum	121
	National Reports on Education	122
	The Geography Lesson	123
	Resource Allocation	124
	College or Workforce?	126
	Individual Differences and Equal Opportunity	128
	Social Reproduction	129
	Equal but Separate	131
	Education for Work	132
	Workforce School	133
	Class Bias?	134
	Social Studies	136
	Interpretation and Ethical Relativism	136
	The New Student	137
	Mainstream or Not?	138
	Social Conditioning and Freedom	140
	Interpretation and Epistemic Relativism	141
	A Third-World School System	142
	The Curriculum	143
	Notes	149
	Annotated Bibliography	153