Schools and Societies / Edition 1

by Steven G. Brint, Steven Brint

Overview

In Schools and Societies the author demonstrates that more than any other major institution, schooling and schools are political, and virtually everyone has opinions to voice and interests to promote. Steven Brint musters a wealth of comparative material to show how schooling around the world is shaped by social forces even as it tries to shape the societies of the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803990593
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/14/1998
Series:	Sociology for a New Century Series , #474
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steven Brint, (Ph.D. Harvard University), is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of In An Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life (Princeton University Press, 1994). He is also co-author with Jerome Karabel of The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900-1980 (Oxford University Press, 1989), which won the American Educational Research Association's "distinguished publication" award in 1991.

Table of Contents

Schools as Social Institutions
Schooling in the Industrialized World
Schooling in the Developing World
Schools and the Transmission of Knowledge
Schools and Socialization
Schools and Social Selection
Opportunity
Schools and Social Selection
Inequality
Teaching and Learning in Comparative Perspective
School Reform and the Possibilities of Schooling

Editorial Reviews

"The new edition of Schools and Societies is an impressive expansion of the original book. It is an excellent review of the whole field of the sociology of education from a broad macro-sociological point of view. It will find many uses—as an undergraduate and graduate textbook, as an authoritative sourcebook, and as a set of interesting and thoughtful interpretations of research and theory in the field. It is the leading work in its genre, and the central text for those looking for a broadly comparative and historical review of the sociology of education."—John Meyer, Stanford University

"If you have time to read only one book on the contours of social and political analysis of schooling in modern society, Brint's Schools and Societies would be an excellent choice. Brint weaves divergent perspectives and complicated research findings on schools into a readable story about what scholars and policy analysts alike are coming to understand about formal education. This book is equally valuable as an introduction to the field for students as it is a refresher for the expert."—David P. Baker, Pennsylvania State University

"Schools and Societies" is a brilliant analysis of why we have the schools we have. Importantly, it reminds us that learning and socialization take place within particular institutional arrangements, that those arrangements vary across time and from country to country, and that the structure of opportunities embedded within those arrangements affects the ways in which schooling benefits individuals and groups. It provides a new way of approaching the question at the center of the current debate about American schooling: how can we reduce various achievement gaps? Brint's analysis reminds us that inequality in educational opportunity is aligned with inequality in educational achievement, and that we cannot understand the latter without understanding the former. This new edition of Schools and Societies is an invaluable resource for teaching and for research."—Pamela Barnhouse Walters, James H. Rudy Professor of Sociology, Indiana University

From the Publisher