The Schooled Society The Educational Transformation of Global Culture [Hardcover]

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 societythat is, a society that is actively created and defined by education.

Drawing on neo-institutionalism,The Schooled Societyshows 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 Societysheds light on how mass education has dramatically altered the face of society and human life.

The Schooled Societyis one of the most important books in the sociology of education in quite some time. It provides an original, rigorous, and well-supported application of neo-institutional theory and covers an enormous amount of material. The author takes on some of the most accepted aspects of both conflict and functionalist theory and in doing so provides what is at times a controversial take on mass education, democracy, K-12 and higher education, cognition, and a number of other topics. It will solidify his reputation as one of today's leading sociologists of education and comparative and international education. In a little over 100 years, formal education has gone from the privilege of an elite few to a standard life phase. Conventional analyses view this 'massification' as the inevitable response to increasingly complex societies and economies. David BaklC$