The Sociology of Educational Inequality (RLE Edu L)

153 Pages·2012·2.742 MB·English

by  William Tyler

THE SOCIOLOGY OF
EDUCATIONAL
INEQUALITY
William Tyler
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
EDUCATION
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
EDUCATION
THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATIONAL
INEQUALITY

THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATIONAL
INEQUALITY
WILLIAM TYLER
Volume 202
Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1977
This edition first published in 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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© 1977 William Tyler
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-61517-4 (Set)
eISBN 13: 978-0-203-81617-2 (Set)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-50597-0 (Volume 202)
eISBN 13: 978-0-203-12738-4 (Volume 202)
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would
welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
WILLIAM TYLER
The
sociology of
educational
inequality
METHUEN
First published in 1977 by Methuen Co Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
© 1977 William Tyler
Printed in Great Britain
by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd,
Bungay, Suffolk
ISBN (hardbound) 0 416 55840 2
ISBN (paperback) 0 416 55850 X
This title is available in both hardbound
and paperback editions. The paperback
edition is sold subject to the condition that
it shall not, by way of trade or
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otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or
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CONTENTS
Editor's introduction 7
1 The causal structure of
educational inequality 9
2 Education and jobs – the
'tightening bond' examined 35
3 The school environment:
does it matter? 54
4 Genetics and inequality:
the IQ debate 76
5 Social background and attainment 99
6 Fairness and merit:
a reappraisal of educational policy 115
References and name index 133
Subject index 141

Editor's
introduction
Sociology has changed dramatically in the past decade. Sociolo-
gists have provided an ever increasing diversity of empirical and
theoretical approaches that are advancing our understanding of
the complexities of societies and their educational arrangements.
It is now possible to see the over-simplification of the earlier socio-
logical view of the world running smoothly with agreed norms of
behaviour, with institutions and individuals performing functions
that maintained society and where even conflict was restricted to
'agreed' areas. This normative view of society with its function-
alist and conflict theories has now been augmented by a range of
interpretative approaches in which the realities of human inter-
action have been explored by phenomenologists, ethnomethodolo-
gists and other reflexive theorists. Together they have emphasized
the part that individual perceptions play in determining social
reality and have challenged many of the characteristics of society
that the earlier sociologists had assumed to be 'given'.
The new approaches have had striking effects upon the
sociology of the school. Earlier work was characterized by a range
of incompletely examined assumptions about such matters as
ability, opportunity and social class. Sociologists asked how
working class children could achieve in the schools like middle
class children. Now they also ask how a social system defines
class, opportunities and achievement. Such concepts and many
others such as subjects, the curriculum and even schools them-
selves are seen to be products of the social system in which they
7