The author uses an ethnographic study of teacher resistance to a state-sponsored "basic skills" reform movement in the United States to look at some fundamental issues of education and social justice. He shows how the cry of "back to basics", taken up by education pundits on both left and right in many parts of the English-speaking world, has become a smoke screen for less acceptable developments such as the whittling away of teacher autonomy, teaching to the test, and the assumption that children from disadvantaged areas should be taught low-level functional skills rather than the higher order thinking which might enable them to clmb the socio-economic ladder. This book raises important questions about the role of public education in a post-industrial society and the inter-relationship of class, gender and race in power relations in education. This book should be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics in the field of sociology of education.
- ISBN10 041590269X
- ISBN13 9780415902694
- Publish Date 27 August 1992 (first published 21 May 1992)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 8 November 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Imprint Routledge
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English