Education: Straitjacket Or Opportunity

Current discussions of education from Jenck's "Inequality "to Coleman's recent controversial pronouncements on desegregation orders and "white flight" concentrate on the efficacy of educational reform. The articles in this anthology, collected from two issues of the journal "Social Problems, "all consider this topic.

The volume is divided into six sections, each exploring different aspects of education. In an introductory essay the editors state the theme of the work and outl i ne the approaches and focuses of the individual essays. Daniels and Benet provide a framework within which the reader can digest and interpret the various contributions, and raise a series of questions intended to guide future educational research. They maintain that only interdisciplinary study can enable researchers to understand the play between individual aspirations and interconnecting social systems and institutions in the development of the growing exasperation with (or indifference to) the schooling question.

Originally sponsored by the Society for the Study of Social Problems, this work provides refreshing insights into the nature of contemporary education and explores new areas of research not previously discussed. It follows a "social system" approach to education and advocates it as a model for future researchers.

Serves an "important role in the current assessment of American education. "Ray C. Rist, Cornell University