A.K.C. Ottaway - Education and Society

EDUCATION AND SOCIETY

SOCIOLOGY OF BEHAVIOUR AND PSYCHOLOGY In 18 Volumes

First published in 1953 by
Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000, 2001
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
or
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

First issued in paperback 2010

Education and Society
ISBN 978-0-415-17754-2 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-60582-3 (pbk)
eISBN 978-1-134-55442-3
The Sociology of Education: 28 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17833-4
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17838-9

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

W E are all sociologists now in the sense that we recognize that it is impossible to think purposefully about many contemporary problems without thinking also about society. Such an approach is certainly not new, for none have used it more effectively than did Plato and Aristotle. But in modern times the study of society has acquired a new name for itselfnot a remarkably euphonious oneand has become a discipline in its own right. As such it has been set on its ever widening course by pioneers in various countriesDurkheim in France, Max Weber in Germany, Hobhouse in Englandand to-day as a study it flourishes nowhere more profusely or profoundly than in the United States. Like other studies, it has various specialisms: statistical, demographic and so on. But in spite of the widening scope of sociological literature, teachers in this country are not well provided for if they wish to examine its special application to educational principles and practice. For them, and for students preparing for the teaching profession, there is not, so far as I am aware, any book which can serve specifically as an introduction to the sociology of education, and furnishing an appropriate bibliography. Yet there is a growing demand for such an introduction, one that illuminates social and political issues that affect education, relates them to our own contemporary problems, and does this with an understanding of British ways of thought and life.

What I have found in my experience to be a particular need is a book of this kind, which adheres fairly closely to the sociological tradition so well set in motion in this country by Hobhouse and Graham Wallas and so wisely developed in our generation by Professor Ginsberg and others. One happy feature of this tradition is that it presents the problems of society in English undefiled by the jargon which some schools of thought affect, and does not clutter our vocabulary with such verbal infelicities as acculturization, sociatric, and the like. It can say with William of Wykeham that manners maketh man, without finding it necessary to debase this into a certain configuration of behaviour situations determines the dynamic orientation of the male character structure. How refreshing it is to turn from one of these needlessly obscure treatises to Wallass The Great Society or to such transatlantic models of plain English as the writings of Professor Maclver or the Harvard Report on General Education in a Free Society.

Karl Mannheim did, perhaps, more than anyone to arouse the interest of the teaching profession here in sociological thinking, and his all too brief spell of service in the University of London already stands out as a landmark in the recent history of the training of teachers in this country. His