ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how cultural studies can contribute to an understanding of educational change. In the post-war period schooling has played an important role in dealing with the consequences of, and even promotion of, social and cultural change. The chapter seeks to evaluate the changes and suggests that schools are placed in the difficult position of seeking to manage the tensions between a consumer culture and more conservative cultures. It attempts to show how, in the post-war period, British cultural studies has been part of a progressive intellectual milieu. The new comprehensive schools of the 1960s threw up dilemmas for social relations as evidenced in classic studies such as Colin Lacey's High town grammar and David Hargreaves's Social relations in the secondary school. As the economic changes of the 1980s continued, a number of writers associated with the new times challenged the assumptions and explored the limits of the socialist project in education.
