ABSTRACT

A rapid expansion of the educational system is now taking place in nearly every country. Despite the diversities of popular attitudes and public policy and the many particular local social settings for this world-wide movement, everywhere it has fundamentally similar roots, and it is bringing about many parallel results. There are numerous perspectives from which a sociologist might choose to interpret this phenomenon. Of the many topics upon which I might comment, I have chosen five: (i) some problems of devising an appropriate educational response to ‘manpower needs’: (2) absorption of selection and allocation processes into the educational sphere; (3) more complex relationships between individuals’ education and their occupation; (4) a relative shift of emphasis from teaching methods to curriculum construction; (5) new sources of insecurity for the teaching profession.