ABSTRACT

Stable societies are always faced with the challenge of successfully integrating the upcoming generation within the frameworks maintained by former generations. In simple terms, this depends to a large extent on the stories which are told by one generation to the next. With the emergence of a comprehensive industrial society, mass education has become directly implicated in the process of intergenerational story telling. Within liberal democracies, such as Australia, the dominant story told within schools implies that children will have the opportunity to move from home, to school, and then on to full adult life. Certainly within the period of the postwar long boom, the stories involved the idea that employment followed the period of education.1