ABSTRACT
Progressivism, which was popularized in the 1960s at the height of the economic 'boom', can be said to be the mode of education where the child, considered to be the centre of the educational process, largely chooses activities according to its own needs and interests. At the time Sharp and Green were writing Education and Social Control, which is a study of progressive primary education, the social-phenomenological research was very influential. As representative of the many attacks on progressivism from the Right, let us consider Neville Bennett's research on Teaching Styles and Pupils' Progress. Societies are subject to periods of 'moral panic' when the official reaction to persons or series of events, is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered. Bourdieu is interested in the ideology of culture, power, social reproduction and their relation to education. Cultural privileges become portrayed as natural phenomena; social gifts are presented as if they were individual gifts.
