ABSTRACT
Historical research into school education moral panics provides new perspectives. No matter what research paradigm or discipline the researcher might be working in, there remains the need to examine motives of the moral provocateurs, moral entrepreneurs and political elites who have essential roles in the moral panic. Globalism has been asserted a major impact on moral panics during the last thirty years or so. Social media is both a source of, and a contributor to, school education moral panics. Any moral panic occurring in school education since the late 1970s is likely to be influenced by risk-society imperatives. The chapter demonstrates a history of a plethora of moral panics impacting on school education. These include illicit-drug usage of the 1980s and 1990s, with a history back to the late 19th-century temperance campaigns. By the 1990s, moral panic theory was undergoing considerable working over.
