ABSTRACT
Social reproduction theory entered the sociology of education in the late 1960s and early 197 Os as a critical reaction to liberal educational reform. Though liberal reformers expected public education to promote individual development, social mobility, and greater political and economic equality, social reproduction theorists contend that schools actually enhance social inequalities rather than attenuate them. Drawing particularly on the work of Karl Marx, but also Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, social reproduction theorists focus on how the social class structure is perpetuated from one generation to the next. Why, they ask, do working-class children tend to end up in workingclass jobs whereas youth of privileged origins tend to secure positions of prestige and power? Concern with the effects of social background on educational performance and attainment and the contribution of schooling to occupational achievement have of course been long-standing concerns in the sociology of education (Davies, 1995:1449; Dreeben, 1994:29). Bur social reproduction theorists see in the class-education nexus an indicator of broader institutional arrangements that reveals a particularly rigid social class structure.
