ABSTRACT
This chapter work began in 1968, stimulated by the then raging academic debates and social conflicts about the structure and purposes of education. It focuses on attention not on the explicit curriculum but on the socialization implied by the structure of schooling. The chapter shows that parental class and other aspects of economic status are passed on to children in part by means of unequal educational opportunity, but that the economic advantages of the children of the well-to-do go considerably beyond the superior education they receive. By 1980 it expanded this insight beyond education, arguing that each of the major sites in society family, state, educational system, and economy has its unique internal forms of social organization. The chapter devotes much attention to how economic systems other than capitalism might better facilitate achieving the enlightened objectives of schooling.
