Contrastive Rhetoric and Extremist Talk

For those people who work in the sociology of education, 1981 is an auspicious year: the tenth anniversary of the publication of a collection of theoretically dense papers, bound in an inconspicuous cover and titled Knowledge and Control. ¹ This book gave birth to what came to be known as the New Sociology of Education which marked the end (or temporary suspension) of interest in the problems of educational opportunity and achievement, ² and substituted two grand explorations (whose paths have only recently crossed) which went in search of the meaning and organization of school life in one direction, and the ways in which schooling contributes to the processes of social and cultural reproduction in the other. ³