ABSTRACT
The history of any substantive topic within any one of the many branches of the sociology of education is always, in part, also a history of the sociology of education as a whole. Every substantive topic has its own distinctive features, certainly, but no contributor to the field is ever wholly free from those wider forces and influences which shape the discipline as a whole. The fact is useful, for no speaker can assume that every member of his audience has a deep and genuine interest in his chosen theme. Since some of the audience may have but the most slender of commitments to the topic of schooling for delinquency – some of you may, in David Matza’s terms, simply have ‘drifted into delinquency’ – my paper seeks to be not merely a modest contribution to that substantive area, but also an exemplification, within one selected area, of some much more general problems which affect many branches within the sociology of education in Britain today. That seems entirely proper at a Westhill conference, to which so many of us now turn as an annual opportunity to consider the wider horizons of our discipline. Although this is hardly an occasion in which to attempt a judicious appraisal of British sociology of education in general, I want to refer to four general issues which in recent times have come to give me cause for concern.
