ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the ways in which two eminent contemporary sociologists, Basil Bernstein and David Hargreaves, have tried to apply the insights of Emile Durkheim. Hargreaves says that our 'excessively individualistic concept of education' has lead to a neglect of education's 'social functions' and diverted attention away from asking questions about the sort of society we want to create or maintain. Hargreaves adopted his ideas about the threats to social solidarity in modern society. Developmental individualism is 'centrally concerned with the development of the individual person'; and teachers imbued with this doctrine 'see their pre-eminent goals to be the development of the intellectual abilities and moral character of individual pupils'. The notion of self-development is certainly not tied to some sort of egoism, nor is it hostile to the pursuit of social aims and purposes. Bernstein uses the terms organic and mechanical solidarity to try to analyse changes in the school.
