ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social engineering role of education or, in Zygmunt Bauman’s terms, the meaning and purpose of formal education systems as instruments of the gardening state. For Bauman the role of education within solid modernity was to counter ambivalence and act as a mechanism governing the processes of social reproduction. Bauman rejects the argument that ‘society’ is a moralising force that restricts animal passions and prevents life from becoming nasty, brutish and short. Bauman’s view of education in solid modernity takes as its starting point his critique of E. Durkheim’s view of morality within modernity. In liquid modernity Bauman argues that the role of education is to facilitate ways of living in which people live: “daily and at peace with uncertainty and ambivalence”. Schooling in its solid modern form embraced the idea of ‘social engineering’ that emphasised an important role for the state.
