This work is designed to stimulate thinking about, and offer differing perspectives on, problems related to school and society, including curriculum reform, social justice, and competing forms of research. This text tackles such questions as: do schools socialize students to become productive workers?; does schooling reproduce social class and pass on ethnic and gender biases?; can a teacher avoid passing on dominant social and cultural values?; and what besides subjects do students really learn in schools? Expanded to include important issues in contemporary schooling, new sections featured in this edition are: the postmodern move beyond functionalism and Marxism; Foucault on knowledge, power, sexuality and domination; and feminism as a form of conflict theory.