Body and Soul: sources of social change and strategies of education.

This article summarizes the historical predecessors of a critical theory of education. The social theory of education is an integral part of social and cultural changes. The liberal or progressive view of faith in education as the basis of social reform developed during the period of social expansion and belief in democratic culture. The view of education as cultural reproduction began as a critique of the liberal social theory of education. Cultural reproduction theory belongs to a later time, when commitment to a common culture has become less tenable as a result of the salience of social fragmentation and class division. The most insightful intellectuals see prevailing social arrangements and patterns of culture as partial, deceptive and socially oppressive. Withdrawal of faith in education is an aspect of the removal of commitment from a system of symbolic interpretation that has lost its claim to universality and its capacity to compensate for socioeconomic deprivation with cultural consolation. Cultural meanings, and the institutions through which are transmitted, are identified with social denomination. The disenchantment is connected to an affirmation, among intellectuals, of the endogenous cultures of the oppressed as more authentic and socially accurate than the official culture.