The Inequalities Debate: An Interpretive Essay

Front Cover
Deakin University, 1985 - Education - 156 pages
This volume is part of a series of monographs from Australia devoted to outlining an alternative approach, based on neo-Marxist concepts, to policy studies in education. The opening essay in this volume argues that the controversy over inequalities in education is essentially a school-level issue, involving what administrators and teachers do with children in schools and classrooms, including the formulation of curricular goals. The essay begins with an analysis of inequalities in Australian life, followed by discussions of the competing definitions of "equality" and the ideology of inequality, along with explanations of inequalities in education and the relationship of education to class, family, and society. The essay concludes with schematic suggestions aimed at contesting the logic of schooling as it is. The latter half of the volume consists of five readings by separate authors: (1) "Education and the Structure of Opportunity," by Philip Robinson; (2) "Explaining Inequality," by Brian Abbey and Dean Ashenden; (3) "Explaining Inequality: A Reply to Abbey and Ashenden," by Don Edgar; (4) "Education: Back to the Drawing Board," by David Bennett; and (5) "Successful and Unsuccessful Schools: A Study in Southern Auckland," by Peter Ramsay and others. An annotated bibliography is included. (TE)

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
Equalitya contested term
10
Explanations of inequalities in education
23
Copyright

8 other sections not shown

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information