In this chapter, the author emphasizes how a path not taken in the beginning of the sociology of education—as exemplified in the work of John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Emile Durkheim—could have taken sociologists of education in another direction in the study of schools, emphasizing schools as sites of moral and political education with goods internal to them (as opposed to goods that are primarily useful in remedying inequality). The author outlines some of the contemporary challenges in the sociology of education, describes the moral and political education outlined by Dewey, Durkheim, and Du Bois, and then stresses how their focus on education allows both scholars and citizens to reconsider the role of internal goods, meritocracy, and a political and economic redistribution no longer rooted in the “merit” of its recipients as determined by school achievement.
Why Study Schools?