This book reviews the educational experience of the 1960s and 1970s and to suggest ways of approaching major contemporary themes such as equality, accountability and standards. The author underlines a nineteenth and twentieth-century sociological tradition in analysing education and covers a range of educational themes including aspects of schooling and higher education, education as social policy, knowledge as power, and teaching and adolescence. He draws on the social history of many of the processes, concepts and debates. Parts of the book derive from research into the history and contemporary forms of these problems in the USA. The volume therefore illuminates important contemporary issues in education and society by using historical, sociological and comparative insights.