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David P. Baker. The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. 360 pp. Cloth: $90.00. ISBN: 9780804787369
The role and propensity for education to forge modern life remains a thorny yet unretractable discourse for sociological thought. This was very well known by the early patriarchs of the discipline, and it seems today much social theory, in one way or another, wrestles with the global phenomena of formalized education. The latest work from the neo-institutionalist theorist David Baker finds a welcome home both in the classical oeuvre as well as new movements in sociological thought. His The Schooled Society once again turns the attention of academia to the primary role played by formal education in forming 21st century society. As such, he consequently aims to open a divisive and fresh account of the place, status, and influence of education in sociological and educational thinking.
Baker's intellectual project, in pontificating about the 'schooled society,' begins by asking what an 'educated' person means today, which he goes on to argue is radically different from assumptions made even a half century previous. Due to the pressures placed by governments as well as international developmental institutions to increase numbers of graduates globally, an 'educated' individual has implicitly come to be equated with one's social as well as personal fulfilment. The social consciousness therefore surrounding formal education should not be dismissed as bearing little or no significance for a society's functioning, argues Baker. Interpreting these complex institutional changes, the book prefaces its claims through a neo-institutional perspective, namely, challenging the university as merely being 'influenced' by the dictates of societal discourses. For Baker, the means for understanding the current and unprecedented changes in modern society can, and should, be interpreted as the morphing of education into a primary institution with the ability to dictate and define society. Therefore, contrary to much of the present educational literature, the book makes the claim that
education has grown to such proportions that it has become a separate and enduring social institution; thus the education revolution socially constructs significant portions of the culture of modern society, rather than merely reproducing it. Not only are people trained and credentalized through schooling but the institution itself changes other social institutions...