Michael Oakeshott’s Criticism in the Sociology of Education

Abstract

In the following paper I intend to analyse the leading points of the criticism of the sociology of education I detected in Michael Oakeshott. First, education is substituted by socialization. Then, in connection to this, vocational education, only an alternative to education at first, created for the poor, becomes more and more important. There are also several myths that link education to employment and economic development. Leaving such ideas aside, we can choose a liberal academic education, that doesn’t underlie extrinsec purposes such as the student’s future career or his fulfilling the needs of his current society. The more so as the fact that education is not strictly orientated towards producing valuable performers of the social functions, doesn’t mean that educational engagement is designed to produce socially valueless persons.