| The term 'ideology', and the claim 'knowledge is socially constructed', figure prominently in discussions of schools and society within the New Sociology of Education. I argue that ideology should be distinguished from knowledge, and that 'ideology' should be given a restricted, theoretically informed conceptualization in radical studies of schooling. In Chapter 1 a restricted conceptualization is developed, one in which ideology is tied to Cohen's analysis of Marx's theory of historical materialism. Arguments for a broader, more inclusive definition of ideology are considered and rejected. In Chapter 2 I argue that the thesis 'knowledge is socially constructed' should be understood as both a relatively uncontentious philosophical corrective to positivism, and as a theory positing specifiable social causes purportedly capable of explaining at least some of the beliefs that people hold. Establishing the validity of the latter explanatory claim means that a strong sociology of knowledge, one committed to epistemological relativism, must be rejected. I urge radical educators to adopt a realist theory of knowledge, truth and explanation.In Chapter 3 I contend that radical educators studying schools must recognize that explaining the origin and persistence of beliefs, and determining the social consequences of holding to, and acting on, those beliefs are separate tasks. I argue that radical analyses of the relations between schools and society need to develop a more rigorous and fine-grained conception of capitalist class interests, one that will allow for empirical determination of whether or not particular educational beliefs and practices have beneficial consequences for the capitalism class. I conclude that explanations of educational practices that appeal to 'bourgeois ideology' are typically a form of intentional explanations. In the last chapter, three differences between social scientific inquiry and inquiry in the natural sciences are examined, differences often thought to carry radical implications for the study of schools and society, and for the nature of educational knowledge. These differences, I argue, are interesting and important, but they do not undermine either the development of causal explanations for social and educational phenomena or the rational, and objective, assessment of competing claims. |
