The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture – An Interview with Author Dr. David P. Baker, by William C. Smith
Recently I had the privilege of talking with Dr. David P. Baker[1] about his recent book from Stanford University Press, The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture[2]. Dr. Baker is a professor of education and sociology at Penn State University, past-president of the Comparative International Education Society, and recently presented a TEDx Talk titled New Minds, Gods, and Political Upheavals: Imagining a New World from the Education Revolution[3]. Alan R. Sadovnik of Rutgers University calls The Schooled Society “one of the most important books in the sociology of education in quite some time. It provides an original, rigorous, and well-supported application of neo-institutional theory and covers an enormous amount of material,” and John Meyer, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University states that “Baker spells out the origins and development of this [education] system, and analyzes its societal consequences, in this dramatic and wide-ranging book, which will be significant for students and scholars across the range of the social sciences.” Additionally the book is discussed on multiple blogs including The Page 99 Test[4], HEPPAS Books[5], and Campaign for the American Reader[6].
Dr. Baker, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your new book. I’d like to start by asking you what was your goal or rationale for the book.
Dr. David P Baker (DB): Thank you and the AJE Forum. A century ago the average person was illiterate. Advances in education since then have wrought drastic changes the world over. Given this, the book has two related goals. The first is to describe the extensive revolution in education in terms of rising participation of the world’s population in formal education from early childhood to university to adult education, and the resulting vast culture of education. The second is to explore how the education revolution transforms society, now and into the future.
Q: What are the primary components of a schooled society?
DB: I tend to think of two components. The first is what can be called an intensifying demography of education, meaning: more children and youth globally attend schooling for ever greater number of years, more completion of higher education degrees, rapidly approaching mass graduate school, greater use of educational credentials in the labor market, and so forth. Led by the major sociological success of the western form of the university, the second is an intensifying culture of education, meaning: increasingly more aspects of society are thought of through an educational lens, central cultural meanings are frequently interpreted though the logic of education, and education itself takes on deeper and broader culture significance. These components interact symbiotically over time producing the schooled society.
Q: How does your book re-conceptualize the relationship between education and society?
DB: In thinking about education and post-industrial society the usual assumption is that broadly speaking education follows societal needs (often not very competently) or merely reproduces social advantage and disadvantage. This book turns the assumption on its head by arguing that widespread education and the values, ideas, and norms that it fosters make it a robust primary institution that now uniquely shapes society far more than it reacts to it. This hypothesis is examined through forty years of extensive research on education and its relationship to society.
The Schooled Society is unique among neo-institutional writings about education in that it attempts to do a full analysis of the institution over time plus its impact on a host of other social institutions and the broad culture of society.
Q: Your book discusses the educational revolution from a neo-institutional perspective. Many critics of neo-institutionalism state the perspective privileges the global while underemphasizing the importance of the local, how does your book speak to this debate?
DB: Unfortunately there are many caricatures of neo-institutional theory and its close cousin world culture theory, and the old saw about global-versus-local is a popular one. The Schooled Society does not take this complaint up, as my earlier book with Gerald LeTendre, National Differences, Global Similarities, addressed this with extensive cross-national data, and we found that there are powerful global educational trends that are enacted, interpreted, and struggled over at many levels of culture including the most local. The conclusion is that there is something that can be called global culture and it is powerful, but, of course, not simplistically singular. It exists along with many local sources of meaning, but without acknowledging the former it is impossible to explain a large number of empirical trends in how education systems operate from place to place. The Schooled Society is unique among neo-institutional writings about education in that it attempts to do a full analysis of the institution over time plus its impact on a host of other social institutions and the broad culture of society.
Q: Central to the power of education as an institution is the perseverance of the western university and its centrality in producing legitimate knowledge. How do you see some of the more recent movements in higher education, specifically the spread of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCS) and the Bologna Process in Europe impacting the privileged position of the western university?
DB: The university has a complex charter to produce knowledge, create associated degrees, and then train and certify individuals in the authoritative control, further production, and use of this knowledge across society. Over the course of the education revolution, schooling and society in general have been pulled towards the charters of the university. So from this position I see MOOCS and so forth as mostly intensifying the university’s position in society rather than rivaling it. MOOCS have not replaced universities as many early pundits speculated; instead universities use them as sophisticated marketing for their on-line programs and even residence programs, all the while collecting more tuition.
Q: Education is often believed to make people smarter or help them get a better job but you emphasize in chapters 9 and 10 how education reconstructs how individuals view society and make sense of the political realm. Outside of cognitive enhancement, what other changes does education bring to an individuals understanding of the social and political world?
DB: Throughout the book are references to research on both psychological changes brought on by education and cultural scripts and narratives, or meta-messages, of the curricula of schooling that can change people. Chapters 9 and 10 on the education revolution’s transformation of politics and religion respectively are good examples of such micro and macro influences.
Q: In your conclusion you discuss the continued expansion of greater levels of education across the globe and remark that the schooled society is “sustainable”. How would you respond to those who believe the growth in education may outpace the availability of appropriate jobs, creating an overeducated or underemployed population?
DB: Chapters 6 and 7 confront the overeducation imagery and argue that it is a myth and an overly mechanical way to think. Instead, a number of empirical observations and sophisticated statistical analyses about education, jobs, credentialing, profit-making, and workplaces suggest that expanding education changes these toward the capabilities, sensibilities, and interests of the evermore educated worker. Mass education also greatly expands markets for all types of services and products. The dynamic articulation between education and jobs means joint accommodation. Although often predicted from the 1960s on, overeducation crises have not occurred, and probably will not in the future. We will see if this hypothesis proves useful in further research.
Q: One final question, what do you hope undergraduate sociology of education students take away from the book?
DB: I hope that it will help them put this major social revolution in perspective. While education is a frequently discussed topic in sociology courses, it is rarely thought of as a major cultural institution at the formation of postindustrial society. Perhaps my book can help change that.
[1] For more on his research go to http://davidbakerresearchproject.wordpress.com/
[2] http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=18531
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sv3CLr84UJU
[4] http://page99test.blogspot.com/2014/08/david-p-bakers-schooled-society.html
[5] http://heppas.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-schooled-society.html
[6] http://americareads.blogspot.com/2014/08/pg-99-david-p-bakers-schooled-society.html
