The Sociology of Education: Canada and Beyond

Merritt Clifton was an environmental journalist and lived in Brigham, Quebec.

Mifflen and Mifflen distinguish between “schooling, which is what takes place in formal institutions of learning, and education,” the sum of learning experience, in school and out. They establish that the initial purpose of schooling in Canada was to promote social order, not education, quoting extensively from schooling pioneers to underscore their point. This was equally true of both religious and secular educational systems. Promoting social order necessarily also meant preserving the social and economic stratification prevalent in Canada during the time educational institutions were emerging, roughly 1820-1880. The authors use numerous sociological studies to show that contemporary schooling continues this stratification, benefiting children of the white-collar class more than those of the blue-collar class, even though the blue-collars send the greatest number of children to school during the years when schooling is mandatory and pay the most taxes in support of the entire economic structure. This finding leads Mifflen and Mifflen to endorse the Marxist view of schooling in a capitalist economy. Examining movements toward making schooling a vehicle for economic upward mobility, they argue that these have usually been unsuccessful because the concept of stratification is endemic to schooling — whether because of the general economic atmosphere to which schooling responds, or because of individual differences in student motivation, they do not judge. Both cases are examined.

As a whole, the Mifflen work would make a fascinating argument if it were as well written as it is researched. Unfortunately, it is excessively jargon-packed and redundant. Virtually every page contains statements and restatements of the obvious, such as that students don’t accord one another social status primarily because of high grades, or that students of equal abilities tend to achieve differently. The footnotes take up 57 pages. The remaining 350 could have been packed into 150 without losing any substance.