Education and Social Policy: demise of an ethic or change of values?

It is, of course, a banality to say that education is one of the driving forces of social change. And equally, it is banal to say that there are different schools of thought about the exact place that education should occupy in this process. The conservative thesis takes the view that the purpose of our education systems is to consolidate those transformations that have already taken place externally to it, in the work place, in society. The radical interpretation takes a different stance. It says that the role of education is to go beyond existing priorities and established practices and act within itself, as the catalyst for the fundamental renovation of the social fabric. These are old and perennial tensions which, if located inside the educational debate, are nonetheless a part of a rather broader series of issues, namely: 'What sort of society do we have?' 'What sort of society do we wish to have?' And, further: 'How do we move from the former to the latter?'