6. School and Work

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this lecture, we think about school and work and the relationship between them, focusing in particular on: (i) the idea that education is a fundamental right of children around the world: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the Millennium Development Goals (2000) and the Sustainable Development Goals (2015); (ii) the economic argument for school: the growth in the 18th-19th century of the bureaucratic state, and the consequent need for a literate and numerate workforce; (iii) the moral argument for school: education enables the full flourishing of the human being; (iv) the impact of the expansion of mass schooling: schools as 'workhouses', the preference for standardisation, the flattening of local cultures, etc.; (v) the idea of school and work as a 'technology' that enables people to acquire certain skills or bodies of knowledge; (vi) the inappropriateness of a schooling system developed within (and for) the industrialised economy of the 18th and 19th centuries for the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century; and (vii) the fundamental similarities of the school space and the work space, their status as 'technologies', and the potential damage caused by schooling (or work) in which the student (or worker) does not acquire any skills and knowledge.

Course

In this course, Professor Karen Wells (Birkbeck, University of London) explores the sociology of childhood. In the first lecture, we think about the idea is childhood is socially constructed. In the second lecture, we consider the idea that children have agency. In the third lecture, we think about child rights and the emergence of a 'child rights regime'. Next, we think about the inequalities that shape childhood. In the fifth lecture, we think about different theories of identity emerging from psychology and childhood studies. In the sixth lecture, we turn to think about school and work as domains of childhood. In the seventh and final lecture, we think about the juvenile justice system.

Lecturer

Professor Karen Wells is Professor of Human Geography at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research is focused on childhood studies, particularly the formation of childhood and the impact of inequality on children’s lives. She is author of The Visual Cultures of Childhood (2020), Childhood Studies: Making Young Subjects (2017), and Childhood in Global Perspective (2014).