Home and School at the Launch: some preliminary observations

Abstract

system of the occupational world that dominates, with all other aspects of life falling into dependent, subordinate relationships. This linear model has been extremely influential, in the society at large and in the academic disciplines. According to the model of serial dominance of social institutions, family influences were relegated to the periphery when a child entered school. The specialists in the educational institution tended to function with a 'closed door' policy, often viewing parents as providing noxious influences of one kind or another-by no means confined to those unfortunate families suffering from social disorganisation and multiple deprivations. The formulations of Max Weber reinforced this viewpoint, and it is clear in Weber's writings that family influences were seen as antithetical to those of the world of work dominated by values of the Protestant Ethic. Weber felt that when family influences were too strong, they tended to undermine the development of rational bureaucracies based on individual merit (Weber, I947, pp. 354-58). Educational policies emphasising segregation of school and family, authoritative domination of school authorities and so on were legitimated in this framework. In the academic disciplines, the organic-differentiation model is seen in the segregation of family, educational, industrial and other 'sector' branches of sociology and psychology from one another. The revision of this relatively closed-system model has been stimulated