‘New People’ and ‘Old Structures’: Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld on Society, Education and Change

Abstract

This article deals with central issues in the field of theory of education and history of education. The examples of Max Adler and Siegfried Bernfeld show that contemporary debates on education and society, social reproduction of social inequality, and education and social change have been subjects of strong controversies in the first third of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the deepness of these approaches shows the contemporary relevance and the limits of these historical attempts to solve these controversies. The article aims to overcome some of these limits in proposing to deal with the approach of the central educational theorist in Germany in the twentieth century, Heinz-Joachim Heydorn.