Social Paralysis and Social Change: British Working-Class Education in the Nineteenth Century

Neil Smelser's Social Paralysis and Social Change is one of the most comprehensive histories of mass education ever written. It tells the story of how working-class education in nineteenth-century Britain―often paralyzed by class, religious, and economic conflict―struggled forward toward change. This book is ambitious in scope. It is both a detailed history of educational development and a theoretical study of social change, at once a case study of Britain and a comparative study of variations within Britain. Smelser simultaneously meets the scholarly standards of historians and critically addresses accepted theories of educational change―"progress," conflict, and functional theories. He also sheds new light on the process of secularization, the relations between industrialization and education, structural differentiation, and the role of the state in social change.