Revisiting the classics: the contributions of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber to the sociology od education

Abstract

The present essay consists of an introductory presentation of classical Sociology on the subject of education that, after the thought of Durkheim, would come to acquire status of autonomous discipline, happening to denominate itself Sociology of Education. The main objective consisted of an overall summary of the main contributions from classical sociology to the discipline, highlighting the main ideas of Karl Marx’s thought, Emile Durkheim’s and Max Weber’s. This study started with a review of the classical and specialized literature about the authors in perspective, in order to problematize the main theses and to understand the possibilities and limits that they give rise in contemporary investigations of this specific field. Considering the broad thematic repertoire of this perspective, we chose to present not a systematic framework of the main ideas, but to exercise the thinking about this relation taking as a starting point the reading of the classics. Topics such as: the division of labor; relations between education and work; ideology; social function of education; social fact; social coercion; disenchantment of the world; rationalization of the world; bureaucratization; among others, composes the body of this introduction.