This collection presents a sociological analysis of education and society in New Zealand. It is the first sustained attempt to examine the political work of an education system whose real social and cultural effects have been largely misunderstood throughout the first 100 years of its history. The 16 contributors, nearly all academics with an interest in social theory, have examined a range of controversial political issues including cultural domination, sexual inequality, curriculum control, assessment, and the transition from school to work. The reader is left in no doubt that state schooling in our kind of society us an inherently political instrument for cultural reproduction which has developed a variety of modes for the exercise of power in the interests of dominant groups.