The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affects education and its outcome.
It is most concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education.<1>
Education has always been seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour characterised by aspirations for progress and betterment.<2> It is understood by many to be a means of overcoming handicaps, achieving greater equality and acquiring wealth and status. <3> Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potential.<2> Ideally, it is also perceived as one of the best means of achieving greater social equality.<3> The purpose of education must be to develop every individual to their full potential and give them a chance to achieve as much in life as their natural abilities allow. This promising vision, however, does not unfold into reality. The reality, according to many sociologists, is that education works towards a larger goal than that of the individual and its purpose is to maintain social stability, through the social reproduction of inequality. What the goal of this stability is differs depending on which sociological perspective one uses to approach the issue.