Eight statements of the 'bleeding blindingly obvious' and a PS on education as social control

The following statements were originally put forward for discussion at the British Sociological Association Education Study Group meeting on 'Education as Social Control' at the London University Institute of Education, 24 November 2001. They review what in the author's opinion would have been taken for granted during what Michael F.D. Young called 'the brief flowering of intellectual radicalism ... represented by ... the rise and fall of the "new sociology of education" ' (introduction to 1998). They apply this understanding to institutionalised learning in England today, along with some explanation of why such an understanding has been lost. The argument thus proceeds through statements of fundamentals to what should not, as John Cleese put it in an episode of Fawlty Towers , require for its comprehension 'an MA in the bleeding blindingly obvious'. It is advanced here in revised form as a similar contribution to debate, the original statements plus the PS remaining emboldened throughout.