What do you think?
Rate this book
Educação e Sociologia
Este é, em grandes linhas, a obra pedagógica de Durkheim. Para os educadores, ela oferece uma doutrina original e vigorosa, envolvendo os principais problemas pedagógicos. Para os sociólogos, ela esclarece as concepções que Durkheim expôs em outras obras sobre alguns pontos essenciais: relações entre o indivíduo e a sociedade, entre a ciência e a prática, a natureza da moralidade e a do entendimento. Sejam educadores ou sociólogos, muitos eram os que aguardavam a publicação desta importante obra.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
17 people are currently reading
454 people want to read
About the author
Émile Durkheim
379 books808 followersMuch of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have come into being. His first major sociological work was The Division of Labor in Society (1893). In 1895, he published his Rules of the Sociological Method and set up the first European department of sociology, becoming France's first professor of sociology.
In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.
Durkheim was also deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. He refined the positivism originally set forth by Auguste Comte, promoting what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism, as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For him, sociology was the science of institutions,[citation needed] its aim being to discover structural social facts. Durkheim was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic; that is, sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the specific actions of individuals.
He remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting numerous lectures and published works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Durkheimian terms such as "collective consciousness" have since entered the popular lexicon.
In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.
Durkheim was also deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. He refined the positivism originally set forth by Auguste Comte, promoting what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism, as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For him, sociology was the science of institutions,[citation needed] its aim being to discover structural social facts. Durkheim was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic; that is, sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the specific actions of individuals.
He remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting numerous lectures and published works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Durkheimian terms such as "collective consciousness" have since entered the popular lexicon.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 24, 2013
This is a remarkable little book. I have been meaning to read some Durkheim for ages – I have two of his books sort of waiting to be read – On Suicide and The Division of Labour in Society. But I just haven’t been able to find time. All the same, this one ticked all of the boxes – it is on education, it is short and I have this window (rather narrow) which this just about fit through.
I’m going to run his arguments here in a slightly different order to what he does.
Most animals don’t really need an education. They live either in isolation or they live in packs, but either way, the rules of the ‘societies’ they form are so simple that they don’t need to be ‘learnt’, but can be transmitted genetically. And for most of human history education could be left, more or less, to tradition. This is substantially different from genetic inheritance, but it reflects a form of society where there are fairly fixed numbers of things that need to be learnt and these can generally be learnt by puberty. At that age you become a real person – an adult – and there is probably some initiation rite, possibly involving your genitals, pain and blood, and you might even get a new name. The point here is that this kind of education doesn’t seem so much like an education to those undergoing it, as the origins of all this stuff are lost in time and it seems like what is learnt is a kind of eternal truth. In such societies you probably are going to think time runs in a circle, for instance.
But we don’t live in that kind of world anymore. In fact, the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that the education that was suitable for our parents will certainly not be suitable for our children - my parents grew up in a house without a telephone, my children have never lived in a house without a computer.
Except, of course, there are a group of people who believe this educating our kids as if we were educating our parents is exactly the kind of education our children need. They rave about falling standards and the need for a return to a time when everyone could spell and read and add up in their heads and know the difference between trigonometry and Tangier and could score goals from the back line and everyone got to marry the Dux of the school. Look, just because a time never existed doesn’t make it any less appealing.
As Durkheim points out a couple of times during this, we now live in a world where we know that how we used to teach no longer works, we just don’t quite know what to replace it with.
Still, the appeal of a world in which there is a single ‘best’ way of educating young people is very strong. We love to think that that there are eternal truths and that teaching these is the best way to educate our kids. This is partly due to the fact that we like to think of ourselves as individuals in a very narrow sense. That is, self-actualising beings – we imagine that we are able to completely create out of nothing the ideal conditions of our own existence. And this gets transferred across when we start thinking about how we would change things like education or society or anything else for that matter. Too often we think that the first instruction on creating 'the best of all worlds' is to being, 'first tear down everything that currently exists'. It is as if we can be Gods – and can create the universe out of nothing.
The problem is that all of the things that are worthwhile and truly human are all of the things that we owe to society. Our language was bequeathed to us and doesn't even make sense without other speakers, the material conditions of our world existed before we were here and will continue on after we are gone. And it is this society that decides what we need to teach the young.
This is part of the reason why education goes on all of the time, from the most primitive of times up until the day we die – but that pedagogy (the study of how people learn and what are the best ways to teach them) only becomes a subject of philosophical interest at very specific times in human history. Like I said before, if you are going to teach from tradition there is no need for pedagogy – for a theory of learning. If you are going to teach in a way that meets the needs of an ever new and changing world, then pedagogy becomes an obsession.
The fact that what we learn is decided by the society we live in is, in part, obvious – at least, in the same way that we can easily see that everyone else’s religion is rubbish, but not see the same about our own – everyone else’s method of educating their young seems absurd to us, while our way seems the only obvious and rational method. To explain this, Durkheim gives the wonderful example of physical education. How in Sparta the point of physical education was to create hard bodies ready for the extremes of war, how in Athens the point was to create beautiful bodies of god like perfection and how today physical education is a kind of hygiene. Except, I’ve just read some Bourdieu – another Frenchman – who also talks about physical education and points to the differences in the point of physical exercise between the various classes in society – with working class men still wanting to be Spartans and working class women wanting to be Athenians and only the middle class fitting into Durkheim’s third category.
Pedagogy is essentially a sociological fact – what is it that the members of society need to know to be able to contribute to society? His point is that the history of the world has been a history of a differentiation of paths towards ‘education’ – where rather than a ‘one size fits all’ education being appropriate, each member of society gets a differentiated education depending on the role they will play in society. This doesn’t need to be as snobbish nor as reactionary as it might sound. That we still need plumbers and pilots is a fact of life, that these people need different educations is likewise a fact of life.
But pedagogy is also a psychological fact. If we knew more about sociology or psychology we would be able to provide children with a much better education – however, the point is that we can’t really wait for these sciences to mature before we start 'fixing' education. We know that many of the ways we go about teaching children today is better suited to another time, an older time – so, even though we possibly don’t know enough to produce a perfect pedagogy, we know enough to know that what we are currently doing isn’t enough. What is absolutely clear is that to understand how best to educate our children is a social question – and social questions are best answered by understanding history.
I really enjoyed this book – much more than I expected to.
I’m going to run his arguments here in a slightly different order to what he does.
Most animals don’t really need an education. They live either in isolation or they live in packs, but either way, the rules of the ‘societies’ they form are so simple that they don’t need to be ‘learnt’, but can be transmitted genetically. And for most of human history education could be left, more or less, to tradition. This is substantially different from genetic inheritance, but it reflects a form of society where there are fairly fixed numbers of things that need to be learnt and these can generally be learnt by puberty. At that age you become a real person – an adult – and there is probably some initiation rite, possibly involving your genitals, pain and blood, and you might even get a new name. The point here is that this kind of education doesn’t seem so much like an education to those undergoing it, as the origins of all this stuff are lost in time and it seems like what is learnt is a kind of eternal truth. In such societies you probably are going to think time runs in a circle, for instance.
But we don’t live in that kind of world anymore. In fact, the only thing we can be fairly certain of is that the education that was suitable for our parents will certainly not be suitable for our children - my parents grew up in a house without a telephone, my children have never lived in a house without a computer.
Except, of course, there are a group of people who believe this educating our kids as if we were educating our parents is exactly the kind of education our children need. They rave about falling standards and the need for a return to a time when everyone could spell and read and add up in their heads and know the difference between trigonometry and Tangier and could score goals from the back line and everyone got to marry the Dux of the school. Look, just because a time never existed doesn’t make it any less appealing.
As Durkheim points out a couple of times during this, we now live in a world where we know that how we used to teach no longer works, we just don’t quite know what to replace it with.
Still, the appeal of a world in which there is a single ‘best’ way of educating young people is very strong. We love to think that that there are eternal truths and that teaching these is the best way to educate our kids. This is partly due to the fact that we like to think of ourselves as individuals in a very narrow sense. That is, self-actualising beings – we imagine that we are able to completely create out of nothing the ideal conditions of our own existence. And this gets transferred across when we start thinking about how we would change things like education or society or anything else for that matter. Too often we think that the first instruction on creating 'the best of all worlds' is to being, 'first tear down everything that currently exists'. It is as if we can be Gods – and can create the universe out of nothing.
The problem is that all of the things that are worthwhile and truly human are all of the things that we owe to society. Our language was bequeathed to us and doesn't even make sense without other speakers, the material conditions of our world existed before we were here and will continue on after we are gone. And it is this society that decides what we need to teach the young.
This is part of the reason why education goes on all of the time, from the most primitive of times up until the day we die – but that pedagogy (the study of how people learn and what are the best ways to teach them) only becomes a subject of philosophical interest at very specific times in human history. Like I said before, if you are going to teach from tradition there is no need for pedagogy – for a theory of learning. If you are going to teach in a way that meets the needs of an ever new and changing world, then pedagogy becomes an obsession.
The fact that what we learn is decided by the society we live in is, in part, obvious – at least, in the same way that we can easily see that everyone else’s religion is rubbish, but not see the same about our own – everyone else’s method of educating their young seems absurd to us, while our way seems the only obvious and rational method. To explain this, Durkheim gives the wonderful example of physical education. How in Sparta the point of physical education was to create hard bodies ready for the extremes of war, how in Athens the point was to create beautiful bodies of god like perfection and how today physical education is a kind of hygiene. Except, I’ve just read some Bourdieu – another Frenchman – who also talks about physical education and points to the differences in the point of physical exercise between the various classes in society – with working class men still wanting to be Spartans and working class women wanting to be Athenians and only the middle class fitting into Durkheim’s third category.
Pedagogy is essentially a sociological fact – what is it that the members of society need to know to be able to contribute to society? His point is that the history of the world has been a history of a differentiation of paths towards ‘education’ – where rather than a ‘one size fits all’ education being appropriate, each member of society gets a differentiated education depending on the role they will play in society. This doesn’t need to be as snobbish nor as reactionary as it might sound. That we still need plumbers and pilots is a fact of life, that these people need different educations is likewise a fact of life.
But pedagogy is also a psychological fact. If we knew more about sociology or psychology we would be able to provide children with a much better education – however, the point is that we can’t really wait for these sciences to mature before we start 'fixing' education. We know that many of the ways we go about teaching children today is better suited to another time, an older time – so, even though we possibly don’t know enough to produce a perfect pedagogy, we know enough to know that what we are currently doing isn’t enough. What is absolutely clear is that to understand how best to educate our children is a social question – and social questions are best answered by understanding history.
I really enjoyed this book – much more than I expected to.
July 24, 2025
Eğitim hakkında yazmakta olduğum yazı için güzel bir rehber oldu ancak çeviri o kadar kötüydü ki kitabı zorla bitirdim. Burada kapak fotosu sanırım yok ancak Cem Yayınevi'den okudum kitabı. Çok kötü bir çeviriydi, hem yazım yanlışı dolu hem de çevirmenin ürettiği abuk subuk kelimeler vardı. Aslına uygun çevirsenize ya, burjuva yerine KENTSOYLU yazınca elinize ne geçiyor?
June 16, 2015
Cuando un libro toma el carácter de obligatorio, la lectura se hace lenta y en ocasiones aburrida. Personalmente, me gustaron las ideas que Durkheim expone en su obra, definitivamente los conceptos y observaciones los hizo desde una perspectiva realista y basado en hechos verídicos en materia de educación a diferencia de otros autores que hablan de utopías y de una pedagogía desde un punto de vista arbitrario.
Ojalá lo hubiera leído sin que fuese para un examen parcial. :/
Ojalá lo hubiera leído sin que fuese para un examen parcial. :/
June 12, 2015
Leer obras académicas siempre será un reto y más si los conceptos son muy amplios y debes resumirlos para un parcial haha. Pero, Durkheim fue muy claro con sus ideas y sus concepciones, la socialización del individuo como objetivo de la educación, el papel de la sociedad como la que establece los criterios en los cuales un hombre es un buen individuo, el papel de la historia para entender los sucesos presentes, el papel de la moral como arma para formar individuos sociales... Muy buena obra, entendí por qué es la base de la sociología.
January 4, 2022
"La transmisión de los atributos específicos que distinguen al hombre, se hace por una vía que es social, como ellos mismos son sociales: es la educación".
Este pequeño texto del reconocido sociólogo, Émile Durkheim, no es más que una recopilación de sus lecturas y enseñanzas cuando fue profesor universitario, y que demuestra una postura interesante en cuanto a la comprensión de la educación y la pedagogía desde la óptica sociológica, pero tomando en cuenta, para ciertas cuestiones, a la psicología.
Es una obra corta, pero que puede llegar a ser confusa en ciertos momentos, ya sea por la redacción, porque es necesario el conocimiento de la filosofía de la historia, o porque se repiten varias veces algunas ideas (sobre este último punto, se hace una advertencia en el prólogo).
Destacaría, a modo resumen, los puntos más valiosos de la obra:
- La formación del YO en dos seres distintos: el individual y el social, siendo el segundo importante para la socialización y el objetivo de la educación.
- La definición de la Educación y su propósito, además de sus diferentes formas: la moral y la intelectual.
- La importancia de la Pedagogía para la educación y la sociedad.
- Las diferencias conceptuales entre la Educación y la Pedagogía, pero entendiendo cómo son cruciales entre ambas.
- La postura y función que debe tener el Estado en cuanto a la educación. En cuanto a este punto, me hubiese gustado un mayor desarrollo, puesto que hay premisas que ponen en duda cómo evitar la monopolización de la Educación por parte del Estado.
- La importancia del maestro en el proceso educativo.
- La problematización sobre si la pedagogía es una ciencia o un arte; qué entendemos como ciencia y qué entendemos como arte. Asimismo, la concepción de la Educación como una ciencia (Durkheim no sólo hace referencia a Comte sobre este punto, sino que muestra algunas posturas que pueden llegar a ser o confundirse con el positivismo, ya que resalta la importancia de un método en el estudio de la educación y su historia).
Hay que entender, pues, que la obra se exhibe como una introducción o un resumen de las enseñanzas de Durkheim sobre estos apartados, lo que significa que habrá limitaciones en las explicaciones en cierto punto; así que, si se quiere entender mejor sobre ciertos temas, habrá que acceder a otros estudios del autor.
Este pequeño texto del reconocido sociólogo, Émile Durkheim, no es más que una recopilación de sus lecturas y enseñanzas cuando fue profesor universitario, y que demuestra una postura interesante en cuanto a la comprensión de la educación y la pedagogía desde la óptica sociológica, pero tomando en cuenta, para ciertas cuestiones, a la psicología.
Es una obra corta, pero que puede llegar a ser confusa en ciertos momentos, ya sea por la redacción, porque es necesario el conocimiento de la filosofía de la historia, o porque se repiten varias veces algunas ideas (sobre este último punto, se hace una advertencia en el prólogo).
Destacaría, a modo resumen, los puntos más valiosos de la obra:
- La formación del YO en dos seres distintos: el individual y el social, siendo el segundo importante para la socialización y el objetivo de la educación.
- La definición de la Educación y su propósito, además de sus diferentes formas: la moral y la intelectual.
- La importancia de la Pedagogía para la educación y la sociedad.
- Las diferencias conceptuales entre la Educación y la Pedagogía, pero entendiendo cómo son cruciales entre ambas.
- La postura y función que debe tener el Estado en cuanto a la educación. En cuanto a este punto, me hubiese gustado un mayor desarrollo, puesto que hay premisas que ponen en duda cómo evitar la monopolización de la Educación por parte del Estado.
- La importancia del maestro en el proceso educativo.
- La problematización sobre si la pedagogía es una ciencia o un arte; qué entendemos como ciencia y qué entendemos como arte. Asimismo, la concepción de la Educación como una ciencia (Durkheim no sólo hace referencia a Comte sobre este punto, sino que muestra algunas posturas que pueden llegar a ser o confundirse con el positivismo, ya que resalta la importancia de un método en el estudio de la educación y su historia).
Hay que entender, pues, que la obra se exhibe como una introducción o un resumen de las enseñanzas de Durkheim sobre estos apartados, lo que significa que habrá limitaciones en las explicaciones en cierto punto; así que, si se quiere entender mejor sobre ciertos temas, habrá que acceder a otros estudios del autor.
Read
August 16, 2025DNF
Pues leímos un par de capítulos para la escuela pero objetivamente, no lo voy a terminar de leer porque no me interesa lo suficiente, solo lo pondré como leído porque no me gusta verlo en want to read.
Pues leímos un par de capítulos para la escuela pero objetivamente, no lo voy a terminar de leer porque no me interesa lo suficiente, solo lo pondré como leído porque no me gusta verlo en want to read.
September 8, 2017
Title: Éducation et sociologie
Author: Émile Durkheim
Contributor: Paul Fauconnet
Release Date: September 7, 2017 [EBook #55501]
Language: French
Produced by Laura N.R. and Marc D'Hooghe at Free Literature (online soon in an extended version,also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... MOOC's, educational materials,...) Images generously made available by the Gallica
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and it will be published by Project Gutenberg.
Images available at HathiTrust
August 3, 2011
L'éducation est avant tout l'entrée dans la vie sociale, et contribue à forger des citoyens. La pédagogie est nécessaire, car un certain empirisme n'est pas suffisant pour former de bons enseignants. Autant d'affirmations, qui apparaissent évidentes pour certains, mais qui doivent être martelées haut et fort.
September 2, 2014
Vaya, vaya, vaya
October 1, 2018
A helpful book for understanding the development of educational philosophy. Reflecting on the limits of psychology the differences between cultures, Durkheim argues that education and pedagogy will never become universally valid sciences. Instead, he claims, the best that educators can do to successfully pass on knowledge and customs to the next generation is to study the lessons of history in order to tailor instruction to the complexities of contemporary society.
After having read the sweeping and grandiose sociology of Comte, it was refreshing to study Durkheim's restrained assessment of educational sociology. Still, likely due to this being a posthumously published work, Education and Sociology lacks the polish of his other works such as Moral Education. Still worth a read, but not a masterpiece.
After having read the sweeping and grandiose sociology of Comte, it was refreshing to study Durkheim's restrained assessment of educational sociology. Still, likely due to this being a posthumously published work, Education and Sociology lacks the polish of his other works such as Moral Education. Still worth a read, but not a masterpiece.
May 26, 2020
Eğitim toplumsal bir kurumdur. Durkheim bu kurumu kendine özgü yöntemlerle birlikte pedagoji ile ilişkisini ayırmadan okur. Eğitime dair fikir edinmek isteyen ve özellikle pedagoji ile ilgilenenlere önerilir.
May 1, 2021
"La réflexion est, par excellence, la force antagoniste de la routine, et la routine est l'obstacle aux progrès nécessaires."
Read
August 31, 2025sim durkheim, a educação é principalmente colocar a sociedade dentro dos indivíduos. Então me diz porque a sociologia é tão desvalorizada na escola que dou aula?😭😭😭😭
September 11, 2025
Odie lo mucho que no entendí este libro
April 20, 2024
Fue el segundo libro que empecé. Este libro tiene historia, lo adquirí meses después de pedirlo debido a que lo pedí para el piso de Córdoba, c/ Julio Pellicer, 3 3. Es el libro que más he tardado debido tanto al verano como a la monotonía que me generaba la lectura del mismo. Más tarde, cuando lo retomé en 2024 me pareció muy interesante a pesar de esa monotonía del principio.
November 8, 2013
personellement je trouve Durkheim un peu catégorique comme il assumait qu'il faut que l'éducation soit divisée parce que la société est divisée. Mais après tous c'est une vérité amère que Durkheim est peut-être vrai. C'est la société qui prend la décision finale, et qui peut affecter notre manière d'éduquer les jeunes, ainsi que nos préférence de les conduire vers des comportements fixés qu'elle demande.
December 10, 2016
Lo terminé pero eso no quiere decir que lo entendí...
No entiendo como mi profesor piensa que con sólo leerlo de una vamos a saber qué dice Drukheim, en qué pagina y porqué. Al menos es cortico, porque ya mismo me siento a leerlo otra vez...
Y las 4 estrellas son porque yo no me siento digna de calificar un libro que es la biblia de la sociología de la educación. Si no me gusto, fijo es porque no lo entendí!
No entiendo como mi profesor piensa que con sólo leerlo de una vamos a saber qué dice Drukheim, en qué pagina y porqué. Al menos es cortico, porque ya mismo me siento a leerlo otra vez...
Y las 4 estrellas son porque yo no me siento digna de calificar un libro que es la biblia de la sociología de la educación. Si no me gusto, fijo es porque no lo entendí!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews