摘要：Studies have shown that sociology is one of the most downgraded and misinterpreted school sciences. This article reports the results of a study of high school sociology in Greece. The aim was to reveal how and why education misinterprets and devaluates sociology. The basic assumption was the following: the science of sociology, which has special features and differs from other physical/natural sciences, is being transformed to a school course full of misconceptions concerning the sociological discourse, because of the dominance of a teaching model that advocates a positivistic aspect of science. The above assumption was examined through an analysis of the two main factors that are involved in the formation of the school course: sociology curriculum and sociology teachers, with regard to the way they use and perceive sociology’s special nature as a science. The results indicated that the sociology course is based less on the science of sociology, and more on the everyday knowledge of society, on the presentation of social problems and issues familiar to the students, and on the promotion of citizenship education. These results bring to light new data on the issue of high school sociology in Greece. At the same time, they confirm and reinforce what has been asserted from other relevant studies elsewhere, revealing that, regardless of the specific educational environment under study, a specific pattern seems to be recurring: sociology courses produce a distorted image of sociology.
