Book excerpt: The central place of ?text? as a means of organising language in order to construct what people come to think of as ?knowledge? is a phenomenon affecting all educators, students, and citizens of modern societies. This volume offers various voices and perspectives including those of Ron Carter and Michael Halliday on the role of text in education and society. The chapters on text in education explore some ways in which texts can create bonds or raise barriers between educational knowledge and common-sense knowledge, while the chapters on text in society focus on how personalities and societies are themselves constructed through texts. Learning to unpack texts, and to consider alternatives, is a crucial goal for education and growth, especially so in the context of fast-changing contemporary societies.This book should be of special interest to educators, students of language, and readers interested in the dynamic relationship between text, education and society.