Abstract: As for the 30-year interruption of the sociology of education in mainland China from 1949—1979, it is inappropriate to touch on it lightly or vaguely, and a comparison based on the ‘sky of history’ is an effective way to review it and its loss. Compared with Soviet Union, it is found that while China was following & surpassing this Big Brother’s old disastrous road, its sociology of education had achieved rapid progress and peaked in the 1960—70s. And a comparison with Taiwan demonstrates that the both sides have the same root but different consequences. Unlike the complete interruption in mainland China, sociology of education in Taiwan at that time fulfilled two tasks of transforming from ‘sprouting’ to ‘laying foundation’ and from educational sociology to sociology of education. In the same period, sociology of education throughout the world developed quickly and promoted its discipline status from the edge to the mainstream. When China’s Opening & Reform came, the 30-year interruption had left us Chinese scholars blind both in time and space. We forgot the nearly 30-year-entrepreneurial-history of the sociology of education in China which had been swept aside during the interruption and also was unfamiliar with the flourishing of the international sociology of education at that moment. As a result, we had to restart learning and carry out the so-called ‘discipline re-construction’ which had never been heard before in the history of the development of sociology of education.

Key words: educational sociology/sociology of education, disciplinary interruption, P. R. China, the “sky of history”, disciplinary history studies