Comparative Education

Some Considerations of Method

Brian Holmes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138544604
• eBook ISBN: 9781351005043
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1981. Presented here is a coherent theory of Comparative Education research, based on the traditions and innovations established by such pioneers as Joseph Lauwerys and Nicholas Hans. From the author's substantive studies emerges a taxonomy for education based on Popper's critical dualism, and a way of analysing problems based on Dewey's reflective thinking and the social change theories of people such as Marx, Ogben and Pareto. Models of formal organisations drawn from Talcott Parsons show how systems analyses can be made in comparative perspective and how the processes of policy formulation, adoption and implementation can be studied.

The use of ideal typical normative models illustrates how comparative educationists can penetrate aspects of man's socially created worlds. These techniques are exemplified in succinct models against which debates about education in Western Europe (Plato), the USA (Dewey) and the USSR (Marx, Engels and Lenin) can be analysed. Against the crude use of comparative arguments and transplantation of foreign practices, Dr Holmes suggests that problems should be analysed and the outcomes of hypothetical solutions or policies should be tested under identified national circumstances. The distinctive feature of this book is that it takes account of the debate among social scientists, rejects both induction and ethnomethodology as adequate in themselves and brings together the problem-solving approach favoured by American research workers and the hypothetico-deductive method of enquiry advocated by natural scientists such as Sir Peter Medawar and Sir John Eccles.

Chapter 1

Cultural Borrowing – Misconceived Comparative Education

The nineteenth-century pioneers or precursors of comparative education were men whose task was to develop their own national system of education. Almost without exception they were members of a new class of officials appointed to take a special interest in education. Many of them were scholars in their own right. Victor Cousin (1792–1867), for example, was a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne before becoming Minister of Education in France in 1840. Matthew Arnold (1822–88) is as well known as a littérateur as for his activities as an inspector of English schools. William Torrey Harris (1839–1909) was the leader of the American Hegelian school of philosophy as well as a distinguished superintendent of St Louis schools and later US Commissioner of Education. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that their contribution to educational reform, though principally practical, had a theoretical component.

As administrators they wanted to know if anything of practical value could be learned from the study of foreign systems of education. Their answers differed. Some of them were prepared to take over from foreign systems these features which would benefit but not harm their own schools. During a period of growing nationalism in Europe rivalry and competition between nations encouraged imitation. National sentiments which included feelings of special national virtues discouraged it. The question these administrators asked was: how can we select from foreign systems what is good, and perfect it? The answer was that foreign systems should be studied, preferably at first hand by visits and observation. Such men represent a strong (but in my view mistaken) tradition among comparative educationists who consider that comparative education can, and should, serve a useful function by making possible more discriminating choices when reformers propose to copy features from another system.

Other administrators were much more sceptical. They were unwilling to concede that much of value could be borrowed from a foreign system but they were prepared to compare their own systems unfavourably in order to persuade their fellow countrymen to mend their ways. The ‘comparative argument’ has a long history and it is still used today. It is dangerous because at best the comparative argument constrains or promotes action. At worst it diverts attention away from a serious analysis of national problems and careful consideration of alternative solutions.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new generation of administrators, seeking to plan the development of secondary education, viewed cultural borrowing with grave suspicion. They made explicit their theoretical and practical objectives to it as a function to be served by comparative educationists and returned to earlier proposals that the purpose of comparative education should be to establish principles of policy and general theories of education from which sound practice could be deduced. They laid the foundations of method on which my own approach to comparative education is based. At the same time they have also been the source of inspiration for other comparative educationists with whose accepted methodological assumptions I basically disagree – but more about this in Chapter 3.

Thus in spite of their practical concerns administrators throughout the century made some contribution to the theory and methods of education. In this chapter I propose to examine the role played by comparative educationists who favoured cultural borrowing and to comment on its misuse in the post-Second World War period.

FOREIGN TRAVEL, CULTURAL BORROWING AND THE COMPARATIVE ARGUMENT

Cultural borrowing has a long history. Among its exponents Plato is the most famous. As an observer of Sparta, he then incorporated all that he thought best in that city-state in his description of his ideal republic. For this he has been regarded as a pioneer of comparative method. To be sure his willingness to adopt a Spartan model exemplifies a most radical form of cultural borrowing in that a foreign system is accepted by an observer as better than his own.

The fact that Plato built the Republic into a universal model does not deny his aim was to observe one foreign system and transplant major features of it into his own. This approach has relatively few present-day adherents except perhaps among communists who look to the USSR for a model.

Erasmus had a different purpose in mind and used comparative studies in a somewhat different manner. As an itinerant scholar he studied in England, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy and enunciated principles which influenced virtually all the educational leaders and school reforms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His ideal was to establish a common culture throughout Europe. This aim represents the universal model building aspect of comparative education which finds expression today in the work of some international agencies.

An early example of a third type of practical activity may be cited. Comenius, to some extent through force of circumstances, worked in Poland, England, Sweden and Hungary after leaving his native land. In modern parlance he was invited as a ‘technical assistant’ by Samuel Hartlib to come to London in 1641 and advise the government of the day on how to establish a pansophic college. After returning to Poland he went on to Hungary to establish a school at Savos Patok. He hoped that an international centre for the study of education could be established. In these activities he anticipated the ‘technical assistants’ of today and the creation of international centres.

Some decades later Peter the Great of Russia sent officials to study the Royal Mathematical School at Christ’s Hospital in England with the intention of setting up similar institutions in Russia to train naval personnel and engineers. The assessment by Henry Barnard (1811–1900) of Peter’s aim was that he ‘desired to transplant Western culture to Russia, and for this purpose sent Russians to foreign countries and called foreigners to Russia …’¹ Of equal interest is the procedure adopted by Maria Theresa² in her attempts to develop a comprehensive plan of educational reform. Her Imperial Chancellor, Prince Kaunitz, was given the task of collecting useful information on foreign improvements in education. In 1774 Kaunitz sent a circular to the Austrian embassies abroad asking for information about various aspects of educational systems which might be useful in the reorganisation of education at home. Some time later in 1801 the government of Prussia sent a school inspector to study the work of Pestalozzi in Burgdorf³ and young men of promise were also encouraged to study there so that they might return to Prussia better equipped as teachers and administrators.

During the first half of the nineteenth century when national systems of elementary education were being established the flow of travellers abroad increased.⁴ The implicit and frequently explicit purpose of these visits was to observe foreign schools to see what could be borrowed from them and transplanted into the visitor’s own system of education. Often such travellers were commissioned by their governments to report on schools abroad. Many of them prepared reports which became widely known but, while they are carefully written, it is not possible to detect in them any conscious desire to collect comparable observed data and to classify them or indeed to discuss the problems of classifying educational data. Documentary evidence and information derived from direct observation were the bases on which their recommendations were made. As foreign observers they were free to recommend to their governments whatever they thought would improve their own system and to reject whatever would be harmful.

The period between, let us say, 1810 and 1880 was one in which governments in Europe and North America were seeking to set up national systems of elementary or primary schools. Some eighteenth-century models were available and some national governments had proposed or enacted legislation designed to create systems of universal elementary or primary schools. For the most part during the early part of the nineteenth century governments in Europe and North America (whether local or national) were breaking new ground in attempting to reduce or eliminate the monopoly of a church or churches in the running of schools and to reach the mass of young children. Administrators were more willing to copy emerging systems of elementary education than they were later to adopt foreign models of secondary schooling when the expansion of secondary schooling occupied the attention of governments. Roughly by 1880 in many Western European countries and in the USA universal, compulsory elementary education under lay control had been achieved in theory and was on the way to being realised in practice. Post-1880 debates turn on the expansion of post-primary or second-stage education. Post-1945 debates are about the reorganisation of secondary education and educational expansion includes the rapid growth of universities and institutes of higher education.

The first half of the century, when observers were interested in foreign systems of elementary or primary instruction, can be more accurately described as one of ‘selective cultural borrowing’ because while Prussian legislation, schools and teacher training attracted much attention not all aspects of this system found favour with foreign observers. Moreover some visitors were principally interested in the work of European educators whose fame had spread. Among the Americans who came to Europe between 1810 and 1850 to learn something of value about schools and educators, Benjamin Silliman, John Griscom, Calvin Stowe, Alexander Dallas Bache, William C. Woodbridge, and Horace Mann are cited by Stewart Fraser.⁵

The influence of these men had on developments in the USA is not so clear. In 1815 Griscom visited educational institutions in Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Italy and Holland and he published A Year in Europe in 1818–19. He visited Pestalozzi and was impressed by his methods of teaching. Hans⁶ claims that as a result he influenced American education but it is difficult to find in standard histories the extent of this influence except that, in spite of his reservations about Lancaster’s mechanical methods, he established a private Lancastrian high school in New York City. Silliman, too, merits little attention except as editor of the American Journal of Science and as a teacher at Yale. Woodbridge also is known as the editor of the American Annals of Education (1830–9) and did much of the visiting in Europe to make known the methods of von Fellenberg and Pestalozzi. At the request of the Ohio legislature Calvin Stowe reported on Elementary Education in Europe in 1837 and several states reprinted his report in official documents.⁷ Stowe was impressed by Pestalozzi and by the efficient and enriched curriculum in Prussian schools. There is little evidence that his report had much effect on American education. The same cannot be said of the use made by Horace Mann⁸, as Secretary to the Massachusetts Board of Education, of his report on the schools of Europe. In his seventh report in 1844 he praised Prussian methods of teaching the three Rs and the way teachers kept discipline without resorting to corporal punishment. There is little doubt that he wished to stir up the teachers of Massachusetts and he succeeded. The Boston schoolmasters reacted violently and there followed a long and acrimonious debate.⁹ It demonstrated, in a rather dramatic fashion, one of the ways in which comparative arguments were and are used. Today unfavourable comparisons with other countries are frequently used by politicians to exhort people in their country to work harder or improve their standards of educational achievement.

All the ‘cultural borrowers’ wanted to be sure that their own system would not be harmed by innovations taken over from elsewhere. Three examples of the cautious attitude adopted by Americans who were undoubtedly impressed by the Prussian schools may be mentioned. A digest of Victor Cousin’s Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia¹⁰ was published in the USA in 1836. In the preface to this edition J. Orville Taylor welcomed the report and stated that many lessons would be learned from the Prussian system but warned that ‘Many parts of this system of public instruction are not adapted to the spirit and feelings of the American people nor to their form of civil government’.¹¹ Horace Mann’s expressed admiration for the Prussian methods of teaching was modified by the hope, however, that if Prussians had used education to support arbitrary power Americans could use similar methods of instruction to support republican institutions.¹² Henry Barnard, who also admired Prussian methods of teaching, was more forthright. He did not consider the German model one that should be imitated.¹³

Victor Cousin, who at the request of the French government studied primary schools and teachers’ colleges, had more confidence in the unity of French national traditions. He wrote:

The experience of Germany ought not to be lost upon us. National rivalries and antipathies would be completely out of place. The true greatness of a people does not consist in borrowing nothing from others, but in borrowing from whatever is good, and in perfecting whatever is appropriate.

He was confident that the French would assimilate all that was good ‘without fear of ceasing to be ourselves’.¹⁴ His reports received a good deal of attention in England and Leonard Horner, who translated Cousin’s report on education in Holland, went so far as to urge his fellow Englishmen to ‘take a lesson from a neighbour’.¹⁵

It is not surprising that this period of ‘cultural borrowing’ is associated with the development of elementary schools and methods of teaching in them. In most countries these sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Cultural Borrowing – Misconceived Comparative Education
• 2 Comparative Education, Scientific Method and Educational Planning
• 3 The Positivist Debate in Comparative Education – an Anglo-Saxon Perspective
• 4 A Framework for Analysis – ‘Critical Dualism’ (Conventionalism)
• 5 The Collection and Classification of Data – National Profiles
• 6 Ideal-Typical Normative Models
• 7 Plato’s Just Society
• 8 Dewey’s Reflective Man in a Changing Scientific Society
• 9 The Ideal-Typical Soviet Man
• Select Bibliography
• Published Works by the Author
• A Selected Guide to Ancillary Reading
• Index