The Sociology of Education

Introductory Analytical Perspectives

Donald Swift

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351839709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

First published in 1969, this book examines the educational process as a whole in relation to its society. The discussion is set within a specifically sociological frame of reference and looks at the school as an organisation as well as the social environment surrounding the school. It concludes by considering some of the basic issues concerning the functions of education for society.

Written at a time when sociological studies of education were scarce, this ground-breaking work will be of interest to those studying education and its relationship with society.

1

Sociology and education

Introduction

Modern society is generating a great demand for all kinds of social scientists to put their knowledge and skills at the service of society. We are finding less use for the amateur and we believe we have greater need for the expert. Since many of our problems are social, one kind of expert we turn to is the sociologist.

But pleas for help do not always bring a satisfactory response from the sociologist. The layman usually expects too much or misconceives the kind of contribution sociology can make. In the long run the interests of sociologist and social problem-solver overlap because if sociology is to help in solving problems of society it will have to be done well. In the short run, however, we can expect some conflict and much misunderstanding.

By his own standards, the sociologist may not always be equipped to help in dealing with social problems, but under the urgent pressure of events he has become more involved in them. In the process he has begun to acquire a certain measure of confidence that sociological thinking and information-collecting skills are sufficiently improved to be relevant.

One area of the discipline which illustrates this developing confidence is the sociology of education. During the last decade in Britain the sociologist has begun to play a part in the statutory administrative system as consultant, administrator and researcher. At the same time the findings of research are being assimilated into the folklore of teaching at what, given the small amount of research, may even be thought to be a dangerous speed.

A minor revolution in our attitudes towards education is resulting. Instead of looking upon it as a form of national expenditure we are beginning to think of it as one of the more financially fruitful kinds of capital investment. Partly as a result, education is becoming looked upon as a means for producing talent rather than a sorting and selecting system for finding it. This book aims to exemplify that way of looking at social life which is helping to encourage the development of such a fundamental change in our view of education. It offers a set of conceptual models based upon the sociological perspective.

The sociology of education

Until recently sociology of education dealt with social improvement. For example, Durkheim the father of modern ‘educational sociology’, as it was usually called, was deeply disturbed by the developing trends in modern industrial society. He sought a way out from approaching disaster by reorganising social life, and education was to provide the solution. (Durkheim 1956). At the present time we have similar examples from many developing countries where deliberate programmes of community development work have usually been started with the explicit intention of raising living standards by influencing the attitudes of its inhabitants. This is often a massive project in adult education which must be based upon sociological knowledge in so far as its aims and its means are social.

It would be wrong to suggest that this belief in the rôle of education is a new one which follows solely from the findings of sociology. The notion that we can improve society through deliberate action on the process of education is implicit in much theorising about education. Plato’s plan for a proper balance in the perceived conflict between the individual’s drive for personal excellence and the claim of the state upon his actions implicitly assumed that education could be so arranged as to facilitate an optimum arrangement. The sociology of education since Durkeim has developed through the insights which socio-psychological theory and research brought to our understanding of the social nature of man. For example, in conjunction with his educational scheme, Plato bequeathed us some ideas about the intractability of human intelligence and the likelihood of specialisation of interest. They have been fundamental in shaping Western European education but modern research is showing them to be erroneous. On the other hand, Durkeim’s desire to save and remake his society led to proposals which were based upon a sounder understanding of the social process than that usually shown by earlier philosophers who tended to base their theories upon their intuitive ‘understanding’ of individual psychology.

It is obvious that the study of education can make a valuable contribution, both to sociology and to society. The next step is to ask how the best interests of sociologist, educator and administrator can be served in the process. In the first place, the answer must be that the sociologist should do good sociology. That is, he must work according to the rules of his discipline. But in doing so he will run the risk of providing answers which are inappropriate or undesirable in the eyes of the educator.

Taylor (1967) has suggested that separate use of two terms, ‘educational sociology’ and ‘the sociology of education’ might be maintained in order to preserve the distinction between an emphasis upon educational or social problems and an emphasis upon sociological problems. For Taylor

although in its more rigorous forms it [educational sociology] has brought a good deal of sociological insight to bear upon educational problems, it has tended to be hortatory rather then empirical, inspirational rather than objective, and synoptic rather than analytic. (Taylor, 1967, p. 191)

It is useful to look upon education as standing in a relationship to sociology similar to that held by engineering in relation to physics. It is the technology to the pure science. Practitioners take the knowledge and theories evolved by the pure scientists and apply them to the solution of practical problems. As a matter of fact the relationship also works in the opposite direction, because solving practical problems also contributes to knowledge, but that does not alter the analytical usefulness of the distinction.

Since the difference lies in the reason for carrying out the research in the first place it is of no practical importance. The intention is ‘pure’ when the research is carried out in order to improve our knowledge of how society works or of the methods by which we can arrive at valid information about it. On the other hand the reason for applied research is a desire or a commission to solve some specific problem of society as perceived by a client. There is a distinction, but only a conceptual one, between research for sociology and research for society.

The point is that one can (and almost all sociologists do) hope that sociology will be of help to society without making the patently erroneous stipulation that whenever we do sociology we should be actually trying to solve one of society’s problems.

One of the important aims for the physical and biological sciences is to bring about changes which are intended. Similarly, prediction and control are aims of social science. The way to test the validity of social science knowledge is to predict changes that occur either without intervention of the sociologist or because of it. If it occurs because of intervention we might say that it is engineered. This is exactly what education seeks to do, both for the individual, and through him, the society. In a very real sense the application of social or behavioural science is a necessary (though not sufficient) aspect of education.

So much for what sociology contributes to education. We also need to look at what education offers sociology. If sociology is to progress as a genuine science it must become more ‘experimental’. The system of education offers situations in which experiments are possible without offending our own values about human beings. In doing so it provides sociology with an opportunity to meet the challenge of what many people consider to be the vital requirements of science—the ability to predict and organise social change. Sociological research in education, therefore, is simply experimental or observational sociology.

The development of the discipline (and hence its value in society) follows from a mutually stimulating relationship between theorising and information-gathering each of which is dependent upon the other for its meaning. There is no point in distinguishing between the motives for doing the research. What matters is the candlepower of the theories which illuminate the information and the rigour with which it is collected. Consequently sociology and education have a great deal to offer each other.

Sociological approaches to problems

The theories, concepts and research methods of sociology offer one set of tools for thinking about education. These are different from other ways of approaching it. For example, an ethical point of view is different in all three elements whereas a psychological one would differ much less radically. However, the difference in perspective can cause a very great deal of controversy between people who are employing the different perspectives without realising it (Swift 1965 b). The one point which must be made clear at the outset is that we cannot claim a superior position for the sociological perspective. It is simply one way of looking at education which will add to our understanding of it, but it cannot replace an ethical or a psychological view.

The special contribution of sociology arises from its interest in the structure and functioning of groups varying in size from two people to a nation. Instead of looking at human behaviour as the actions of individuals it looks for the regularities and similarities in behaviour which are referable to a group context. The discipline assumes that one valid way of explaining the action of human beings is to think of it as a product of their social experience. The consequences of this contentious-sounding, but thoroughly innocuous, statement will be dealt with in later chapters. For the time being, it is enough to say that the patterns which can be seen in social behaviour are usually the result of group membership. Consequently, in analysing them we are describing the structure and functioning of social groups.

There are two kinds of perspective, therefore, from which we can view social behaviour—the individual and the group perspective. Because we are so used to individuals as concrete things we find it easy to talk in terms of the individual level of abstraction. On the other hand, because the group is not a concrete thing we often find it a difficult idea to deal with despite the many group level abstractions to be found in everyday thinking about society. Ideas like ‘the team’ ‘the motherland’ and ‘the economy’ are attempts at sociological thinking. Through many years of practice, we tend to look upon action as the result of the motives, desires and intentions of the actors. This is a valid way of doing it, but not the only valid way. The sociological perspective points towards the ways in which the actor arrived at these motives, desires and intentions and at the pressures which direct and constrain action.

Neither the individual level nor the group level abstraction is analytically superior. They should go hand in hand, giving complementary explanations for social situations. Educators need to use both perspectives if they are to plan their activities effectively. The sociology of education, in describing the group processes to which individuals are subjected and the influence of one group upon another, provides an understanding of the context within which the aims of education are pursued. The individual perspective deals with whatever a person brings into that context and the means by which he assimilates his experience of it.

What is education?

As far as the sociologist is concerned, education is something which takes place in society because of three basic facts about the human race. Firstly, everything which comprises the way of life of a society or group of people is learned. Nothing of it is biologically inherited. Secondly, the human infant is incredibly receptive to experience. By this we mean that he is capable of developing a wide range of beliefs about the world around him, skills in manipulating it and values as to how he should manipulate it. Thirdly, this infant is also totally dependent from birth and for a very long period thereafter upon other people. He is incapable of developing human personality without a very great deal of accidental or intended help from others.

In the very broadest sense, education is the process which links these three facts together. It is the way the individual acquires the many physical, moral and social capacities demanded of him by the group into which he is born and within which he must function. Sociologists have called this process socialisation. Such a term is valuable for two reasons. In the first place, it emphasises that the process is a social one; it takes place in a social context and in ways demanded by the rules of the group. It also allows us to use the word education in a special sense.

Most educators prefer it to mean something in addition to socialisation because, for them discussion of what they are doing usually pre-supposes some ideas about how individuals (and hence society) ought to be improved. For the sociologist there is no difference. Education is the induction of newcomers into a society. It goes on in response to values about how members should act and ideas about what they should learn. These two aspects of ‘humanness’—patterns of behaviour and the values which give them ‘meaning’—are the two principal foci of sociology.

We now have a broad definition of education. It is all that goes on in society which involves teaching and learning. We can see that this teaching or learning can be either intended or unintended. That is, we need not restrict ourselves only to those consequences of action which are intended. Indeed, to do so would limit our understanding of the educational process unnecessarily. Often the most important consequences of a person’s actions are not the ones he was setting out to achieve but the ones which he had not expected. Not only may the consequences be unexpected, they may not even be recognised when they have occurred. Consequently, a basic rule in sociological analysis specifies that in order to understand what education is doing in a particular society, an observer must always distinguish between what educators say it is doing and what it is actually doing. It might happen that these turn out to be similar but there is no reason for him to assume that they are. This idea will be developed later under the headings of latent and manifest functions.

For most of man’s history and for many people today, the process of education simply ‘goes on’ as a consequence of the functioning of the society or social group into which the child is born. Some effort may be made by adults and older children to teach those laws and customs regarded as vital for the group but little explicit provision is made. Modern society, on the other hand, has set aside particular individuals with a special task to which they can devote the majo...