Intro Sociol Education V 9

Karl Mannheim, W. A. C. Stewart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134552184
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

First published in 1962.This is Volume IX of the collected works of Karl Mannheim and focuses on a collection of sociological works written to give viewpoints and perspectives on the educational system.

PART ONE

THEORETICAL MATTERS

I

General Introduction

IN studying education we try to create scope for reflection; and, secondly, to establish the study of education as a coherent body of facts and principles so that the work done in schools and elsewhere should be built upon foundations which are as nearly scientific as possible.

There are some who are still sceptical about both these purposes, considering that reflection in education is scarcely a serious endeavour, and that the principles are no more than amiable discussion of disconnected topics. However, I belong to those who believe that philosophic reflection is even more necessary in our age than ever in the past and that education is becoming not only one of our most important efforts, but that in studying it we have accumulated a great deal of reliable knowledge which is too little known. I think that the time is ripe for us to draw together these findings, but it would be as well to look more closely at what I have called reflection and to indicate the concept of education and pedagogy which I have in mind.

Whenever a man lifts himself above a specific endeavour and reflects upon it from a different viewpoint he displays an attitude of mind which need not be clearly linked up with systematic logic and metaphysics nor with any other traditional philosophic discipline, but which is related to that kind of thinking. In our everyday approach to things, we necessarily take them for granted and use techniques with which we are familiar, struggling for purposes which we seldom analyse thoroughly. For example, in preparing to teach, one might study a subject and absorb considerable knowledge of it, one might examine the methods of teaching it to children of different ages and, to give some context to the part one intends to play as a teacher, one might study educational administration and institutions, maybe even on a comparative basis. Most of this we would do first of all in a largely factual and non-reflective fashion, taking the inherited aims of education, the inherited techniques of teaching and the established methods of keeping order and preserving discipline, for granted. However, when we reflect upon these matters, we raise questions which reach out beyond our routine activities and habits of thought. We move to a higher vantage point from which we can see the whole situation and not isolated facts. Some of the questions have been asked many times by philosophers and practically-minde’d men. Consider the following: What is education? What is education for? What are the special tasks and potentialities of education in the situation of the present day? We examine the facts in relation to each other, we trace them where possible to cause and effect, and we evaluate them in terms of performance. John Dewey expressed this as an aspect of culture when he wrote ‘Culture . . . is a capacity for expanding in range and accuracy one’s perception of meaning.¹

The study of education combines and co-ordinates the results of various more or less homogeneous subjects in order to find the answers to the questions which it raises. We have recently been forced to realize that the composite studies are in many ways at least as important as those which are more homogeneous. Consider, for example, the emergence of biochemistry, criminology, geophysics and economics as inter-disciplinary studies. What then are the disciplines which have to be coordinated in order to be able to answer the many problems raised by education?

In the past and for many teachers in the present, the emphasis in teaching and learning has been upon knowing your subject. For the rest a ‘common-sense’ knowledge of what a child is like will enable a man, cultivated by his learning, to teach successfully, which is to say, to teach so that his pupils may learn. However, the more society has grown and its complexity has increased the more we have realized that unimaginative and routine teaching helps to create many misfits, and we have become greatly aware of the fact that the implications of teaching Johnny Latin are more intricate than we ever expected them to be. It is now something of a truism to say that authoritarian methods of keeping order and punishing are more likely to make than to reform criminals. Martin Luther some four centuries ago said: ‘It is a miserable thing that on account of severe punishment children learn to dislike their parents or pupils their teachers. Many a clumsy disciplinarian completely ruins children of good disposition and excellent ability.’²

Besides admitting that knowing your subject well and having a certain accumulated common-sense experience of children is not enough for effective teaching, it is worth while remembering the simple fact that children spend only a sixth of their lives at school and less than a half of that sixth in school. Hence we ought not to ignore or underestimate the effect of out-of-school life. We ought in fact to enlarge our perspective of what education is.

In 1945 some disquieting statistics were published by the War Department of the United States. Twenty-eight out of every 1,000 recently educated young men were rejected by the army because they were too badly trained to pass even the simplest literary test and were too badly grounded to receive army education: be it noted that these were not registered as educationally subnormal while at school. Or again, in 1939 the Regents’ Board of New York State (where expenditure per student is the highest in the United States) published a generally depressing report stating that secondary school children were weak in the knowledge of their own community, ignorant of the history of the United States, ready to think in catchwords and slogans, unaware of the operation of democratic principles, and noticeably reluctant to think of their civic responsibilities. Six out of seven of the children whose cases were considered said that they would refuse a position of responsibility if it entailed personal discomfort. The Regents’ Board went on to state that once out of school most boys and girls seemed to read almost solely for recreation, chiefly poor quality fiction magazines and the more sensational newspapers. There have been many similar reports in this country with which we are familiar.

We received a great shock during the war when evacuation showed us in what physical and mental destitution many children lived. Surveys like Our Town or Youth Service in an English County or any of the numerous books published since 1940 on such subjects have shown the nature of the physical and cultural conditions endured by many families, particularly those living in large cities. The social services and legislation promoting the punishment of neglectful parents have indicated that the State through these agencies is concerned to try to maintain some kind of standard.

On an international as well as an educational plane, we have been forced to realize that the old social order is in a state of disorganization and so are the people who have lived under it. Services undertaken by the United Nations Organization, by U.N.E.S.C.O., and by the World Health Organization, tend to corroborate that about half the population is living at, or below, a bare subsistence level, and here again what to do, how to have the financial means to do it and in what manner to present the changes, show that some notion of what ought to be is present in the minds of those who are working for material and cultural change at the international level. That this kind of thinking involves educational planning of all kinds does not need to be stressed.

Besides the information that has recendy been presented both in this country, in the western world in general, and throughout the countries concerned in the international organizations, we have had in the last twenty years the most conspicuous example of the disorganization of standards and the prostitution of educational ideas. In Germany, the emergence of the Nazi type of character revealed that the educational efforts of a highly educated nation were in vain, and indeed that it was possible to operate the education system to promote the character which is generally condemned elsewhere. In fact, while everybody admits that perhaps the most pressing international problem is that of poverty in the midst of plenty, we have to add that we can have barbarism in the midst of educational plenty. It is not enough to provide educational opportunities, it is equally important that we should understand what kind of effects these educational opportunities are having.

It would appear, then, that at home, as we discovered dramatically during the Second World War and as is known in the daily experiences of many teachers and social workers, educational organization has not only to care for the élite but has to improve the conditions of those who are living on a subcultural level. In fact, the primitives are not only to be found in some distant countries, but are here among us.

New methods of social surveying applied to education have made a number of important facts accessible. It is now apparent that the distribution of opportunity under the pre-1944 educational system was very uneven and that even when secondary education was possible, it has often been ineffective in its results. In March 1937, of the 560,000 between ten and eleven years of age in public and elementary schools only 80,000 passed on to a secondary school and of these, about 2,500 were likely to reach the universities. In other words, of every 1,000 elementary children, 143 or 14 per cent, reach the secondary stage and less than 0·5 per cent, reach the universities.³ However, in the United States, the attendance at secondary schools during the first forty years of this century has increased from 10 per cent, to 70 per cent, of the population aged 14 to 18, and there have been similar large increases in university and college attendance. In fact, in some states of the United States, 95 per cent, of those between 14 and 18 have some period of secondary education. Lest it should be thought that the United States has always maintained this high level of provision of secondary education, it should be stated that before 1890 attendance at high school and college was confined to less than 5 per cent, of the population. Therefore, within a period of 50 years, the proportion of young people having some kind of secondary education has multiplied ten-fold, and the number of these going on to college or university education is now three times as many as it was at the beginning of the century. Nevertheless, the United States War Department published during the war the statistics already mentioned referring to faulty training and general illiteracy.

Despite increased facilities for higher education in Britain and the United States, there is much evidence on both sides of the Adantic to show that the teaching is not proportionately more effective since this vast increase of provision. In some ways this is scarcely surprising since in an earlier time we were educating those who by means of one selection or another were usually above the minimum literacy level, at any rate at the secondary school. With the insistence upon educational provision for all on the basis of democratic principle, we have undertaken to educate the total population and, of necessity, a certain proportion of this population is believed to be of a low level of ability. For all kinds of practical, political and ideal reasons the educational system since 1944 has been re-organized and its total effect upon our society will increasingly be felt during the next thirty or forty years.

When all these matters are taken into account, however, it has to be admitted that our routine technique of teaching is plainly not as efficient as it should be. This is partly because we have only recently given systematic attention to the problems of educating and learning, and partly because our educational aims are inarticulate, not to say confused. The Nazis and the Soviets knew what they could expect from education and we have been very vague about what we really want to achieve by education. One of our valuable but ambiguous principles has been that we must appear to be as varied as possible in our educational system and practice, and that we must not ‘indoctrinate’. We are rightly critical of and hostile to what Hider achieved because his purposes were evil, but we have at least his example to show that a great deal can be done in influencing people through educational practice and organization.

It will already be clear that the study of education must concern itself with a clarification both of what education is and what it aims at being. The definition of what education is involves an analysis of techniques and the definition of aims is concerned with an assessment of values which help to decide, among other things, what methods should be used. Thus, in mentioning the difference between a discussion of educational methods and educational aims I wish also to emphasize the interconnection of both.

When we say that we intend to teach a set of ideas to children we are at once faced with the problem of sorting out these ideas with some precision and our reasons for presenting them. Secondly, we are also faced with deciding the means by which we shall present the ideas. And thirdly, we have to consider what effect both the method of presenting the ideas and the ideas themselves may have. Is educating to mean that we inculcate or indoctrinate firmly and definitely or does it involve guidance only? Perhaps it may be one or the other at different times. Have we in mind the desired shape into which we hope the organism will grow, or is our emphasis upon the growth itself, in whatever way the pupil may choose within the limits of society?

Many teachers are aware of the tension between the amount of information and ideas which should be made explicit and the other effect of the relationship between persons which has a direct and indirect result on the degree of and attitude to knowledge absorbed. Even behind this issue of method there is the major question mark of what can be achieved at all. What can human beings learn to do? How far can human nature be moulded by educational influences? What are the limitations of the contribution of the teacher? What is the significance of the educational atmosphere? These I suggest are all questions which will have a bearing upon practice.

Let us turn for a moment to consider what education is for. Is our aim to educate independent personalities with no particular attention given to the social situation in which they find themselves ? Or perhaps the aim may be to educate for adjustment, which some people may consider as a healthy interconnection between adaptable, developing individuals and a changing and developing society. If we accept that this notion of social adjustment is central in human education have we in mind that we should aim at some recognizable type of development while also attempting to grow beyond this type? Many who have read the works of W. E. Hocking or Sir Fred Clarke will remember the importance which they attached to this last point.⁴ Even if we accept the importance of society, for which kind of society do we educate ? Here we should try to clarify the focal points of advance and deterioration in education for change in a democratic society.

Any student of education has to be concerned with psychology, for in this study he informs himself about the degree of plasticity of human nature. Sociology is also related to the study of education because it deals with the working of society in general and of modern society in particular. It is most important to recognize the kind of influence which a society has upon its members through its institutions and the situations which they create. It is clear that there has been a tremendous advance in the last fifty years in understanding the physical and mental development of persons, but there has been a much less noticeable increase in the understanding of their social development. Education, as it takes place in schools or other institutions, is mainly a social business. It is a dynamic process which is based upon the plasticity of human nature and which aims at a selection of social and personal experiences for concentrated presentation. When we talk about the study of education we tend to think that it should concern itself only with classroom techniques, but this is not so. The classroom and the subjects taught in it are vitally important, of course, but we are concerned in addition with learning, as each person undertakes it, and with all the educational influences which go to form the environment to which each person responds.

Thus philosophic reflection, psychology and sociology are the fundamental studies which together furnish a body of knowledge which is bound to deepen an understanding of, and broaden an outlook upon, education as a whole. Sir John Adams presented a part of this idea when he said ‘Education has for its aim to modify the nature of the educand, and not merely to supply a certain amount of knowledge . . . The whole process of education may be said to be one in which the educand becomes gradually transformed into his own educator.’⁵

I would suggest that here Adams has presented to us some of the fundamental value judgments and psychological notions as they relate to education. What is missing is its relation to sociology. In addition to what he has said, we must bear in mind that education has to prepare members of a society to conform on the one hand and, if it is a democratic society, to have the opportunity and scope for individuality on the other. Therefore, we must pay attention to what the society wants of its members as, for example, respect for the law, participation in election of government, a relatively general acceptance of conventions, and a more or less clear understanding of economic motivation. To the comprehension of social institutions and their obvious effects, we must add a recognition that these institutions have latent influences. As an instance of this, it is true that if we raise the compulsory school leaving age to 16, this will offer more opportunity for sound school preparation which may, or may not be directly educational in character; but it is also true that raising the age to 16 will mean that we increase the period of economic dependence of adolescence, and this is the kind of thing I mean when I refer to latent influences. In studying education, then, we must give attention to sociology because it represents contexts within which psychological and philosophical interpretations may be expressed.

II

Training, Instruction, Teaching and Education

I WANT to draw a distinction between various terms that are commonly used in relation to education. I refer to four—training, instruction, teaching and education.

Training

This word which we often meet in educational discussion has a certain clear connotation and carries with it also often a number of derogatory implications. First of all it can refer to the actual drill or practice which a person may undertake to prepare him for an improved performance, the training which an athlete or an apprentice may undergo, the reference being to the preparation itself whether it be running or gymnastics or the repetition of supervised practice with tools or some other such. However, the additional element which differentiates repetition of this kind from practice is that it is done in the framework of some sort of programm...