Education Matters

60 years of the British Journal of Educational Studies

James Arthur, Jon Davison, Richard Pring

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415505529
• eBook ISBN: 9781136341588
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Education Matters draws together a selection of the most influential papers published in the British Journal of Educational Studies by many of the leading scholars in the field over the past sixty years. This unique collection of seminal articles published since the first issue of the Journal provides students and researchers in education with an informed insight and understanding of the nature the development of the field of Educational Studies in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. It also assesses the current position of Educational Studies and explores the possibilities for the development of the field in coming years.

Compiled by the journal's editors, past and present, James Arthur, Jon Davison and Richard Pring, the book illustrates the development of the field of educational studies, and the specially written Introduction contextualises the selection, whilst introducing students to the main issues and current thinking in the field.

Each of the twenty articles includes a preface which highlights the changing conceptions and development of, or consistency in, educational thought over time, as well as debates and conflicts in the seminal articles by key educational thinkers that have been published in the Journal.

1 Karl Mannheim and the Sociology
of Education

W. A. C. Stewart

Author

A former schoolteacher and research student of Karl Mannheim, William Alexander Campbell Stewart (1915–97) was the first professor of Education in the Institute of Education, Keele University (previously University College of North Staffordshire). Campbell Stewart wrote numerous books and articles on education and sociology, such as Quakers and Education as seen in their Schools in England, Progressives and Radicals in English Education, 1750–1970, The Educational Innovators and Systematic Sociology: An Introduction to the Study of Society (with Karl Mannheim), which he wrote and published in 1962. Karl Mannheim had been appointed to the Chair in the Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, in 1946, but died the following year. Campbell Stewart based the book on Mannheim's manuscript and lecture notes. His last book, Higher Education in Postwar Britain, was published in 1989. He was Vice-Chancellor of Keele University 1967–79. Perhaps fittingly, Professor Stewart died while on a visit to Keele University on 23 April 1997.

Introduction

In Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Education (1, 2: 99–113) Professor Campbell Stewart attempts to explain the nature of Mannheim's thought by exploring the main trends in the continuity of Mannheim's thought to see how these came to be expressed in his approach to the sociology of education. He does so by considering what he sees as two geographically distinct phases of Mannheim's work: The German Period and The English Period.

In his consideration of Mannheim's German Period, Campbell Stewart furnishes readers with detail of the background of the development of his thought from his doctoral thesis (1922) and his writings produced at the universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt before he fled the Nazi regime in 1933 to come to England. The development of the general philosophic bases of Mannheim's sociology are considered in his key texts including Analysis of Epistemology (1922), Interpretation of Weltanschauung (1923), Historicism (1925), The Sociology of Knowledge (1925), Conservative Thought (1927) and the German edition of Ideology and Utopia (1929).

Campbell Stewart then moves on to explore Mannheim's English Period from 1933, when he worked at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Education, University of London until his death in 1947. A revised English translation of Ideology and Utopia was published in Britain in 1936 and Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1940), which contains the often quoted,

Sociologists do not regard education solely as a means of realizing abstract ideas of culture, such as humanism or technical specialization, but as part of the process of influencing men and women. Education can only be understood when we know for what society and for what social position the children are being educated. (p. 105)

and Diagnosis of Our Time (1943), in which, Campbell Stewart asserts, Mannheim

… develops the whole theme of a sociological approach to education. Aims and methods in education have to be understood ‘in and for a given society’. Education is one of the means of influencing human behaviour, a form of social control which can be effective in maintaining emotional stability and mental integrity only if it has strategy in common with agencies outside the school. Education can no longer be considered mainly as an interchange between teacher and pupil. It is part of a broader process altogether. (p.106)

Campbell Stewart is clear in his admiration of Mannheim's contribution and critical of his detractors, such as G. H. Bantock. Although his intellectual contribution was cut short ‘when he died in 1947, he had already had an important effect, not all of it good, because it was not difficult for shallow or prejudiced minds to distort or over-simplify his thinking for their own purposes’ (p.99).

For Campbell Stewart, Mannheim's belief of the study of education is as a social science that involves ‘a synoptic study for pursuing which data could be collected and collated from many different fields’. As Gary McCulloch (50, 1: 100–119) has noted elsewhere in the BJES, ‘Mannheim's published work established a disciplinary heritage, an inspiration and source for continued sociological work’.

Other related articles in the Journal include: Professor Campbell Stewart's Progressive Education – Past Present and Future (27, 2: 103–10) as well as Disciplines Contributing to Education? Educational Studies and the Disciplines (50, 1: 100–119); Utopianism and Education: The Legacy of Thomas More (49, 3: 299–315); Relativism, objectivity and moral judgment (27, 2: 125–39); Jung and the living past (6, 2: 128–39) and The sociology of knowledge and the curriculum (21, 3: 277–89).

Karl Mannheim and the Sociology
of Education

by W. A. C. Stewart, Professor of Education,
University College of North Staffordshire

Karl Mannheim came to England in 1933 as an exile from Germany. He was actually a Hungarian born in Budapest at the end of the last century and educated in his own country, where he had been trained in the German philosophic tradition. He taught sociology in German universities after the first World War, at Heidelberg and then at Frankfurt-am-Main, where he held the Chair of Sociology; and, before he left Germany, he had built up an international reputation for himself in academic circles. When he came to England he started to teach sociology at the London School of Economics, and, as his command of English improved and his writings were translated into the language, his ideas began to reach a wider circle.

We are not much inclined in this country to read systematic analyses of society, particularly when they were originally written in academic German and have had the variable advantage of being translated in America by those whose first language was not English. However, Mannheim's two main works, Ideology and Utopia and Man and Society, are of such importance for social philosophy and sociology that they deserve the hard work they demand. Besides, after he came to England, Mannheim turned to an analysis of the place of Britain in the emerging world picture, and in Diagnosis of Our Time, written in wartime, and in essays which were gathered together and published after his death entitled Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning he tried to show how Britain could take a unique place in the urgent conflict between what he called laissez-faire liberalism and totalitarianism. He brought to his examination of British institutions and ways of thinking a constructive candour and a massive learning, for which we have reason to be grateful.

In 1946 he was appointed to the newly created Chair of the Sociology of Education at the University of London Institute of Education, and he had then a field of study rich in possibilities and virtually unexplored in this country, where his discernment and his abilities for synthesis would have found scope. In his way, he would have deepened our thinking in education if he had lived. As it was, when he died in 1947, he had already had an important effect, not all of it good, because it was not difficult for shallow or prejudiced minds to distort or over-simplify his thinking for their own purposes.

It is the intention of this essay to try to show the main trends in the continuity of Mannheim's thought and to see how these came to be expressed in his approach to the sociology of education.

1. The German Period

Mannheim's doctoral thesis in 1922, Structural Analysis of Epistemology, though having obvious Kantian affinities (it was published as a Supplement to Kant-Studien in Berlin in 1922), finds ‘meaning’ not so much in the intrinsic properties of an object or a perception, as in relationship within a physical or psychological structure. In philosophy he specifically rejects absolutes of which we are, in some way, a part, and with which we can communicate. There can be no ‘revelation’ of knowledge through some pre-existing absolute, whether Christian or any other, nor do we grasp the reality of an object because the reality was there and is timelessly the same and happened to be revealed to our experience. The reality exists in the essential contact in our experience within time, with all its historical limitations and partial perspectives.

This rationalism is always present in Mannheim's thought, and he says that his emphasis on ‘this-worldliness’ prevents him from making any jump beyond, such as postulating a pre-existent realm of truth and validity. In all that Mannheim has written we find the idea of structure, of inter-connectedness within history, of what he himself calls ‘relationism’, present in simple or elaborated form. His sociology is rooted in philosophy, and the ‘sociology of knowledge’ grows out of his dissatisfaction with the final reference to absolutes in traditional epistemology. He recognized the metaphysical consequences in this attitude to truth in history and indeed to the concept of truth as a whole.¹ In his writings on the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim from the beginning differentiated between the ways of knowing and verifying appropriate to the natural sciences and mathematics, and those appropriate to the social sciences.

‘It is well known that the Hellenic or Shakespearian spirit presented itself under different aspects to different generations. This, however, does not mean that knowledge of this kind is relative and hence worthless. What it does mean is that the type of knowledge conveyed by natural science differs fundamentally from historical knowledge – we should try to grasp the meaning and structure of historical understanding in its specificity, rather than reject it merely because it is not in conformity with the positivist truth-criteria sanctioned by natural science.’²

He gained no satisfaction from the approach to truth worked out by the Vienna school of logicians. As Bramstedt and Gerth say, he engaged in sociological study as a response to the challenging present. Positivism as it took shape in Vienna left too much out of the field of discourse. The general philosophic bases of his sociology were laid in Structural Analysis of Epistemology (1922), Interpretation of Weltanschauung (1923), and Historicism (1924). In The Sociology of Knowledge (1925) a change is apparent in that he does not now make the analysis in such general philosophic terms. Instead of interpreting past ages by bringing together as many ‘adequate’ views as possible in order to recreate something of the climate of the times, he applies a Marxian technique, unmasking thought systems and power devices in ruling groups. As always, Mannheim rejected Marx's reliance on the unique significance of the proletariat. In this essay there appears a readiness to see social and philosophic ideas expressed in actual social groups, and conversely, that membership of such groups tends to make certain ways of thinking more likely than others.

In Conservative Thought (1927) he took this further in an actual piece of historical analysis of the social consequences of the struggle in German class structure between 1800 and 1830. The earliest sketch of ‘ideological’ and ‘utopian’ ways of thinking appears in this essay. These characteristic polarizations of thought and attitude can be reliably detected, says Mannheim, in the last century of development of our western industrial society.

In 1929 the German version of Ideology and Utopia appeared.³ The main thesis of this work represents a further refinement and expansion of his earlier sociological theory. He takes the general proposition that thought and attitude are circumscribed by our position in time and place, and he tries to show two main perspectives or viewpoints which have arisen in our past and present western situation.

Perhaps the best way to show the nature of the two perspectives from which the book takes its title is to quote Mannheim's own words:

‘The term “ideology” reflects the one discovery which emerged from political conflict, namely, that ruling groups can in their thinking become so intensively interest-bound to a situation that they are simply no longer able to see certain facts which would undermine their sense of domination. There is implicit in the word “ideology” the insight that in certain situations the collective unconscious of certain groups obscures the real condition of society both to itself and to others and thereby stabilizes it.

The concept of “utopian” thinking reflects the opposite discovery of the political struggle, namely that certain oppressed groups are intellectually so strongly interested in the destruction and transformation of a given condition of society that they unwittingly see only those elements in the situation which tend to negate it. Their thinking is incapable of correctly diagnosing an existing condition of society. They are not at all concerned with what really exists; rather in their thinking they already seek to change the situation that exists. Their thought … can be used only as a direction for action. (The collective unconscious) turns its back on everything which would shake its belief or paralyse its desire to change things.’⁴

He examines these two characteristic ways of thinking and evaluating, showing how an unreflective and traditionalist attitude, characteristic of the nobility in a feudal social structure, can harden into a conservative or reactionary style of...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Education Matters
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Sixty years of the Society for Educational Studies
• Chairs of the Society for Educational Studies 1951–2012
• Introduction
• Editors of the British Journal of Educational Studies 1952–2012
• Selected Articles
• 1 Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Education
• 2 Tradition and the Comprehensive School
• 3 The Examination at Eleven Plus
• 4 The 1870 Education Act
• 5 Christian Theology and Educational Theory: Can there be Connections?
• 6 The Impact of Research on Educational Studies
• 7 Philosophy of Education, 1952–82
• 8 The Sociology of Education, 1952–82
• 9 The History of Education in the 1980s
• 10 The Place of Theory of Education in Teacher Education
• 11 The Importance of Traditional Learning
• 12 City Technology Colleges: an Old Choice of School?
• 13 Education and Values
• 14 What is Evidence-Based Education?
• 15 The Need for Randomised Controlled Trials in Educational Research
• 16 The Educative Importance of Ethos
• 17 The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman and Us
• 18 John Dewey, Gothic and Modern
• An Appreciation of Roy Niblett CBE
• Index