18

Conclusion: The End of Education?

Introduction

Part of the purpose of this book was to discuss the continuous development of educational thought over about 3,000 years. We have tried to show that whilst some ideas have fallen into disuse or disrepute others have been modified and refined and have continued to exist. We have seen that education is essentially concerned with the transmission of values, knowledge and beliefs from one generation to the next. Some values, knowledge and beliefs may change over time but there has often been a sense of continuity, sometimes even progress. Many would see the twentieth century as the rise of democracy over competing belief systems, and with democracy, ideas of universal education and equality of opportunity have gradually been accepted, in principle if not in practice.

Yet many problems remain, and perhaps one of the most important, from an educational point of view, is a challenge to democratic optimism in the form of extreme cultural relativism or some versions of postmodernism. In earlier chapters we have seen that the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, despite temporary periods of chaos and reaction, led to the growth of the social sciences and to the spread of humanistic beliefs in the latter part of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth century. Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, social theorists have developed more complex interpretations, some of which question fundamental values and beliefs.

We have seen that sociology as a discipline emerged from the Enlightenment. The so-called Enlightenment project of the eighteenth century was concerned to provide rational explanations not only for the physical universe but also for humanity itself. Enlightenment thinkers were, generally, optimistic. Critics of the Enlightenment have even attributed blame for the excesses of the French Revolution to an exaggerated faith in human reason, and too little respect for traditions which they saw as the inherited wisdom or culture of their society. The rise of social science in the nineteenth century was essentially a product of both traditional values and scientific rationality, taking into account the limited rationality of human beings and their institutions. Many of these social science explanations, sometimes referred to as 'grand narratives', have been called into question by postmodernism, along with many historical explanations.

One important part of the sociological account of late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries was the period described as 'economic nationalism'¹ which dominated the years from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1970s. The features of economic nationalism included the fact that education assumed a key political role in modern societies, and that there was sustained economic growth. Progress was seen in terms of national economic growth; and three political priorities emerged for governments - prosperity, security and opportunity. All three were linked together by government policies, business organisations, families and education.

Economic nationalism was reinforced by the forging of common, national cultures. But there were several outstanding problems of modern capitalism, including how to maintain social solidarity and control in a society based on inequalities of reward and status. An additional problem was how to avoid alienation and loss of personal identity. Part of the answer was seen as 'meritocracy',² itself associated with bureaucracy, which relies on the myth of fairness of life-chances, whilst the reality is class and privilege. A further question concerns the role of education: is the task allotted to education too great? Schools are required to be responsible not only for social control but also for education for democracy, manpower training and individual development.

The breakdown of economic nationalism was said to occur after the oil crisis in the 1970s. In the 1980s the doctrines of the New Right presented another threat to social consensus. More recently, there has been much discussion of globalisation and the demise of economic nationalism. However, one of the advantages of economic nationalism was consensus which was partly based on education. There were at least three important elements in the educational consensus: universal primary and secondary education; very high participation rates in tertiary education; and the vocationalising of education.

Tensions and contradictions existed in what was referred to as economic nationalism. They were discussed critically by intellectuals, sociologists and others, some of whom referred to themselves as postmodernists. Postmodernism is a set of theories, not necessarily coherent or consistent, which postulate a complete transformation from modern society, emphasising: relativism (the view that no theory of society is better than any other); scientific objective truth is non-existent; grand theories or 'narratives' such as those of the Enlightenment or Marxism are meaningless; knowledge is not about truth but about power and oppression; symbols, signs and other forms of communication, not just language, are important in the human condition. Postmodern thinking leaves a series of major problems for education. Not least is the difficulty of deciding what to teach when nothing is more important than anything else. We saw in Chapter 1 how some historians have counter-attacked the postmodernist challenge; some social scientists have also dealt with the problems of high modernism within different theoretical perspectives.

Critical Theory

These theories owe much to the so-called Frankfurt School which originated at the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University in 1923. In the 1930s the rise of the Nazi Party caused most of the members to migrate to the USA: first to Columbia University and later to California. The group included not only sociologists but some who would achieve fame as social psychologists, such as Erich Fromm, and social philosophers such as Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Part of the idea of the Institute of Social Research was to integrate social science disciplines and to see society in a more holistic way, a return to the aspiration of Comte but not to his positivism. It has sometimes been suggested that the basis of this integration was a combination of Marx and Freud, but this would be to underestimate the originality of the Frankfurt approach to critical theory.

After the Second World War, some of the group remained in the USA, others returned to Germany, and although the Institute was officially dissolved the work has continued, notably through the research of Jurgen Habermas (1929-) at the Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt. In some respects critical theory is a continuation of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment project, attempting to apply critical reasoning or rational thinking to aspects of society which are taken for granted or considered to be 'commonsense'.

Critical theory has cast doubt on much traditional sociology, especially functionalism and positivism, as well as postmodernism. Critical theorists also reject 'pluralism' because it represents an acceptance or accommodation of many of the unjust and irrational features of capitalist society. One important method of critical sociology is 'unmasking', that is, exposing the contradictions between the public goals, values and mission statements of institutions and what happens in reality. For example, it is claimed that markets are 'free' when they are really manipulated or rigged; or it is claimed that bureaucracies operate 'rationally' when their real practices are often lacking in reason and fairness, frequently disobeying their own rules. Above all, the method of critical theory is to continue to attack, or at least to question, traditional methods of social science and institutions on the assumption that change, but not revolution, will eventually take place.

Some features of the thinking behind critical theory include the following ideas: the assertion that critical theory is emancipatory, in the sense that one of its aims is freedom from 'technical' or instrumental rationality, that is, short-term means without examining the end or purpose of an activity. An important technique of critical theory is to ask 'Whose interest are served by...?' (for example, a belief, or tradition or behaviour). Critical theory also attacks the obssession of many social scientists with calculation and measurement; it is often alleged that clever statistics become an end in themselves. Culture is a central concept for critical theorists who attack many other sociologists for their lack of attention to this important idea derived from social anthropology. Critical theorists also give examples of the fact that instrumental rationality is used to control and dominate. Critical theorists want to return to 'the individual in society', not to individual psychology or individualism but to social psychology and personality (for example, the famous study by Theodore Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality³ published in 1950). Another key concept is ideology which is defined broadly by critical theorists as sets of beliefs which influence behaviour. Critical theory uses some of the ideas of Freud and psychoanalysis to discuss differences between surface appearances and deep structures, which may be irrational. Finally, critical theory emphasises the centrality of language and communication to cultural studies.

Habermas in particular sees the problem of modern society in terms of Legitimation Crisis⁴ in which he suggests that a key question for modern society is to ask 'Why accept this authority?' The fact that this question has now been asked so often goes some way to explaining the instability of many capitalist societies. Habermas also suggests that there is a related crisis, that is, a motivation crisis (many citizens now ask 'Why bother to participate?'). A third crisis, according to Habermas is 'identity crisis' (the individual constantly asks 'who am I, where do I belong?') To some extent this is a return to Durkheim's concept of anomie in the context of late capitalism.

Habermas has been criticised by both left and right. He was a revisionist who criticised some student movements for 'left fascism'. He was preoccupied with rational decision making; and specifying the conditions for consensus governed by the 'force of the better argument', that is, rationality; he was concerned with language and communication as part of rationality. According to Habermas, rationality has less to do with knowledge than with how knowledge is used. For example, when X speaks to Y, X implicitly claims intelligibility, truth, justification and sincerity, that is, the lack of any intention to deceive.⁵

All four claims are contingent and fallible. The ideal of communicative rationality is Habermas' basis for countering relativism. In this context he also discusses myths. Myths are seen as concretised modes of thought, integrating different aspects of life within a single domain. They express the organisation of societies which have not generated separate intellectual domains or arenas of discourse. Habermas has thus an evolutionary view of society - the expansion, over time, of rationality. He claims that the more we are able rationally to ground the conduct of our lives in the three main spheres of existence, that is, relations with the material world, with others and in the expressive realm of aesthetics, the more advanced our form of society can be said to be. Thus, Habermas implies that the modern world is more 'enlightened'. In traditional cultures man is more at the mercy of nature, the contingencies of which are 'explained' by myth: the life-world is the taken-for-granted universe, what some people would refer to as 'commonsense'. Tradition in such societies is all important.

Social evolution is connected with 'decentring' and separating the three main spheres of existence. Habermas considers Max Weber's ideas to be central to this kind of thinking, but considered Weber's view of modern society to be too pessimistic. Habermas said we need to inject communicative rationality back into the everyday social world.

Habermas rejects relativism: the rational is superior to the pre-rational or the irrational, but what are the universal criteria of rationality? He sometimes seems to rely on the idea of social evolution but without the historicist mistake of inevitability. In this respect, critical theory offers an optimistic alternative to postmodernist, nihilistic interpretations of reality. It is important for education because many of the ideas of critical theory can be seen to be completely compatible with some of the educational ideas discussed earlier in this book, such as the need for young people to learn to be critically reflective in the learning process rather than to memorise information or to be socialised into conformity and obedience.

Postmodernism logically leaves no room for education in the normal meaning of the word: education implies a planned, purposive rational process, but planning, purpose and rationality have no place in the vision of the more extreme postmodernists. Educationists are likely to be more attracted to other visions of the future such as those of Habermas or Giddens.⁶ Even so, educationists have to plan for the future without knowing exactly what it will be. That is why certain principles of living in society and education are essential. Aristotle said that no human being could live without other human beings: only a god or a beast could live alone. We are thus driven back to considering education about society and for society as the first priority, more important than education for work, for example.

In our view, educational ideas cannot move far in the direction of postmodernism. The more extreme versions of postmodernism reject value preferences, but education is essentially concerned with value priorities, and also requires visions of a better society and a better way of life. Socrates was right: the Sophists were wrong. For that reason, we have concluded the book with this chapter which presents rational alternatives to postmodernism in the form of other late modernist philosophies such as critical theory and the sociological views of Habermas and Giddens. Whereas postmodernism rejects the values of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment developments, we believe that twenty-first-century education will be a fulfilment of some Enlightenment ideas about education, as refined by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century experiences discussed in earlier chapters, but without the naive optimism of the Enlightenment. Pedagogy will be central to this development: it is remarkable that so far educational practice has had comparatively little concern for the pupils, despite Comenius and many of the reformers who followed.

References

1. P. Brown et til.. 'The Transformation of Education and Society: An Introduction', in A.H. Halsey et ai. (eds), Education: Culture, Economy and Society. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997), pp. 1-7.

2. M. Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (Penguin, 1958).

3. T. Adorno et ai., The Authoritarian Personality (Harper, New York, 1950).

4. J. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Heinemann Educational, 1976).

5. J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Competence (Heinemann Educational, 1984, 1988), 2 vols.

6. A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Polity, Cambridge. 1991).

Further Reading

Habermas, J., The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge Polity Press, 1987).

Kumar, K., From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society (Blackwell, Oxford, 1995).