S O C I O L O G Y A N D C O M P A R A T I V E E D U C A T I O N : A

C O M P A R A T I V E E D U C A T I O N I S T ' S P E R S P E C T I V E

BRIAN HOLMES

Abstract - The thesis examined in this paper is that comparative educationists, far from following intellectual trends, have introduced new dimensions to methods of enquiry developed first by historians, then by social scientists and, finally and perhaps marginally, by conceptual philosophers. In so far as comparisons can be made, it is asserted that, in the twentieth century, paradigms in comparative education reflect revolutions in the natural sciences, and that to the extent that these preceded shifts in social science paradigms after about 1900, comparative educationists debated and rejected positivism before sociologists did, in the Anglo-Saxon world at least.

A second assumption which is examined is that comparative educationists have anticipated issues which subsequently became important in the growth of national and parochial research in sociology, and for that matter in political science.

A disclaimer is necessary: little attempt has been made to examine the causal influences in either field or between comparative educationists and sociologists. The history of such interaction at a personal and institutional level is very recent, the participants in the interchanges are, in many cases, still alive, and a substantive recent history of comparative education has yet to be written, although to some extent E. Shils' analysis of the history of sociological enquiry provides a schema against which the growth of comparative education can be compared.

R ~ s u m ~ - La th6se soutenue dans cet article est que les th6oriciens de l'6ducation compar6e, loin de suivre les courants intellectuels, ont introduit de nouvelles dimen- sions dans les m6thodes d'enqu&e +labor6es d 'abord par les historiens, puis d6velop- p6es par les sp6cialistes des sciences sociales, et enfin - marginalement peut-6tre - par les philosophes conceptuels. Pour autant que l 'on puisse 6tablir des comparaisons, on constate qu'au XXe si+cle, les paradigmes de l'6ducation compar6e refl6tent les r6volutions qui surviennent dans les sciences naturelles et qu'ils se modifient avant m6me ceux des sciences sociales, aux alentours de 1900, au point que les th6oriciens de l'6ducation compar6e contestent et rejettent le positivisme avant que les sp6cialistes des sciences sociales soient parvenus fi cette d6marche, du moins dans les pays anglo- saxons.

Une autre assomption de la th~se est que les th6oriciens de l'6ducation compar6e ont anticip6 des situations qui devaient se r6v61er importantes par la suite, avec le d6velop- pement de la recherche sociologique nationale et locale, et 6galement avec celui des sciences politiques.

I1 est juste de reconnaitre n6anmoins qu'une timide tentative a ~t6 faite dans l'intention d'6tudier les influences causales, que ce soit dans chacun de ces domaines ou entre th~oriciens de l'6ducation eompar~e et sociologues. L'histoire d'une telle inter- action au niveau individuel et au niveau institutionnel est tr~s r6cente; les hommes qui ont particip6 fi ces ~changes sont encore pour la plupart vivants et une histoire r6cente

International Review o f Education - Internationale Zeitschrift fiir Erziehungswissen- schaft - Revue Internationale de Pkdagogie XXVI1 (1981), 397-410. All rights reserved. Copyright © 1982 by Unesco Institute for Education, Hamburg and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague.

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autonome de l'éducation comparée reste ä écrire. Toutefois, l'analyse que E. Shils a fa~te de l'histoire de l'enquête sociologique fournit, jusqu'ä un certain point, une base permettant d'évaluer le développement de l'éducation comparée.

Zusammenfassung - In dieser Arbeit wird die These überprüft, daß vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaftler, weit davon entfernt, intellektuellen Trends zu folgen, neue Dimensionen für Untersuchungsmethoden eingeführt haben, die zuerst von Histori- kern, dann von Sozialwissenschaftlern und am Rande auch von konzeptuellen Philoso- phen entwickelt wurden. Soweit es möglich ist, Vergleiche anzustellen, wird dargelegt, daß im 20. Jahrhundert Paradigmen der vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft tief- greifene Veränderungen in den Naturwissenschaften widerspiegeln. Sofern diese den nach ca. 1900 stattfindenden Wandlungen in sozialwissenschaftlichen Paradigrnen vorausgingen, haben vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaftler noch vor den Soziolo- gen den Positivismus erörtert und verworfen, zumindest in der angelsächsischen Welt.

Zweitens wird die Annahme überprüft, daß vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft- ler Fragen vorweggenommen haben, die später in der Entwicklung nationaler und örtlicher soziologischer Forschung und auch in der Politologie Bedeutung erlangten.

Eine Einschränkung muß noch gemacht werden: Der Autor hat weitgehend darauf verzichtet, die kausalen Einflüsse in den beiden Einzelbereichen sowie die gegenseiti- gen Einwirkungen von vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaftlern und Soziologen zu untersuchen. Die Geschichte solcher Wechselwirkungen auf persönlicher und in- stitutioneller Ebene ist noch sehr jung, die Teilnehmer an ihnen sind in vielen Fällen noch am Leben, und eine substantielle neuere Geschichte der vergleichenden Erzie- hungswissenschaft ist noch nicht geschrieben. Dennoch bietet E. Shils Analyse der Geschichte soziologischer Untersuchungen eine gewisse Grundlage für einen Vergleich mit der Entwicklung der vergleichenden Erziehungswissenschaft.

Educationists are notoriously parochial, ifonly because at one level, as school teachers, they are committed to the transmission from one generation to the next of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the society in which they work. Sociologists are no less parochial in their substantive work in spite of the fact that there is at the moment no clear sociological profession, ad- mission to which is restricted to persons with sociological qualifications. Working sociologists tend to study the institutions with which in their own country they are most familiar, even if they pay lip service to comparative method. Educational and sociological research consequently tends to be ethnocentric in a way in which research in the natural sciences is supposed not

to be. Comparative educationists in theory and in practice have been and are

committed to the study of systems of education other than their own and to cross-national comparisons. This commitment has influenced the methods they have used, which are, in important respects, different from those devel- oped by sociologists who regarded the comparative method as a viable substitute for experiment. The latter made comparisons between ideal typical polar models of society or between societies located on a continuum of societal change. Within this framework they were able to locate their own

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society and investigate it. They are not under the same obligation as com- parative educationists to examine and compare nation-specific aspects of society.

Natural scientists go even further. They rarely ask whether their approach within a framework of physical or natural' laws is ethnocentric. It could be argued, however, that t here are differences between English and French styles ofreasoning and that these are legitimised by different mathematical sys~erfis~ This point will be referred to somewhat later.

What sets some comparative educationists apart from both sociologists and natural scientists is that, following Sir Michael Sadler, comparative educationists recognise explicitly that each nation has its ethos or natural spirit, which should be taken into account when creating general methodolog- ical frameworks.

These assertions need to be examined a little more closely if we are to classify a range of intellectual positions into which natural and social scien- rists can be placed. For example, a number of sociological paradigms have regional, if not world-wide, currency. Several patterns of theories and as- sumptions have their origins in the macro-philosophies created during the nineteenth century. Hegel, J.S. Mill, Marx and Comte were among the authors who provided frameworks for students of society which were similar to that created by Newton and used by natural scientists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It is clearly possible to classify sociologists, from whatever country, as positivists, and indeed until Alvin Gouldner's attack on positivism it re- mained a paradigm within which many British and American sociologists worked. They failed to accept, even if they recognised them, the implications of the Einsteinian revolution. To be sure, this paradigm shift was not re- cognised, nor accepted by all natural scientists. Nevertheless this major break with Newtonian physics is the basis on which the complex pattern of twentieth century societal paradigms can be analysed. The macro nature of the pre-nineteen hundred philosophies within positivism suggests, of course, that at the most general level sociological theories and assumptions were not ethnocentric and indeed were not intended to be. Certainly they were not regarded as nation-specific . . . . .

All the same, even at this most general level, it might be said that Hegelian- ism appealed to German academics, and Comte informed French academic attitudes in much the same way as J.S. Mill influenced English social and natural scientists. For those social scientists who became activists or social reformers, the theoretical paradigrns were used as ideologies to mobilise followers and legitimise action. The career of Marx and the subsequent use to which his writings have been pur, exemplifies the extent to which social scientific theories can be used not merely to examine social institutions but to

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reform them. His sociological views have become a political creed but, at the same time, his middle-range theories have provided research models and techniques. This combination places Marx in a category by himself.

Hence, in Europe, there emerged in the nineteenth century a number of general social theories, most of which could be regarded on some criteria as being positivistic. They undoubtedly provided frameworks within which social scientists including sociologists formulated their middle-range theories. For the most part they incorporated a theory of social change and postulated the inevitable arrival of a millenium of some kind.

Among the authors of middle-range theories, some of whom bridge, in- tellectually, nineteenth and twentieth century movements, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Herbert Spencer stand out as influential theoreticians whose models, while general in nature, cannot easily be transformed into ideologies to legitimise political and social action. The models and techniques provided by these middle-range theorists have an international appeal and indeed have been adopted by sociologists in many countries in a way that the ideologies derived from more general philosophical models have not. To be sure, Pareto is regarded as a right-wing economist, sociologist, political scientist, and on these grounds his models may be rejected as useful by left-wing social scien- tists. Weber, while hardly a Marxist, has not been categorised in the same kind of way, but Talcott Parsons' consensus theory of social action has been regarded as very conservative. Thus, while it is possible to classify and accept or reject the views ofmiddle-range theorists by r~ference to major philosoph- ical positions, it is clear that the political implications of the positions exemplified by the middle-range theorists are iaot so obvious nor so readily accepted or violently rejected on these grounds.

The purpose of the distinctions is to suggest that at one level sociological theories, while general, should be seen in relation to more general philoso- phies which give to substantive sociological enquiry a national flavour and style. A large number of the theories which currently form sociological paradigms are European in origin and include many of the characteristics of positivism and, as Karl Popper insisted in The Open Society, historicism. Moreover most of them were compatible with the Newtonian positivistic paradigrn wideiy used by physicists, though some of them were designed to deal with biological phenomena.

For the most part, nineteenth century comparative educationists worked within similar, very general sets of European assumptions, albeit interpreted in what may be regarded as nation-specific ways. Jullien de Paris was positiv- istic in the sense that he advocated a method of enquiry based on induction. Victor Cousin adopted similar methods by insisting that sound comparative studies should begin with a review of national legislation. Ferdinand Buisson in France also regarded the collection and classification of data as a sine qua

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n o n of research. Closer inspection of the epistemologies which informed the work of, let us say, James Kay-Shuttleworth, Horace Mann, Henry Barnard and Matthew Arnold, is needed before concluding that the nineteenth century comparative educationists were not even creative middle-range theory buil- ders. What is clear is that they were practical men, committed by their task as administrators to formulate reform policies. In this sense, the nineteenth century pioneers of comparative education differ from the social scientists who formulated very general philosophies or middle-range theoretical frame- works. At the same time, as educationists they were not parochial, and shared in an international discourse which was practical in nature. The emerging sociologists participated in general theoretical discussions and debate. Many of them provided models which have been widely used subsequently by educationists.

National Styles

Just as Einstein's theories offered an alternative paradigm for the natural scientists, so pragmatism provided a distinctly new pattern of assumptions about knowledge and society. Post-Einstein relativism in the natural sciences can be more easily reconciled with pragmatism than with traditional positiv- ism or any other European ideology. Thus, in the classification of social thought, a sharp distinction should be made between European and American theories. What I am asserting here is that intellectual climates in Europe and the USA began to diverge during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in spite of the fact that pragmatism had its origins in the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, whose scientific models were drawn from biology rather than physics.

On this it is interesting to note that many features of the work undertaken by natural scientists are far more nation-specific than is sometimes assumed, perhaps because the outcomes of scientific endeavour, testable in experience, are recognised and accepted everywhere. Attitudes, techniques and modets however vary, and the interest shown, at least since Benjamin Franklin, by American scientists including J. Willard Gibbs at Yale, in practical rather than theoretical problems illustrates a general and significant difference in the contribution made by European and American scientists. Again, within the Newtonian paradigm, a distinction of a general kind could be drawn between the contributions made by French and English natural scientists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Not all these differences can be explained by remembering that the French scientists were Cartesians and used the calculus, whereas British scientists were followers of Francis Bacon and, perhaps out of loyalty to Isaac Newton, continued to use geometrical methods.

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Thus, within the general frameworks estabiished in the natural and phys- ical sciences, there were, I contend, national styles which were disguised more in the natural sciences than in the social sciences. These styles were influenced by the degree to which, overtly, Euclidian or Cartesian geometry dominated modes of thought or the extent to which Newton's methods and techniques persisted in the face of the challenge to thinking presented by Descartes.

The differences between European and American intellectual frameworks which emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century can be seen as stemming in the natural sciences from the differences between biological and physical models - the former inform pragmatism, the latter many European styles of thinking. Both the physical and the biological models have their origins in Aristotle's distinctions between final and formal causes, which have been used as explanatory factors by some biologists and social scientists, and material and efficient causes, which have dominated the explanation offered by physical scientists and some social scientists. Pragmatism, furthermore, incorporated a relativism which is not found in Aristotle's theory of'causes'. We have to turn to the Sophists for classical authors who anticipated pragmatism.

Bases of Comparison

Most of the concerns and problems investigated by present-day sociologists and by some comparative educationists can be classified in terms of the work of Europeans: Marx (1818-1883), Spencer (1820-1903), Durkheim (1858-1917) and Weber (1864-1920). Of these, Marx alone provided a con- ceptual structure as broad and general as that of Hegel or J.S. Mill and combined the methods of dialectics and induction. Mill's System of Logic, of course, provided in addition models for the development ofprecise statistical techniques which have been used extensively by social scientists.

Thus we find, among sociologists, wide acceptance of the notion of class structure, but not all of them interpret it in Marxist terms. Concepts such as consciousness, false consciousness, ideology, alienation, infra- and super- structure all provide sociologists with useful tools for analysis which are open to national interpretation. Spencer's models were more biological and al- lowed societies to be examined in terms of their structure and functions. His direct and vicarious influence, moderated by Darwinism, provides a major nineteenth century link between European and American social thought. Durkheim's notion of a collective conscience as a powerful moral force seems in some way to offer an antidote to Marx's materialism. Weber provided another alternative by stressing theories of leadership, power, bureaucracy, and he was, perhaps above all, interested in the development of rationality as

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an organising principle in bureaucratic societies which in the event could be capitalist or socialist.

The comparative element in these middle-range theories becomes apparent in the theories of social change advanced by these scholars. Societies could be classified, for Spencer, Durkheim, Weber and indeed Tonnies, in terms of the traditional and modern. This approach to comparative method was devel- oped by David Redfield and Talcott Parsons in the USA. Marx, of course, postulated contrasting modal types of society and placed them - feudal, capitalist and communist - in historical, and some commentators would say, inevitable sequence.

A number of sociologists, such as William Sumner, William Ogburn and more recently Karl Mannheim, took technological innovation as the major source of social change without asserting that it would inevitably follow the same or similar paths.

In present-day research, these theories permit the identification oftypes of society on a world scale. Capitalist and socialist societies are regarded as polar types - so too are rural-urban and developed-developing societies. Conse- quently the nation-specific features of let us say USSR, China and the German Democratic Republic on the one hand, and the nation-specific features of, let us say, USA, Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany on the other, are less important to sociologists making comparisons than the fact that one group of societies can be classified as socialist, the other as capitalist. The distinction between developed and developing countries is no less at- tractive and indeed widely used, even though the criteria on the basis ofwhich societies are classified are less precise than might be desirable even if they are principally economic.

Sociological theories imply ~ha~t comparisons can and should be made on the basis of polar type models or in the light of societal types in an historical sequence. Those sociologists who have claimed that the comparative method can be used in the social sciences - because the experimental method of the natural sciences cannot be used - have encouraged this kind of classification of social systems.

To be sure, there has been a tendency among comparative educationists to adopt polar-type models as a way of classifying societies. Isaac Kandel, who classified national systems into those which had centralised administrative systems, etc., and those which had decentralised ones, exemplifies this ten- dency. He also concluded that the former were totalitarian, the latter demo- cratic. By the same token, many comparative educationists accept a dis- tinction between developed and developing countries, and between indus, trialised and non-industrialised or industrialising countries, for the purpose of comparison. Against this approach two caveats should be repeated. First, as administrators the nineteenth century pioneers of comparative education

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were interested principally in their own national (or state) system ofeducation and compared it with other (usually one other) national systems of education. Secondly, Sadler insisted that each national system of education had its own ethos which reflected the nation's spirit. Consequently, the criteria on which societal types were classified for the purpose ofcomparison were significantly different from those provided in the more general sociological models.

There can, moreover, be little doubt that the nineteenth century com- parative educationists were not macro-theory builders. None of them can be regarded as such when compared with Weber, Durkheim, and Spencer - let alone with Marx, Hegel or J.S. Mill. To be sure, William Torrey Harris was a leading Hegelian, Victor Cousin was a philosopher in his own right and Matthew Arnold a writer of note. The insights each of them had into the national systems they examined were remarkable but were not dependent on any major philosophical or middle-range theory held by them.

Attempts have been made, particularly by Pedro Rossello, to elaim Jullien de Paris as the father ofcomparative education. It would be possible to argue that his claim to fame rests on his proposal that comparative education should be based on induction. The data to be collected were about national systems ofeducation, however, rather than industrial or non-industrial coun- tries. A careful study of the methodological assumptions of the nineteenth century comparativ~ educationists does not reveal any profound interest on their part in major social theories or epistemologies. Statistics were collected particularly by the US Bureau of Education, and Harris had his doubts about their reliability and validity. Cousin advocated a study of legislation, but

Arnold noted that in practice it could be and was frequently ignored. Sadler's views that the living spirit of nations and the ethos of their educational systems should be compared, and that in understanding the process of education, what weht on outside schools was as important as what was going on inside them, ~ame nearer than most to providing a distinctly different methodological framework within which comparative educationists should work. Harris' claim that a purpose of comparative education was to generate theories with directive and predictive power, marginally provided an alter- native to induction as the method of enquiry. The position of these two pioneers came closer to the amelioration of Lester F. Ward than the macro- theorists.

These broad distinctions drawn between the intellectual and practical interests of nineteenth century sociologists and nineteenth century com- parative educationists, while crude, are useful if developments in the twentieth century are to be analysed. For example, it is possible to classify present-day comparative educationists and sociologists in terms of their implicit or overt commitment to one of several Weltansehauungen. It is also possible to discover whether or not they have been educated as natural

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scientists - and if so, whether in physics or biology - or as social scientists - and if so, whether as economists, sociologists or political scientists. Moreover, it is possible to say whether they were educated and socialised (at least early on) in Europe, North America or Japan.

Twentieth Century Approaches

Simply to classify comparative educationists and sociologists in the light of these criteria does not make it possible to assert how and under what influences the intellectual position of any one of the leaders in either field evolved. A careful historical study would involve an examination of relation- ships between sociologists, relationships between comparative educationists and finally the nature and extent of relationships between sociologists and comparative educationists during the twentieth century.

In tracing the growth of sociology, Edward Shils has of course referred not only to the intellectual linkages between sociologists in Europe, but he has also pointed to the impetus given by Europeans who left Europe in the nineteen-thirties to sociology in the USA. Wars and pogroms in Europe equally influenced the development of comparative education in England and the USA. It is useful to look at some detailed examples of these processes.

Joseph Lauwerys left Belgium as a young boy soon after the outbreak of the First World War. He brought to the study of comparative education powers of analysis which owed much to Cartesian methods and a respect for facts which doubtless stemmed from his training in England as a natural scientist. Lauwerys' background in the natural sciences and their historical develop- ment undoubtedly made hirn aware of the work of Ernst Mach, Sir Arthur Eddington and other philosophers of science who were grappling with nineteenth century natural scientific paradigms. As a science educator, he was and remained, in my opinion, a follower of J.S. Mill and an advocate of H.E. Armstrong's method of scientific discovery. Nevertheless he was profoundly influenced by his work with progressive educators in the USA and, through the New Education Fellowship, elsewhere. John Dewey's theory of learning by doing and from experience, appealed to hirn. These approaches basically took account of Einstein's revolution in physics. But he was deeply interested in the social functions of science, and through his contacts with Lancelot Hogben, John D. Bernal and others, he saw more clearly than most the emerging relationship between methods of enquiry in the natural sciences, sociology and comparative education. Indeed, along with Sir Fred Clarke, he encouraged the introduction of a sociological dimension into the study of education in England. Previously it had been dominated by scholars interest- ed in principles and the history of ideas, and by educational psychologists.

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Nicholas Hans was another pioneer of comparative education in England. He brought an historical philosophical perspective to his earlier studies. His background certainty influenced his approach. He spent a year in a Czarist jail, was urged to support the new regime after the Revolution, and prepared a thesis on David Hume before leaving Odessa with his wife for England. His collaboration with S. Hessen doubtless influenced the development of his work in comparative education, and while he remained in the tradition of Sadler, Kandel and Friedrich Schneider, Hans helped Lauwerys in London to introduce sociological perspectives into comparative education research. His 'factors' approach, however, remained in the nineteenth century sociological traditions of seeking explanations in terms of historical or antecedent causes.

This was Kandel's position too. As a leading figure in the development of comparative education at Teachers College, Columbia, in the USA, he brought to his work a European background which undoubtedly influenced his assumptions and approach as a historian-philosopher. Doubtless, as with Hans and Lauwerys in England, the climate of intellectual discussion in his

• adopted country helped to shape his attitude. In the New Era in Education, for example, mindful of the Second World War and as indicated earlier, he clearly identified decentralised systems of administration with democracies and assumed that decentralised systems could not be democratic - a view widely held by American social scientists in spite of the example of France.

The evolution of the positions finally adopted by Kandel, Lauwerys and Hans can be compared with the consistently held assumptions which in- formed Schneider's work. As a philosopher, he too looked for the forces which made educational systems what they are. My feeling is, however, that he was more Hegelian than Marxist and paid more attention in bis analysis to Aristotelian final and formal causes than to the latter's material and efficient causes. Such a superficial judgement should be accepted with caution. It is advanced simply to suggest that while sharing some of the assumptions of his contemporary comparative educationists he was a German educationist and philosopher.

These scholars, important as they are in comparative education, cannot be associated with the development of any macro-philosophical position, or indeed general middle-range theoretical position. They worked within a climate of intellectual opinion determined by their own origins, education, and the country and centre in which they did most of their academic work. Clearly they knew each other, had a wide range ofcontacts in many countries, participated in the growth of international agencies and knew and worked with the growing band of sociologists.

It must be said, however, that among them all, Lauwerys alone had a strong and internalised feeling for the paradigms within which the natural scientists were still working. Since, at least in Britain and the USA during the thirties,

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these were positivistic and for the most part their methods derived from Mill's canons of induction, it was not surprising that at one level it was possible to assume that sociologists, natural scientists and comparative educationists were working broadly within the same paradigms. The differences were of emphasis, in terms of the models and techniques they adopted. For example, it is difficult to categorise any of them as a Marxist or in any real sense a pragmatist.

Post-1945

Even in 1961 it was still possible to justify these assertions. When, in that year, the Comparative Education Society in Europe was established, all the well- known comparative educationists were there. They shared many assumptions about their work. Most of them were historian philosophers, few of them had a background in the natural sciences and, with some exceptions, they held positivism as a philosophical position with its variations, and induction as a method of enquiry in the light of which data are collected and explanation in terms of 'causes' given. Yet the apparent unanimity of basic assumptions among the older generation disguised differences which were emerging among younger scholars.

An issue which has divided comparativists, and indeed sociologists, since 1945, has been the nature of scientific method. A second and related issue has been how, by using appropriate methods of research, social scientists can contribute to the planned development of society. Among sociologists a sharp distinction can be drawn between those who favour evolutionary and concen- sus reform, and those who, in the interest of real change, favour revolutionary and conflict reform. Immediately after 1945, social debate in Britain turned on the need for total planning in a democratic society. Karl Mannheim thought it was possible. Karl Popper and Friedrich von Hayek held that it was undesirable, even if possible, and Popper at least was in favour of piecemeal social engineering.

These socio-political debates were legitimised by appeals to emerging social philosophies and middle-range theories. Sociologists in Britain and in the USA were locked into methods of enquiry legitimised by Mill's System of Logie and concepts of scientific method deduced from the success of Newtonian physics. As pragmatists, American sociologists used many of the theoretical concepts of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, but rejected total plan- ning. British sociologists were more divided in their attachment to this kind of planning. Popper's major contribution to the debate was to relate theories of social planning to theories about the methods of science which took the implication of Einstein's work fully into account.

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Post-war sociologists in Britain and the USA only became aware, in my judgement, of the paradigm shift which had occurred in the natural sciences when Alvin Gouldner's Crisis in Western Sociology appeared. Then, many of them at least, turned to a German school of social philosophers in Germany, the Frankfurt school, for guidance. Neo-Marxists appeared who were willing to concede that men negotiated their own social worlds and were not the pawns of economic determinism. The history of sociological debate in the post-1945 world is, in outline, sufticiently weil known to need no further elaboration here. Suffice it to say, it broke up the polar type models of sociology drawn from Marx, Mill and Hegel. On the other hand, for various reasons, many sociologists were unwilling to embrace pragmatism or the alternative offered by Popper to the problem of social scientific research.

The background of a new generation of comparative educationists in the USA helps to cxplain their reluctance to abandon positivism and induction. George Bereday received some ofhis training as a sociologist in London at the School of Economics. Harold Noah and Max Eckstein were also British- trained and brought to comparative education research models derived from Ernest Nagel's book on scientific method. Andreas Kazamias, an historian by inclination, also had a European background. British sociological techniques at the time fit in very weil with those which had been developed in the USA during the thirties and forties. A notable exemplifier of the empirical tech- niques derived from Mill is C. Arnold Anderson, who came from an in- tellectual background in rural sociology. The vogue in the sixties among those responsible for appointing faculty members to positions in comparative education was to find appropriately trained social scientists. This movement also found expression in the research carried out by economists, sociologists and psychologists, under the auspices of international agencies. All used empirical methods and psychometric and econometric techniques in line with this Millsian tradition. An example of the approach is found in the pioneering work of Torsten Husén and Neville Postlethwaite on the IEA study.

Popper's attack on historicism, induction and total social planning had far- reaching implications which were recognised by Lauwerys and Brian Holmes in London, and by E.J. King. From somewhat different perspectives, they began to examine the implications, for compärative education research, of Popper's position. In so doing, they, like Saul Robinsohn in Hamburg (and later Berlin), distanced themselves from the main stream of sociological, economic and psychological research in comparative education. While it is clear that sociologists, economists and psychologists were invading the field of comparative education, the reverse movement of comparative education- ists into these disciplines has been rare.

Nevertheless initiatives based upon Popper's understanding of scientific method were taken by comparative educationists before phenomenology and

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ethnomethodology became widely debated among sociologists. Moreover, particularly through the work of Robert King Hall the explicit application of pragmatic methods of enquiry has received the attention of comparative educationists in the problem-solving approach advocated by Holmes and others. Against the criteria established by Popper as measures of scientific method, there is no doubt that comparative educationists have anticipated the work of sociologists.

Most comparative educationists consider that a national system of educa- tion (in its social context) constitutes the social institutions in which they are principally, but not exclusively, interested. To be sure, they are willing for the purpose of analysis to draw crude distinctions between socialist and capital- ist, developed and developing and industrialised and non-industrialised societies. But, for the most part, they acknowledge consciously, to use Sadler's terms, that each nation has its own living spirit and each national system ofeducation its own ethos. This recognition gives a different emphasis to comparative method from that adopted by sociologists informed by macro-theories which, for the most part, are all products of the nineteenth century.

If a major theoretical difference may be drawn between comparative educationists and sociologists, it is that some of the former work more systematically than the latter within paradigms developed by philosophers of the natural sciences since about 1900. It is, of course, the case that some comparative educationists depend more on biological models than on models drawn from physics, but they tend, for example King and Holmes, to be united in their anti-deterministic and anti-positivistic stance.

The differences between biological and physical scientific models and techniques should not ofcourse be nation-specific; nevertheless an admixture ofpragmatism to either type ofmodel is likely to influence the approach of the investigator. In the USA, for example, problem-solving techniques are rauch more widely accepted than in Europe. Moreover, whatever techniques of enquiry are used, knowledge is more likely to be regarded as negotiable and relative than in Europe. An extreme example, to make the point, is found in the different assumptions and themes which inform Soviet sociological and comparative education research and those accepted even now by many American social scientists.

Meanwhile debates among philosophers of science, among sociologists, and among comparative educationists, will continue. Against the monopol- istic view of science provided by Newton's paradigm in the nineteenth cen- tury, each of these fields seems fragmented. Doubtless sociologists and com- parative educationists will learn from each other. Members of both groups would do well to keep in touch with debates among philosophers of science and, in so far as in all fields of enquiry there are ethnocentric elements, with

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debates about methodology in different countries. On the other hand, I think it would be unwise for comparative educationists to abandon their interest in cross-national studies in favour of comparisons made in the polar types identified in sociological theory. The latter approach makes sociologists as parochial as the run of educationists whose vision is inspired by grand theory but whose interest is restricted to what goes on in their own system. Compar- ative educationists, as a result ofhistory and their commitment, may not build impressive theories; but while they may be ethnocentric, they are not parochial.

quarterly review of education Unesco

VoI.XI N°4 ]981

Integrating education with production and researeh in Romania Fred Mahler

Vie~ points and controversies

The impaet of international assistance organizations on the development of education Seth Spaulding

Elements for a dossier: Educating handicapped children and youth Eeonomic aspects of speeial education Karl-Gustaf Stukat Basic prineiples of special education in the USSR V.I. Lubovsky Helping parents to beeome partners in the education of their handicapped child Hugh Stuart Taylor Family involvement in the training of mentally retarded children: an Indian example Rose Chacko Early identification of handicaps and early special education in the ~erman Democratic Republic Lothar Hammer Hearing-impaired ehildren: prevention and integration Armen Lowe Hearing-impaired children in India: needs and possibilities Prem Victor Integration of blind children into sdhools in Denmark Svend Ellehammer Andersen and Bjorn E. Holstein Music in the education of the young multiply handicapped deaf-blind child Vanda Weidenbach

Trends and cases Sehool education for Palestinian refugee children and youth Knud Morten~en