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DURKHEIM AND MODERN EDUCATION

Emile Durkheims teaching and writing on education has traditionally been a neglected area of research. Much of his work on this subject was published. posthumously and only slowly translated into English after the Second World War. However, philosophers of education increasingly argue that Durkheims ideas are applicable to modern education.

This volume explores Durkheims place in modern educational thought at three different levels: Durkheims ideas on education are analysed and placed in the context of a modern

society; Current educational issues are explored using a Durkheimian framework; Durkheims thought is related to that of modern educational theory to reveal his

enduring influence.

In discussing Durkheims modern relevance, the contributors stress his desire to integrate the practical and theoretical aspects of education. They identify particular pertinence in his focus upon the moral base of education and his insistence upon the importance of the social and society.

Durkheim and Modern Education brings together authoritative work from acknowledged leaders in both educational and Durkheimian studies. Written from an international perspective, this will be an important resource for sociologists and educationalists alike.

Geoffrey Walford is Reader in Education Policy and a Fellow of Green College at the University of Oxford. His publications include Privatization and Privilege in Education (1990) and, as editor, Doing Educational Research (1991).

W.S.F.Pickering helped to found the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies at the University of Oxford in 1991 and is currently its General Secretary. His latest publications with Routledge include Debating Durkheim (edited with H. Martins, 1995) and On Durkheims Elementary Forms of Religious Life (co-edited with N.J.Allen and W.Watts Miller, 1998).

ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF

EDUCATION 1 EDUCATION AND WORK IN GREAT BRITAIN, GERMANY AND ITALY

Edited by A.Jobert, C.Marry, L.Tanguy and H.Rainbird

2 EDUCATION, AUTONOMY AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP Philosophy in a changing world

Edited by David Bridges

3 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN LEARNING Christopher Winch

4 EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH Beyond the Postmodern Impasse

Edited by David Carr

5 VIRTUE THEORY AND MORAL EDUCATION Edited by David Carr and Jan Steutel

6 DURKHEIM AND MODERN EDUCATION Edited by Geoffrey Walford and W.S.F.Pickering

DURKHEIM AND MODERN

EDUCATION Edited by Geoffrey Walford and

W.S.F.Pickering

London and New York

First published 1998 by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Editorial material and selection 1998 Geoffrey Walford and W.S.F.Pickering

Individual chapters 1998 the individual contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Durkheim and modern education/edited by Geoffrey Walford and

W.S.F.Pickering. p. cm.

Published in conjunction with the British Centre for Durkheimian StudiesAdded t.p.

A selection of revised papers presented at a three day conference sponsored by the British Economic and Social Research Council and the British Centre for

Durkheimian Studies, University of Oxford, held at Maison Franaise, Oxford in July 1996.

Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Durkheim, Emile, 18581917Views on educationCongresses.

2. Educational sociologyCongresses. 3. Moral educationCongresses. 4. EducationPhilosophyCongresses. I. Walford, Geoffrey. II. Pickering, W.S.F.

III. British Centre for Durheimian Studies. LB775.D862D87 1998 306.43dc21 9820185

CIP

ISBN 0-203-02205-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26521-1 (OEB Format) ISBN 0-415-18168-2 (Print Edition)

The Durkheim family on holiday at Saint-Valry-en-Caux in August 1915. From left to right are shown: Mme Durkheim, M.Durkheim, Claudette Raphal (then aged five and still alive), Mme Raphal, Madeleine Raphal and Andr Durkheim. Mme Raphal was Durkheims niece, Andr was Durkheims son, and the photograph was taken by Marie Halphen who was Durkheims daughter.

CONTENTS Notes on contributors ix Preface xiii1

Introduction W.S.F.PICKERING AND GEOFFREY WALFORD 1

PART ONE 16

2

Emile Durkheim and moral education in a pluralistic society MARK S.CLADIS 18

3

Emile Durkheim, citizenship and modern education ANTON A.WESSELINGH 30

4

Kohlbergs critique of Durkheims Moral Education STEPHEN P.TURNER 42

5

The administration of punishment in schools W.S.F.PICKERING 54

6

Teaching autonomy WILLIE WATTS MILLER 65

PART TWO 83

7

Japanese education: a Durkheimian ideal type? ROGER GOODMAN 85

8

Educating for social cohesion in a pluralist society MART-JAN DE JONG AND JACQUES F.A.BRASTER 97

9

Durkheim, democracy and diversity: some thoughts on recent changes in England and Wales GEOFFREY WALFORD

112

10

Durkheim, Dewey and progressive education: the tensions between individualism and community ALAN R.SADOVNIK AND SUSAN F.SEMEL

128

11

Emile Durkheim in the context of the American moral education paradigm ARTHUR K.ELLIS

147

12

Classroom management as moral education: a Durkheimian perspective DAVID RIGONI

163

PART THREE 179

13

Durkheim, social revitalization, education and religion PHILIP WEXLER AND PAUL STEIN 181

Name index 202 Subject index 208

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jacques F.A.Braster is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Social Sciences Faculty of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Until 1993 he was researcher at the Rotterdam Institute for Sociological and Public Administration Research. In 1996 he wrote his Ph.D. thesis De identiteit van het openbaar onderwijs (The identity of public education). His research interests are sociology of education and educational policy, sociology of religion and culture, and methodology of evaluation research.

Mark S.Cladis, author of over twenty articles and A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism: Emile Durkheim and Contemporary Social Theory (Stanford University Press, 1992), is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Vassar College. After receiving his doctorate from Princeton University, where he studied philosophy and social theory as they relate to the field of religious studies, he taught at the University of North Carolina and at Stanford University. His publications and teaching pertain to the history of Western political, social and religious thought, especially the religious nature and origins of liberal, democratic society. His current research project, Politics of the Heart: Rousseau, Religion, and the Relation between the Public and Private Life, is expected to appear in 1999.

Mart-Jan de Jong is Associate Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and member of the management team of the Netherlands School for Social and Economic Policy Research. For his Ph.D. thesis he studied educational careers of immigrant children. He wrote a book on political issues of the welfare state. His latest book is about the lives and work of nine masters of sociological thought (Grootmeesters van de sociologie, 1997).

Arthur K.Ellis is Professor of Education and Director of the Center for Curriculum Studies at Seattle Pacific University, Washington. He is the author of twelve published books and numerous articles and papers. Professor Ellis taught for several years in public schools and for seventeen years at the University of Minnesota prior to joining the faculty of Seattle Pacific. He has been consultant to various National Science Foundation projects and to state and local educational organizations. Presently, he teaches and consults at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and at Moscow State University and the University of the Russian Academy of Education in Moscow, where he holds the position of Corresponding Professor.

Roger Goodman, formerly Reader in Japanese Studies at the University of Essex, is currently University Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Japan and Fellow of St Antonys College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Japans International Youth: The Emergence of a New Class of Schoolchildren (Open University Press,

1990) and Kikokushijo (Iwanami Shoten, 1992) and editor of Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (Routledge, 1992; with Kirsten Refsing), Case Studies on Human Rights in Japan (Curzon, 1996; with Ian Neary) and Welfare Orientalism: Social Policy in East Asia (Routledge, forthcoming; with Gordon White and Huck-ju Kwon) as well as many articles on Japanese education and social welfare.

Willie Watts Miller is editor of Durkheimian Studies/Etudes Durkheimiennes. His publications include Durkheim, Morals and Modernity (UCL Press, 1996), a critical translation of Durkheims Latin thesis on Montesquieu Montesquieu/Quid Secundatus (Durkheim Press, 1997) and On Durkheims Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Routledge, 1988; edited with N.J. Allen and W.S.F.Pickering). He is a member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol.

W.S.F.Pickering was for many years a lecturer in sociology in the Department of Social Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His books include: Durkheim on Religion (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975; introduction and translations with J.R.Redding); Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; edited with introductions); Durkheims Sociology of Religion: Themes and Theories (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984); Anglo-Catholicism: A study of religious ambiguity (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989), Debating Durkheim (Routledge, 1995; edited with H.Martins) and On Durkheims Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Routledge, 1988; edited with N.J.Allen and W. Watts Miller). He is currently General Secretary of the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies at the University of Oxford.

David Rigoni is Associate Professor at the Education Department at the College of St Scholastica, Minnesota. Prior to teaching at the university level, he taught English for fourteen years in both public and private secondary schools. At the College of St Scholastica, he taught in the Computer Science Department for nine years before becoming chair-person of the Education Department. He gained his doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of St Thomas in St Paul Minnesota, and he now also chairs the Behavioral Arts and Sciences Division (in which the Education Department is situated). His interests include sociological approaches to education, critical thinking and problem solving.

Alan R.Sadovnik is Professor of Education and Dean of the School of Education at Adelphi University, New York. He received his BA in sociology from Queens College of the City University of New York, and his MA and Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. He is the author of Equity and Excellence in Higher Education: The Decline of a Liberal Educational Reform (Peter Lang, 1994), editor of Knowledge and Pedagogy: The Sociology of Basil Bernstein (Ablex, 1995), co-editor of Exploring Society (Allyn and Bacon, 1987, with Caroline Hodges Persell, Eleen Baumann and Richard Mitchell, Jr.), the International Handbook of Educational Reform (Greenwood, 1992; with Peter W.Cookson, Jr and Susan F.Semel), Implementing Educational Reform (1996) and The Encyclopedia of Sociology of Education (Garland, 1998; with David Levinson and Peter W.Cookson, Jr), and co-author of Exploring Education (Allyn and Bacon, 1994; with Peter W.Cookson and Susan F.Semel).

Susan F.Semel is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Hofstra University. She received her AB in history from Wheaton College (Norton, MA), and her MAT, Ed.M., and Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the author of The Dalton School: The Transformation of a Progressive School

(Peter Lang, 1992), co-author of Exploring Education (Allyn and Bacon, 1994; with Alan R. Sadovnik and Peter W.Cookson, Jr), co-editor of the International Handbook of Educational Reform (Greenwood, 1992; with Peter W. Cookson, Jr and Alan R.Sadovnik), and editor of School of Tomorrow, Schools of Today: What Happened to Progressive Education (Peter Lang, 1998).

Paul Stein is a doctoral student at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development of the University of Rochester, New York.

Stephen P.Turner is Graduate Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Florida, and the author or editor of a number of works on Durkheim, including Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Moralist (Routledge, 1993), The Search for a Methodology of Social Science: Durkheim, Weber and the Nineteenth Century Problem of Cause, Probability and Action (Reidel, 1986), a special issue of Sociological Perspectives on the centennial of the publication of Durkheims Rules of Sociological Method, and Durkheim among the statisticians, Journal of the History of Behavioural Sciences, 1996. His The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions (Polity and University of Chicago Press, 1994) is critical of the Durkheimian tradition, and places it in a broader historical perspective. He has taught at Virginia Polytechnical Institute, the University of Notre Dame, and Boston University, and has been a visiting fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences and an Honorary Simon Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester. He recently won a Thyssen prize for a paper on charisma published in the Berliner Journal fr Soziologie.

Geoffrey Walford is Reader in Education Policy and a Fellow of Green College, at the University of Oxford. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Education Policy at Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham. His books include: Life in Public Schools (Methuen, 1986), Restructuring Universities: Politics and Power in the Management of Change (Croom Helm, 1987), Privatization and Privilege in Education (Routledge, 1990), City Technology College (Open University Press, 1991; with Henry Miller), Choice and Equity in Education (Cassell, 1994), Researching the Powerful in Education (UCL Press, editor, 1994) and Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal (Falmer, 1997; edited with Richard Pring). In 1997 he edited a Special Issue of the Oxford Review of Education on Choice, diversity and equity in secondary schooling.

Anton A.Wesselingh graduated from Leiden University, the Netherlands, in sociology and worked as a researcher at the Universities of Leiden and Amsterdam. His professional interest has been focused for a long time on the problem of social inequality in education. This has resulted in a doctoral thesis on the role of education in the reproduction of social inequality, in articles on the problem, and several reports of research projects in educational priority areas in the Netherlands. At the moment his main interest lies in sociology of education as a discipline, educational policy and, in particular, citizenship education. His publications include several theoretical books and articles on varying topics in the field. He is now an associate professor in the sociology of education at the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Philip Wexler is the Michael Scandling Professor of Education and Sociology and Dean of the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development of the

University of Rochester, New York. He is the author of Social Analysis of Education (Routledge, 1990), Becoming Somebody (Falmer, 1992), Critical Social Psychology (Peter Lang, 1996), and author and editor of many other books and papers. His most recently published book is Holy Sparks: Social Theory, Education and Religion (St Martins Press, 1996).

PREFACE Over the last two years the British Economic and Social Research Council and the British Centre for Durkheimian Studies, University of Oxford, have sponsored a series of conferences on the work of Emile Durkheim. As part of this series, a very successful three-day conference on Durkheim and Modern Education was held at the Maison Franaise, Oxford in July 1996. This book presents a selection of revised papers first presented at that conference with the addition of several further specially commissioned chapters. Contributions are included by scholars from the United States, Great Britain, France and the Netherlands, but this is only a partial indication of the international resurgence of interest in the work of Durkheim.

An edited volume on the relevance and applicability of Durkheims work to modern education is particularly appropriate, for throughout his academic life Durkheim was continually involved with teaching and writing about education. His first appointment at Bordeaux was to give a course on social science and pedagogy to school teachers, and his major university posts at Bordeaux and the Sorbonne both involved him in lecturing about education as well as sociology. His deep involvement with and desire to integrate the practical and theoretical aspects of education continued throughout his life. However, most of Durkheims work on education, including his monumental The Evolution of Educational Thought in France, were published after his death and compiled from lectures notes taken by his students. The majority of his work on education was only translated into English comparatively recently, and many authors are now finding that his ideas have considerable relevance to modern society. Although Durkheim was writing about a century ago, the uncertain and rapidly changing situation that France faced at the time has many similarities with the present day. Durkheims focus on the moral base of education and his insistence on the importance of the social and society have important implications for education today.

The editors wish to express their appreciation for the help they have received in the organization of the conference which gave rise to the papers. In particular, they thank Jean-Claude Vatin, Director of the Maison Franaise, Oxford, for encouraging us to hold the conference there, and for the assistance of its administrative staff.

For the preparation of the book, we should above all thank the contributors themselves, who had to produce chapters in accordance with stringent technical instructions. Without willing authors there would be no book. But we should also like to show our appreciation to those who gave papers which, for various reasons, we have not been able to include but who all made a positive contribution to the conference. We are sure that all contributors benefited from the constructive debate and discussion at the conference.

Finally, it is necessary to forewarn readers of a particular technical point in the format of this book. Steven Lukes dating-enumeration system for Durkheims work has been

followed throughout. In this system each original published work has its own specific identification. Unless otherwise specified, references to Durkheim thus give the date of the French original (followed by an identifying letter), then the date of the English translation used (again followed by an identifying letter). This system allows a precise identification of any quotations.

1 INTRODUCTION1

W.S.F.Pickering and Geoffrey Walford

The unpopularity of Durkheims work on education

Of all the social areas that Durkheim examined, or the sub-disciplines that he developed, the least referred to has been that of education. This was the case amongst his own disciples who constituted the Anne Sociologique group. And the same lack of interest continues amongst scholars today. The subjects of methodology, religion, morals, epistemology, suicide, the division of labour, law, and so on, have given rise to comment, criticism, praise and development. Not so the Cinderella of them all: education. Admittedly, Paul Fauconnet who followed Durkheim as professor in Paris made education his speciality but published nothing original on the subject. In more recent times a few books and some articles have appeared on the subject. But the fact remains that Durkheims Rules of the Sociological Method (1895a) and Suicide (1897a) have been far more prominent among teachers and students than say, The Evolution of Educational Thought (1938a)a book which in many respects approaches the magisterialor even Moral Education (1925a). Why is it, then, that Durkheims approach to education has been so marginalized? As a sociologist of education, should he not be written off? Before an attempt is made to answer such questions, and to suggest why he should be taken more seriously, attention ought to be focused on his deep concern for education. But lest there be any misunderstanding, it should be stated at the outset that this book and its introduction are concerned only with the education of young people up to about 18 years of age. University education lies outside its boundaries.

The educational world of France

Durkheim was born at a time when public education was seen to be of the utmost importance to the well-being of the French nation. In spite of the fact of radical

Napoleonic reforms in education, the disastrous war of 1870 was held by some to be due to a failure of an entrenched educational system which, amongst other things, was not focused sharply enough on the sciences.

In France the training of teachers in primary and secondary schools was taken much more seriously from the beginning of the nineteenth century and was much more institutionalized than it was, for example, in Britain. One can point to the Ecoles Normales Primaires (teachers training colleges) which were initiated by Napoleon and which were for primary school teachers and were found in every dpartement. For those anticipating teaching at the secondary level, in lyces or universities, study at an Ecole Normale Suprieure was required, the most prestigious of which was the Ecole Normale Suprieure in Paris. The best candidates often went from teaching in a lyce to lecturing in a university. Students unable to pass the exams necessary to enter the Ecole Normale Suprieure usually went straight into a university. The courses at the Ecole Normale in Paris were of an academic standard, usually held to be higher than that of the university itself. A person who successfully completed the course would at the end have received something equivalent to an honours degree as well as a qualification in pedagogy. In Britain, teachers training colleges were never given such priority. The first voluntary college was opened in Battersea, London in 1834: by 1850 there were about thirty such colleges in England under the control of the national church or local civic authorities (Judge et al. 1994:165). Such colleges were outside the compass of the universities and it was commonly reckoned in the mid-nineteenth centuryand to some extent is still foundthat a man (not a woman!) who read for a degree at Oxford or Cambridge could proceed to teach in a school without any further training. Education courses in universities proceeded slowly and Cambridge created a faculty of education only in 1968 (Searby 1982:3).2

Another reason that made the training of teachers so important in the eyes of the French government in Durkheims day was the policy that the ideals of the state should be implemented by teachers themselves. It was these instituteurs and institutrices of the Third Republic who, it was hoped, would supplant the cur as the moral leader, not only in towns, but in the thousands of villages of rural France. The policy was to replace a rigid ecclesiastical morality with a secular one. Through Jules Ferry, who was in the ministry of education during the Third Republic, all primary schooling was made free and compulsory in 1881.

Durkheim, man, sociologist and educator

Such, in a few words, was the educational world in which Durkheim found himself as a leading pedagogical figure. He was born in 1858 into a rabbinic family in Epinal in Lorraine, entered the Ecole Normale Suprieure in 1879 and received his aggrgation in 1882. He taught at three lyces for short periods and then went to lecture at the University of Bordeaux in 1887. In 1902 he became a lecturer at the Sorbonne and gave compulsory courses in education at the Ecole Normale. All his life he was deeply immersed in the teaching profession at various levels.

Durkheim and modern education 2

Unlike the situation in Britain and the United States, formal education in France was controlled by the French civil service based in Paris. It was centralized and much influenced by the government in power. Local authorities had little or no say in its administration. Realizing his potential for their purposes, not least in education, certain people in the government of the day selected Durkheim as someone important for the future. To enhance his career they sent him in 1886 to study in Germany for a year under leading psychologists and philosophers. All his university posts involved the subject of education. When he first went to Bordeaux he was appointed lecturer in social sciences and pedagogy. Later he became professor of social science. When he went to the Sorbonne it was as a lecturer in the science of education and when he was made professor in 1913 the title of the chair at his request was Science de lEducation et de la Sociologie. When he first went to Paris to teach he followed a professor of education, Ferdinand Buisson. Buisson before that had been Director of Primary Education and supported Ferry in the reformsthe Ferry Laws, just mentioned. Thus it is clear that education was always prominent in his appointments and might be said to be his lifes work, irrespective of the many books and articles he wrote on sociological subjects in general. It is estimated that three-quarters of his teaching time was given to pedagogy. However, Durkheim referred to an uncomfortable tension in this respect. On the one hand he admitted the extreme importance of education to society and the fact that he had to spend so much time in lecturing on education. And he was unique among all sociologists until recent times in giving education such a large place in his thought. On the other hand, he saw his creative workhis missionas that of developing the science of sociology, which he was convinced had so much to offer to the academic world and to society in general.

Sociology, as a totally secular science of social phenomena, could also be seen to have an ideological base which coincided with that of the anti-clerical Third Republic. It provided it with a firm, scientific foundation. Another type of sociology was known before that of Durkheim. It was that of Auguste Comte (17981857), who indeed had coined the word. But his sociology had been rejected by the academic world and was scientifically and philosophically unacceptable, not least because it reached its culmination in a secular Catholicism. Durkheim was a far more political creature than Comte. He was a devoted Frenchman and a strong supporter of the Third Republic. Though never a member of any political party, he was a socialist in spirit and many of his friends were socialists. He was critical of its manifestation in various parties claiming to be socialist. Such were the alleged political consequences of his sociology that in the 1930s it was attacked by more conservative politicians when it was planned to incorporate some of his thinking into educational syllabuses. The person responsible for such an inclusion was Flix Pcaut, a strong Durkheimian sympathiser. His policy forced him to resign from the government.

But in general Durkheim was successful. Sociology became a recognized academic subject and his disciples were able to teach it through university appointments, as a rule, within the discipline of philosophy. It made its way into Eastern Europe, to the United States and slowly into Britain where Durkheimian sociology gradually became popular through social anthropology.

During his lifetime, Durkheims publications on education were meagre. They were mainly articles and reviews (see references). However, after his death, lectures and

Introduction 3

lecture courses appeared in the form of booksEducation and Sociology (1922a), Moral Education (1925a), The Evolution of Educational Thought (1938a). All these, whose titles are given in English, were not translated into that language until after the Second World War. The fact that they were translated relatively late, compared with the English translations of other books by Durkheim, only emphasizes the fact that was raised at the beginning, why of all the social areas dealt with by Durkheim, was education the most neglected? To that question we now turn.

Criticisms expounded and answered

The purpose of education

Perhaps one reason for the unpopularity of Durkheims work on education comes in his concept of the function, or if one prefers, the purpose of education. In an early book not usually referred to in connection with education, Suicide, he writes that education is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latter in abbreviated forms: it does not create it (1897a:427/t.1951a:372). There is no evidence to show that Durkheim ever deviated from this position. Two issues ensue. One, it assumes a form of determinism and rigidity within the processes of education. Two, it reduces the role of the teacher in society to that of a kind of civil servant.

By todays values, does Durkheims assertion about the purpose of education damn him? At first sight it might appear so for it means that the teacher can teach only what is stipulated by the curriculum, that is, what the authorities prescribe and is thus highly restricted. Boundaries are set: the content is imposed. Only in this way, it seems, can a society be sure that its children become socialized into its norms and ideals and receive practical knowledge held necessary for being adult members. The object of education is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and the special milieu for which he is specifically destined (1922a:41/t.1956a:71). Of course the extent to which the teacher is restricted will depend on the curriculum set by authorities. Some teachers who find it acceptable will be pleased with the task before them. But others might say it limits their powers and they thus become little more than state administrators. Their own predilections and ideals have to be repressed.

Durkheim never really considered in detail the issue of the syllabus. He probably did not think it was his task. It was a given within which the teacher could be creative. For Durkheim teaching was both a science and an art (Pickering 1979:1046). The teacher must never be an automaton. Durkheim emphasized the humanity of the relation between the teacher and the pupils and this is nowhere more evident than in his argument for the total prohibition of corporal punishment in schools (see chapter 5).

That the teacher cannot change society would appear to downgrade the role of teachers, for they must be subservient to higher authorities. The teacher is therefore very much number two on the list. Durkheim wrote education can be reformed only if society itself is reformed (1897a/t.1951a: 373). One assumes the order is irreversible.

Durkheim and modern education 4

That the school must always reflect the community in which it is situated may seem to reflect Durkheims authoritativeness and his sense of social order. And order is necessary for a society to function. But surely it is true that a primary school or even a secondary school has to follow in the wake of social ideals rather than be an agent for social change? One has to start with the tradition contained in and set by society. It is necessary to build on that so that lasting change can take place. A schools primary purpose is to transmit that tradition. Never can a school be a hotbed of revolution!

Is the individual or society the primary object of education?

At the heart of a society stand reprsentations collectives, which are ideas, ideals, morals, religious values created by society for society. It is these which have to be absorbed by the pupil. This, it might be argued, makes education social-centred rather than individual-centred. Durkheim, with his commitment to social realism (society is a reality sui generis), is open to criticism from educationalists on the grounds that the individual is crippled because what is social must always be prior. The individual is therefore dehumanized. This is a distorted reading of Durkheim. He stands for the autonomy and full development of the individual. The highest point in the process of evolution is the emergence of the individual. An individual must be free to be the person he or she believes they can become. Education encourages each individual to advance to the degree she or he is able. The point is that this cannot be achieved apart from the social. It is out of the social that the individual grows. Young children have a need for order and security before the individual can develop particular characteristics and abilities. Thus in general terms the relation between the social and the individual is a dialectical one, with neither of them being finally triumphant. The individual is partly derived from the social and partly from specifically individual traits. On this point Durkheim and Dewey are very close. Further, Durkheim held that the childs mind was not a tabula rasa but had given emotional characteristics. Psychology had a legitimate place in studying the individual development of children.

In preparing the individual for adult society, education beyond a certain age has to be tailored for society and its requirements at a particular period in history. Again, society dictates, or what are now called market forces dictate what is desirable or possible. Pupils are not to be given just a general education but a vocational one where the occupation students finally embrace is available to them. Earlier school education directly prepares them for vocational education. Such an educational policy has nothing which smells of dilettantism or learning for its own sake. Life is too earnest for that.

Durkheim asserted that the school can be viewed as a community which reflects the society in which it is situated. Obvious though such an assertion is, it has its limitations. The school is indeed a social institution but can never be an independent society, even a democratic one, because of its authoritarian structure and its economic dependence on the larger community.

In another direction one might say that Durkheim has been maligned, or cast to one side, because he held that all teaching had to be carried out in schools and that parents should have no say in it. It is interesting because he himself gives the impression of being a patriarchal figure who would have had a considerable say in the education of his own

Introduction 5

children.3 He offered no reasons for his position. But nevertheless certain social groups adopted Durkheims position long before him, notably Anabaptists, who were pioneers in infant education and who have always stood for the autonomy of the school, where all discipline of children is carried outnever in the home. This is certainly a stronger position than Durkheims.

The issue of morals

Of all Durkheims books on education the most popular has been Moral Education (1925a). But although it covered many topics in education, including the class and school as social groups, discipline, punishment, psychology, the teaching of the sciences and so on, the subject which engaged most of his attention was the teaching of morals. The reasons for this are several. One might begin with a personal one. Durkheim himself was a very moral person, indeed there was something of a Puritan in him. He had hoped his greatest book would have been on morality but alas he completed only the introduction in manuscript form before he died (see 1920a).

Standing within the humanist-rationalist camp, he believed that morality was little short of religion. But although he rejected the traditional religions of Judaism and Christianity he wished to retain much of their ethical teaching. He believed that a new form of secular religion was emerging, which he called the cult of the individual. It was this that was destined to become the ideological base of modern Western industrial society all over the civilized world. No society can exist without some system of morality. Such a system was one which had to curb a persons natural instincts and give to everyone a sense of responsibility and duty, and a set of common values. It called for obedience, self-discipline and sacrifice. In keeping with such Greek philosophers as Aristotle and Plato, Durkheim stressed the need for moderation and self-discipline. But those whose work it is to teach morality are obliged to show that it is was not just a negative approach to behaviour but that people should be encouraged to love moral behaviour for its own sake. Here he diverges from Kant. For Durkheim, discipline is never an end in itself but is necessary for freedom, for the good of the individual and society.

Durkheim saw that one of the difficulties in teaching morals to the young was that of authority. Whereas the Catholic church could appeal to the teaching of a divine church, to a divine founder, and Protestants to the Bible as a written account of Gods revelation, and in all these instances refer to an authority beyond the present world, no such option was available in the imparting to pupils a laque (non-religious), humanistic system of morality (Durkheim 1925a:3ff./t.1961a:3ff.; 1905b). He was convinced he had solved the problem by asserting that the authority for such behaviour was in society itself (see Durkheim 1991a). While this is a severe weakness in Durkheims thought, some of those who teach a non-religious morality in schools find the problem just as serious. Indeed, it might be argued that Durkheim is in a stronger position because he saw the problem much more clearly than perhaps some school teachers do. For Durkheim morality has to have its reasons and these can be abstract. Children cannot absorb a kind of logical Kantianism which stands at the foundation of a philosophical humanistic ethic. Further, it

Durkheim and modern education 6

has to be admitted that Durkheims relativism logically leads to what today is called post-modernism.

Not sufficiently empirical

Another weakness which some might level against Durkheim is that, sociologist though he was, there was little in his lectures that was based on empirical researchnothing comparable to his much debated and allegedly empirical work on suicide (1897a), and The Elementary Forms (1912a) in which he employed Australian ethnographical material. In his lectures on education he relied on the experience that he felt was common to his listeners (and readers) as well as himself. He did not attempt to plumb empirically the notion of a school or a class, each viewed as a community. He knew the answer from his own educational experience! Two things should be stressed in his defence. First, there were limits to what he could accomplish. Few people, if any in his day, had undertaken in education the kind of research empirically inclined people now demand. For his book on suicide, statistics had been gathered for a considerable time. Durkheim was able to use these and sift them for his own purposes. As an armchair anthropologist, he had available ethnographical material for The Elementary Forms, and was helped in this, as in the statistics for Suicide, by his nephew, Marcel Mauss. The second reason is that Durkheim was sceptical about the value of empirical material unless it was related to some theoretical base. And let it not be forgotten that most of Durkheims studies on education have been based on lectures which he was obliged to deliver to would-be teachers. Above all, he saw his overarching task in sociology as propagating a method of analysis which he hoped others would adopt in working in specific social areas. In this he was probably more successful than any other sociologist.

Political and cultural issues

Some critics find the political and cultural setting of Durkheims approach to education too time-imprisoned and French-oriented: so much so, that it is not applicable, they argue, to modern times and to other nations and cultures. The ideals of the French middle-class intellectuals of the nine-teenth-century Third Republic are irrelevant to the contemporary situation involving discipline in classrooms, ethnic diversity, and the uncertainty of a common morality. Behind some of this criticism lurks the fact that he was oblivious or paid little attention to the existence of social and economic classes and to the tensions between them.

The last point has to be accepted but the issue here is not so much with Durkheims general sociology as with his approach to education. As we have repeatedly had occasion to observe, Durkheim rightly did not envisage the school as an agent for social reform, let alone revolution! Schools, at least in France, it should be said did not create the class system. They may reproduce it, as can be deduced from Durkheims premises (see comments by Bourdieu in Cardi and Plantier 1993:205ff.). With schools being based in the local community and with little or no choice of school on the part of parents, and with nearly all schools in Durkheims day state controlled, they can and do become means

Introduction 7

whereby class, religious and ethnic differences arising in the local community can be reduced. What is taught is not determined by the class from which pupils come: education transcends class and overcomes it. In countries, however, where a choice of school exists, differences in class are likely to be enhanced.

Moreover, the issue of pluralism is not necessarily the bone of contention in Durkheim that some might imagine. At no point is Durkheim opposed to the possibility of a pluralistic society. Indeed, he stands against absolute uniformity. Enrichment is to be had in diversity. Admittedly underneath that diversity there has to be some degree of moral consensus for, as we have noted, if everyone was totally different in moral beliefs, there would be no society. A set of moral values to which everyone adheres which reflects the basic ideology of the society is a sine qua non of that society. In countries in the modern Western world this relates to the values which are at the heart of a democracy, and these are to be systematically taught in school.

For Durkheim the only acceptable diversity lies in that of the mental ability of pupils. According to him, the examination system is absolutely fair, and is in no way invalidated by class or ethnic grouping. Meritocracy alone reigns. And that surely is what Western industrial societies support, at least theoretically and doubtless they hope de facto. It is true that Durkheim never imagined that class and ethnic background would seriously impair such an ideal and I think he believed that when once the principle of meritocracy was established, such social factors would in time be ironed out.

General trends

Today in pedagogical circles in the United States and Britain, and perhaps in other countries, less attention is given to the history, theory and philosophy of education than was once accorded to such subjects. In a crowded curriculum focus is on more technical matters aimed at making teachers better equipped to help their pupils achieve examination results of a high orderin making them master literacy and numeracy skills, in acquiring a working knowledge of languages and now skills in the operation of computers.

Trends, fashions, and ideals come and go in pedagogy as in other professions. Not long ago the dominant ideal in teaching was the free expression of what individual pupils were said to possess. It was not a question of forcing facts into the childs mind but of extracting what was naturally in it. Further, the notion of direct competition between pupils was held to be more harmful than good. Today, these ideals have been eroded, not least because the concept of competition seen in judging school against school, country against country, has now demonstrated, in the eyes of British authorities, the failure of giving pupils too much encouragement in freedom of expression. The swing means that it is necessary to implant in children facts and techniques and, above all, the 3 Rs. In short, education is now to be more rule-governed and formal. But, also in Britain, there is a tendency for more state intervention and centralization. There should be greater accountability for money spent on education (see, for example, Hargreaves 1994). Much more attention is to be paid to discipline, not least because the levels of crime amongst

Durkheim and modern education 8

children are higher than in previous decades and because of the need to control unseemly and violent behaviour of children in classrooms. But there is another interesting change. In Karabel and Halseys book on ideology in education published in 1977, there is no contribution to the teaching of morality in schoolssomething so prominent in Durkheims thinking on education. To be sure, many chapters imply some kind of underlying morality, but it is the morality of political issues.

Today, there is an increased concern for the teaching of basic morality in schools, as discipline continues to break down. The changes that are now occurring point, certainly indirectly, if not directly, to the work of Durkheim. Most assuredly Durkheim upheld the usefulness, if not necessity, of competition within the school milieu, but competition had to be contained within given boundaries and unbounded competition led to social malaise. He argued that the child in its development needed security and that security had to be provided by the teacher on whom the child was dependent. The teacher was to be a role model, and assuredly a moral one at that. But it also brings us back to the quotation of Durkheim stated at the beginning of this introductionthat in the last analysis education is and has to be a reflection of the countrys ideology. The school must never be an instrument of ideological manipulation. The child must never be a pawn in the ideological ambitions of the teacher.

In conclusion we would appeal to a serious consideration, or reconsideration, of the contribution Durkheim has made to the various facets of the sociology of the education. The climate is right at the moment to rehabilitate his educational thought. If what he said and wrote does not fit precisely the problems of the present time, at least he spelt out those problems with great force and many of them do not appear to have been solved. What he wrote cannot be ignored.

A rsum of the papers

The book is divided into three parts broadly representing different types of engagement with Durkheims work on education. Part One has Durkheims writings at the centre of each chapter. These first chapters examine in a detailed and critical way Durkheims thought about various aspects of education. The authors then discuss these ideas in the context of a modern society. These chapters deal with, for example, Durkheims ideas about morality, punishment and social cohesion.

In contrast, the chapters in Part Two start by focusing on particular educational problems and issues in modern society and look to Durkheims work for illumination and understanding. These authors present up-to-date discussion of current areas of concern and use a Durkheimian framework to structure their analysis.

Finally, the single chapter in Part Three is concerned with developments in social and educational theory that have been influenced by Durkheims work. In this chapter the authors relate Durkheims thought to that of significant present-day theorists, and indicate the extent and nature of his enduring influence.

Following this introduction, Part One opens with a chapter by Mark S. Cladis that examines the nature of Durkheims conception of moral education, along with a

Introduction 9

discussion of the extent to which that conception is appropriate in pluralistic democracies. It shows that Durkheims approach to education was essentially that of the historicist who understands education as a collection of practices and institutions that have been organized slowly in the course of time. His idea of public education was one that embraced moral individualism, and can be seen as one of the best examples that we have of democratic education.

Cladis argues that Durkheims heterogeneous work on moral education embraces: critical thought and shared traditions, autonomy and community, human diversity and social unity. The chapter offers a nuanced description of and challenge to liberal, democratic institutions. It champions various authoritative perspectives of societys shared understandings, as a means to cultivate in students dispositions for life in complex, pluralistic societies.

In chapter 3 Anton A.Wesselingh discusses Durkheims views of citizenship and the role of education in promoting citizenship in the context of his own time. The second part of the chapter examines the relevance of these views to modern multicultural society. The chapter focuses on the Dutch education system, and considers such issues as a national curriculum and the concept of nationhood. It is argued that Durkheims strength is his opposition to both utilitarian liberals and conservative traditionalists. Durkheim recognized that there can be no simple restoration of traditional values. He was aware of the need to adapt the form and content of moral socialization to the social changes or the time, and not isolate moral education from the socio-historical context. There are great difficulties in the direct application of Durkheims prescriptions to modern education, yet, it is argued, Durkheims definite propositions with regard to citizenship education have yet to be replaced by equally definite alternatives.

Stephen P.Turners chapter provides a comparison between the theories of moral education of Durkheim and Lawrence Kohlberg. He argues that the contrast between the two approaches provides an opportunity for recognizing the form of problems still to be overcome in the theory of moral education. Lawrence Kohlbergs writings on moral education remain the greatest influence on the subject today in the United States, and his student, Carol Gilligan, is one of the most influential writers on feminist ethics and on the idea that there are gender differences in morals. In his writings Kohlberg described Emile Durkheims conception as the most philosophically and scientifically comprehensive, clear and workable approach to moral education extant, yet he is highly critical of what he sees as the demonstration of Durkheims views in Soviet Russia. Turners chapter examines Kohlbergs criticism, and uses this to show persistent difficulties and lacunae in Kohlbergs conceptions.

The fifth chapter by W.S.F.Pickering focuses on Durkheims views on the administration of punishment in schools. Durkheim, in his lectures on Moral Education published posthumously in 1925, provides a comprehensive and closely argued case against the use of corporal punishment in schools. It is based on his deep-seated humanism associated with the Third Republic and la morale laque (secular morality). His argument turns on the conviction that any form of physical punishment dehumanizes the child. But just as important is the fact that the very moral values the teacher tries to instil in the child are negated by such punishment. Rehearsing Durkheims argument has many virtues, not least at the present time. It raises the issue of discipline and punishment in general, the object of punishment and how it should be administered. The grading of

Durkheim and modern education 10

punishment, group punishment and frequency of punishment are also referred to. These points are relevant today when so much violence is found in schools. Britain was the last country in Europe to abolish corporal punishment in state schools, and it is retained in private schools. In Britain and elsewhere there is always lurking the possibility of a return to physical punishment. Hence the value of looking at Durkheims arguments, which of course are not without certain weaknesses.

Willie Watts Millers chapter examines the teaching of autonomy. Durkheims sociology of the modern world has been much misunderstood, partly because his ethical theory has been so much ignored. This chapter reexamines his sociology, opens up his ethics, and explains the importance of the teaching of autonomy within Durkheims perspective. The chapter defends the scientific approach to ethics and engages with recent debates on modernism and morality, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of Durkheims ideas.

Part Two of the book is opened by a chapter by Roger Goodman who investigates the nature of Japanese education in the light of Durkheims views. First, Goodman presents a detailed account of one very popular conception of the present-day Japanese educational system. He takes ten elements of that system and shows that there are many similarities between this conception of Japanese education and the type of system that Durkheim thought to be ideal. However, this chapter argues that, in practice, the popular conception of the Japanese educational system is a myth. While the ideological underpinnings of the educational system might be seen to have strong parallels with Durkheims ideas, the reality is very different. The chapter then describes an alternative conception of the Japanese system, which includes the widespread private sector, and shows that the system is far from the ideal type that Durkheim envisaged.

In chapter 8, Mart-Jan de Jong and Jacques F.A.Braster focus on The Netherlands. They argue that growing ethnic and cultural diversity in Dutch society, due to historic developments and recent immigration, have created a strong need for education directed at enhancing social cohesion and the acceptance of ethnic and cultural diversity. These needs were detected by Durkheim a century ago, and the authors investigate the extent to which Dutch teachers are able to meet them. The authors draw upon their own extensive research into educational policies and practices in state schools in The Netherlands. From 1988 till 1994 this study has yielded data on teachers pedagogical values and their strategies for making pupils aware of a wide range of social problems and political issues. They show that teachers attach a higher value to tolerance than to self-reliance or conformity. But the study also indicates that the focus on cultural diversity is very limited. The paper ends with a discussion on the desirability of education for equality, social cohesion or cultural diversity.

In chapter 9 Geoffrey Walford considers the links between Durkheims views on democracy and diversity and some of the recent changes in England and Wales. The last decade has seen many changes in the English educational system that have been designed to broaden choice and diversity within the state-maintained sector. However, until recently, little has been done to encourage the supply side of schooling. This chapter reviews the changing nature and structure of the educational system in England, concentrating on 1993 legislation that allows the establishment of faith-based and sponsored grant-maintained schools. Groups of parents or sponsors may now apply to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to establish their own schools and

Introduction 11

existing private schools can also apply for this new status. The chapter reviews the conditions under which new schools can be established and can operate, and examines the extent and nature of implementation of the legislation. The whole development is discussed in the light of Durkheims ideas on the nature and provision of schooling and his beliefs about the role of schools in developing social solidarity.

Chapter 10, by Alan R.Sadovnik and Susan F.Semel, applies Durkheims sociological analysis of education to understanding the tensions between the concepts of community and individualism in the history of American progressive education. Through an analysis of the limits and possibilities of Durkheims work, the similarities between Durkheim and John Dewey are examined. The chapter describes two New York progressive schools, founded in the first half of the twentieth century (The City and County School and the Dalton School) and, through a Durkheimian approach, explores a number of themes including the object of education, the function of the school and the concepts of socialization and autonomy. It discusses the attempts made by the two schools to balance the tensions between community and individualism, and links Durkheims work to the current liberal-communitarian debates in philosophy and sociology, showing the centrality of Durkheimian thought to these debates.

Arthur K.Ellis focuses on moral education in the next chapter, where he reviews and assesses the state of moral education in American public schools during the fifty-year period from 1945 to 1995. He utilizes both primary and secondary sources, and shows the way that certain ideas, trends and fads have been pervasive components of school programmes, particularly in the light of the changing and differential emphases on such societal, and thus school-related, goals as egalitarianism, individualism and efficiency. Four major areas of emphasiscitizenship, values education, character education and moral educationare defined, characterized, explicated and traced as influences of the school curriculum. Their places as distinctly identifiable school subjects or as infused aspects of the existing subject curriculum are documented, as are their roles as shapers of the so-called hidden curriculum of the school. This analysis is illuminated by Durkheims work which traced the institutionalization of school curricula in France from medieval times to his own. Durkheim gave attention to ideological and social movements and to interest-driven group action as major sources of curricular and organizational change in French secondary education. His work informs this chapter in two ways: first, the focus of attention, particularly in connection with the influence of certain groups interested in shaping the agenda; and second, the validation of much of his insight with regard to modern American school culture.

The following chapter by David Rigoni returns to the question of punishment in schools, by examining a specific Assertive Discipline programme. He shows that, in the last few years, Assertive Discipline has swept through the USA and is now entering Britain. Being a complete package of ideas and behaviours that promises teachers greater control over their classes, assertive discipline has been widely taught on in-service courses and has entered the initial teacher training curriculum. The essence of the idea is that children need firm, clear rules that are enforced without exception. Once the teacher has set the rules, children who break them know exactly what punishments will follow. Punishment is calculated and performed by the teacher in a clear and impersonal manner. Rigoni describes and examines the nature of assertive discipline training, and compares the moral underpinnings of the system with those put forward by Durkheim. The system

Durkheim and modern education 12

is criticized and it is shown that there are both similarities and differences between Assertive Discipline and the form of discipline that Durkheim advocated.

In the final chapter Philip Wexler and Paul Stein present a theoretical exposition of the complementary nature of education and religion based on Durkheims writings. Education, they hold, is transformed religion. The development of social forms moves from religion into education. Both, expressed as ideals, are derived from the dynamic of social becoming. Religion, far from disappearing, magnifies changes and idealizes social reality through the notion of resacralization. All rests on the notion of social energywhich is at the heart of Durkheims thought.

The collection is thus diverse and, in some places, provocative. It is offered to encourage debate about Durkheims work and its relevance to modern education. As such, it should be noted that the interpretations and opinions of the contributors do not necessarily concur with those of the editors.

Notes 1 For a fuller and more historical introduction to Durkheims educational thought, see Pickering

1979. 2 See Searby 1982 for an account of the early attempts to introduce teacher training at the edge of

the University of Cambridge. Only after the 1960s did the sociology of education in universities receive any attention, mainly through the work of Bernstein, Floud and Halsey. In the 1970s Departments of Education in Britain were embroiled with Marxist ideology, which did not raise their already low reputation in universities (see Davies in Cardi and Plantier 1993:146ff.; also The Times for 9.12.74 describing the formation of an anti-Marxist movement amongst teachers). Marxist school teachers envisaged their work as a means of radical social change, if not revolution. This was totally unlike Durkheims concept of education (see Karabel and Halsey 1977).

3 The story in the family is that Durkheim was very much concerned with the education of his son, Andr, who turned out to be a brilliant university student and who was killed in 1916 on the Eastern Front. His death undoubtedly hastened Durkheims own death. But he felt that his daughter, Louise, should not proceed on a course of higher education. (My thanks to Mrs Claudette Kennedy for this point.)

References

Cardi, F. and Plantier, J. (eds) (1993) Durkheim, sociologue de lducation, Paris: LHarmattan.

Durkheim, E. (1893b) De la Division du travail social: tude sur lorganisation des socits suprieures, Paris: Alcan.

Introduction 13

(t.1933b) by G.Simpson, The Division of Labor in Society, New York: Macmillan. (1895a) Les Rgles de la mthode sociologique, Paris: Alcan. (1901c) 2nd edition by Durkheim. (t.1938b) by S.A.Solovay and J.H.Mueller, The Rules of Sociological Method,

edited, with an introduction by G.E.G.Catlin, Chicago: University of Chicago Press and (1950) Chicago: Free Press.

(1897a) Le Suicide; Etude de sociologie, Paris: Alcan. (t.1951a) by J.A.Spaulding and G.Simpson, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, edited,

with an introduction by G.Simpson, Chicago: Free Press and (1952) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

(1901a(i)) Deux Lois de lvolution pnale, LAnne sociologique, IV:6595. (t.1969e) by W.Jeffrey Jr, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 38:3260. (1905b) Contribution to: La Morale sans Dieu: essai de solution collective, La

Revue, LIX:3068. (t.1979a) by H.L.Sutcliffe. In W.S.F.Picketing 1979, see below. (1912a) Les Formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse. Le systme totmique en

Australie, Paris: Alcan. (t.1915d) by J.W.Swain, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in

Religious Sociology, London: Allen and Unwin; New York: Macmillan. (1920a) Introduction la morale, Revue philosophique, LXXXIX:7997. (t.1979a) by H.L.Sutcliffe. In W.S.F.Picketing 1979, see below. (1922a) Education et sociologie, introduction by Paul Fauconnet, Paris: Alcan. (t.1956a) by S.D.Fox, Education and Sociology, Chicago: Free Press. (1925a) LEducation morale, introduction by Paul Fauconnet, Paris: Alcan. (t.1961a) by E.K.Wilson and H.Schurer, Moral Education: A Study in the Theory

and Application of the Sociology of Education, edited, with an introduction, by E.K.Wilson, New York: Free Press.

(1938a) LEvolution pdagogique en France, 2 vols, Paris: Alcan. (t.1977a) by P.Collins, The Evolution of Educational Thought, London and Boston:

Routledge and Kegan Paul. (1991a) LEnseignement de la morale lcole primaire. Reproduced in J.

Gauttain Le Formation dune discipline universitaire: la science de lducation 18501914, Thse de doctorat, Universit Paris V, pp. 63655.

(t.1995a) by D.Lussier, W.S.F.Pickering and J.Watts as Durkheim and moral education for children: a recently discovered lecture, Journal of Moral Education, 24, 1:2636.

Hargreaves, D. (1994) The Mosaic of Learning: Schools and Teachers for the Next Century, London: Demos.

Judge, H., Lemosse, M. and Sedlak, L.P. and M. (1994) The University and the Teachers: France, the United States, England, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 4, Wallingford, Oxfordshire: Triangle Books.

Durkheim and modern education 14

Karabel, J. and Halsey, A.H. (eds) (1977) Power and Ideology in Education, New York: Oxford University Press.

Lukes, S. (1973) Emile Durkheim. His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study, London: Allen Lane. New edition 1992, London: Penguin.

Pickering, W.S.F. (1979) Introduction to W.S.F.Pickering (ed.) Durkheim: Essays on Morals and Education, London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Searby, P. (1982) The Training of Teachers in Cambridge University. The First Sixty Years 18791939, Cambridge: The University Department of Education.

Introduction 15

Part One

2 EMILE DURKHEIM AND MORAL EDUCATION IN A PLURALISTIC

SOCIETY Mark S.Cladis

I

One of the defining characteristics of contemporary, North Atlantic democratic societies is what John Rawls has referred to as the fact of pluralism. My chief question in this chapter is: What is the nature of Durkheims conception of moral education and is it appropriate for pluralistic democracies? Many would not associate Durkheim with anything having to do with moral pluralism, especially if the subject pertained to education. Training, discipline, authorityare not these the terms at the heart of Durkheim on education, and what have these to do with pluralism?

Yet we know that the case of Durkheim on pluralism is not simple. Durkheim was, after all, a champion of the dignity, indeed, the sacredness of the individual. This meant, among other things, that he was a strong supporter of individual rights. Moreover, the individual for Durkheim was never a mere tool of the state or a mere vessel to be filled by the state for the sake of the state. We also know, however, that Durkheim was a champion of the common good. To what extent do Durkheims theories permit conflict between the autonomy of individuals and the good of society? This issue is important when discussing moral education in the context of pluralistic societies. For example, to what extent do parents have the right to determine their childrens education? And in what way are children protected from what some would call state socialization?

In this chapter, I describe what I take to be the ethosthe characterof Durkheims approach to moral education, while highlighting the relation between his educational vision and the question of pluralism. In the end, I will argue that Durkheims approach is one of the best examples we have of democratic education for pluralistic societies.

II

In 1885, in a very early review, Durkheim wrote:

It is necessary that we never lose sight of what is the aim of public education. It is not a matter of training workers for the factory or accountants for the warehouse, but citizens for society. The teaching

should therefore be essentially edifying [moralisateur]; it should detach minds from egoistic views and material interests

(Durkheim 1885b:449)

In the same review Durkheim argued that material power is not the only social good to be distributed justly. Political power constitutes a sort of social fund, and in democracies this collective capital is to be distributed equally. Such equality, Durkheim claims, can be justified on good and solid reasons. Yet lest there be a contradiction between the quantity and the quality of political participation, political power must be wed to that other collective good that is also to be distributed equallyintellectual capital, that is, education.

Early on, then, Durkheim was aware of the important role education plays in the life of a democracy. He never lost this perspective, but developed it into a sophisticated, and helpful, model for democratic education. Its heterogeneous character, embracing critical thought and shared traditions, autonomy and community, human diversity and social unity, provides a powerful support and challenge to liberal, democratic institutions.

Durkheim took to heart Rousseaus belief that education ought to transform individuals into citizens ready for moral participation in society. Education, Durkheim wrote, far from having as its unique or principal object the individual and his interests, is above all the means by which society perpetually recreates the conditions of its very existence (1922a/t.1956a:123). Socialization, then, not private self-expression, is the aim of education, and socializing individuals is a moral endeavour: We are moral beings only to the extent that we are social beings (1925a/t.1961a: 64). Education, in Durkheims view, shapes social beings by instilling shared moral traditions, practices and ideals. Despite all the assorted moral disputes, Durkheim claimed, there exists a certain number of principles which, implicitly or explicitly, are common to all. These include the respectfor the ideas and sentiments which are at the base of democratic morality (1922a/t.1956a:81). Through moral education, young people become autonomous and develop the skills in reflective and critical thought that are so important to flourishing democracies, as they are nurtured in, to use John Rawls phrase, an overlapping consensus or, to use Durkheims phrase, nurtured in societys shared ideas, sentiments, and practices. Rousseaus dilemma (namely, how to reconcile his love for both the autonomous indi-vidual and the devoted citizen) is tackled by Durkheim when he described the individual as a cherished social ideal. Advancing this ideal, according to Durkheim, should be a prominent goal of modern education.

I now turn to explore some of the various aims and methods specified in Durkheims work on moral education. For Durkheim, education is a moral task. It is not self-evident that we should expect Durkheim, a professor of education, to hold this position. Many would not agree with him. Education, some would argue, is amoral. It imparts facts about the way the world is, and not values concerning the way it should be. Statements about how things should be or ought to be are normative and pertain to morality. Unlike education, whose domain is public facts for public consumption, morality is a matter of the individuals heart. It is private. The most that public education can do is clarify for students what they already believe. A childs public education must remain neutral on questions of morality so that he or she can, someday, freely choose a morally satisfying

Emile Durkheim and moral education in a pluralistic society 19

way of life. Proponents of this position argue that good parents, like good educators, respect this principle of neutrality.

Durkheim rejected the very idea of a neutral or amoral general education. Moral ideals, in his account, are public. They contribute to the creation and re-creation of the world about us. They are inescapable.

I do not want to suggest that Durkheim considered all education moral education, only that, contrary to many educational theorists, Durkheim considered the moral aspect the most important aspect of education. Teaching is genuinely educational, he claimed, when it has the capacity of exerting a moral influence on the way we are and the way we think. An education whose sole aim is to increase our mastery of the physical universe is bound to fail in this central task (Durkheim 1938a/t.1977a:3367).

Moral education, in Durkheims view, takes place in most school subjects. It cannot be confined to a daily course. It is not lessons in Moralitt, to use Hegels termmemorizing abstract ethical codes and regulations.1 Moral education cannot be so rigidly confined to the classroom hourit is implicated in every moment. It must be mingled in the whole of school life, as morality itself is involved in the whole web of collective life. There is no formula that can contain and express it adequately (1925a/t.1961a:125). The teaching of science, history, literature and the social sciences all contribute to the construction of the social worlds in which the child will ethically develop and participate.

I have said that for Durkheim education is fundamentally a moral task, yet I still need to specify the nature of that task, that is, the nature of Durkheims conception of moral education. A good way to begin is to note how Durkheim distinguished his position from Kants and from the utilitarian positions of Bentham, James Mill and Spencer. Durkheim offered specific criticism of each, but for my purposes these particular critiques are not as significant as Durkheims general criticism of what these theorists had in common: They assume that there is an ideal, perfect education, which applies to all men indiscriminately; and it is this education, universal and unique, that the theorist tries to define. History, however, in Durkheims view, provides no evidence of such an ideal. Moreover, these theorists failed to understand education as a collection of practices and institutions that have been organized slowly in the course of time (1922a/t.1956a:64, 65).

Durkheims approach to education, unlike Kants and the various utilitarians, was that of the historicist. By historicist I am referring to those who, to use Richard Rortys description, have denied that there is such a thing as human nature or the deepest level of the self. Their strategy has been to insist that socialization, and thus historical circumstance, goes all the way down (Rorty 1989:xiii). Durkheim complained that the modern educational theorist asserts that human nature is universally and eternally the same. It is regarded as self-evident that to the questions of how to think about the world and how to behave in it there is a single right answer which holds true for the whole of the human race (1938a/t.1977a:321). Those subscribing to this essentialist view attempt to discover ahistorical human nature and then use education as a means to elicit or instil it, thereby protecting it from all the deceits and artificialities of different civilizations. In Durkheims view, however, all education, like all morality, is sectarian. It is for these people, at this time. Moreover, what we teach here and now cannot be developed from scratch. We suffer from self-deception when we believe that we can create, ex nihilo, the ways and means of education. Educational systems, he wrote:

Durkheim and modern education 20

are the product of a common life. They are, moreover, in large part the work of preceding generations. Historical investigation of the formation and development of systems of education reveals that they depend upon religion, political organization, the degree of development of science, the state of industry, etc. If they are considered apart from all these historic causes, they become incomprehensible.

(1922a/t.1956a:66)

Educational institutions, then, are contingent. They cannot be derived from God above or nature below. But they are not arbitrary. They belong to a vast though not shapeless narrative, or set of narratives, that a society tells itself about itself. Durkheim wrote of the diverse educational aims of a variety of cultures. Of Roman culture, for example, he claimed that education trained the individual to subordinate himself to society. This is not the case for modern democratic societies. Today, Durkheim noted approvingly, education tries to make of the individual an autonomous personality (1938a/t.1977a:64). A central aspect of Durkheims principled understanding of moral education is that it should engender this social ideal, the autonomous individual or, more generally, as Durkheim occasionally put it, moral individualism.

Moral individualism designates a cluster of values and goals, institutions and practices distinctive of liberal democratic traditions.2 Our belief in the moral worth of the individual, Durkheim claimed, increasingly dominates our whole present-day moral system (1938a/t.1977a:325). However, he also insisted that it needs to permeate our institutions more deeply. This social ethos needs to be taught to our youth, and to any others who are destined to be active participants in liberal society.

Education centred on moral individualism aims to foster a sense of the dignity of man and a greater thirst for justice. An education centred on moral individualism, moreover, is secular and rational, although it is not anti-religious. It does not, for example, attempt to subvert religious belief. Secular education, in Durkheims account, is attentive to rational moral beliefs and practices that are embedded in religion, lest we be left only with an impoverished and colorless morality (1925a/t.1961a:9). Secular education, however, does combat what Durkheim called intellectual servitude. Future citizens of democracies need to know about styles of belief and practices other than that of their family or local group. Otherwise a child, a future adult, who had been held captive to a highly particular moral point of view, could find it difficult to respect those holding other worthy views. So when Durkheim wrote of secular education, he was referring to an inclusive education, an education that arises from the greater society, and that enables individuals to appreciate, if not to participate in, a variety of communities and associations. Such a tutored appreciation is an essential component of moral education in pluralistic societies.

III

I have been enlarging upon the ways in which Durkheims idea of a public education embraced moral individualism; later we will see that there are implicit connections between his educational commitment to moral individualism and our contemporary

Emile Durkheim and moral education in a pluralistic society 21

interest in moral pluralism. A further investigation of Durkheims educational commitment to moral individualism can be based on his lectures on moral education and briefly inspecting two of the three concepts he considered central to this subjectnamely, the concepts of discipline and autonomy. Durkheim was saying some novel things with these familiar terms.

In the lectures on discipline, Durkheim repeatedly referred to liberty, critical thought, innovation and self-expression. These are not themes many would expect to find in a discussion on discipline. For Durkheim, discipline is an aspect of morality: it is an acquired capacity for living in the various contours of a moral life. The discipline found in moral education in liberal democracies, according to Durkheim, ought to be directed at furthering the values and goals of moral individualism which give moral education its content. Its form follows its content. Given the content of moral individualism, Durkheim insisted that the forms of discipline should not be harsh or coercive. Corporal punishment, for example, is strictly prohibited. A teachers authority is not to be derived from physical power or threat of punishment, but from moral legitimacy (1925a/t.1961a:154). Moreover, discipline must [not] involve blind and slavish submission, and it must not be removed from the realm of discussion, converting it into icons to which man dare not, so to speak, lift his eyes (1925a/t.1961a:523).

One of the results of discipline is something like Nietzsches will-to-power, that is, the will to master ones life. From self-mastery a host of good things follows. Self-mastery, Durkheim wrote, is the first condition of all true power, of all liberty worthy of the name (1925a/t.1961a:45). Self-mastery protects freedom from caprice and emotional gusts of wind. It produces the freedom to act from a defined character, checking the tyranny of being unduly subject to the influences that happen to surround us. Self-mastery enables us to focus our powers and talents to a precise point, thereby creating something splendid, something lovely, and something novel. Moral innovators such as Socrates and Jesus, Durkheim pointed out, dared to shake off the yoke of traditional discipline (1925a/t.1961a:53). Such innovation does not entail spurning all received social contours. It is a matter of knowing when some disciplines become yokes of slavery.

Finally, out of self-mastery emerges the self. The individual human being, Durkheim said, is someone who can leave his imprint upon everything he does, a mark appropriate to himself, constant through time and by means of which he recognizes himself as distinct from all others (1925a/t.1961a:46). This is not an invitation to overcome what Harold Bloom has called the anxiety of influence (1973:516). On the contrary, the strong personality wields a distinctive influence only because it is enriched and stayed by the stable yet flexible intellectual and moral traditions of an age. The attempt to escape the influence of what has been achieved before is more likely to create vacuity, not originality. Man possesses all the less of himself when he possesses only himself (1925a/t.1961a:69).

Autonomy, or self-determination, is the other concept Durkheim employed in his lectures on moral education. This concept represents still another aspect of morality. To act morally, it is not enoughabove all, it is no longer enoughto respect discipline and to be committed to a group. Beyond thiswe must have knowledge, as clear and complete an awareness as possible of the reasons for our conduct (1925a/t.1961a:120). Autonomy does not spring from escaping collective influences or

Durkheim and modern education 22

from a total immersion in collective influences such that societys justifications become the individuals. Neither account is satisfactory.

Durkheim dissociated his position from these two extremesthe position of various Enlightenment liberals and Romantics who insisted that individuals should be free from all social constraints in order to experience spontaneity in moral and aesthetic activities, and the position of those who claimed that individuals, by necessity, are perpetually subject to restraints and that the personality can be nothing but a product of its environment. Kant, according to Durkheim, attempted to preserve the good and helpful aspects of both positions. Kant emphasizes, on the one hand, the imperative quality of morality. On the other hand, Kant refuses to acknowledge that the will can be completely moral when it is not autonomous, when it defers passively to a law of which it is not the maker (1925a/t.1961a:108, 109). Kant tried to mediate the two positions by claiming that if the will were free from sensibility and conformed to reason alone, it would, as Durkheim put it, move spontaneously toward duty through the impulse of its nature alone. The coercive and obligatory aspect of the moral law, in other words, would vanish for the purely rational individual.

The Kantian will purchases autonomy, however, by violently separating itself from the world, and by attempting to align itself with unworldly reason. This price is too high, for, as Durkheim noted, our reason is not a transcendent faculty; it is implicated in society (1925a/t.1961a:109, 113). In Kants account, there is no room for moral pluralism; the universal permits no diversity. In Durkheims account, in contrast, there is room for moral pluralism both between and within societies. But this is not an invitation to moral nihilism. Durkheim attempted to capture the merits of Kants position by socializing the Kantian faculty of moral reasoning. In doing so, he redefined it. Reason no longer was the faculty for producing universal and certain judgments to guide the autonomous will. Instead, it became the ability to recognize the bestthe most helpful, or plausible, or beautiful, or profounddescriptions, explanations and judgments that our historical communities have so far produced. Having said this, Durkheim could agree with Kant that as individuals become rational they become autonomous agents. It was understood now, however, that individuals become rational as they learn to identify what a society calls reasonable or unreasonable or problematic, and as they learn how it has arrived at these (often tentative, and even diverse) conclusions. Autonomous agents are those who are aware of the social and historical warrants for moral beliefs and practices, and who are thereby free to embrace and criticize them. Autonomy, then, is an important virtue to inculcate in young citizens of modern, pluralistic democracies, for these societies benefit from an active citizenry that explores present social practices, asks for reasons and pursues just reforms.

IV

Because the development of critical thought was a prominent feature of Durkheims concept of moral education, he placed particular stress on encouraging critical skills. In order to prevent what Durkheim called parrot-like morality, he insisted that a societys beliefs and practices should not be internalized in such a way as to be beyond criticism or reflection, the agents par excellence of all change (1925a/t.1961a:94, 52). Students

Emile Durkheim and moral education in a pluralistic society 23

need to be taught to expect change; they need to understand that the morality of the future will probably not be that of today (1909a(2)/t.1979a:131). Continuity persists, to be sure, but social reality, while relatively stable, is perpetually in the process of becoming. It is this process of becoming that needs to be made perceptible to the child (1909a(2)/t.1979a:132). This may sound more like a sociological than a moral argument about education. Durkheim made it clear, however, that his concern was not simply that children be prepared for change per se, but that they be prepared for moral advances. Society is not to content itself with a complacent possession of moral results that have been handed down to it. To that end, the teacher must be on his guard against transmitting the moral gospel of our elders as a sort of closed book. Morality, then, is to be understood as an open canon. Understanding this, Durkheim felt, could enable students to see themselves as something more than performers, reciting yesterdays lines. It could excite in them