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Review of Education
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GERAINT PARRY
ABSTRACT It is a recurrent feature of the history of political thought that thinkers have
turned their attention to education. Some have been concerned with the reproduction of
a political culture through education. Others have sought to redress the failings of present
ation of the mind-set and produce new persons. Constructive theories include early
utilitarians, conservatives such as Oakeshott and moder democratic realists. Examples of
It is a striking feature of the history of political thought that so many thinkers have
explicitly addressed the subject of education. Some have written works which feature
notably in the history of educational philosophy. Others, whilst not authors of distinct
treatises on education have, nevertheless, discussed the implications of their respective
training of ruling elites or the advancement of the national economy, two broad
purposes appear to have motivated political thinkers in turning to education which
might be termed 'reproduction' and 'redress'. The notion of education as reproduction
is widespread and has been furthered as a result of the influential work of Bourdieu and
Passeron (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; also Gutmann, 1987). Pedagogic authorities are
seen as capable of exercising a more lasting effect in sustaining social values and
practices than the wielders of political power since education tends to 'reproduce ... the
0305-4985/99/010023-16 $7.00 ? 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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be to distance the young as far as is possible from the various forms of schooling
provided by the established authorities. Since parents will be parts of the corrupted
generation and are certainly chronologically the first teachers it may also be necessary
to remove the child from their influence. In their place must step teachers who can in
some way stand apart from society and be the representatives of the new world.
Whether the broad aim is to reproduce social practices or to remedy their failings, the
pedagogic proposals advanced by political theorists at a number of levels-of structure,
curriculum and method-can be highly revealing of the ostensible political programme.
Most obviously one might look to ideas on access to schooling and of what kind. In the
18th century doctrines of natural rights were in tension with the exclusion from equal
educational opportunities of various categories of persons such as the poor or women
(see, for example, Payne, 1976; Chisick, 1981; Melton, 1988). Since the advent of
universal and compulsory schooling the relevant questions have surrounded the manner
in which pupils are permitted to advance through the system on the basis of merit or
on the basis of elite recognition (see the seminal work of Turner, 1960). Here the once
clear liberal notion of education preparing for the career open to the talents has become
obscured as the central ideas of merit and talent have joined the ranks of contested
concepts (Green, 1989; Wooldridge, 1994).
In similar fashion disputes over the content of the curriculum have repeatedly
reflected broader political and social concerns, even when portrayed as purely educational issues-whether they were over the hegemony of classical languages or over the
introduction of new, more 'relevant' subjects. The recent controversies in Britain over
'traditional' and 'progressive' teaching methods also have their 'pre-echoes' in earlier
debates. Liberal or radical stress on learning and discovery have confronted conservative emphases on the teacher and on discipline in ways which have drawn explicit
Two such families of political education theory may be designated as 'constructive' and
'reconstructive' education. The distinction draws upon Dennis Thompson's classic
differentiation between ideals of citizenship (Thompson, 1970, pp. 43-52 and passim).
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transforming their priorities and ways of understanding of the world. Within each
family there are several variations which, whilst sharing a common approach to the
broad purpose of political education, yet differ widely in their policy implications.
CONSTRUCTIVE THEORIES
The 18th century saw the first proposals for a recognisably modem national education
system-the essay by La Chalotais (1763) being the most influential early exposition.
The immediate intellectual inspiration can be traced to an interpretation of Locke's
view of the mind as at birth a tabula rasa, which permitted education to be regarded as
a technology capable of printing ideas on the mind of the child. When coupled with the
assumption of an inbuilt tendency of humans for self-preservation or self-love the
objective of education came to be one of redirecting self-interest to the pursuit of
common or national interests.
dangers. Helv&tius himself, whilst recognising that the science of education would
enable the legislator to guide the motions of the 'human puppet' (Helvetius, 1773,
p. 4), for this reason argued that reformation of the absolutist state was necessary to
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nationally prescribed curriculum (Priestley, 1771, section IV; Macaulay, 1790, p. 15).
At the same time Priestley wished schools to provide courses for those playing an active
vation which was to become increasingly familiar in both secondary and tertiary
education in the 19th and 20th centuries (see, for example, Haldane, 1902; Moberly,
1949 or world league tables of scholastic achievement, e.g. The Economist, 1997).
Conservatism
tionists. In his famous inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics in 1951
on 'Political Education' Oakeshott described it as 'coming to understand a tradition'
and 'learning how to participate in a conversation' (Oakeshott, 1989, p. 151). This
tradition is largely peculiar to a given society and the conversation it entails stretches
over time and links that society's past and present with its future. Understanding the
tradition is compared to acquiring a language which consists in learning words in use.
Analogously political education involves 'observation and imitation of the behaviour of
our elders', absorbing in effect their political vocabulary (Oakeshott, 1989, p. 152). It
requires especially the study of how the society has thought about the tradition and the
'legends' it has constructed and kept up to date-'not to expose its errors but to
understand its prejudices' (Oakeshott, 1989, p. 153).
This account of political education is of a piece with Oakeshott's conception of the
enterprise of education in general. The product of schooling is likely to be a person who
will be well-attuned to approaching politics as a tradition in which to be inculcated
rather than a practice to be criticised and transformed. Education is 'the deliberate
initiation of a newcomer into a human inheritance of sentiments, beliefs, imaginings,
understandings and activities' (Oakeshott, 1989, p. 68). The emphasis is on teaching
more than on learning (Oakeshott, 1989, pp. 46, 62). The 'world of achievement' into
which the pupil is inducted is made up of the standards of conduct and the activities
which previous generations have approved and pursued. For this reason education is a
'transaction between generations' (Oakeshott, 1989, p. 93). Initiation into a practice
does not mean that the practice will be reproduced unchanged. Education should
impart judgement which allows the pupil to use the language of the practice in ways
which lie beyond the rules of the activity whilst yet maintaining the 'flow of sympathy'
(Oakeshott, 1989, p. 149). In politics judgement consists, in his famous phrase, in the
pursuit of the 'intimations of the tradition' (Oakeshott, 1989, pp. 136-158). But
judgement cannot be exercised in any sphere without information, which presupposes
formal instruction and memory work.
This stress on the teacher as the transmitter of civilisation rather than on the pupil
leads logically to the conservative rejection of ideas of discovery learning. In a caricature
of 'progressive' education, Oakeshott condemns those who see learning as 'finding out',
who reject the idea of a curriculum, who emphasise pictorial over verbal representation
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and the political arena as new worlds to explore, uninhibited by the intellectual
boundaries and governmental institutions they had inherited. From the outset the
conservatives recognised almost more quickly than its proponents the political
implications of educational reform.
'Realist' Democrats
Alongside the first modem movements towards national education developed calls for
an education which would assist in incorporating emergent classes into the political
system. By the 1820s the inevitability of some considerable extension of the democratic
element in government was widely recognised. The difficulty lay in ensuring, at various
stages through the 19th century, that the new classes would govern with due appreciation of the permanent interests of society. The system devised was representative
government, described by James Mill as 'the grand discovery of modern times' (J. Mill,
1978, p. 73). The essence of representative government lay in, as Schumpeter was to
put it, a 'division of labour' between the people and the politician (Schumpeter, 1943,
p. 295). The political role of the people was to be largely confined to voting in elections.
For this relatively undemanding task education was still necessary. The first requirement, historically, was the promotion of basic literacy and numeracy. Equally
significant was learning democratic self-control in not seeking to be a political activist
engaging in political 'back-seat driving' (Schumpeter, 1943, p. 295).
It is appropriate that James Mill, as the author of the most succinct statement of this
version of representative government, should also have expounded the theory of
education to accompany it. Democracy was designed to protect individuals from being
exploited by sinister interests in government by submitting office-holders to the threat
of defeat in regular and frequent elections. Since all persons, voters as well as holders
of power, are assumed to be moved by private advantage, the political and educational
task is to ensure that voters understand that this will be attained by redirecting
self-interest to the common interest. No transformation of attitudes is demanded.
Education was seen, accordingly, as making 'certain feelings and thoughts take place
instead of others' (J. Mill, 1931, p. 11). The skill lay in manipulating rewards and
sanctions in order to habituate the mind to associate pleasurable trains of ideas with
activities which produced benefits to others (. Mill, 1931, pp. 54-56). The emphasis
was on the teacher and the transmission of values rather than on the pupils and their
discoveries. Substantively the core interest to be learned was the respect for property.
But more significant for present purposes is the style of politics which this education
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rule of the people but in the people selecting who is to rule (Sartori, 1987, passim).
Unlike more direct forms of democracy it can accommodate low levels of political
competence and rationality and does not demand an unrealistic transformation in
popular behaviour (Sartori, 1987, pp. 102-130, 425-449). The inference Sartori draws
for political education is that it should concentrate on the political representatives,
enabling them to comprehend and analyse the flood of expert scientific information
they face (Sartori, 1987, p. 110).
The implications for citizens are developed by William Galston who argues for a
mode of civic education which has 'congruence with the basic features of the society it
is intended to sustain' (Galston, 1991, p. 246). He identifies the basic features of
modern democracy in the manner of Schumpeter and Sartori as the selection of
representatives. The appropriate form of civic education is one that enables electors to
select wisely. Beyond that, civic education might legitimately promote toleration,
political self-restraint and commitment to the rule of law. What Galston objects to is
any proposal that civic education in a liberal democracy should advance a sense of
participatory obligations. Nor might it properly inculcate the qualities of confidence,
courage or friendship as specific civic virtues (see White, 1996). It is not that Galston
thinks poorly of such virtues but that to incorporate them into a public education goes
beyond the remit of a genuinely liberal system by privileging a particular ideal of human
excellence which is neither shared generally nor requisite to the conservation of
present-day democracy. This would be 'to endorse a politics of transformation based on
a general conception of the political good external to the concrete polity in question'
(Galston, 1987, p. 246, emphasis added).
The radical riposte to Galston is likely to replicate the criticism which has commonly
been mounted against Schumpeter and Sartori (Duncan & Lukes, 1963; Barber, 1984).
The limited conception of the citizen's role is, it is suggested, itself the product of
political education in the broad sense that current liberal democracy in its institutions,
practices and ideologies distances the citizen from political life and discourages active
participation. School instruction in civics which was congruent with such democracy
would therefore merely reinforce a conception of citizenship deriving from a minimal
theory of civil association (Parry, 1991, pp. 166-173). The realist position is seen as
failing to recognise the negative education it is offering. Participatory theorists by
contrast would expect the state to provide an educative lead in cultivating a more
activist conception of citizenship. The response of liberal realists is that such civic
education represents an attempt by the state to wean children away from the normal
lifestyles of their parents and turn them into new persons who, when adults, will realise
an alternative democratic vision. Such a programme is seen as incompatible with the
values of a limited liberal polity which is capable of being sustained by a far more
modest instruction in a small 'core of civic commitments' (Galston, 1987, p. 255).
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Communitarians
divided and debased. The most influential exponent of this conception of civic education has, of course, been Rousseau. Although Rousseau insisted that private and civic
education were quite distinct enterprises, his own educational thinking constituted two
opposed a vision of men (though not women) as citizens who would be motivated by
a sense of community and public interest.
The dilemma for Rousseau was how to get there from here. How can corrupted man
generate virtuous society? How can the effect become the cause (Rousseau, 1973,
p. 216)? Education appeared to offer the way out and this explains its centrality to
Rousseau's thought. It might be feasible to teach men an entirely new conception of
social and political life. However, existing education was designed to reproduce the
social corruption of which it was the inevitable agent. Hence Rousseau took a step
which was to be characteristic of radical communitarian education. Instruction had to
other social agent but by a tutor miraculously aware of corruption but uniquely
uncorrupted-who shared the name Jean-Jacques. The tutor's celebrated 'negative
education' is not, as Rousseau also claims, 'inactive' so much as defensive against the
pressures of debased society (Rousseau, 1991, pp. 317, 93, 117).
Emile is required to be dependent only on nature and not on man and to examine
'facts' and not opinion. Only when confident enough to think his own thoughts is he
released into society. How such an austere individual can be integrated into a community remains Rousseau's most pressing problem. Can Rousseau hope for a world of
citizen Emiles living according to the norms of the society imagined in the Social
Contract? Or are we to attend to the more tragic final pages of Emile where community
is to be found by withdrawal into the household? In each case Rousseau conceived of
renewal by means of an education which was neither reproductive nor merely redirective but, instead, deliberately distanced from the political realm in order to achieve its
more complete reconstruction or rejection.
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(1808), the earliest dramatic call for national revival through education, similarly
argued that regeneration was impossible unless the children were removed from
parental supervision for retraining, just as they were for military service (Fichte, 1808,
pp. 360-361). They cannot be released back into the community until they have
learned to detest corruption and are safe from infection by society (Fichte, 1808,
p. 332). Once this first generation is educated it can then in turn educate its successors
without the same precautions.
The problem facing 19th- and 20th-century communitarians has been, however, that
it has ceased to be self-evident wherein this common good consists. Raymond Plant has
described the modem era of thought as 'political philosophy on Dover Beach' (Plant,
1991, pp. 320-379). Plant invokes in Matthew Arnold a theorist for whom education
through the auspices of the state was the key to the restoration of the community he saw
appears likely to be the source of a new shared language. Culture, 'the best that is
known and thought in the world' (Arnold, 1993a, pp. 150, 79) is offered as the new tie
that might bind. However, for it to succeed as a replacement social idea in an anarchy
of opinion culture needs to be taught and the only available educative agency is the
state as, in Arnold's view (following Burke) 'the nation in its collective and corporate
character' and 'representing its best self (Arnold, 1993b, pp. 15, 22-23). The state in
this educative role acts as a disinterested critic of the partial spirit which is reproduced
in existing schools (Arnold, 1993b, p. 17). The regenerative character of the project is
clearly expressed when Arnold argues that the basis of community cannot be found in
'our ordinary selves' but only in 'our best self (Arnold, 1993a, p. 99). The difficulty
Arnold faced, along with others who bewail the disintegration of community whilst
calling for its revival, lay in identifying a genuinely disinterested agency to undertake the
reconstruction (see Williams, 1961, pp. 128-136). Rousseau's educator who is free of
class or sectional associations and Arnold's 'remnant', who can transcend their class
inheritance and promote the 'best', are akin to Plato's philosopher-kings returning to
the polis from the Cave.
This missionary zeal similarly motivated those British Idealists who, inspired by T.
H. Green, devoted so much of their thinking and their practical lives to citizen
education (see Gordon & White, 1979; Vincent & Plant, 1984; Nicholson, 1990). They
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story. If, as Michael Walzer claims, membership of a human community is 'the primary
good we distribute to one another' (Walzer, 1983, p. 31), educating its children
becomes an essential part of the process of ensuring that the new generation recognises
the nature of this primary good.
Nevertheless, late 20th-century communitarians cannot, given the experience of
totalitarian programmes of re-education, be as relaxed as their predecessors about the
solidaristic tendencies of community. Thus, for Alasdair MacIntyre the self needs to
start from the moral particularities of its community in its search for the universal
(MacIntyre, 1981, p. 205)-a sentiment which the British Idealists would have endorsed. The danger, particularly in the "thick" version advanced by MacIntyre, is that
communitarian education may reproduce the particularity rather than engender the
search for the universal. In the more liberal communitarianism of Walzer the saving
element lies in the relative autonomy of schools, which he perhaps rather optimistically
takes to be a fact of modern society (Walzer, 1983, pp. 197-199; see also Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1990). Schools constitute an 'enclosure' within which teachers can "teach the
truths they understand" and which is a context for the reproduction of social critics.
Walzer's communitarianism may derive its appeal from its attempt to reconcile itself
with pluralism. The school is to be part of a local (neighbourhood) community but also
of the community of communities. For this the school must forge the wider association
and not necessarily reproduce the narrower. In the American context this could involve
'busing' from a restrictive neighbourhood to one more plural. The enclosure must help
change the established patterns of associational life, which reinforce the habits of low
expectations, and protect pupils from themselves. The goal is 'the integration of future
citizens' (Walzer, 1983, p. 222). Here the 'enclosure' plays a role familiar in pedagogy
where the school is a defended space in which critical distance from the outside
community could be established. It seems, however, that the contemporary liberal
communitarian wishes to have it both ways-the school should permit the pupils to
retain their roots in their particular inherited culture and yet learn at the very least that
this culture is only one amongst others recognised within a plural democracy. The
upshot is a watery communitarianism which escapes the danger of collective authoritar-
Participatory Democrats
The realists look to electors to acquire only the level of understanding of spectators
appraising the performers in the political arena. In a participatory democracy, by
contrast, everyone needed, like the ancient Athenians, to learn to 'play his part upon a
stage where cram was of no use' (J. S. Mill, 1981a, p. 336). Just as Mill himself
discovered that his own education had failed and that he had to 'begin the formation
of my character anew' (J. S. Mill, 1981b, p. 141), so a sense of the responsibility
implicit in self-government could not be acquired by instruction but, rather, through
the exercise of that responsibility. In politics 'what we require to be taught ... is to be
our own teachers' (J. S. Mill, 1984, p. 244).
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to the meaning of experience' (Dewey, 1966, p. 76). Pupils are invited repeatedly to
reinterpret their experiences in the light of their transactions with the environment.
They are not to understand themselves as spectators but as involved in an exchange
with their surroundings in which they offer hypotheses which are to be tested by acting
upon the world, but which are to be treated as fallible (Tiles, 1988; Ryan, 1995,
Where this vision may depart from John Stuart Mill's is in its communitarianism.
Whatever his reputation as the educator for personal self-realisation Dewey was never
concerned to cultivate Mill's rather prickly kind of individual but, rather, someone
whose very character was developed through social transactions and who would be
concerned with the whole. This begins with the school which, as Ryan rightly says, was
not to be an 'apart institution' but be 'of its community' (Ryan, 1995, p. 147). The
school is to promote sets of shared meanings and the teacher represents the community
by selecting the meanings it wishes to transmit.
All this has led more libertarian critics to perceive Dewey as the defender of
conformity to communal culture (Flew, 1977; Bantock, 1984, pp. 316-322). This
inference understates Dewey's insistence on the continual reconstruction of experience.
Truth may be 'warranted assertibility' but the warrant is always up for renewal.
Nevertheless, these responses (for other such criticisms see the discussion in Ryan,
1995, pp. 345-365) indicate a certain ambivalence within the communitarian stream of
participatory democracy between the commitment to dialogue whatever discomfort it
may bring and to community and consensus. It is one thing to say, as Dewey certainly
does, that we need to learn a common set of meanings in order to deliberate together.
It is another to suggest that this common set of meanings is to be such as to imply a
consensus on substantive rather than procedural policies. The first position might have
few implications for education beyond the relatively uncontroversial expectation that
schools should strive to ensure that pupils achieve a level of 'communicative competence' by a command of written and spoken language. More contestable and more
pedagogically demanding would be the inference that such a competence involved
learning to use the language in certain ways such that utterances are recognised to be
sincere or justifiable or framed so as to be open to particular styles of criticism. Citizens
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by citizens. The prime reservation, which profoundly affects education, is that the
liberal state cannot be neutral about its own neutrality. It must seek to instil respect for
its fundamental principle in its future citizenry. The problem posed by this requirement
is that neutralist liberalism may, in its educational programme, be less accommodating
than it claims towards those who wish to bring their children up to share their own
non-liberal doctrines and consequently to adopt more negative attitudes to what they
One response to this dilemma is libertarian. Schooling is left to the free operation
of the market or to some quasi-market mechanism such as educational vouchers.
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The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research
Council (Grant R000235410) and of the Leverhulme Trust for the research of which
this study forms part.
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Correspondence: Professor Geraint Parry, Department of Government, University of
Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
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