University of Copenhagen

Keywords: History, historical theories, nation state, democracy, government, Plato, society, culture, education, globalization, regionalization.

Article style and source: Paper originally presented at Education in late modernity: beyond narrowing agendas, Institute of Education, University of London,10 - 12th June 1998.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Historical Theories
• A. The Just State
• B. The Natural State
• C. The Nation-State
• The Situation Today
• Culture and Democracy
• Bibliography

Abstract

The last part of the paper raises the question: Are new forms of social organizations on their way? Will democracy and the nation-state prevail? Can democracy stand alone as a model for our social organizations? And what are the consequencies for education? In order to illuminate - but not to solve - these questions the theories of Samuel Huntingdon, Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal are introduced.

Introduction

1. What is the idea of a society?
   The fundamental question he is dealing with, however, is a more general one:
2. How are the concepts: society, individual man and education related to each other?

Let's have a look, then, at what he says about "society". There seems to be no absolute definition. We cannot set up, out of our heads, someting we regard as an ideal society. "Society is one word, but many things", he says. "Men associate in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of purposes...There are political parties with different aims, social sets, cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships, groups bound loosely together by ties of blood and so on in endless variety". But however different they are, they have two traits in common:

1. some interest held in common and
2. a certain amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups.

The two traits both point to democracy: "The first signifies not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common interest, but greater reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests as a factor in social control. The second means not only freer interaction between social groups ..... but change in social habits - its continuous readjustment through meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse. And these two traits are precisely what characterize the democratically constituted society".

Education is essential to his conception of democracy. They are closely related as the title of his book indicates. To meet the demands that arise through the many and varied interests and contacts, education is a sheer necessity.

Education is necessary for the abolition of old barriers, which are in the way of interaction, of change of our habits and of a continuous readjustment to the world around us.

It is obvious that for Dewey democracy is more than a form of government; it is, with his own words, "primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in his action".

There is no doubt that Dewey sees democracy as the peak of a long historic development. He looks upon society as a comunity in which "all men are born equal", as a totally open community of shared and varied interests, of conjoint associated living. In such a society the individual is conceived as a participating individual. And education as a necessary means for change, readjustment and the breaking down of inherited barriers, outdated habits, and personal prejudices.

I shall return later with a criticism of Dewey's conception of the triangle: society, the individual, and education, but before that we'll have a look at his own criticism of three educational theories which have evolved in three epochs, when the social import af education was especially conspicuous. In his critique he applies the two traits described above. content

Historical theories

A. The Just State.

The first theory to be considered is Plato's. Dewey was a great admirer of Plato, although he disagreed with him on almost every issue.

Plato's model - the Just state - was based on the following assumptions:

1. that any society is divided into classes - not so much on ecomic criterias as on criterias of knowledge and character;
2. that men are unequal by nature;
3. that education should sift individuals, discovering what they are for, and supplying a method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature fits him. Each doing his own part, and never transgressing, the order and unity of the whole would be maintained.

But he criticizes it on two essential points:

1. Plato had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fell by nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that. "But progress....has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes".

2. His just state didn´t allow for change. Although his educational philosophy was revolutionary, it was none the less depending on static ideals. "The breakdown of his philosophy is", according to Dewey, "made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation".

B. The Natural State.

The second theory, let´s - for the sake of convenience - call it the natural society of the eighteenth century, had a different view on the relations between society, man and education. Individual man was now given the highest priority. Men were by nature free and equal. "Nature" still meant someting antithetical to existing social organization. "But the voice of nature now speaks for the diversity of individual talent and for the need of free development of individuality in all its variety. Education in accord with nature furnishes the goal and method of instruction and discipline".

Social arrangements were mainly considered unnatural or thought of as mere external expedients by which these non-social individuals might secure a greater amount of private happiness for themselves.

But the ideas conveyed by these statements were inadequate of the true significance of the movement. In reality its chief interest was in progress and in social progress. "The seeming antisocial philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus toward a wider and freer society - toward cosmopolitanism. The positive ideal was humanity. In membership in humanity, as distinct from a state, man´s capacities would be liberated; while in existing political organizations his powers were hampered and distorted to meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of the state".

In other words, Plato's just and class-divided society was to be replaced by a membership of world humanity. "To give "nature" full swing was to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a new and better kingdom of humanity". "The Newtonian solar system, which expressed the reign of natural law, was a scene of wonderful harmony, where every force balanced with every other. Natural law would accomplish the same result in human relations, if men would get rid of the artificial man-imposed coercive restrictions".

C. The Nation-State.

As soon as the first enthusiasm for freedom waned, the weakness of the eigthteenth century model on the constructive side became obvious. Just to leave everything to "nature" was, after all, to negate the very idea af education. The realization of the new education destined to produce a new society was, after all, dependent upon the activities of existing states. The movement for the democratic idea inevitably became a movement for publicly conducted and administered schools.

As far as Europe is concerned, Dewey points to the fact that "the historic situation identified the movement for a state-supported education with the nationalistic movement in political life - a fact of incalculable significance for subsequent movements".

Under the influence of German thought in particular, education became a civic function and the civic function was identified with the realization of the ideal of the national state.. "The "state" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave way to nationalism. To form the citizen, not the "man" became the aim of education. The historic situation to which reference was made was the after-effects of the Napoleonic conquests. The German states felt that systematic attention to education was the best means of recovering and maintaining their political integrity and power. Under the leadership of Prussian statesmen they made this condition a stimulus to the development of an extensive and thoroughly grounded system of public education.

In two decades Fichte and Hegel - and prior to them Herder - elaborated on the idea that the chief function of the state is educational. "In this spirit, Germany was the first country to undertake a public, universal, and compulsory system of education extending from the primary school through the university, and to submit to jealous state regulation and supervision all private educational enterprises".

During the 19th century the European national states gradually built their own national education systems and transformed the common educational heritage into different national curriculum traditions.

Dewey draws two conclusions from his brief historical survey:

1. terms like the individual and the social conception of education are quite meaningless taken at large, or apart from their context. Plato´s situation forced his ideal into a notion of a society organized in stratified classes, losing the individual in the class. The 18th century educational philosophy was highly individualistic in form, but this form was inspired by a noble and generous social ideal: that of a society organized to include humanity, and providing for the indefinite perfectibility of mankind. The idealistic philosophy of 19th century Germany "made the national state an intermediary between the realization of private personality on one side and of humanity on the other". On this background he therefore comes to the following over-all conclusion that "the conception of education as a social process has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind";

2. one of the fundamental problems of education in and for a democratic society today (1916) "is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a wider social aim". In the 19th century the social aim of education and its national aim were identified, and "the result was a marked obscuring of the meaning of a social aim". content

The situation today

In some respects he was right; he was right in his quest for a new definition of society. Although the European idea of the nation-state has beeen imitated all over the world - in fact, has been exported to the rest of the world (including the idea of human rights) - it somehow seems to have passed its peak. It is under pressure from two sides. On one hand from the tendencies we gather under the term globalization: science, commerce and art transcend national boundaries. They are largely international in quality and method, helped on their way by the new technology and the mass medias. On the other hand of regionalization. There seems to be a revival of some kind of the old city-state, i.e. smaller communities than the nation-state, but still communities that trangress the national borders.

In other respects we are not quite sure that his definition was an adequate one. Was democracy a sufficient answer? Does democracy alone provide us with a sufficient content of education? Even if we accept Dewey´s definition of democracy - not just as a form of government - but as "a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience", don't we still sit back with a feeling that democracy alone cannot provide us with "a common faith, common principles, common knowledge and a common moral and intellectual discipline", as Walter Lippman expressed it in his critique of Dewey? content

Culture and democracy

Usually, culture points out the habits and values we have in common. With great interest I have followed the literature that has appeared in the wake of Francis Fukuyama's now famous essay "The End of History" (1989). His thesis was that liberal democracy had won over socialism and all other ideologies and that therefore history had come to an end. The West was the final victor and the communist block had lost.

Fukuyama's essay appeared half a year before the breakdown of Eastern Europe and his thesis was almost considered as a prophecy. The Gulf War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union seemed to confirm the thesis. The old bipolar structure of power had been released by a new uni-polar world order with the liberalistic US in the front.

However, the situation in former Yugoslavia indicated that other forces were at work which in practice ignored the new western hegemony: Forces like nationalism, religion, and cultural identity. In Bosnia these forces caused a civil war. In Iraq Saddam Hussein continued to challenge the West in the name of Islam. And in the far East China didn't submit itself to the Western leadership.

In the light of this, Samuel Huntingdon, Fukuyama's teacher, in 1993 published his influential article in Foreign Affairs, titled "The Clash of Civilizations" The article was later revised and considerably extended and appeared in 1996 as the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Huntingdon's thesis is that the West has not yet won at all. On the contrary the world situation is characterized by a fundamental conflict between seven civilizations, of which especially two, Islam and Kungfutsianism, will challenge the west in the future. There is no dominating set of human values and notions. Each civilization has its own values. So, in Asia they have other values than in the West and in principle equally good. Consequently, you can't talk of universal values. Even democracy and human rights are not universal, but particular and culture-bound.

In reality, this is also the attitude shared by Asian politicians. Western values, they say, are characterized by the worshipping of the individual man and by a social split-up, lack of solidarity, and increased criminality. Again and again the Chinese government has emphasized that Western values only apply to the West and that Asia should follow Asian values.

Then in February this year Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal published a book called: Anticipating the Future. In one of the chapters of the book they directly attack Huntingdon, saying that he is wrong on two crucial points. Firstly, because he regards civilizations as material entities with fixed boundaries. Secondly, because he assumes that civilizations can act united and determined on par with states.

Therefore, Huntingdon misses the fact that civilizations are about ideas and that ideas develop and influence each other. Furthermore, he overlooks the fact that most world centers of civilization today are multicultural and influenced from all over the world. They are a mixture of ideas and influences from many civilizations.

But this doesn't mean that the West is about to lose its identity in a melting pot of influences from the global village. On the contrary, the West has never been stronger politically, economically, and militarily. According to Buzan and Segal, it is the West that has generated the whole frame of political and economical ideas within which the present civilizations develop. This goes for concepts like the sovereign state, nationalism, the market, political pluralism, science, progress etc. In short, a whole line of fundamental Western values have become universal. We therefore stand at the entrance of what Buzan and Segal call a "Westernistic age". "Westernistic" doesn't mean the same as "Western"; rather it means a structure, in which the form or the frame for the future development of the world is set by the West, but not necessarily the concrete content.

Japan is used as an example in that respect. The country has combined Western ideas like democracy, pluralism, etc.with its own culture. At the same time Japan has been able to send back ideas and impulses to the West. It is not just a question of sushi and karaokee, but also a question of production, management systems, and quality control.

Buzan and Segal also reject the idea that there are different kinds of modernization. Modernization only exists in the Western edition. It is a package with no options included. You cannot choose freely from the shelves. You must take it all or be left with nothing. Economic reforms and introduction of market economy involve pluralism, then democracy and some kind of individualism. In that respect the Chinese government is right, when it sees westernization as a threat to the socialistic order in China.

We leave the discussion of the political scientists here and return to the theme of my paper: The relation between society, man, and education. If we follow Dewey, our conception of society - or community - should be given the top priority, because our definition of society defines our conception of man and the kind of education we need. If we follow him further, there seemed to be no absolute definition of society. "We cannot", as he said, "set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society for all times and for all men". The historical models he presented were meant to show that. They showed that our definition of society changes with history. It was his conviction that time was running out for the nation-state and should be replaced by democracy. I think he imagined some kind of global brotherhood, transgressing all borders - a kingdom of humanity like the one we heard about in the Enlightenment period. In a sense he was a forerunner of western modernity.

But history after World War I proved him wrong. The nation-state survived and even strengthened its position. Since the French revolution and up till now we have defined society as the nation-state. The nation-state has set the aim and direction for the education of the citizen, based on the idea of a single national identity and history, a national school system, a national curriculum, and an official and national teaching language.

But even more important: since the days of Dewey we have succeeded in integrating the nation-state with democracy. Since World War II democracy and human rights have become the hot subjects. Democratization of education in all respects - but especially at the secondary level - has been on the agenda during the last five decades.

Today the situation is slightly different. It seems to me that the two - nation-state and democracy - are splitting up again. Democracy remains, while the nation state is declining. We experience today that the nation-state is under transformation. From the outside it is, as I said before, under pressure of globalization and regionalization, and from the inside it is gradually changing from a mono-cultural into a multi-cultural population. But at the same time we experience that the position of democracy is stronger than ever.

My final question is: Can democracy stand alone? Can it exist without being rooted in a set of cultural values?. Shouldn't we talk of the relation between culture, society, man and education, instead of just society, man and education?

If Huntingdon is right, we should. He points to the fact that there is something beneath democracy, a civilization - he called it - from which democracy receives its content of ideas, the values we believe in, the values on which we base our lives and the values from which we deduce which knowledge is of most worth.

Buzan and Segal rejected the idea that there are different kinds of modernization. To them modernization only existed in the western edition. But they made a distinction between "western" and "westernistic". "Westernistic" didn't mean the same as "western"; rather it meant a structure, in which the form or the frame for the future development of the world is set by the West, but not necesssarily the concrete content. So, even to them something more is needed than just the western package solution. They used Japan as an example.

To conclude: Dewey was right in pointing at democracy. But he overlooked the importance of the culture in which education is situated. The inclusion of the concept of culture is needed to give "society" and "education" full swing.

Therefore, for the future planning of education top priority should be given to the idea of culture, rather than to the idea of society. content

Bibliography

Fukuyama, Francis: The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992.

Huntington, Samuel P., "The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Buzan, Barry and Segal, Gerald: "Anticipating the Future". London: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

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