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Review
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Presidential Address
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EPSTEIN
4 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
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EPSTEIN
universal laws. This is not to say that in all cases positivists use mul
or multicultural data; they may focus on a particular socie
framework that calls for replication in other societies. Neo-M
ideology as pervasive in all theoretical frameworks, unlike
Marxists who see only theories that support capitalism as being
infused. And in contrast to "orthodox" relativists, who focus
militude" (rather than truth) in science, neorelativists are also p
with the practical application of "critical rationalism" in particular
The fine distinctions between orthodox and neo-orientations ar
to show the derivations of contemporary theories; my mai
however, is with the overall contrasts between the positivist, M
relativist frameworks. These contrasts should become clear in m
of the debates.
First, however, it will be important to recognize that comparative ed-
ucation invites ideology insofar as that field has practical utility in the
reform of schooling. If comparative education were no more than an
academic exercise, it would furnish no motive for the development of
political consciousness. Yet we display almost an obsession over the need
to achieve some practical benefit from comparative study. Rarely have we
viewed as a primary benefit knowledge for its own sake or the quest of
knowledge to strengthen the mind or to gain personal mastery over the
environment. Such benefits are apparently too elusive, too impervious to
empirical demonstration to justify investment of our time, let alone of
our research institutions' resources. The preoccupation over appropriate
policy and the infusion of ideology which informs policy research should
become evident in my review of the debates.
6 Philip Foster, "Dilemmas of Educational Development: What We Might Learn from the Past,"
Comparative Education Review 19 (October 1975): 375-92, quote on 393.
6 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
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EPSTEIN
rhetoric is a theme to which Foster has returned recurrently. In his 1971 presidential
claimed that radicals are "trapped at a level of rhetoric which makes it difficult for
through the full implications of their arguments" (Philip Foster, "Presidential Addre
against the Schools," Comparative Education Review 15 [October 1971]: 268).
10 Foster, "Commentary of the Commentaries," p. 423.
8 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
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EPSTEIN
16 Anderson specifically mentions Murdoch's study of kinship and Udy's study of economic
organization-both displaying hologeistic methods-as models for comparative analysis (Anderson,
"Methodology of Comparative Education," p. 30). See G. P. Murdock, Social Structure (New York:
Macmillan, 1949); and Stanley Udy, Organization of Work (New Haven, Conn.: HRAF Press, 1959).
Perhaps the only examples of hologeistic research to be found in the literature on education are
Erwin H. Epstein, "Cross-cultural Sampling and a Conceptualization of 'Professional' Instruction,"
Journal of Experimental Education 33 (Summer 1965): 395-401; and John D. Herzog, "Deliberate
Instruction and Household Structure: A Cross-cultural Study," Harvard Educational Review 32 (1962):
310-42. For a description of the early development of the hologeistic approach, see John W. M.
Whiting, "The Cross-cultural Method," in Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. Gardner Lindsey, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1954), 1:523-31.
"17 Abraham Kaplan, "Positivism," in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L.
Sills (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 12:394.
"8 Noah and Eckstein (n. 1 above).
19 Harold J. Noah, "Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish in Comparative Education," Comparative Education
Review 18 (October 1974): 341-47. In discussing the limitations of macro studies, Noah referred
10 February 1983
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EPSTEIN
was translated into policy by the Marshall Plan and Point Four Leg
Shortly afterward, as reflected in the Mutual Security Act, devel
became associated in part with military security. Later still, goals of po
participation and the building of democratic institutions, as em
for example, in Title IX of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1966,
equal with economic growth in defining development.22 Most rec
the reduction of inequality has joined the set of propositional comp
of which "development" consists.23 In short, the meanings asc
development have been determined by the range of values used to
desirable end states.
Notwithstanding the unquestioned acceptance of development a
universally desirable goal by comparativists in the neopositivist traditio
development can never be wholly based on objective, rationalistic,
indisputable premises. Indeed, scholars are increasingly observing "ove
development" in some societies: a condition in which the intangible co
ponents of human existence decline as the tangible indices of developm
improve.24 The benefits of development, including the outcomes
products of education, must remain open to question if social patholog
are a by-product of expanded material wealth and political equality. N
Marxists may be faulted for their relative inattentiveness to empir
validation, but they have a strong case in attributing ideological bias t
the work of neopositivists such as Foster and Anderson. All scholar
members of society are part of the studied reality, and their beliefs, wh
are prior to their scholarship, are influenced by the historical reality
which they participate.25 However much positivists may avow the prob
of personal dissociation in the diagnosis of a subject, the process of in
vestigation itself transforms social reality. Consider that a generalizat
regarding social reality is a statement about "typical"-or "regularit
in-behavior; a scientifically described mechanism of behavior is not sim
an empirical fact descriptive of a sample of observations but a model
conformity for the entire universe of individuals to whom the stateme
2 R. A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer
Press, 1973).
23 See, e.g., Irma Adelman and C. T. Morris, Economic Growth and Social Equity in Developing
Countries (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973); and Dudley Seers, "The Meaning of
Development," in The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment, ed. C. K. Wilber (New
York: Random House, 1973).
24 Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Dean C. Tibbs, "Modernization
Theory and the Study of National Societies: A Critical Perspective," Comparative Studies in Society and
History 15 (1973): 199-226; S. Chodak, Societal Development (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973); C. H. Anderson, The Sociology of Survival (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1976); and Daniel Chirot,
"Changing Fashions in the Study of the Social Causes of Economic and Political Change," in The
State of Sociology: Problems and Prospects, ed. James F. Short, Jr. (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981), pp.
259-82.
25 See Jerzy J. Wiatr, "Sociology-Marxism-Reality," in Marxism and Sociology: Views from
Europe, ed. Peter L. Berger (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), pp. 18-36.
12 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
26 Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957).
27 Archer, Social Origins ofEducational Systems; King's review is in Comparative Education 15 (October
1979): 350-52.
28 Edmund King, "Prescription or Partnership in Comparative Studies of Education?" Comparative
Education 16 (June 1980): 185-95, quote on 186.
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EPSTEIN
Why then is the comparative method found so wanting by King? The ans
lies deep at the heart of the "reformative" purpose of comparative education
is because the comparative method can never tell us what ought to be done
King the ultimate test of a theoretical framework is quite simply whether it
"29 John E. Craig, "On the Development of Educational Systems," American Journal of
89 (February 1981): 189-211, quote on 201.
30 King, p. 187.
3' Ibid., p. 195.
14 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
"aid policy development." Hence his blurring of validity with utility parallels th
earlier elision between facts and values and between explanation and prescrip
tion .... The instrumental criterion of validity has all the defects... for i
strumentalism in general, notably that practical utility need have nothing to
with verisimilitude, least of all, one would add, in the field of political polic
Moreover policy formation is quintessentially a political process, in which th
Comparative Educationalist can only be pushed around as a pawn rather than
playing at being King. Any such educationalist would do much better by retreatin
to his seminar room and trying to understand this process, with the aid of th
comparative method, than by naivelyjoining one of the "policy-shaping comparativ
'workshops' "... which King says have so "greatly strengthened Comparative
Education since the later 1960s .... "32
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EPSTEIN
34 See Koula Mellos, "The Concept of Ideology in Marx," Social Praxis 7 (1980): 5-19
5 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 19
also Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972);
"Hegemony and Consciousness in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci," Political Studies 23 (1
48; and Ron Eyerman, "False Consciousness and Ideology in Marxist Theory," Acta Soci
(1981): 43-56.
16 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
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EPSTEIN
18 February 1983
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EPSTEIN
existing stratification systems. However, recent analyses have seriously questioned the assum
and historical reasoning that have given rise to Marxist world-system theory (see, e.g., Chirot
above]). Cardoso and Faletto even claim that dependency theory, a Marxist corollary to world-s
theory, is dead (see F. H. Cardoso and E. Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America [Ber
University of California Press, 1979]; see also Mary Jean Bowman, review of Martin Carnoy, Educa
as Cultural Imperialism, Economic Development and Cultural Change 24 [July 1976]: 833-40). Yet no
world-system analyses are Marxist. In particular, the findings of Meyer, Ramirez, Rubinson,
Boli-Bennett oppose the Marxist contention that educational expansion has helped to maintain
existing status hierarchy as well as the functionalist use of modernization to explain educa
growth (John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, Richard Rubinson, and John Boli-Bennett
World Educational Revolution, 1950-1970," Sociology of Education 50 [Fall 1977]: 242-58; se
John W. Meyer and Michael T. Hannan, eds., National Development and the World System [Ch
University of Chicago Press, 1979]; and Francisco O. Ramirez andJohn Boli-Bennett, "Global Pa
of Educational Institutionalization," in Comparative Education, ed. Philip G. Altbach, Robert F. Arn
and Gail P. Kelly [New York: Macmillan, 1982], pp. 15-38).
48 Lukacs, pp. 42 and 327; see also Frank Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Cri
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), pp. 145-55.
49 Peter L. Berger, Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change (New York: Basic, 1
pp. 19 and 114.
50 For a discussion of this point, see Erwin H. Epstein, "The Social Control Thesis and Educational
Reform in Dependent Nations," Theory and Society 5 (1978): 255-76.
20 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
51 David Lane, The End of Inequality? Stratification under State Socialism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971);
Mervin Matthews, Class and Society in Soviet Russia (New York: Walker, 1972); Seymour Martin Lipset
and Richard B. Dobson, "Social Stratification and Sociology in the Soviet Union," Survey, no. 19
(Summer 1973), pp. 114-85; Murray Yanowitch, Social and Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union:
Six Studies (White Plains, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1977); and Walter D. Connor, Socialism, Politics, and Equality:
Hierarchy and Change in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
52 Frank Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order (New York: Praeger, 1971).
53 Murray Yanowitch and Norton Dodge, "Social Class and Education: Soviet Findings and
Reactions," Comparative Education Review 12 (October 1968): 248-67; Richard B. Dobson, "Mobility
and Stratification in the Soviet Union," Annual Review of Sociology 3 (1977): 297-329; and Richard
B. Dobson and Michael Swafford, "The Educational Attainment Process in the Soviet Union: A Case
Study," Comparative Education Review 24 (June 1980): 252-69.
54 Erwin H. Epstein, "Ideological Factors in Soviet Educational Policy toward Jews," Education
and Urban Society 10 (February 1978): 223-54.
55 See Michael Harrington, The Twilight of Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976).
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EPSTEIN
- However much King and Holmes bicker about their mutual epistemological diffe
both were students of Karl Popper and are very much in the Popperian neorelativist
Brian Holmes, Problems in Education: A Comparative Approach [London: Routledge
1965], p. 53; Edmund J. King, Comparative Studies and Educational Decision [New York:
1968], pp. 53-54; Brian Holmes, Comparative Education: Some Considerations of Method
& Unwin, 1981], pp. 70-71, and "Models in Comparative Education," Compare 11 [1
57 Holmes, Comparative Education: Some Considerations of Method.
22 February 1983
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EPSTEIN
61 Charles Frankel, The Case for Modern Man (Boston: Beacon, 1956), p. 130.
62 See Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, trans. M. J. Adler (London: Bles, 1940).
24 February 1983
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IDEOLOGY IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
In the end, indeed, there is an embracing paradox about the idea that all
ideas about human affairs are true only from the point of view of a particular
culture or social class. This statement is itself an idea about human affairs. If,
like all other such ideas, it is a doctrine which is true for some people but false
for others, there is no reason why people who hold a different point of view
should pay any attention to it. If, on the other hand, it is not limited in its validity,
then it is an exception to the very generalization it utters. It is one example of
an idea whose truth transcends the historical circumstances in which it is uttered.
And if there is one such idea, it seems arbitrary to suggest that there can be no
others.63
If, indeed, the concept of relativity is not limited in its validity, and
its truth transcends the historical circumstances in which it is uttered,
then it seems logical that certain individuals -those trained to evaluate
events in terms of their unique psychosocial circumstances, namely, the
relativists -must be the ones called upon to expose systematically the
partiality of all ideas. Such a formulation is Platonic in its implications;
it invites the establishment of an oligarchy of intellectuals to be the guardians
if not of "truth" then of the norms of correct procedure.64
Conclusion
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EPSTEIN
26 February 1983
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EPSTEIN
70 Paulston (n. 4 above), p. 395. Paulston's framework includes the equilibrium paradigm, whic
shares assumptions in common with neopositivism, and the conflict paradigm, whose most prominen
analogue is neo-Marxism:
28 February 1983
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"71 George Orwell, Such, Such Were the Joys (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953), p. 141
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