1

L U H M A ” ON SOCLALIZATION AND EDUCATION

Raf Vanderstraeten
School of Education
Utrecht University, The Netherlands

INTRODUCTION
In the English-speaking world, Niklas Luhmann is still mainly known for the
Auseinandersetzungen with Jiirgen Habermas. In the beginning of the 1970s’ these
German authors jointly published a collection of essays on the merits of systems
theory, entitled Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie.’ They focused on
the foundations of social theory and discussed Talcott Parsons’s structural-function-
alism and the use of phenomenological analyses within systems theory. The
collection found wide response in the German-speaking world, and was followed by
three supplementary volumes in which other social scientists took their stand in the
discussion2Without any doubt, the overall outcome of the discussion went against
Luhmann. Habermas’s objections to Luhmann’s systems-theoretical arguments -
that systems theory is just another version of bourgeois ideology, interested in
equilibrium and system maintenance3 - met with widespread approval in this
”critical” era. Although both authors were concerned with the architecture of social
theory, it was Luhmann’s work that received the label of ”social technology”
(Sozialtechnologie),while Habermas could claim to present the “theory of society”
(Theorie der Gesellschaft).
In the following decades, both Habermas and Luhmann continued working on
their type of “grand theory,” and both produced great scientific output. Niklas
Luhmann published, in less than forty years, approximately 70 books and 450
article^.^ The polemic between Habermas and Luhmann also continued; it lasted for
almost 30 years, until Luhmann’s death at the end of 1998. Their writings contain

1. JiirgenHahermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie. Was leistet die
Systemforschung! (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1971).
2. Franz Maciejewski, ed., Theorie der Gesellschnft oder Sozialtechnologie. Beitrage zur Habermas-
Luhmann-Diskussion. Supplement I (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973);Franz Maciejewski, ed., Theorie
der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie. Neue Beitrage zur H a bermns-Luhmann-Diskussion. Supplement
2 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1974);and H.J. Giegel, ed., System und Krise. Theorie der Gesellschaft oder
Sozialtechnologie. Beitrag zur H a bermas-Luhmanii-Diskussion. Supplement 3 (Frankfurta.M.: Suhrkamp,
1975).
3. Jiirgen Hahermas, “Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie! Eine Auseinandersetzung mit
Niklas Luhmann,” in Hahermas and Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie, 144,170.
4. The most recent overall bibliography of Luhmann’s work appeared in the journal Soziale Systeme 1
[ 1998).Renk Gortzenhaspublishedanumberof bibliographiesofworkof andahout Habermas. For example,
“Habermas: Werk und internationale Wirkung,” in [iirgen Habermas, ed. Detlef Horster (Stuttgart:
Metzler, 1991).

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Winter 2000 / Volume 50 / Number 1

0 2000 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois
2 EDUCATIONAL THEORY 2000 / VOLUME
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numerous passages in which they criticize each other’s theoretical ambitions. The
Auseinandersetzungen are sometimes quite hostile, but mostly intermingled with
(ironic)expressions of respect. In a lengthy discussion of Luhmann’s relation to the
subject-philosophical tradition, in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,
Habermas notes for example that “Luhmann’s theory.. .is today incomparable when
it comes to its power of conceptualization, its theoretical imaginativeness, and its
capacity for processing inf~rmation.”~Although this remark is preceded by a passage
in which Luhmann’s work is once more depicted as “neoconservative,” one can
clearly sense Habermas’s shifting perception of Luhmann’s (later) work. Other
observers, however, are more explicit. In a much-quoted comparison of their
theoretical positions, Walter Reese-Schafer even labeled Habermas “conservative”
and Luhmann “progressive.’’h
Notwithstanding this shifting pendulum, the hard core of Luhmann’s systems
theory remains largely unknown outside the German-speaking academic world. At
present, there are approximately ten English-languagebooks of Luhmann available
(partly collections of translated articles). Two discussion lists on the Internet are
devoted to his work: <Luhmann@listserv.gmd.dez <sociocybernetics@egroups.com>.
But translations of his major works are still scarce. Social Systems - Luhmann
himself called this book the ”introductory chapter” of the theory of society that he
envisaged - was published in 1995.’ Of the other “chapters” of this theory - five
books, published between 1988 and 1997, and containing together over 3300 pages
-none is yet available in English. This situation is partly due to the difficulties that
Luhmann‘s singular vocabulary and condensed style provide for translators, and
which have in fact delayed several translation projects. In addition, the reception of
systems theory continues to be hindered by echoes of the Habermas-Luhmann
discussion of the early 1970s, and by the affinity of Luhmann’s early work with
Talcott Parsons’s conservative structural-functionalism. Although Luhmann’s death

5. JiirgenHabermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures [Cambridge: Polity Press,
1987),351, The sentence reads in the original German edition (DerphilosophischeDiskurs der Moderne.
Zwolf Vorlesungen [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 19851, 411 as follows: “Luhmanns Theorie, die heute im
Hinblickauf Konzeptualisiernngskraft,theoretische Phantasieundverarbeitungskapazitatunvergleichlich
ist, weckt allenfalls Zweifel daran, ob der Preis fiir seine ‘Abstraktionsgewinne nicht zu hoch ist.”‘ The
German word “Phantasie” can be translated as ”imaginativeness,” but its meaning is ambiguous. It can also
mean fantasy, phantasm, illusion. Habermas probably alluded to both meanings of the word (althoughhe
authorized the translation).
6. Walter Reese-Schafer, Luhrnann zur Einfuhrung (Hamburg: Junius, 1992), 139-52. Recent English-
language overviews of aspects of the Habermas-Luhmann debate can bc found in Eva Knodt, “Toward a
Non-Foundationalist Epistemology: The Habermas/Luhmann Controversy Revisited,” New German
Critique 61 (19941, 77-101; R.C. Holub, “Luhmann’s Progeny: Systems Theory and Literary Studies in thc
Post-Wall Era,” N e w German Critique 61 [ 19941,143.61; and Loet Leydesdorff, “Habermas, Luhmann, and
the Theory of Communication,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science, in press.
7. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). The original German
edition is: Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. Grundrifl einer allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1984).This book will be cited as SS in the text for all subsequcnt rcferences.

RAF VANDERSTRAETEN is on the Faculty of Social Sciences at Utrecht University, P.O. Box 140,3508
TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. His primary areas of scholarship are social theory and policy analysis.
VANDERSTR.AETEN Niklas Luhmann 3

led to some obituaries in Anglo-Saxon scientific journals, his writings have barely
received attention outside the Old Continent.
Another element that might explain this somewhat marginal position is a
consequence of the aim and architecture of Luhmann’s theoretical work. In the
preface to the English edition of Social Systems, Luhmann wrote:
This is not an easy book. It does not accommodate those who prefer a quick and easy read, yet
do not want to die without a taste of systems theory. This holds for the German text, too. If one
seriously undertakes to work out a comprehensive theory of the social and strives for sufficient
conceptual precision, abstraction and complexity in the conceptual architecture are unavoidable.
Among the classical authors, Parsons included, one finds a regrettable carelessness in conceptual
questions - as if ordinary language were all that is needed to crcate ideas or even texts [SS,
xxxvii).
Abstraction and complexity indeed characterize Luhmann’s work; they are the
counterpart of its universalistic scope. Moreover, Luhmann introduced concepts and
conceptual determinations that are fairly uncommon in the field of social theory [let
alone ordinary language). One of the concepts that was at the core of his later work,
namely, autopoiesis (self-production), was first coined in biology. Apart from
systems-theoretical research, he also frequently referred to literature in the field of
cognitive science and cybernetics. These characteristics of his theory and his work
tend to intimidate the readers. As a consequence, Luhmann’s writings are ignored or
violently criticized.8
Luhmann’s ambition to develop a comprehensive theory of the social has led him
to write about an extraordinarily wide range of topics. Luhmann has published on the
most diverse issues, including the societal systems of art, law, science, religion,
politics, the economy, the family, the mass media, society at large, epistemology, and
the historical evolution of particular types of discourse. As part of this large-scale
theoretical enterprise, he also devoted attention to education. With Karl Eberhard
Schorr as his companion, Luhmann made critical observations about traditional
modes of thought within the field of education, and presented incongruent, alterna-
tive perspectives on the basis of his own theory of social systems. Apart from a
number of articles, this work consists of six books: a monograph on problems of
reflection in the system of education, and five edited volumes, subtitled Fragen an
die Padagogik or Questions for Educational Science.9 After Schorr’s death, and at a
8. See, for example, Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action [Cambridge: Polity Press, 19961.
9. Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, Reflexionsproblemeim Erziehungssystem (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 1979). This book was reprinted (with an appendix) in 1988. An English translation of this book
[entitled Problems of Reflection in the System of Education) has been announced by Bcrbahn Books in
London, but has not yet appeared. The edited volumes are Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, eds.,
Zwischen Technologie und Seibstreferenz. Fragen an die Piidagogik [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982);
Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, eds., Zwischen Intransparenz und Verstehen. Fragen un die
Piidugogk. [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1986);Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, eds., Zwischen
Anfang und Ende. Fragen an die I’iidagogik (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990);Niklas Luhmann and Karl
Eberhard Schorr, eds., Zwischen Absicht und Person. Fragen a n die Padagogik (Frankfurta.M.: Suhrkamp,
1992);and Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schnrr, eds., Zwischen System und Umwelt. Fragen un die
Pudagog& (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996). They deal with means-end thinking, the hcrmeneutic
Verstehen, the temporal boundaries of education, the intention of educators, and the environment of the
educational system respectively. Luhmann’s most important articles on the educational systcm are
reprinted in Niklas Luhmann, Sozioiogische Aufkiarung 4. Beitrage zur funktionulen Differenzierung der
Gesellschaft (Opladen: Westdcutscher Verlag, 1987).
4 EDUCATIONAL THEORY 2000 1 VOLUME
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moment when Luhmann was already terminally ill, yet another volume appeared.’O
Although these writings about education and educational science touch upon
classical issues in educational theory, they derive their meaning primarily from the
conceptual framework that Luhmann elaborated. Luhmann “simply“ attempted to
apply this framework to all kinds of social systems.
The systems-theoretical “drive” with which Luhmann and Schorr dealt with
educational issues has not contributed to the diffusion of their thoughts in the field
of education (not even in Germany). The questions they raised, however, bear upon
the foundations of contemporary educational theory. Luhmann’s use of the concept
of autopoiesis leads him to draw a sharp distinction between social systems and
psychic and organic systems (or human beings). Following Luhmann, social and
psychic systems use different modes of self-production, namely, communication
and thought. The distinction between these systems not only gives cause to question
common assumptions about the transmission of knowledge and value orientations;
his theory of social systems also provides alternative points of view, by treating
education as a social phenomenon that seeks to realize effects within psychic
systems. Luhmann’s systems theory seeks to shed new light on the ”problems” of
difference, deviance, divergence, or plurality. It is this claim that is at the core of the
following reflections on his work. In my view, Luhmann’s perspective on socializa-
tion and education deserves close attention from researchers in the field of educa-
tional theory.
As his work makes use of recent theoretical developments within systems
theory, I will first present a brief overview of the “paradigm change” in systems
theory. Next, I indicate some of Luhmann’s core concepts and their consequences.
This reconstruction focuses on Luhmann’s analysis of interaction and communica-
tion. The second part of the essay is devoted to a discussion of conceptual distinctions
and conceptual determinations regardmg issues of socialization and education. In
the final section, I argue that the field of education is in need of a theory that considers
the conditions of the possibility of education. As this article illustrates, Luhmann’s
work cannot be easily situated within one of the boxes of the hfferentiated modern
system of scientific disciplines. Luhmann used to present himself as a sociologist or
a systems theorist. But he canalso be characterized as aphilosopher -or even as ”der
wahre Philosoph” [“the true philosopher”], as Habermas wrote.”

10.Dieter Lenzenand Niklas Luhmann, ed., Bildungund Weiterbildungim Erziehungssystem. Lebenslauf

und Humanontogenese als Medium und Form (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997). Its topic is the life
trajectory of individuals.
11. JiirgenHabermas, Die Einbeziehurig des Anderen. Studien zur politischen Theorie (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 19961, 393. This book contains an extensive appendix, in which Habermas replies to some
reactions on his previous work. This appendix, in which he continues the Auseinandersetzungen with
Niklas Luhmann, is not included in the English translation The Inclusion ofthe Other (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1998).The omission seems bnce morea symptom of the lackof interest in Luhmann’spoints of view
outside the German-speaking world.
VANIJERSTKAETEN Niklas Luhmann 5

SYSTEMS
THEORY
CHANGE”
“PARADIGM IN SYSTEMS
THEORY
Modern systems theory has been largely shaped by the work of Ludwig von
Bertalanffy. His General System Theory, which originated in the period around the
Second World War, is still influential in a number of research fields.I2Although von
Bertalanffy focused his work predominantly on organic systems (such as cells or
bodies), several researchers have profited from his views to frame their study of
psychic and social systems. Undoubtedly, the best-known and most influential
distinction discussed by von Bertalanffy is that between closed and open systems.
Closed systems are, so to speak, self-satisfied systems. They do not interact with
their environment. They do not have contact with elements that do not belong to the
system itself (for example, a clock). The maintenance of open systems, on the
contrary, depends upon the continuous exchange of elements between these systems
and their environment. The boundary of open systems is permeable. Organic
systems -which are, accorlng to von Bertalanffy, open systems -can only survive
by taking in and excreting elements through their membrane or skin (such as food
and excrement). Without this metabolism, they would soon die. In fact, a system’s
openness is seen to be both the basic condition and the basic problem of its existence.
Because it can never entirely control its chaotic environment, it has to adapt to its
environment.
In systems-theoretical research, one has - in line with von Bertalanffy’s
approach -tried to describe and analyze the network of relations between an (open)
system and its environment. Here, the concepts of “input,” “output,” and “through-
put” or “process” are often used. This kind of approach also found acceptance in the
field of education. In a much-quoted, alarming study, Philip Coombs, for example,
analyzed the worldwide (mal-)functioningof education by means of these concepts.
He wrote:
An educational system, as a system, obviously differs greatly from the human body - or from
a department store - in what it does, how it does it, and the reasons why. Yet in common with
all other productive undertakmgs, it has a set of inputs which are subject to a process, designed
to attain certain outputs, which are intended to satisfy the system’s objectives. These form a
dynamic, organic wh01e.l~
Education is, for example, confronted with particular economic expectations (input),
which it needs to translate into subject matter, goals, courses, and curricula.
Individuals are, on the other hand, able to fill particular economic positions on the
basis of the degrees and diplomas which the system of education delivers (output).
For Coombs, the poor input/output ratios of this system are an indication of “the
world crisis in education.“14

12.Ludwigvon Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory:Foundations, Development, Applications

(New York: Braziller, 1988).
13. Philip H. Coombs, The World Educational Crisis:A Syslems Analysis [New York: Oxford
University Press, 19681, 9.
14. Coombs, The World Educational Crisis and Philip H. Coombs, The World Crisis in
Education: The View from the Eighties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
6 EDUCATIONAL THEORY 50 1 NUMBER
2000 VOLUME
WINTER 1

The strength and attractiveness of this approach had to do with the fact that it
broadened the horizon of postwar educational research. Next to the traditional intra-
unit orientation of educational science, t h s systems approach focused attention on
the societal embedding of educational processes. It helped establish the idea that
societal mechanisms for the distribution of power and wealth play an important role
in education (although often in a latent way, as in the hidden curriculum). It
stimulated research that aimed to map and explain the pressure of society on the
system of education. This is a general characteristic of this kind of systems analysis.
Within the framework of the ”general system theory,” researchers have described
the behavior of complex, open systems as the result of an interaction between a
system and its environment. But in fact, this approach accords the primacy to the
environment. Divergence between a system and its environment indicates a “crisis”
of the system; structural change within a system is interpreted as a functional,
adaptive reaction to the environment.
Already in the early 1960s,the guidingprinciples of this kind of systems analysis
were criticized - in particular by researchers working in the field of cybernetics
(kubernetesis Greek for steersman).This field, which developed in part as a spin-off
of “General System Theory,” focused on purposeful behavior and incorporated the
concepts of feedback and feedback control. Accordingly, systems are able to act
purposefully within a chaotic and threatening environment if they can process
information about the results of their own actions as part of the information on
which they continue to act. Using feedback control, systems are able to maintain
their proper identity, to realize their own goals, or to change themselves, notwith-
standing the active exchange of matter with their environment. Systems are-as the
cyberneticians claimed15 - self-referential, self-organizing systems. Again, this
approach was applied to a wide range of systems. As Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert
Wiener, and Julian Bigelow indicated in a foundational article, “A uniform behavior-
istic analysis is applicable to both machines and living organisms, regardless of the
complexity of the behavior.”l6 There are ample indications of the influence of this
approach on educational theory and educational practice. In the literature on
organizational innovation for example, schools are portrayed as self-organizing
centers that have to alter their own structures or traditions, and that can learn to
accomplish this task.“

15. Heinz von Foerster, “On Self-organizing Systems and Their Environments,” in Self-organizing
Systems, ed. Marshall C. Yovits and Scott Cameron (London: Pergamon, 1960).
16. Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,” Philoso-
phy of Science 10 (January 1943):22. See also Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: Or Control and Communica-
tion in the Animal and the Machine [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1948)and Norbert Wiener, The Human Use
of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (New York: Avon, 1967).
17. Agoodovcrview of the morphogenesis of the field of cybernetics is offeredin the Cahiersnr. 7-9 of CREA
(Centre de Recherche Epistemologie et Autonomie in Paris!. Most articles are written in French, some are
in English. A recentlyupdated, but unfortunatelynot annotated, bibliography of thefieldof sociocybernetics
is Felix Geyer and Johannes van der Zouwen, A Bibliography on Sociocybernetics (Amsterdam: SISWO,
19981;the text is also available at <http://www.unizar.es/sociocybemetics>. For more background informa-
tion on cybernetic pedagogy, see J.M. Heffron, “Toward a Cybernetic Pedagogy: The Cognitive Revolution
and the Classroom, 1948-Present,” Educational Theory 45 (1995):497-518.
VANDERSTRAETEN Niklas Luhmann 7

This circular feedback thinking of cybernetics is able to explain the maintenance

of the structural characteristics of systems, but it is unable to provide an account of
all the operations of a system. Defined in terms of self-organization, the meaning of
the concept of self-reference remains restricted. Meanwhile, new developments
within systems theory have made it possible to give this concept a more encompass-
ing meaning. h this new “paradigm,” the concept of “autopoiesis” is crucial.’*
Autopoietic systems are systems that produce the elements out of which they exist
by means of a network of these elements themselves. To illustrate this tautological
definition, an example may be helpful. In a textbook on autopoiesis, Milan Zeleny
describes the organic system of a cell as follows:
The cell., .is a complex production system, producing and synthesizing niacromolecules of
proteins, lipids, and enzymes, among others; it consists of about 10j macromolecules on the
average. The entire macromolecular population of agiven cell is renewed about lo4times during
its lifetime. Throughout this staggering turnover of matter, the cell maintainsitsdistinctiveness,
cohesiveness, and relative autonomy. It produces myriads of components, yet it does not produce
only something else -it produccs itself. A ccll maintains its identity and distinctiveness during
its lifespan. The maintenance of unity and wholeness, while the components themselves are
being continuously or periodically disassernblcd and rcbuilt, created and decimated, produced
and consumed, is called “autopoiesis.”’~
Autopoietic systems are, thus, self-referentially closed systems. They recur-
sively produce the elements out of which they exist by the elements out of which
they exist. Living systems do not import “life” from their environment, but need to
produce their own “being alive.” This does not imply that autopoietic systems are
windowless “monads” (Leibniz).It means that autopoietic systems use the environ-
ment according to their own standards. External factors do not hrectly interfere with
the functioning of a system; they need to be “translated” into internal elements.
Bacteria for example may provoke the production of antibodies in living organisms.
The environment resonates in the system by means of the elements that the system
itself produces (unless, of course, organisms are destroyed by environmental influ-
ences]. In this regard, one might also speak of ”order from noise,” or “order out of
chaos.” By implication, von Bertalanffy’s distinction between open and closed
system needs to be surpassed. Autopoietic systems are at the same time open and
closed systems. Or, to put it more precisely: they can be open, because they are
closed.20The new Leitdifferenz for systems theory is that between system and
environment.
T h s theory of autopoietic systems is no general systems theory. It only pertains
to living, organic systems; the concept of autopoiesis was invented to define life. The
extension of this concept to other fields and other types of systems has, nonetheless,
been taken into consideration. One of the authors who took the lead in this regard
since the early 1980swas Niklas Luhmarnz’ Luhmann departed from the idea that
18. H.R. Maturana and F.J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living (Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1980).
19. Milan Zeleny, “What is Autopoiesis?” in Autopoiesis. A Theory of Living Organizahon, ed. Milan
Zeleny [New York: North Holland, 1981),4-5.
20. Edgar Morin, La methode. I: La nature de la nature (Paris: Seuil, 1977), 197-203.
21. See, for example, K.D. Bailey, ‘TheAutopoiesis of Social Systems: Assessing Luhmann’s Theory of Self-
Reference,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 14 (19971, 83-100.
8 EDUCATIONAL THEORY WINTER 50 / NUMBER
2000 / VOLUME 1

autopoiesis, if defined more abstractly, characterizes a wide range of systems. He

distinguished between organic, psychic and social systems. Each of these types
realizes its autopoiesis in an autonomous mode of reproduction. Abstracted from
biological connotations, Luhmann’s concept leads to “a sharp distinction between
meaning and life as different kinds of autopoietic organization; and meaning-using
systems again have to be distinguished according to whether they use consciousness
or communication as modes of meaning-based reproduction.ff22Seen from this
perspective, education is a social phenomenon, based on communication, that
intends to influence and improve the functioning of psychic systems (conscious-
ness).It encompasses two types of autopoietic or self-referentially closedsystems. To
elucidate this view I will first indicate how, according to Luhmann, social systems
realize their autopoiesis. Afterwards, I will discuss how participation in social
systems affects the functioning of psychic systems. This discussion amounts to the
question, How is education possible?
COMMUNICATION
According to Luhmann, social systems use communication as their particular
mode of autopoietic reproduction. The autopoiesis of social systems emerges from
“communication’s triggering further communication” (SS, 218).But how does com-
munication realize its self-reproduction?How did Luhmann conceive of elemental
communications?
Customarily, communication is described by means of a metaphor of transmis-
sion. From this point of view, communication consists of the transmission of
messages or information from one place (thesender) to another place (thereceiver)
by means of a medium. It includes processes of encoding by the sender in order to get
the message through the medium, and processes of decoding by the receiver in order
to get at the meaning of the encoded message. Following this metaphor, the educator
has something to tell while the pupils need to catch the information (for their own
sake). That this depiction brings along a one-sided perspective is well-known. To
adjust the bias, authors who defend a ”client-centered” view of knowledge have
proposed to reverse the relation. In their view, the pupils are looked upon as the
senders, while educators are expected to decode the messages of their pupils.
Although this (Copernican?)reversal leads to some interesting views on knowledge
and self-discovery learning, it does not alter the way communication is conceptual-
ized. Communication remains defined in terms of the transmission of information.
Against the use of this metaphor of transmission, Luhmann raised several
objections. He preferred to avoid the metaphor because “it would burden us with
problematic preliminary decisions” (SS, 139).First,
The metaphor of transmission is unusable because it implies too much ontology. It suggests that
the sender gives up something that the receiver then acquires. This is already incorrect because
the sender does not give up anything in thc sense of losing it. The entire metaphor of possessing,
having, giving, and receiving, the entire “thing metaphoric” is unsuitable for understanding
communication [SS, 139).

22. Niklas Luhmann, Essays OR Self-reference (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990),2.
VANDERSTR AETEN Niklas Luhmann 9

Second, the metaphor locates what is essential in communication in the act of

transmission, in the utterance,23It focuses attention on the sender (and reduces
communication to a question of skills, of communicative competence).But commu-
nication emerges only to the extent that the sender‘s utterance is picked up and
processed by a receiver! Third, the transmission metaphor prematurely assumes an
identity of what is transmitted. It might be the case that the information transmitted
is the same for the sender and the receiver. But the content of the information cannot
guarantee this identity. Information might mean something very different for the
sender and the receiver. The identity of information is constitutedin the communi-
cation process. Luhmann, therefore, proposed a reorganization of terminology. He
focused on communication as an occurrence or event, which emerges from the
processing of selections. According to Luhmann, a unit of communication consists
of the coordination or synthesis of three different s e l e c t i o n ~These
. ~ ~ selections are:
information, utterance, and understanding (“Verstehen”).Communication is in this
sense an emergent, three-part unity.
For Luhmann, information is - in line with today‘s standard definitionz5- a
selection from a repertoire of possibilities. Without this selectivity of information,
no communication would emerge, however minimal the news value of the ex-
changes uttered(forexample, if communicationis carriedout for its own sake, topass
the time or avoid periods of silence). Communication is not just a two-part matter
of sending and receiving messages; the selection of information is one of its crucial
components. ”What is utteredis not only selected, but also already a selection- that
is why it is uttered” (SS, 140).Thesecond selection concerns the choice of a behavior,
an atterunce, that does express the information. Information should be provided in
a form that the utterer and the addressee are able to understand. Communication
does require an adequate standardization of the utterance (linguistic forms). Cer-
tainly, this utterance can occur intentionally or unintentionally. It is also possible
without language, for example through “revealing” looks, through dress or outfit,
through absence, and so forth. But the utterance must always be interpretable as
selection, andnot just appear as a sign of something else. “In this sense, rushingabout
can be observed as a sign of urgency, just like dark clouds as a sign of rain. But it can
also be interpreted as a demonstration of urgency” (SS, 151).The third selection,
understanding, is in a sense the most important one in Luhmann’s concept of
communication. Understanding implies a change in the state of the receiver. But not
every change in the state of the receiver is equivalent to understanding. What is
decisive is the fact that the third selection can base itself on a distinction, namelythe

23. See, for example, Benny Shanon, “Metaphorsfor Language and Communication,” R e w e Internationale
de Systemique 3 (1989):43-59.
24. This distinction between components is related to the distinction, introduced by Karl Biihler, between
functions of linguistic communication. It comes also close to John Austin’s typology of utterances and acts,
namely, locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary language acts, and to John Searlc’s fairly similar
classification of speech acts. But these authors depart from an action-theoretical approach to communica-
tion, within which communication is synonymous with the transmission of information [see SS, 117).
25. The classic reference is Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of
Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949).
10 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 2000 / VOLUME50 / NUMBER 1
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distinction between information and its utterance. Understanding therefore implies

more than mere observation; it only takes place if the receiver construes the
information from the utterance. Communication depends on the processing of this
difference.
Understanding (andthis will almost inevitably contain some misunderstanding)
concludes the communicative act. An understanding, however, needs to manifest
itself. The receiver needs to show that she understands the uttered information, by
addressing herself to the information component (for example, to question what is
said) or to the utterance (for example, to question the way something is said).It is,
in other words, the receiver who has to conclude theunity of a communication. This
point is crucial in Luhmann’s concept of communication. It follows that communi-
cations are only possible as part of a recursive, self-referentialprocess. A communi-
cation always necessitates a new communication. Each communication “is an
element only as an element of aprocess, however minimal or ephemeral that process
may be” ( S S , 144).Communications conclude preceding communications and enable
connectingones. They organize their own renewal; they realize their own autopoiesis.
Thus, a social system can reproduce itself by means of the reproduction of the
communications out of which it exists by means of the reproduction of the
communications out of which it exists.
As I indicated in the preceding section, autopoietic systems are operationally
closed systems because they produce their elements themselves. This goes, accord-
ing to Luhmann, as much for organic and psychic systems, as for social systems.
Their respective mode of reproduction (life, consciousness, and communication) is
autonomous. These types of systems can be found in each other’s environment, but
cannot participate in eachother’s autopoiesis. There is no input or output of the basic
elements of autopoietic systems. Following Luhmann, the basic unit of social
systems, namely “the ultimate unity, with whose dissolution the social would
disappear,” is the unit of communication (SS, 138). Social systems consist of
communication and not of human beings or individuals. The human body and the
human psyche seem, nevertheless, to participate in communication and thus in
social systems -while thoughts can be communicated by means of bodily gestures.
But as Luhmann argued, organic andpsychic elements do not enter as such into social
systems. They have to follow social rules; they are employed by social systems. Our
muscular system is, for example, employed to write words and sentences. The
muscle contractions that are needed to write the word ‘”no” do not appear in this
word, and do not appear in the social system. Neither intrudes in the communication
of what you really think when you answer a request with a “no.“ How would you
otherwise be able to lie, and say no but think yes?
In my view, the application of the concept of autopoiesis to social systems
creates new opportunities for thinking about intersubjective relationships -when
compared with the types of social theory that are currently in vogue. The sharp
distinction between social systems and their environment offers the possibility of
conceiving of human beings in a way that is both more complex and less restricting
thnn i f thev had to he interureted as Darts of the social order. Because they are part
VANDERSTRAETEN Niklas Luhmann 11

of the environment of the societal system, human beings are conceded greater
freedom (greater complexity) than social roles, norms, and structures would allow.
This is overlooked in criticisms that react rather violently to the exclusion of human
beings from social systems and that speak of the glorification of the system -with
the connotations of systematic, deterministic, inhuman -within systems theory.’6
What should be studied instead are the theoretical consequences that follow from
this distinction between types of systems. As Luhmann wrote,
If one views human beings as part of the environment of society [instcad of as part of socicty
itselfl, this changes the premises of all the traditional questions ....I t docs not mean that the
human being is estimated as lcss important than traditionally. Anyone who thinks so (and such
anundcrstanding either explicitly or implicitly underlies all polemics against this proposal) has
not understood the paradigm change in systems theory (SS, 212).
CONSEQUENCES
This application of the idea of autopoiesis to social reality is at the heart of
Luhmann’s systems theory. It provides the foundations of a highly complex theoreti-
cal building that should be able to accommodate the envisaged “comprehensive
theory of the social.” (It cannot be only a matter of irony that ”the new tower of
Babel” appears on the front cover of the English translation of Soziale Systeme.)The
foundations enable a fundamentally dynamic view of reality, while the elements of
social systems are temporal events, which have to be continually replaced by other
elements. Hereafter, three important consequences of this conceptualization of
communication will be indicated. They point to differences between Luhmann’s
interpretation of communication, and (a)the metaphor of transmission, (b)Habermas’s
idea of communicative action, and (c) the concept of self-organization. These
consequences also refer to each other, and thus indicate that the theory, as the reality
which it describes (and of which it is a part), is itself constructed in a circular way.
THE METAPHOR OF TRANSMISSION. If communication is a three-part unity, commu-
nication does not come about if the addressee does not fix his or her own state on the
basis of uttered information. It does not come about without understanding. In
contrast to the prevailing transmission metaphors, Luhmann underlined the impor-
tance of this third selection. It is (mis-)understandingthat concludes the unity of an
elemental communication. Communication cannot be reduced to intentional ac-
tion, not even if this action wishes itself to be communication. Seen from this
perspective, communication is so to speak made possible from behind. A unit of
communication emerges contrary to the temporal course of the process. Social
systems are thus characterized by an instability at the level of their elemental units.
Whether and how a communication gets concluded by further communication is
their fundamental problem. One should, on the other hand, give due attention to
social expectations and anticipation^.^' They regulate or structure the autopoiesis of

26. For example, Ute Gause and Heinz Schmidt., “Das Erziehungssystem als soziales System. Codierung
und Programmierung - Binnendifferenzierung und Intcgration” in Kritik der Theorie sozialer Syslerne.
AuseinandersetzunSen mjt Luhmanns Hauptwerk, ed. Werner Krawietz and Michael Welker (Frankfurt
a.M.:Suhrkamp, 1992);JohnMingers, Sdf-producingSystems:Implications and Applications o/Autopoiesis
(New York: Plenum, 1995);and Joas, The Creativity o f Action.
27. Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997),790-91.
12 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 2000 1 VOLUME
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social systems. What gets selected as information or as utterance is mostly guided by

expectations regarding what can be understood.
HABERMAS’S IDEA OF COMMUNICATION. If communication causes a change in the
receiver’s state, this means no more than that the receiver understands its meaning.
Understanlng is the selection that concludes the communicative act. Luhmann
certainly envisaged Habermas’s theory of communicative action when he wrote:
Everything else happens “outside” the unity of an elemental communication and presupposes
it. This is especially true for a fourth type of selection: for the acceptance or rejection of the
specific meaning that was communicated.. .One reads, for example, that tobacco, alcohol, butter,
and frozen meat are bad for one’s health, and one is changed (intosomeone who should know and
observe this) - whether one believes it or not! One cannot ignore it any longer; one can only
either believe it or not believe it ( S S , 147).
Thus, acceptance or rejection of an understood selection are not part of the commu-
nicative unity; they are connected acts. Moreover, Luhmann did not stop emphasiz-
ing that consensus is no telos of an ongoing communication process (as it is for
Habermas). The receiver must distinguish between information and utterance, and
that enables him to criticize and, if necessary, to reject the uttered information. “The
possibility of rejection is necessarily built into the communication process” ISS,
154).2xCommunication always makes resistance possible; it does not lead to social
consensus.
THECONCEPT OF SELF-ORGANIZATION. System dynamics still is mostly understood
in terms of the formation or change of structures. Research focuses, for example, on
the conditions that facilitate the stabilization and implementation of particular
innovations. It focuses on organizational learning or self-organization. In a theory of
autopoietic systems, system dynamics are anchored at the level of the basal
operations of social systems, of the ongoing autopoiesis or self-production of social
systems. Social systems are described as fundamentally unstable, dynamic, and
unpredictable systems. The crucial question is: How can a social system connect one
communication to another, so that its autopoiesis does not get broken down? The
notion of structure can only be discussed on a second level. According to Luhmann,
structures must enable the connectivity of autopoietic reproduction despite
unpredictability [SS, 278-356).It is in this function (andnot in a more or less lengthy
unchanging permanence),that structures find their primary relation to time, because
connection can be accomplished only in time. For Luhmann, structures can only
consist of expectations, and of expectations of expectations.
The so-called autopoietic turn in Luhmann’s theory of social systems has
changed the premises of a wide-range of research questions. In a number of volumi-
nous monographs on functional subsystems of society - on the economy, on
science, on law, on art29 - and in his final book Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft,

28. See also Nicholas Rescher, Pluralism: Against the Demand of Consensus (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1993).
29. Niklas Luhmann, Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988);Niklas Luhmann,
Die Wissenschnjt der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990);Niklas Luhmann, Das Recht der
Gesellschaft [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1993);and Niklas Luhmann, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft (Frank-
furt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995).AnEnglish translation of this last book, entitledArt as Social System (Stanford:
Stanford University Press), is scheduled to appear shortly.
V ANDERSTRAETEN Niklas Luhmann 13

Luhmann has tried to provide the outlines of a new theory of social systems. These
books are, together with Social Systems (and with monographs on religion and
politics, which will probably be published from Luhmann’s legacy), the “chapters”
of Luhmann’s theory of society.3oAt present, it is not at all clear whether this
“paradigm change” will realize itself or not. Perhaps some concepts are just too
idiosyncratic to survive their author and his progeny. One can foresee, however, that
it will no longer be possible to use some venerable conceptual determinations. In the
next sections, the concepts of socialization and education will be examined from this
systems-theoretical point of view.
SOCIALIZATION AND EDUCATION
SOCIALIZATION
In view of the remarks made in the introductory section, it is useful to start this
discussion with a brief outline of Talcott Parsons’s structural-functionalist treat-
ment of issues of socialization and education. According to Parsons, societies are in
need of a broadly shared and internally coherent system of norms and value
orientations, in order to be able to maintain themselves. Without this normative
system, social cooperation would not be possible and social systems would disinte-
grate. The stability of the normative system of order - which Parsons called a
structural imperative - “explained” several social processes. It was used to define
the function of socialization: T h e maintenance of a normative order requires that
it be implemented in a variety of respects: there must be very considerable -even
if often quite incomplete -compliance with the behavioral expectations established
by the values and norms. The most basic condition of such compliance is the
internalization of a society’s values andnorms by its members, for such socialization
underlies the consensual basis of a societal ~ o m m u n i t y . I
”n~this
~ Parsonian regard,
both the family and the school class perform an instrumental role for society at large;
their function is to transmit this normative structure to the new generations and
thus ensure a value
Luhmann‘s praise for Parsons has to do with the architecture of Parsons’s
theoretical framework. Luhmann admired Parsons’s attempts to develop a general

30. See Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, 11-5.

31. Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 19661, 14.
32. Hence the name of this approach:structural-functionalism. Structures, which were supposed to be more
or less stable, were taken as the point of departure. They could, according to Parsons, provide a “picture”
of the system; that is, a conceptual scheme which gives the setting for analysis of dynamic processes.
Processes were studied in their function of contributing to the maintenance of these structures. The
consequences of a dynamic process “will be found to fit into the terms of maintenance of stability or
production of change, of integration or disruption of the system.” See Talcott Parsons, The Social System
(Glencoe:Free Press, 1951), 22. Parsons’s approach of socialization and education is described in more detail
in Talcott Parsons and R.F. Bales, Family, Socialization, and the Interaction Process (London:Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 19561and Talcott Parsons, ”The School Class as a Social System: Some of its Functions
in American Society,”Harvard Educationa~Review39(1959):297-318.It is an interestinghistorical detail
that Parsons died in Germany -only a few days after a symposium on his work, where both Habermas and
Luhmann presented their view on systems theory. These articles are, together with the funeral oration,
collected in Wolfgang Schluchter, ed., Verhalten, Handeln und System. Talcott Parsons’ Beitrag zur
Entwicklung der Sozialwzssenschaften (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980).
14 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 2000 / VOLUME
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theory for the social, and to introduce and use concepts that abstract from specific
details, but that could also be respecified when applied to specific fields of inquiry.
Luhmann’s theory of society is built in a similar way. The “introductory chapter” of
Social Systems provides a highly abstract conceptual framework, while the other
“chapters” of the theory are built with these concepts, and respecify them in the
course of the analysis of specific themes. With regard to the “ideological implica-
tions” of Parsons’s use of systems theory,33however, Luhmann shared most of the
criticism directed toward Parsons - that Parsons exaggerated the importance of
widely shared normative commitments, or that Parsons offered an “oversocialized
view of man.”34In fact, the concept of socialization only plays a marginal role in
Luhmann’s work. No more than a handful of pages of the different ”chapters” of his
theory of society are devoted to a discussion of this issue.
After my reconstruction of Luhmann’s autopoiesis theory, it should not be
difficult to understand the reason for this marginal position of ”socialization.” For
Luhmann, issues of socialization fall largely beyond the scope of a theory of social
systems. Socialization, as he defined the concept, refers to changes that take place in
society’s environment. Socialization is theprocess, steered by communication, that
formsthepsychic system and the boddy behavior ofhuman beings (SS,241).In other
words, Luhmann’s concept impinges on several system references. It is also deliber-
ately open-ended; it takes issue with classical notions such as “internalization,”
“inculcation,“ or “socialization to the grounds of consen~us.’’~~ It does not refer to
the fulfillment of societal functions, but overlays positively and negatively valued
effects, and comprises conforming and deviant, healthy and pathological behavior.
As Luhmann wrote:
Socialization in this sense is no occurrcnccstructured by the standards of success (whichat worst
could fail]. A theory that binds the concept of socialization to the creation of adaptive behavior
that conforms to expectation cannot explain the emergence of opposite behavioral patterns, and
it is helpless before discoveries such as, for cxample, that adaptation can have neurotic
consequences ( S S , 241).
Where do these observations lead us, if we take the autopoietic closure of social and
psychic systems into account?
To indicate the exact purport of Luhmann’s concept of socialization, two
clarifications are necessary. First, socialization can only be self-socialization. For
human beings, participation in communication cannot result in the transmission of
knowledge, nor in the internalization of the norms and value orientations of a social
group. The meaning of the norms, rules, habits, customs, and so forth, that are
“transmitted” does not remain identical. In the different systems, these elements
have different meanings. They signify different things, while they select among

33. For example, Michael Keren, “Idcological Iniplications of the Use of Open Systems Theory in Political
Science,” Behavioral Science 24 (1979):31 1-24.
34. Dennis Wrong, “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,” American Sociological
Review 26 (1961): 183-93; Tdcott Parsons, “Comment on ’The Oversocialized Conception of Man’ by
Dennis Wrong,“ Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Review 10 [ 1962):322-34.
35. Parsons, Societies, 14.
VANDERSTKAETEN Niklas Luhmann 15

differentpossibilities and lead to different consequences. In this sense, socialization

seems to presuppose deviant reproduction! The basic process is the self-referentlal
reproduction of the psychc system that brings about socialization in itself. Social-
ization is always self-socialization.As Luhmann stressed, this kind of interpretation
does not obscure the decisive role of the environment in the process of socialization.
Autopoietic closure is, as we have seen, the condition for environmental openness.
”Moreover, it makes little sense to ask whether the system or the environment is
more important in determining the result of socialization, because precisely this
lfferencemakes socialization possible” (SS, 242).
Second, socialization inevitably reiterates the option between conforming and
deviant behavi0r.~6A norm or rule cannot be an item for socialization in itself. It can
only be presented together with its alternative. Socialization creates so-called
bifurcations; it enforces a choice between conforming or not conforming to expecta-
tions, between adaptation or resistance. As indicated before, the concept of socializa-
tion cannot be aligned with the internalization of collective norms. Such a definition
allows one, at the most, to discriminate between successful and unsuccessful
socialization; it does not allow one to account for the possibility of nonconformance.
But socialization brings about a continuous processing of options such as conform-
ance versus deviance, commitment versus noncommitment, and attraction versus
aversion. It is, as Luhmann indicated, the distinction between social system and
psychic system that creates the possibility of rejecting the instruction or information
that is communicated. Moreover, only on the basis of this distinction is an assess-
ment of conforming vis-a-vis deviant behavior possible. What appears in a social
system as contingent individual behavior might provoke different reactions, depend-
ing upon whether this behavior does or does not live up to a norm,
Both clarifications touch upon the foundations of a theory of socialization. Of
course, they do not outline an empirical research program, but they do provide
incongruent perspectives to which empirical research might connect. For reasons of
space, it is possible to point to only one theme here. In my view, it makes sense to
presuppose that the particular value (yes/no)of the bifurcations that functions as an
“attractor” also marks the process of socialization. In this regard, one might in our
late-modern or postmodern society assume a preference for deviance.37Since indi-
vidual freedom and individual autonomy are fostered in societal communication, it
seems paradoxical to continue to insist on conformity or consensus. Nonconfor-
mance offers the best chance to present oneself as an individualized individual.js
Many patterns of positive deviance have developedwithin our contemporary society
- its dominant spirit of performance and competition, its emphasis on exceeding

36. See Niklas Luhmann, Soziologische Auflzlarung 3. Soziales System, Gesellschaft, Organisation
(Opladen: Westdcutscher Verlag, 19811, 161-6:3.
37. See Luhmann, Soziologischearung 4, 175-76 and Niklas Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklarung 6. Die
Soziologie und der Mensch (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 199.51, 55-112.
38.See also Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 19891.
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normal expectations, but also its legitimation of subcultures (such as youth cul-
tures), its transient life and fashion styles that celebrate deviance from what is usual,
among others. Channeling the possibility of deviance into these forms, and thus
intermingling them with conformity with broadly shared norms and values, may
turn out relatively well. How this happens, and with what consequences for the
social system and for the psychic systems involved, needs to be studied (forexample,
by means of longitudinal social-psychological research).It is, on the other hand, also
possible that patterns of negative deviance will become more penetrating. The
opportunities our contemporary society generates might endanger its own structural
characteristics. Modern society might become a victim of
EDUCATION
For Parsons, socialization fulfilleda fairly unambiguous role within society. Due
to socialization, individuals bear the stamp of their social environment. Their inner
structure is determined by the norms and value orientations of the society in which
they live. The model of open systems, of which Parsons (and many other social
scientists)made use, does lead to an “oversocialized view of man” and woman. That
human beings dispose of means to travel a certain distance, to make use of their
indwidual degrees of freedom, cannot adequately be taken into account. If attention
is given to the operational closure or autopoiesis of psychic systems and social
systems, it is no longer possible to describe socialization in terms of the transfer of
a meaning pattern from one system to the other. Instead, socialization needs to be
depicted as an “order from noise” phenomenon. The interaction (or transaction)
between a human being and his or her social environment might or might not
provoke particular structural changes in the “inner sphere” of the individual; a
human being might or mlght not adapt to particular aspects of his or her environ-
ment. There is always the possibility of choosing a different path. An interesting
question, of concern to educators and educational scientists, is whether this possi-
bility of resistance disappears or increases when education comes into play.4o
At first sight, Luhmann used a conventional distinction between socialization
and education. For Luhmann, socialization is limited by, and to, the stimuli of the

39. For a discussion of the self-endangering dynamics of modem society, and of the educational system in
particular, see Raf Vanderstraeten, “Circularity, Complexity, and Educational Policy Planning: A Systems
Approach to the Planning of School Provision,” Oxford Review of Education 23 (1997),321-32 and Raf
Vanderstraeten, “The Performance of the Educational System,” in The Performance of Social Systems, cd.
Francisco Parra-Luna (New York: Plenum Press, 2000).
40. Education, accordmg to Luhmann, is an activity of social systems specialized in “people processing.”
It is - in contrast to socialization - a social phenomenon, and displays the characteristics of social
systems. According to Luhmann, its distinctive unity (or autopoiesis) can only be understood-when this
definition is put to use. Luhmann has on repeated occasions paid attention to the structural characteristics
of the educational system and to pedagogy’s reflection of the particularities and problems of this social
structure (notably Luhmann and Schorr, Reflexionsprobleme im Erziehungssystem). I have discussed this
work elsewhere: Raf Vanderstraeten, Leren voor het leven. Opvoeding en onderwiis als maatschappefijk
deelsysteem [Leuven-Apeldoorn: Garant, 1995J; Vanderstraeten, “The Performance of the Educational
System” and Raf Vanderstraeten, ”Versaulung und funktionale Differenzierung. Zur Enttraditionalisierung
der katholischen Lebensformen,” Soziale Welt 50 (19991,297-314.Here, I continue the course pursued in
the preceding sections and focus on the relation between education and socialization.
VANDERSTRAETEN Niklas Luhmann 17

socializing context, while education strives for a particular, “unusual” output.

Luhmann wrote: “Education is (and here it differs from socialization) action that is
intentionalized and attributable to intentions” (SS, 244). Education aims to attain
something that cannot be left to chance socializing events, something that presup-
poses coordinating a plurality of efforts. It is a systematized process. The modes of
behavior that one would like to achieve are defined; the situation from which one
starts is evaluated (gradelevel, ability, or previous learning experiences, for example);
the pedagogical means to achieve what could not occur by itself are chosen.
Socialization suffices as long as social mobility and internal complexity are low. But
once a relatively high degree of complexity is reached, societies cannot avoid going
beyond mere socialization and mere ad hoc education. “Only thus can they repro-
duce knowledge and capabilities acquired in long sequences of coordinated indi-
vidual steps. Only this enables processes of specialization and the dstribution of
roles on the basis of specialization” (SS,206).The current large-scale organization of
learning situations, school classes, and school systems is an illustration of the
application of this principle.
Socialization comes about by living in a social context. It presupposes the
possibility of reading the behavior of others as selectedinformation such as potential
dangers or social expectations. As indcated before, the meaning of this communica-
tion can be rejected if the addressee or receiver finds the information unsatisfactory
or unacceptable. Education cannot eliminate this possibility of resistance. It cannot
be conceived of as the rational form of socialization, as successfully effective action.41
To the contrary, intentional communication with educational goals will double the
motives for rejection. The addressee now also has the opportunity to reject the
communication because it intends his or her education, if he or she refuses the role
of someone who needs to be educated. In other words, intentional communication
enables the addressee to oppose both the information component and the utterance
component of the communication. This situation illustrates a more general conclu-
sion that Luhmann has often stressed, namely the evolutionary improbability of the
differentiation of particular modes of operation (suchas economic, political, artistic,
religious, legal or educational operation^).^^ One can underpin this conclusion with
a simple social experiment: try to educate someone who does not expect to be
educated, for example a young boy or girl you meet by chance on the street. It is
indeed very likely that your efforts will not be appreciated and will fail,
Educators can be aware of the possibility of resistance, and can take this
possibility into consideration before they decide to communicate. In the field of
education, there has certainly developed practical wisdom in this regard. We know,
for example, that it is a good recipe (in view of the improbability of reaching the
intended results) to create situations that actualize a certain socialization potential,
instead of communicating educational intentions. What happens is that the educator

41. Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklamng4, 178-80.

42. See, for example, The Differentiation of Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982),229-54
and Luhmann, Essays on Self-reference,86-98.
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eliminates resistance against education as communication and relies (without

guarantee of success!J on a hoped-for congruence between psychic and social events.
Education, here, is undertaken in an intentionally nonintentional manner; it returns
to socialization.
In so-called people-processing systems (systems of spiritual, mehcal, legal, or
therapeutic help),there is no ”technology” that can guarantee particular results. The
targets cannot be realized without the collaboration of the clients, nor without the
personal efforts of the professional. T h s characterizes the condition of professional
work in general, and explains the high degree of professional autonomy and the
importance of face-to-faceinteractions in the course of the treatment.43On the other
hand, clients often enroll in these people-processingsystems because of biographical
crises, and do not need to be urged on to collaborate. They are longing for help. In this
regard, education finds itself in an exceptional position. Here, this source of
motivation mostly fails because children have to go to school. One might therefore
assume that the educational relation is in principle highly unstable and vulnerable.
One might also assume that this instability needs somehow to be intercepted,
especially in schools where the relation between the teacher and students is fairly
artificial. It seems safe to assume that the curriculum fulfills a particular function in
this regard. It specifies what needs to be learned at school. It unburdens the teacher;
it reduces the tension between teacher and sudents. Some organizational arrange-
ments in schools have similar effects (for example, the school timetable and
nationwide testing). As a consequence, the educational intention is mostly attrib-
uted to the institution and not to the teacher. However, the dominance of organiza-
tional and institutional arrangements can only partly unburden the teacher. Stu-
dents are continually engaged in reading the behavior of their teacher. Observing
whether one is being observed or is temporarily out of the teacher’s sight, hiding
behind another one’s back, or pretending that one agrees with what is said are
frequent operations in a classroom.
In sum, education cannot guarantee that it will be successful. Moreover,
concretizations of pedagogical behavior are laden with difference. They indicate
lines of success and thereby establish the possibility of failure. An interesting
question for empirical research would be, How do pupils react when they are
constantly confronted with this option and when they are constantly expected to
conform to expectations? It makes sense to assume once more that they will look for
some kind of “opting-out” strategy -to protect themselves, so to peak."^ There are
many options. Students can react with total rejection, but also with unexpectedly
good performance, with nonchalance vis-a-vis evaluation criteria, with humor and
irony, with the celebration of a deviant school or youth subculture, with slang
language, with deviant or alternative assessments of qualities and personal merits,

43. See D.C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chcago: University of Chicago Press, 1975),58-
60j Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, “Das Technologiedeflzit der Erziehung und die Padagogik,”
in Zwischen Technologie und Sdbstreferenz; and Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions. An Essay on
the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19881.
44. See A.O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge: Haward University Press, 1970).
VANDERSTRAETEN Niklas Luhmann 19

and so on. This ”opting-out” strategy has, of course, an impact on the educational
process and the teacher. Burn-out feelings in teachers, for example, are not only
related to low wages and lack of career prospects, but can also be attributed to the
”critical” attitudes of students and to classroom management problems.
The fruitfulness of this theoretical perspective can also be illustrated in a
historical sense. The morphogenesis of our modern educational system, which can
be situated at the end of the eighteenth century, encompasses a number of interre-
lated changes: the so-called discovery of the child, the universalization of classroom
education accompanied by the professionalization of the teacher, and the develop-
ment of new curricular principles (Allgemeinbildung).It is no coincidence that these
developments occurred in the same period, and mutually reinforced each other. This
triadic structure was indispensable for the morphogenesis of the modern system of
education. The curriculum stabilizes the unstable dual relation between students
and teacher.45It is also interesting to note that, at the end of the eighteenth century,
the very possibility of education in the classroom became an important topic in the
literature. One doubted whether a teacher could exercise the authority expected of
an educator, because there were no blood-ties between the teacher and his or her
students.46
A more general, and more fundamental question was raised by Kant: “How do
1 cultivate freedom through c~ercion?”~’ In the history of educational science, this
question was mainly analyzed on the basis of a subject-philosophical approach.
Education was viewed either through the perspective of the educator, or through that
of the child. In fact, educational science opted mostly for the perspective of the
teacher, to be able to see and guide how he or she treats the children. As J.F. Herbart
in his influential book Allgemeine Padugogik declared, “Pedagogy is the science,
which the educator needs for himself .’148 On the other hand, there remained what one
would now call developmental psychology or, more generally, human development.
This means that education as a social phenomenon as such has not been the object
of educational science.49The two subjects involved in education - parents and

45. See K.E. Weick, The Social Psychology of Orgunizing (Redding, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 19691, 38.
46. See, for example, A.H. Niemeyer, Grundsatze der Erziehungunddes Unterrichts fur Eltern, Hauslehrer
and Erzieher (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1970),57-59.The first edition of this popular book was published in
1796. It was frequently translated, and reprinted throughout the whole nineteenth century. See also
Vanderstraeten, Leren voor het leven, 113-19.
47. Immanuel Kant, Werke in sechs Bande. Band VI:Schriften zurdnthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie,
Politik und Piidagogik [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 19641, 711. Kant’s text on education was originally
published in 1803.
48. J.F. Herbart, Allgenieine Piidagogik, uus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet (Bochum:Verlag F. Kamp,
19711,35. The first edition of Herbart’s magnum opus was published in 1808.
49. At least one important exception needs to be mentioned regarding John Dewey’s and George H. Mead’s
pragmatism. This pragmatic philosophy also providcs a powerful alternative to a subject-centered
conception of education. As far as I can see, pragmatism and systems theory share important basic
intuitions. Joas’s rejection of Luhmann’s work is in my view based on an inadequate understanding of
systems theory /especially in The Creutivity o f Action].Together with Gert Biesta, I have tried to uncover
the convergence of both schools of thought in some preliminary investigations for a theory of education.
See Raf Vanderstraeten and Gert J.J. Biesta, ”How is Education Possible? Preliminary Investigations for a
Theory of Education,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 31 [in press).
20 EDUCATIONAL THEORY WINTER2000 1 VOLUME
50 / NUMBER
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children, or teachers and students - imposed and impose their particular perspec-
tive. Before engaging in educational thinking, one is already obliged to opt for either
of these perspectives. The traditional subject-philosophical decomposition of educa-
tion does not allow one to analyze the conditions of the possibility of education as
a social phenomenon.
SECONDARY SOCIALIZATION
As we have seen, communication succeeds when three selections (information,
utterance, and understanding) form a unity to which further communication can
connect. This unity that is communication can never be entirely reduced to the
meaning of an intended and attributable action, not even if the action itself wishes
to be communication. In social systems, intentional action cannot control the
difference(s)it makes. In the preceding section, I have argued that it also communi-
cates its own intention, and that this is experienced and evaluated within the system.
This makes it possible to react to the intention as such, and to seek and find other
possibilities. Intentional action is, so to speak, caught in the coils of self-reference.
When a pedagogically stylized act communicates its own intention, the person
who is expected to be educated acquires the freedom to travel some distance - for
instance, to pursue the intention out of mere opportunism or to avoid “being
educated” as much as possible. In systematized educational settings - where an
elaborate apparatus of goals, textbooks, tests, andinterventions is put to use to attain
a certain output -these unintended and mostly unforeseen effects will probably be
multiplied, and will have particular ramifications. As Luhmann argued,
They [pedagogicalmeans] transform equality into inequality. They motivate and discourage.
They link cxpericnces of success to experiences of success and experiences of failure to
experiences of failure. They promote attitudes that make it possible to handle cducational
problems in special ways via educators, teachers, schools, and grade levels (SS, 207).
One can describe these effects as secondary socialization -when “secondary” is not
taken to refer to processes of socialization that follow on the primary socialization
in the family,jObut refers to the consequences of the particular social settings that
are used to educate, to socialize intentionally. Some of these consequences, espe-
cially those that ensue from classroom education, are of course currently fairly well
known. As the so-called hidden curriculum, they have been (and continue to be) the
object of extensive research. The previous remarks on socialization and education,
however, enable a reformulation of the explanatory goal of this research perspective.
The concept of hidden curriculum is built by means of the traditional sociologi-
cal distinction between manifest and latent functions or structures.s1It defines a

50. See, for example, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Realify. A Treatise
in Sociology ojKnowledge (New York: Doubleday, 19661, 120-35.
51. For Robert Merton, the functions of a social practice are its “observable objective consequcnces.’’ See
Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1963),24.Manifest functions
are those outcomes that are intended and recognized by the agents concerned; latent functions are those
outcomes that are neither intended nor recognized. Notice that this conceptual definition refers to the
input-output schema of the ”open systems” model. The system’s function is dcfined by its transformation
of input into output, and the internal conditions of this transformative performance can be seen as
structure.
VANDERSTRAETBN Niklas Luhmann 21

contrast between the expressed or manifest purposes of the official curriculum, and
the latent functions of the system which are fulfilled alongside of the official
curriculum. Accordingly, the hidden curriculum is promulgated by how schools are
organized and operated as much as by explicit teaching methods and content, and
may be far from the expressed motives of teachers and curriculum planners. Its
discovery has in fact provoked a fairly pessimistic account of the possibilities of a
teacher. No matter what he or she thinks and does, or how hard he or she tries,
apparently it is the hidden curriculum that determines what is really learned at
The concept presupposes - and here it clearly reveals its structural-
functionalist origins - a high degree of structural determination of the educational
process. To what degree these long-lasting effects do backup the dominant structures
and value orientations of modern society (inmore familiar words: to what degree the
hidden curriculum prepares students, in affective as well as cognitive ways, for their
adult lives as workers and citizens in a liberal capitalist society),is on the other hand
an issue that has never been settled.53
Starting from an “autopoietic systems” model (instead of one of “open sys-
tems”), the premise of the structural determination of education in the school class
presents only half the picture. With Luhmann, one can argue that autonomous
functional systems develop a susceptibility to both structural and operational forms
of determination at the expense of an external, environmental determination of the
system. This is exactly what their autopoietic closure implies. With regard to the
educational system and the school class, the operational perspective points to the
typicalities, peculiarities, and consequences of the ongoing operations in the class-
Occasional deviant or conformist behavior, certain unexpected events, or
surprising reactions might deeply influence the habitus or self-concept that each
student develops. Particular events can elicit a ”structural drift” within receptive
psychic systems. What is attributed to the hidden curriculum is an important part
of the global impact of an autonomous educational system. At the same time,
however, it should be acknowledged that chance is to an important extent at work
in education, while minimal events can induce major structural changes in psychic
systems. In research on secondary socialization, one needs to look anew, and very
generally, for the intended and unintended consequences of an autonomous educa-
tional system that aims to rationalize socialization.
The unintended results of education in schools cannot be eliminated with the
help of a careful selection of subject matter - no matter how much this selection
focuses on usefulness in later, professional life, on “pure” intellectual development
(Allgemeinbildung),or on the students’ life world and interests. They inevitably
52. See, for example, the remarkable interlude in Nicholas C. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and
Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 19931, 131-42.
53. See, as more or less classic examples, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist
America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (NewYork: Basic Books, 1976)and
Michael W. Apple, Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age (New York:
Routledge, 1993).
54. Niklas Luhmann, ”Erziehender Unterricht als Interaktionssystem,” in Erziehender Unterricht -
Fiktion und Faktumi ed. Jiirgen Diederich [Frankfurt a.M.: GFPF, 1985).
22 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y WINTER2000 1 VOLUME
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appear in aneducational context. It is against this background that Luhmann defends

his fairly critical and pessimistic stance concerning the role of education in modern
society.
The autonomy of a differentiated input/output arrangement must then submit
to correction a reality it has itself created, and direct its counterintuitive behavior
back to reality. A system that is structured too improbably and that tries to identify
itself entirely with the transformation of input into output ends up having to deal
with the problems resulting from its own increase-directed reductions (SS, 207).
For Luhmann, pedagogy’s major task is to ensure that the price of these
unintended socialization effects is not too high, and that the result is not worse than
omitting educational efforts a l t ~ g e t h e r . ~ ~
WHATNow?
Luhmann’s approach amounts to the question, How is education possible? It
leads us away from the traditional preoccupation with what education is, or what it
shouldbe. For the most part, educators and educational scientists do not question the
very possibility of education. They take this possibility for granted and concern
themselves instead with such activities as educational intentions, interventions,
remedial teaching, or with curriculum planning. And they experience the disap-
pointment of their pedagogical ambitions. The discursive strategy, which Luhmann
employed, consists in part of highlighting the difficulties and failures of input/output
arrangements. As a consequence (so it seems to me), his work is in the German-
language literature often conceived of as bearing upon the theory-praxis problem. It
arouses, in fact, new hopes for system control. Systems theory fuels new energy to
interventionist programs which incorporate more variables, and which operate with
more modest ambitions then their predecessors. In this sense, systems theory
stimulates the search for techniques that might accomplish what cannot be accom-
plished. This development takes place in the field of governmental policy as well as
in that of e d ~ c a t i o nThe
. ~ ~complexity of the theoretical framework, its conceptual
distinctions and determinations, are at the same time irreparably simplified. In my
view, there is not much gained with these hasty applications.
When attention is focused on the conceptual determinations introduced in
Luhmann’s theory of society, and especially in its “introductory chapter” entitled
“Social Systems,” it becomes apparent that the field of education lacks a proper
theory. As I have indicated, education is usually analyzed in a subjectivistic manner
-giving way to a teacher’s or a student’s perspective. An adequate reformulation of
this subjectivistic account of education needs to take different system references
into account. It needs to take individual persons and social systems into account.
How an individual develops, how the “possible world” of an individual changes,

55. Luhmann, Soziologische Aufklarung 4, 181

56. See, for example, Helmut Willke, Supervision des Staates [Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997)and Alfons
Backes-Haasse, “Irritierende Theorie- systemtheoretische Beobachtungen der ’Theorie-Praxis-Prohlems’
dcr Padagogik,” Vierteliahrsschrift jii. wissenschaftfiche Pudagogik 65, [ 19931: 180-200.
VANDERSTKAETEN Niklas Luhinann 23

depends upon the social systems in which he or she is involved. Social systems select
from the possible worlds of individual persons (and individual possibilities that are
not used will probably waste away). Participation in social systems creates, on the
other hand, additional opportunities for persons. The conltions of the possibility of
education are always dependent on what educational interaction allows. The
educational interaction creutes the difference between possibility and reality, and
it is this differencethat constitutes the educational accomplishment.
The interrelation of psychic and social systems inevitably brings about plurality
within the educational interaction. Each system constructs its own reality. The
consequences of this plurality are in part neutralized by the organizational setting
within which classroom education is embedded, and by the systematic structure of
school curricula - as I have indicated before. But this plurality cannot be deleted.
Pluralism inevitably manifests itself in education, and already before the much-
dmussed problems of consensus or of power come into play. Every participant
knows, or might know, that a meaning pattern ”transferred” in education in fact has
a different meaning for the other participants, is of importance in different respects,
calls about different memories, or has a hfferent impact on their self-esteem. Being
aware of, and learning to be aware of, this plurality does not lead to social consensus.
One canleam to be sensitive to different meaning patterns and to different norms and
value orientations, but a social system such as education cannot be modeled as an
idyllic Gemeinschuft. Plurality is the tool of the educational system.
The issue of plurality was also at the heart of the Habermas-Luhmann contro-
versy. In the Auseinandersetzungen with his long-time opponent Habermas, Luhmann
has on repeated occasions pointed to the ontological premises of Habermas’s critical
theory. The ideal of rational communication aiming at consensus presupposes the
existence of a common world, while this common world has to guarantee that the
consensus can be reached. This presupposition has wide-ranging consequences. It
eliminates the very possibility of dissent, of difference, or of plurality! Luhmann’s
conceptual framework functions, quite to the opposite, as a searchlight for differ-
ences, for paradoxes, and for incongruities. “I see something, what you do not see,”
is the aptly chosen title of a paper Luhmann read at a conference on the topicality of
the Frankfurter S c h ~ l e . ~
After
’ the autopoietic turn, the notions of conservation,
equilibrium, or system stability have hardly played any role in Luhmann’s work.
This work is about the possibility of communication, and of social systems. Society
is treated as an emergent unity, and special attention is paid to the factual conditions
and consequences of this emergence. In my view, the field of education might benefit
from this incongruent perspective. A theory of education requires a radical reconsid-
eration of classical conceptual distinctions and determinations.

- - - - - - -
57. Luhmann, Soziolugische Aufklarung 5, 228-34.
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