THE METHODOLOGY OF COMPARATIVE EDUCATION

By I. L. Kandel, Westport, Connecticut

The development of the study of comparative education furnishes an example of the dangers that accompany the proliferation of intellectual disciplinesl). The interest in foreign school systems was motivated originally by a desire to advance reforms in the educational system of the country of the students making the investigation. It was realized early that systems of education could not be transferred from one country to another without being found unsuited to the new environment. Nevertheless the study of comparative education was found to be of value in contributing ideas and principles which could be woven into the prevailing philosophy of national education. This discovery was, indeed, not new, for the process of cross-fertilization of ideas in education is as old as the history of education.

A third stage is reached, however, when the original purposes of a study are forgotten and it becomes an independent field of study – a new subject, in fact, with its own methods and content separate from the original discipline from which it proliferated. Something like this happened in the development of the history of education, which tended to become a specialized subject whose contribution to the professional needs which it was supposed to serve became slighter and slighter as time Wellt on. The proliferation of a branch of psychology, which became educational psychology, went through the same process. There was, therefore, some basis for the definition of psychology which appeared nearly half a century ago in A Joysome History o[ Education (New York 1909). The definition read as follows: "That branch of learning by which a man so profoundly contemplates the internal workings of a clock that he is able to construct another like it, - which won't go." Another example that may be cited is the development of courses in the administration of education in the United States in which more attention is paid to administration than to education.

It is an over-sophistication of a discipline to subject it to such an analysis that the parts never really fit together again. The discipline cannot be predictive or helpful because those who frame educational policies are concerned primarily "to achieve certain positive objectives". In the case of the detailed analyses which the study of comparative education has tended to undertake in recent years, there seems to be a failure to realize the distinction between the influences that enter into the organization, aims, and practices of formal education and the effects of the multitudinous variety of forces in the environment that contribute to the informal education of an individual. As one reads some discussions of what should constitute the study of comparative education, the impression cannot be avoided that the writers appear to forget that the formal systems of education are planned, discussed in a legislative assembly, sometimes presented in advance for consideration by the public and the profession, and generally subjected to comments in the press. If all the forces listed by some students of comparative education were to be taken into account, educational systems would die at birth. The enthusiasts of the subtler forms of social analysis, influenced by the work and methods of cultural anthropologists, do not seem to remember that the work of the cultural anthropologists is directed to an analysis of a society as a whole and not of one of its institutions - education - alone. If this approach is continued and extended, the result that may be expected will be a mass of facts, details, and forces that may affect the nature and form of an educational system but not a picture of the system as a whole.

The methodology of comparative education is determined by the purpose that the study is to fulfil. If the aim is to learn something about an educational system, a description without explanation would be sufficient. The picture could be completed with references to the laws and regulations governing the system, the administrative organization, the method of financing, the number and types of schools, their articulation or lack of it, the number and size of classes, the curricula and methods of instruction and time-schedules, the standards and examinations, and the preparation, salaries, and status of teachers. An account of an educational
system of this type may serve for information and description that one would expect to find in an encyclopedia. From the point of view of comparative education such an account is limited, but is an essential first step in the process of study.

The student of comparative education, however, needs more than information about an educational system. If the discipline is worth pursuing, it is essential that the student search for information into the educational system or systems that he is studying. His task is to learn what forces determine the character of a system, what accounts for differences or similarities between two or more systems, how one system proceeds to solve problems that it has in common with other systems, and so on. He will not find answers to these and many other questions from information about the fabric of the system that he studies. Nor will he garner what should be the finest product of comparative study - ability to analyze his own system of education and add something to the philosophy underlying it.

As an introduction to a consideration of the methodology of comparative education designed to discover the forces that determine the nature and form of an educational system, it may be relevant, before discussing the theoretical foundations, to present a list of the factors that were considered by the Langevin Commission, appointed to plan the post-war reform of education in France. "The educational structure," wrote the Commission in the preamble of its report, "should be adapted to the social structure. The educational structure has not been seriously modified for half a century. On the other hand, the social structure has undergone a rapid evolution and fundamental changes. Mechanization, the use of new sources of energy, the development of means of transportation and communication, industrial concentration, the increase of production, the entrance of women into economic life, the spread of elementary education have profoundly changed the conditions of life and social organization. The rapidity and extent of economic progress, which in 1880 made the diffusion of elementary education necessary among the working masses, to-day poses the problem of recruiting an ever-increasing number of personnel as managers and technicians. The middle class, hereditarily called to hold positions of direction and responsibility, will not be able in the future to do it alone. The needs of modern economy impose the necessity of a reorganization of our educational system, which in its present form is no longer suited to the social and economic conditions". Formidable as this list of conditions is that a reform of the French educational system would have to meet, there were still others which were not considered at the time, such as the questions of religious instruction and parochial schools and the status of private schools. Others again may arise because of the recent constitutional changes.

The Commission's analysis of the needs of a country that should be taken into account when preparing the bases for the reform of an educational system emphasized the study of the sociological, economic, and technological factors, the status of women, and the changing social class stratification. Although the Commission must have had them in mind, there should have been included explicitly such factors as the political and cultural patterns, both traditional and contemporary. The issue of equality of educational opportunity did not have to be mentioned in a country which since World War I has had before it the idea of l'dcole unique; the issue is implicit in the reference to the changing status of the working and middle classes. The industrial concentration which means urbanization is mentioned, but there is no reference to what has been in France the predominance of the agricultural economy. Finally, the Commission failed to mention the ideals that would animate French education or the revived national consciousness which would serve to bind the French people together again after the disastrous cleavages
brought about by the early Nazi victory and occupation.

The quotation from the Langevin Commission's report is cited as a case study because it has a lesson in brief in the methodology of comparative education. It defines the factors and influences in the changing culture of the French people which must be considered in studying the educational system of any country in order to understand its meaning and the forces that give it its particular form and character. At the same time it suggests the kind of background required in order to be able to study any educational system - our own or that of another nation. Thestudy of comparative education is an interdisciplinary study and like the history of education may, in fact, lay greater emphasis on the ancillary studies than on education itself. And so far as methodology is concerned, comparative education may be considered a continuation of the study of the history of education into the present. Since we live to-day in a world which has been shaken by two wars and is passing through a variety of revolutions - political, economic, and technological - with their consequent effects on social and cultural patterns, the period is one in which the serious student can notice the changes that are going on at first hand. Further, he can watch the effects of these influences under different conditions - in countries which are in the van of technological advances and their application to industry; in countries which are shifting from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrial economy; in countries where the state is everything and the individual a pawn manipulated in its own interest, or where the character of the state dependsupon the intelligence, understanding, and educated freedom of the
individual citizen. At still another level there are the nations which have recently gained their independence and are starting virtually from scratch in politics, in industry and agriculture, and in culture - all of which will be in the making for many decades, even to the extent of developing a literate language - oral and written.

The specialist in comparative education should have a knowledge of varying political theories, especially as they bear on the relations of the state and the individual. He should know from the history of education how political ideologies and aims have affected the course of education since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Both philosophers early enunciated the principle which was later expressed in the phrase "as is the state, so is the school" or "what you want in the state, you must put into the school". This principle was clearly at work in Germany, for example, as the Weimar Republic succeeded the monarchy, was in turn displaced by the Nazi Revolution, and, now widely separated by the war of ideas, is in each part seeking to establish an educational system in accordance with its prevalent political ideology. Such changes are easy enough to analyze after a revolution: Italy under Fascism, Russia and China under Communism, and the satellites of the new Soviet imperialism. Other changes may take place and may be as spectacular without being completely radical as in those countries in which the ideal of democracy has become more real, more vitalized, and more enriched, and which at the same time have been affected by many of the changes noted in the quotation from the Langevin Commission.

There is, however, another force under which all the other forces mentioned can be subsumed; that is the concept of the nation or nationalism, by which for over a century and a half the creation of systems of education has been inspired. The sixteenth century principle on which the religious conflicts were settled was cuius regio, eius religio and education in each area was dedicated to indoctrination in its chosen religion. The principle was broadened and, in the nineteenth century and increasingly since then, became cuius regio, eius natio, a principle which received international sanction as the principle of national self-determination. Each nation claims the right to determine its own political institutions, the right to control its own territory, the right to perpetuate its own cultural pattern, and the right to develop its own economic interests for the welfare of its own citizens. These claims have been made by the more advanced countries, although economic self-sufficiency is impossible; they are claims put forward by the new nations which have hitherto been dependent. Nevertheless these claims affect educational systems - the language or languages to be accepted as vehicles of illstruction, the literature and songs to be taught, the history and geography to be mastered, the "way of life" to be preserved and transmitted.

The changes that have been in process for the past generation are clear; what is not so clear is a knowledge of the time that it takes for such changes to have an impact on education. The Communist Party in Soviet Russia may dictate a change overnight; the educational system may be overhauled because a Khrushchev has so decided. In the United States where "adaptation to change" has become a slogan, proposals to introduce changes receive the chief emphases in education and are put forward when any new need becomes apparent. They are readily accepted in a culture where everything new is regarded as progress. But even in the United States the leaders of progressive education frequently deplored the fact that the teachers and the public were unwilling or slow in accepting the new theory and practice. In England, on the other hand, changes have taken place in education since the beginning of the century, and they are still continuing as a "Silent Social Revolution," the subject of a book by G. A. N. Lowndes published twenty years ago. The slow empo of change in France is mentioned in the quotation from the Langevin Commission report.

It is important to enquire, in studying educational systems, into the reasons for the differences in the rate of change. They may be found in the absence of agencies of criticism, in bureaucratic control which induces to public apathy and reluctance to depart from routine; or, on the economic side, they may be looked for in systems of early apprenticeship for training craftsmen, fear of an educated manpower where systems akin to peonage prevail, and in the exploitation of child labor. The influence of bureaucratic control of education is usually discussed when the effects of centralization and local administration are investigated. But the issues are not so simple; there are conditions under which centralized control may be desirable and examples could be cited to show that local administration may be just as bureaucratic as a centralized system is charged with being. To study this problem requires a background not only of political theory and economic conditions of a nation but also of a knowledge of popular attitudes to participation in the framing of policies and the opportunities provided for teachers to recommend needed reforms and contribute from their daily experiences in the classrooms. The issues suggested were pertinently discussed in W. Lester Smith's book, To Whom Do Schools Belong ?

It has long been recognized that a system of education cannot be transferred from one nation to another because the cultural differences between any two nations are too great. This has been amply proved by the futile efforts to transport the system of a suzerain country to its dependencies. The obverse of this principle is that each nation has or should have the educational system that it desires and finds most suitable to it. This principle was illustrated recently, not without some humor for those who knew how futile the quest would be. The panic, created in the United States about the soundness of the American educational system when the Soviet government launched the Sputnik, aroused widespread interest in Soviet education and propelled American educators in groups or as individuals to Russia to discover how the Russian authorities were able to achieve such success in space through their educational provisions. The Americans returned with the message that the Soviet system of education would not suit American purposes. That should have been known before the excursions were undertaken, and it might have been recalled that for nearly four decades graduates of most European secondary schools were two years in advance of American high school graduates. But the influences that made for higher standards in European schools were not due to the fact that better prepared teachers were employed, or that the school year was longer, or that more time was devoted to a limited number of subjects. There were factors (and in Soviet Russia they are still more potent) outside the school that had the effect of enforcing serious attention to intellectual work.

What these forces are and the extent to which they can still operate when equality of educational opportunity is provided it is important to consider along with another question that is becoming paramount – a thorough exploration of the implication of equality of educational opportunity in terms of individual abilities and of national needs and welfare. The changes in the Soviet system of education proposed last year by Khrushchev would provide an interesting topic for study to discover the reasons outside the school that motivated the proposal. Here is an illustration, if one were still needed, of the fact that education has become an instrument of the state, used to promote its stability, well-being and advancement. The fact stands out most clearly in a society controlled by a dictatorial government. It can be found, but perhaps more subtly and impalpably, in democratic societies, as may be seen in the current emphasis, stimulated by government funds, on science and technology, not without serious effects on the place of the humanities
and social sciences.

The student of comparative education thus inevitably becomes aware of the fact that education is provided primarily in the national interest. The concept of nationalism becomes all-inclusive, even when the state is monolithic or pluralistic. The primary aim of education is to-day, as it has always been, to reproduce the type, but the type depends on the particular character or way of life that a nation considers essential to its security and stability. Education, in other words, seeks to put a particular stamp on children while still in school so that they may be prepared to live in "the house of thought which men have made that their minds may dwell there together," to use Sir Ernest Barker's definition of education. Beyond the aim of reproducing the type, more extensive provision is being made for educating beyond the type - common education comes first and specialization follows. It is this emphasis on the common type that affects the attitudes of many persons in most countries to private schools conducted for social or religious reasons, or both.

National characters or national ways of thinking and behaving, or the national ethos, are not permanently fixed, but have in them a core of common features left by national history and the changing circumstances that have played to produce them. There appears to be a tendency to-day to prefer the use of the terms "culture patterns" or "normative standards" or "value systems" for national characters but the distinction is one without any difference, and the effect is the same on behavior and thinking, whatever name is used. As Bertrand Russell amusingly pointed out, even in as objective a discipline as science the results of research are marked by the national way of thinking and behaving. "One may say broadly," according to Russe11, "that all the animals that have been carefully observed have behaved so as to confirm the philosophy in which the observer believed before his observations began. Nay more, they have all displayed the national characteristics of the observer. Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically, with an incredible
display of bustle and pep, and at last achieve the desired result by chance. nAnimals observed by Germans sit still and think and at last evolve the solution out of their inner consciousness". Professor J. D. Bernal has made the same point but rather more seriously.

It will be interesting to observe how the nations that have recently acquired their independence develop their own culture patterns and in turn adapt their educational systems to them. For the present it seems to be clear that the predominant principles, especially of secondary education, of the nations from which they separated, are not still effective and are militating against the creation of new forms more suited to the national culture. Efforts are being made, however, to develop those elements that bind members of a nation together - common language, common literature, common history, common objects of allegiance - even though they have not previously existed and have to be developed and even though the ancient customs may be incompatible with the modernization that is being sought. The conflict between the old and the new is cogently brought out in the work of a young Turkish teacher when he endeavored to implement the ideals of Ataturk in a Turkish village1).

Little more can be added in this article on other aspects of the study of comparative education that require a background of other information that has already been given, such as methods of raising and distributing funds for education, the national economy and its dependence on education and consequently the types of schools to be provided, and so on. In general, it must be assumed that the student has a mastery of one or more languages than his own. Finally, consideration should be given to opportunities of travel and the length of time required to study into rather than about a foreign educational system.

The organization of courses in comparative education would require an article of its own. The issue here involved is again dependent upon the aim that is sought. If the aim is to learn something about a large number of educational systems, a certain superficiality may result. But if the aim is to train students in analyzing the forces that determine the character and form of an educational system, what Professor Schneider has called the Triebkrdfle der Pddagogik, a few countries, including the students' own, will be chosen, after an intensive analysis of one country, with sufficient contrasts to show the different effects and ramifications of these forces. Only by the second method is the student likely to broaden and enrich his own philosophy of education, and this should after all be the primary objective of the discipline.