Modern education in "non-western" societies in the light of the world systems approach in comparative education
International review of education, 38 (3):
241-255 (1992)Abstract
The mainstream of Comparative Education may be criticized from two directions: Firstly, for what we may call its overwhelming 'case and country-study tradition', which tends to neglect theoretical and integrative approaches of what should be the focus of attention: defining, conceptualizing and questioning 'human education' and its respective institutions and processes - the school, family education, adult education, etc. - as the raison d'être of educational science, of which Comparative Education is an integral part. Secondly, for largely ignoring education in non-Western countries, either by sheer ommission of non-Western perspectives, experiences and studies or by the widespread tendency to separate non-Western realities into special branches such as 'thnicity and education', 'educational problems of the Third World' or 'multi-cultural education'. The world systems approach to Comparative Education proposed here tries to remedy these shortcomings in that it offers, firstly, a radically generalized theoretical perspective, because it aims at a theory of the modern school as it emerges from a global and comprehensive concept of comparison. Secondly, it presumes that non-European countries are not the outside world to our or their 'European' or 'Western' experiences, but instead that they form an integral part of what in short is to be termed 'the modem world'. Hence non-Western societies have to be integrated into a truly comprehensive framework of comparative education, the object of which is to describe, analyse and understand the world-wide existence of structurally similar yet socially differentiated and ideologically distinct nation-state controlled education systems. (DIPF/Orig.).