The menace of sociology
Jonathan Benthall
According to reports in The Times this week, the rate of applications for sociology courses in the universities has fallen. One distinguished sociologist, Donald MacRae, complains that a lot of self-styled sociology is simply Marxism. What, then, of the sociology that is now being taught quite extensively in secondary schools?
Sociology at its strongest is a distinctively twentieth-century contribution to civilisation, At an abstract level it overlaps with philosophy. More concretely, it has produced a wealth of detailed case-studies on many forms of human grouping. Comparative sociology and social anthropology have a great deal in common, and it is sometimes said that they are mainly kept apart by traditions of 'in-group solidarity' in university departments.
But from appreciating the importance of sociology as an academic subject, many educationalists have gone on to argue that it Should be taught in schools. The argument is simple and seductive. By learning how human societies are constituted and how they change, children will grow up to be responsible and progressive members of a democracy.
This is not convincing. An understanding of society could just as easily train an adolescent to become a more effective commissar than he would otherwise be. The Nazis knew all about the propaganda potential of mass media, for instance, and hence kept the loyalty of the German people through hardship and setbacks. History has been taught in schools for much longer than sociology, and there is no reason to believe that the study of either subject is in itself conducive to good citizenship. Both history and sociology are vast amorphous subjects, riddled at a theoretical level with controversy over methodology. At an elementary level they both become all too easily vehicles for transmitting the teacher's preconceptions, conscious or unconscious, about morality. This danger is recognised by teachers of history, and consequently schoolchildren studying history are given a strong dose of factual roughage to digest, as a protection against dialectical diarrhoea or Spenglerian Spasms. The same is true of some sociology teaching. There can be no objection, far from it, against teaching how labour relations and party politics have developed in industrial countries; or how medical services, or the criminal law and penal system, work in Britain; or how hunting and gathering tribes are organised. But this would be considered dull Gradgrindery by many sociology teachers. By contrast, the following kind of syl tabus (one of the 1977 'A' level Sociology options offered by the Joint Matriculation Board serving five universities in the Midlands and North) would be regarded as mind-expanding: Political studies I. Interpersonal power Authority, power, dominance, legitimacy; aggression and deference Leadership, decision-making, participation, communication and control 2. Power in the social system Decision-making and allocation of power Political culture, socialisation and communication 3. Cleavage, consensus and change Problems and processes of change Models of explanation; revolution, reform, acculturation; deprivation.
An exceptionally intelligent student might be productively stimulated by such a syllabus. Some of the problems that it implies are indeed crucial ones, and very well suited to advanced university study. But surely nine out of -ten schoolchildren will either cram for 'A' level from textbooks without thinking much for themselves (in which case, why not give them something less elusively theoretical?), or will merely absorb the prejudices of their teachers.
It is not hard to see why sociology, which ought to be one of the most respected of subjects, has acquired such a bad reputation with the man in the street. Sociology teachers frequently see their role as one of 'demystifying' the authority structures of modern society. This would be acceptable if they also emphasised the absolute need for some kind of social order, and hence authority, in all human groups. But many of them know little„of history or comparative anthropology and are content to denounce injustice and inequality where they perceive it. This may do credit to their consciences, but not to their educational wisdom or sociological insight. As Leach has written, the idea of a classless society belongs to the category of purely religious ideas, like that of life after death. All our great institutional traditions — such as science, art, medicine and law — can be and should be examined for their relations with money and power; bur such analysis can be very facile, and should never be taught to someone who has not yet had an opportunity to appreciate the value of these traditions as experienced by those who practise within them.
Some sociology teachers are keen to focus sociological techniques on the school itself and on family life. 'Why do you stand up when the headmaster comes in?' Why do you respect what your parents think even when you disagree with them?' Deference; social control; hierarchy. The intention is that the children will grow up to be effective political radicals. It is much more likely that they will grow up to be mute, inglorious William Burroughses or Samuel Becketts; for most adolescents need to believe in the reality of an authority against which they can test their strength. In many schools there may be a disrespectful music or art teacher who privately reveals to an intelligent adolescent that the dignity of the headmaster and the school ethos may be specious; but should this demystification be institutionalised in the classroom? Such teaching itarts with demystification of 'bourgeois ideology,' but is it not in danger of ushering the pupil into an existentialist void which he is unprepared for?
There has been recently an extensive demand for materials on social anthropology from teachers, children and even parents — stimulated no doubt by television films and popular publications. This may not of course be an ideal subject to learn but, given this demand, teachers ought to be offered resources to help them teach social anthropology with accuracy and balance. Otherwise popular prejudices about race, social evolution, primitive peoples and similar topics are reinforced. The stress should be on comparative ethnography: the detailed examination of some widely differing pre-industrial societies (such as the Quechua of Peru and the Trobriander of New Guinea). The teacher is to be encouraged to draw out from this material, if he wishes, generally applicable principles about social order and conflict, kinship and Family life, rites de passage, and so forth. These can then be related to the lives of the schoolchildren themselves; but the unfamiliarity of the ethnographic material makes it unlikely that the class will degenerate into self-indulgent navel-gazing.
Sociology, properly taught, could be of value in schools. But it should be taught in a down-to-earth way with no pretence that it can train the mind in the same way as can, say, the intensive study of a foreign language and literature. As an advanced subject, sociology demands considerable subtlety of thought, to juggle with numerous ' possible explanatory models, and it demands a perspective at once historical and comparative. These are the signs of an intellectual maturity which only an exceptional schoolchild will show. Cannot he or she be protected, until he is grown up, from the barbarous English which is exchanged by second-rate social scientists of all varieties?
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