1. The writer considers this symposium to be an attempt to find out a new methodology for the study of family in the sociology of education. He is rather skeptical if there are any educational-sociological methods as such. Any method, he thinks, can be educational-sociological so far as it is adopted by the researcher with a view to contributing to the improvement of education through a sociological study.
2. The sociology of education is indeed a sociological study of educational phenomena, and should be approached as objectively as possible, that is, free from any dogmatic creeds or prejudices. But it is also a study of education by a sociological researcher with a clear awareness of his final contribution to the improvement of educational poblems. He is requested to have a perspective in mind in which he connects his present stu-dy with the historical realities of education, although this never means. that his study should be made with a sense of hasty applicability.
The socializing functions of the family are an important area of education, but a mere sociological study of it does not prove educational-sociological unless the researcher is fully conscious of this kind of perspective.
3. In the correlational method so common in sociological studies, the researcher, who tries to find a possible relationship between, for example, a child-rearing practice and the occupation of the family, is tempted to treat these variables separately as if they were two different items. But the truth is that he is only analyzing one and the same social entity, the social class, in terms of its two cultural aspects. The wholeness is given first, the reality is presented before him undivided, and the researcher is to analyze it from various aspects. In such an analysis, qualitative data are as important as the quantitative. This also suggests that the historical realities of education do not exist apart from the realm of sociological studies, and that a researcher in the sociology of education is requested to start his study with an analysis of this given entity rather than to make a sociological study and then try to connect it with educational needs.
