デュルケム教育理論研究

教育社会学の原初形態

抄録

Durkheim consecrated himself to the scientific study of social phenomena, desiring to contribute to the moral consolidation of the Third Republic, which was to be achieved by a lay system of popular education. Then, what sort of a process should be education?
Durkheim set forth his conception of education in a criticism of «lesped'dgogues modernes», Mill, Spencer, Kant, and Herbart. He thought that they took education not as a creation process as he himself believed, but solely as an auxiliary process for natural self-development of each individual's inherent constitution. Then, he intended to construct another theory by employing a conception that individual consciousness has two factors, individual (or personal) and social, and that education should affix purposively the social to the individual.
He did not enter into details, but rather suggested a principle only.
The purposive affixing (education) could not be done without researching into the social needs for education i.e. social factors to be affixed, educational systems as social institutions, and into the mentality of infants. These researches must be accomplished strictly scientifically, which was the task of «science del'education», especially, of sociology, «science des institutions sociales».
In his proposition, we find an «elementary form» of educational sociology.