2024 Volume 91 Issue 4 Pages 462-474
In Japan discourse on public education is seriously polarized. Some argue that it is not only important but crucial for public education to cross system boundaries in order to overcome the complicated difficulties that have challenged its sustainability. Others suggest that because of the shrinking of the young population and the budget crisis, the fundamentals of public education are struggling, putting the sustainability of public education itself at risk. These people emphasize the importance of reinforcing inner borders rather than border crossing.
This paper intends to contribute to resolving this confusion by applying Luhmannʼs concept of functional system differentiation to the historical evolution of public education to find the origins of its antinomy. This historical-sociological investigation will show that the birth of public education as an independent functional system heavily relied on the “infinite theory of human development” that constitutes the unconscious of modern public education.
The paper first, in order to examine a hybrid situation without an independently functional system of education, focuses on the late 17th to 18th century “ancien regime” in France. At this time educational function was embedded in the Catholic Church. The work of the teachers allocated to each parochial district school (socalled “petit ecoles”) was controlled by Catholic priests. However, the trend of anti-Protestantism reform led to a gradual expansion of education focusing much more on the problem of inner faith than on ritual recitation.
Next we turn to the discussion by Daniel Tröhler of “the educationalization of the world”. He points out that Protestantism enabled a fundamental change in how people interpreted and interacted with the world. People turned to the “educational reflex” to resolve the challenges the world presented them with. Protestant egalitarianism and predestination created for the people an “indefinite theory of human development,” directing their eyes to the perfection of their own inner world. Protestantism founded the underlying ideas of modern education, characterized by an open-ended system without specified goals of socialization.
The pureness of the education system primed by the “infinite theory of human development”, however, very often prevented the sustainability of education. When the frustrated needs of people who were treated in “egalitarian” ways came to light, public education had to sacrifice its pureness, compromising on specific social goals. Antinomy was also observed in the case of the evolution of Dowa education in Japan.
