Education and Sociology. Book that gives the reader the great merit of capturing the fundamental concepts of Durkheim, one of the classics of French pedagogy .
Summary
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- 1 Importance of the project
- 2 Plot
- 3 Criticisms of the book
- 4 Author details
- 5 Sources
Importance of the project
A famous sociologist, Émile Durkheim is at the same time one of the “classics” of French pedagogy. In life, he already imprinted his personal stamp on it through his teachings; which he has captured in his books: Education and sociology, moral education and, finally, pedagogical evolution in France , which were published after his death, thanks to the efforts of his disciple Paul Fauconnet.
It was therefore both natural and necessary that today’s educators could easily refer to Durkheim’s most important texts, and we should congratulate ourselves on the happy initiative taken by Les Presses Universitaires de France in republishing, forty years after its publication in 1922 , Education and sociology, a work out of print in bookstores for a long time.
Argument
This small volume, made up of four essays dating from the early years of the 20th century , provides a brief and entertaining presentation. But above all, it has the great merit of embodying the fundamental concepts of Durkheim. In addition, it is appreciated by a long and excellent introduction due to Fauconnet’s pen.
Criticisms of the book
Certainly, it is possible not to share today all his ideas, among others his reluctance towards psychology, inherited from Auguste Comte and which are found again, even more exacerbated, in Alain; or also, his way of defining pedagogy as “a practical theory”, a formula that remains quite enigmatic despite the author’s explanations; or even his unjust disdain in regard to utopian literature in terms of pedagogy.
Nor should we lose sight of, when reading his works, the fact that many changes have occurred since these texts were written. On the one hand, annihilating events such as the two world wars, an accelerated evolution of the industrial economy under the impulse of technical inventions of all kinds that have transformed education to its deepest roots .
The human sciences that Durkheim regarded as barely incipient have made undeniable progress. The conflict between psychology and sociology , in which he participated, has been largely overcome today. Psychology is no longer simply, as he believed, “the science of the individual”; At least one “social dimension” has been recognized.
Sociology, for its part, has deviated from certain Durkheimian theories, those of “collective consciousness” and “collective representations,” for example; At present, the relationship between nature and culture is approached differently . Pedagogy, as scientific research, has been conducted in a very different way from what Durkheim had envisioned: it leaves aside the study of historical processes for that of group dynamics, and for the assessment of school performance through experimental methods . The vocabulary itself has been changing, at the same time as the researchers’ optics.
Author details
Durkheim, who died in 1917 , a sociologist and substitute for the chair of pedagogy at the Sorbonne after the First World War, approached the problems of education in an attractive and lucid way. He died prematurely. Those who followed his teachings owe him the discovery of pedagogical work and socio-pedagogical reflection.
Like all the classics, Durkheim is, above all and in the broad sense of the word, a representative of his time. His doctrine is faithful testimony of the time in which he lived, the Third Republic, that of the secularization of public education , the advances of large industry and the development of the human sciences. He could apply his concepts to research carried out by pedagogues
