ABSTRACT
This is a book to be read three times – once with unreserved admiration for its bold conception and economic execution; secondly with serious sociological reservations; and thirdly with great care to sift out the achievements from the ambitions. Thework is amajor contribution, although it will takeme the whole of this review to establish precisely what Green, Seidman and Ericson have achieved. Essentially the authors have two major aims. The first is to elucidate a ‘logic’ of
the educational system, its structure and dynamics. The second is to validate the claim that the educational system has a ‘life of its own’. This means providing an account such that ‘the behavior of the system, its inherent processes, may become intelligible in a way that is independent of differences in political and economic ideology’ (p. xiii). Basically I will argue that the claim concerning the ‘logic’ of educational systems
cannot be sustained, whereas the claim that they have a ‘life of their own’ can be established. Green and his colleagues see the two claims as intimately, though not inextricably, related. In denying the existence of this (and probably any) inherent ‘logic’ of the system I am obviously separating the two claims, and consequently many of the propositions about the ‘life’ of the system then have to be reformulated to eradicate their logical status and to restore sociological contingency. Reformulation can be accomplished by replacing many of the law-like state-
ments with ‘if : : : then’ propositions. What remains is not the pass-key to the workings of any modern educational system (on the analogy of micro economics to the market economy) but a corpus of theory about how they do work under certain conditions –which is all themore useful because the conditions involved are indeed very common. Perhaps the authors are right that they will become yet more pervasive: if so, they will become more important, but this will not transform their conditional status. The ‘logic’ of the system is grounded in Green’s belief that ‘though the system is
instantiated in many places, it is “the system” everywhere in precisely the same way
that though the nation state is exemplified in many places, it is the same reality in each that we point to with the phrase “the nation state”’ (p. xiv). He is referring to twentieth-century manifestations of educational systems and to their unnoticed uniformities. The first problem begins to arise because Green refuses to define what the educational system is, whilst simultaneously insisting that it is the same everywhere. Instead he is ‘content to rely upon the fact that the reader will bring to the text an adequate conception of what is meant by “the educational system”’ (p. xv). Becausewe talk about it, we knowwhat it is – perhaps our ordinary language use even reveals a popular understanding that ‘the system’ is one. The trouble is that this commonsense conception of the reader rapidly turns out to mean common American experience. Green begins by stating that ‘All we require, by way of definition, is to consult that conception and we shall discover that it refers (1) to a set of schools and colleges (2) related by amedium of exchange, and (3) arranged by some principles of sequence’ (p. xvi). However, ‘commonsense’ has now incorporated into the groundwork of the theory two features (the second and third) which are not found everywhere outside the USA. Particularly when they are spelt out, they appear to be systemic variables: featureswhich varied greatly during the history of different systems and which still display comparative variations. This is clearest where ‘sequence’ is concerned. AlthoughGreen stresses that there
can be different rules of sequence, he thinks of the system in terms of ‘levels’ (meaning primary, secondary and higher) through which people pass sequentially. Indeed, later he refers more explicitly to a ‘single ladder of success’ (p. 88). Thus the principle of sequence
states that the system of schools is organised into levels, so that if a person has completed the nth level of the system, that will constitute sufficient reason for concluding that he has completed the level of n − 1, but not a sufficient reason for concluding that he has completed or will complete the level of n + 1.
