The differentiation of family and school education: historical conditions and current tensions

ABSTRACT

The genesis of the education system is linked with the rapid expansion of school education in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The genesis of the education system therefore brought about a primary form of differentiation in the education system, viz. the differentiation between family and school. Family education and school education can be seen as differentiated units of a more encompassing unit. This paper explores changes in the relationship between these subsystems with the help of systems theory. We particularly discuss tensions between families and schools that have emerged in recent decades as a consequence of the growing societal impact and status of formal schooling. Highlighting the heterogeneity that exists within the education system, we argue that loose coupling, instead of strict coupling, may have major advantages for the primary subsystems of the education system. In the concluding section, we call for more careful reflections within the education system on the pressures and tensions between its primary subsystems.

KEYWORDS:

• Differentiation
• loose coupling
• family and school
• schooled society

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This paper is based on my keynote address to the conference ‘Differentiation Renaissance: Revisiting a Powerful and Multilayered Concept of Education’ at Uppsala University in June 2022. I am grateful to the organizers of the conference for the way they borne with me. An earlier version of this paper appeared in the journal Soziale Systeme (Vanderstraeten, 2020).

2. Given the growing importance of education which is not directed at ‘the child’ (such as lifelong learning or adult education), it might be useful to give more attention to the construction of ‘the learner’ and the ways in which education has become connected with people’s entire life course (Luhmann, 2002; see also the recent discussion in Brosziewski, 2023).

3. At times, Luhmann fully focused on the introduction of compulsory schooling. In an early, programmatic text on the differentiation of society, for example, he wrote: ‘If the society introduces compulsory school education for everyone, if every person regardless of his being nobleman or commoner, being Christian, Jewish, or Moslem, being infant or adult, is subject to the same legal status, if “the public” is provided with a political function as electorate, if every individual is acknowledged as choosing or not choosing a religious commitment; and if everybody can buy everything and pursue every occupation, given the necessary resources, then the whole system shifts in the direction of functional differentiation’ (Luhmann, 1977, p. 40).

4. Inspiring as their approaches are in other respects, the work of Basil Bernstein and that of Pierre Bourdieu does not address these differences in a systematic way. Both Bernstein (with his focus on language codes) and Bourdieu (with his concern about the reproduction of social distinctions) stress, on the one hand, the difference between existing family and school structures. But, on the other hand, they both also assume much correspondence between these systems, particularly for the privileged parts of the population. They assume a ‘differential’ fit between the language code or habitus of families with different class backgrounds and the official and dominant school cultures (e.g. Bernstein, 1973; Bourdieu & Passeron, 2018).

5. For a related discussion of the worldwide expansion of mass schooling in the course of the ‘long’ twentieth century, see Meyer et al. (1977) and Meyer et al. (1992). It should, of course, be kept in mind that children more or less automatically participate in the socialization processes in the family (although family socialization may be difficult), but that school participation requires extra efforts, that it depends on participation in a special subsystem that is specialized in education.

6. While educational credentials presently play an important role within society, the ‘fit’ itself may depend a variety of circumstances. From a sociological point of view, it is plausible to see school grades and school certificates as social ‘signposts’. These signposts may or may not stand for real competences, but it suffices that individuals orient themselves to these signposts (or the absence thereof in the case of the so-called unschooled or low-schooled part of the population). Pierre Bourdieu speaks in this context of illusio, i.e. the belief that the fictions we create constitute reality (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). It might be added that the integration of our society is likely to depend on the institutionalization of such beliefs.