Reproduced from 1971 Conference Proceedings, pp. 6-11 ã SCUTREA 1997

Keith A. Percy, University of Lancaster

Some of you may be aware that in the 1960s the theoretical study of education became even more theoretical. With the advent of such phenomena as the three year teacher-training course, the B.Ed., the Schools Council and Nuffield research and development projects, the twin-headed monster of curriculum development and philosophic analysis of curriculum concepts has pushed forward to a position of all-devouring predominance. The fundamental activity of the adherents of this new educational cult has consisted in the identification of distinct disciplines or ‘forms of knowledge’ on which rational curriculum planning can be built. A form of knowledge has concepts and modes of validation of its conclusions peculiar to itself - that much is clear. What is less clear is how many forms of knowledge there are: the number swings between four and nine and seems to be settling into present equilibrium at about seven. It is a teasing problem; and it is one which will supply climactic intensity to the dissertation pages of the increasing assembly of embryonic philosophers of education now emerging from the London Institute. The physical sciences, mathematics and, of course philosophy are already admitted as forms of knowledge; moral, religious and aesthetic ‘knowledge’ are more problematical. Sociology, geography, psychology are not in themselves regarded as forms of knowledge, but history usually is¹. History, because it is concerned with the past and with intentions and motives as well be occurrences in time and space, is identified as logically distinct.

It is probably very comforting for historians to know that they are regarded as engaged in an esoteric pursuit; but it is, I suggest, both untrue and dangerous and particularly so for historians of adult education. For the numbers of those engaged in the historical study of adult education is small indeed and the resources at their disposal limited. There is not much ‘good’ history of adult education about; that is, history which is a self-conscious interpretative attempt to set this one aspect of societal development within a total framework of the political, social, intellectual and economic past². Much of what appears on library shelves under the label ‘History of Adult Education’ is of the nature of official or commemorative history: it is meant to celebrate, to preserve the memory of ...., but not to criticise or evaluate. If there were many more ‘good’ historians of adult education. it perhaps would not matter very much if they remained at a level of methodological somnolence and intellectual isolationism. Enough mavericks would be thrown up to transgress disciplinary boundaries and to choose topics for research which would maximise the usefulness and quality of their activities. The latter phrase is introduced very advisedly. It is the theme of this paper to question both the distinctiveness and the uniform nature of historical study and relate that questioning to the need for a systematic sense of direction in what future studies there are of the history of adult education. Of course, historical study of adult education may be justified in its own right as challenging and as a contribution to knowledge. But in a climate of scarcity and with a methodology which is diffuse and various, and employs a variety of types of explanation, there seems to be a strong case for the emergence of what may be termed the ‘applied’ history of adult education; that is history taking its place within the interdisciplinary investigation of specified problems in the field of adult education.

All forms of historical study are highly subjective at the level of interpretation. This assertion may be examined within the context of the research I undertook into the history of 19th century state-aided evening schools. There were three types of source material which were used: primary, manuscript sources (log books, minute books); printed primary sources (in particular the multiplicity of tomes of annual or biennial regional reports to their Lordships of the Privy Council by HMIs);and printed secondary sources (notably the works of other historians). Historians are very conscious of their ‘scientific’ rules for handling evidence but nevertheless the subjectivity of the historian enters at every stage of the study of these materials. There are many more log books extant than were examined for the research. They were not consulted because of their geographical inaccessibility or because they were not gathered together in sufficient numbers to warrant a journey to see them. Moreover, the historian does not first do his research or fieldwork and then draw together his conclusions and interpretations; all the time he is constructing working hypotheses as he examines the materials and these hypotheses guide and reinforce the selectivity with which he is bound to treat the source material. Thus some log books are glanced through quickly and discarded, others are examined minutely. Some HMI reports are accorded greater significance than others because they fit better with the working hypotheses and the other evidence, or because of a judgement about the Inspector’s reliability or the personal values which are revealed in his commentary on contemporary education. Similarly with the few historians who have written about aspects of the 19th century state-aided evening schools. It was necessary to question, assess and seek further evidence on some of the findings of Bartley³ because of his evident understanding of education in class terms; of Sadler⁴ because of his obvious predilection for the development of a system of continuation schools; and of the more recent Edwards⁵ because of his seeming Whig conception of historical progress.

But equally there have been other conclusions or findings by these historians which can lie hidden to the researcher because of his own values and attitudes to history. It is true that there is no valid distinction between narrative and analysis, between facts and interpretation. The truly neutral historical fact exists at a very low level of significance. The remainder contain the element of subjective interpretation according to the detail in which the historian presents them, and the priority which he assigns to them. E. H. Carr called the relation between the historian and his facts one of give-and-take: "The historian is engaged on a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts"⁶. Croce was making a related point when he uttered the dictum that ‘all history is contemporary history’. We look in the past for the sorts of events that are of contemporary significance and make explanations of them in terms of the causal sequences and types of meaningful behaviour that we now understand.

To comment briefly on the types of explanation which historians employ is difficult. But Gardiner makes a useful basic distinction between (a) explanations in terms of general laws of human response to specified types of situation i.e. explanation in terms of ‘causes’ and ‘effects’ and (b) explanations of the ‘logic of the situation’, what it would be reasonable to do in particular circumstances with particular objectives in view i.e. explanation in terms of ‘intentions’ and ‘plans’⁷. Neither type of explanation is more valid than the other, The ‘cause-effect’ explanation is, perhaps, more readily comprehensible. It depends on a certain adherence by the historian to a particular model of society or of man or of both - a Marxist historian, a follower of Toynbee or of Namier in their different ways employ this mode of explanation. The ‘intentions’ of the actor/the ‘logic of the situation’ type of explanation is exemplified par excellence in the Romano-British historian, Collingwood, who decreed that "all history is the history of thought" and that the historian is concerned with re-enacting in his own mind the past experience and processes of thought of those whom he is studying⁸. It is this form of explanation that requires both depth of knowledge and refined intuitive understanding and which carries the subjective nature of historical interpretation to the extreme. The point to be made here is that both types of explanation have their parallels, indeed mirror images, in modes of sociological thought, There is not much ground to travel between a Marxist historian and a Marxist sociologist, and cause-effect explanatory frameworks based on models of society are to be found in sociology from Durkheim’s description of anomie and suicide to the embourgeoisement thesis. The intuitive understanding of Collingwood has evident connections with Weber’s verstehen, with Berger and Luckmann’s stimulating analysis of the universe of subjective reality which we each carry around with us⁹ and with the theory of action. It seems that it is not necessary to import sociological concepts or even large-scale sociological theories into history. They are there already, or rather they are latent. It is only because British historians have such a long tradition of pragmatism and empiricism that they do not work more consciously within a developed conceptual framework. It is both partially illegitimate and totally unimaginative to import such well-known, fully fledged sociological concepts into historical analysis as, for example, the concepts of total institutions, truce situations, charismatic leadership, gemeinschaft/gesellschaft, definition of the situation and so on. It is illegitimate because in being transported out of context the concepts are rarified into what they are not - pseudo-universals, limitations of reality and thus restrictive rather than stimulating. It is even worse to transport self-contained, so-called ‘theories’. McLeish is wrong when he seeks to substitute Freud, Malinowski or Parsons in place of what he dismisses as the ‘naive’ and ‘trusting’ phenomenological explanations of historians¹⁰. He certainly fails to distinguish between the types of explanation which Gardiner dichotomises. But where he basically fails is in not allowing the topic or problem under research to generate its own concepts and ‘theories’. The explanations would be at different levels of generality; they would use different types of perspective. They might be exclusive or they might overlap: they would be alternatives but not substitutes for each other. But, added together and interacting, they would provide a more complete interpretation of a problem. It is not particularly relevant whether the concepts or theories developed are labelled sociological or historical; some will be more easily recognised as such than others. But they will form part of an explanatory framework based on the interaction of research derived from the complex of the behavioural sciences and in this instance - historical research is included in the behavioural sciences.

If this much is acceptable, it is a small step to appreciation of the possible role of the ‘applied history’ of adult education. In research into educational topics or problems (or any research, for that matter) it is not finding things that is difficult, it is deciding what to look for. It is in the formulation of questions, or in the working out of hypotheses, that the research usually stands or falls. Habitual categories of thought or schemata that have built up in the mind (and which are often related to subject disciplines) place restrictions around the sorts of hypotheses that are generated. That is why inter-disciplinary, or multi-disciplinary research is potentially fruitful. The Rowntree Research Project in Higher Education at the University of Lancaster is an exemplar. One aspect of the research is into the aims and objectives of higher education, and philosophical and historical analysis as well as branches of theoretical and empirical sociology and social psychology have been combined in the research design. Insights derived from the historical analysis concerned with the relationship between intention and practice in the development of higher education have been used to generate hypotheses for sociological analysis, and to build up interpretations of empirical data gathered from depth interviews of lecturers in higher education. Conversely the historical perspective has been widened by questions stimulated by conceptual analysis and from responses to an attitude scale.¹¹ Thus history has a role which is more than providing a ‘historical background’ or helping us "to understand the past", This sort of multidisciplinary approach is certainly possible in the study of adult education. The research into the 19th century state-aided evening school could, without any distortion, be used to supply insights and hypotheses, and to generate explanations, about LEA provision of vocational and non-vocational adult education, on the marginality of adult education to the rest of the educational system, on the activity of pressure groups in adult education and on the attitudes and mythologies concerned with adult education existing in the Board of Education, and its successors. Multidisciplinary research teams investigating pressing problems of adult education are, perhaps, too much to hope for, but voluntary and inter-disciplinary co-operation, concentration of efforts, and communication, probably are not. The historians of adult education have a part to play, if only in ensuring that their research topics are not recondite and have applicability to long-standing and central problems of adult education. The study of adult education will benefit but so, too, in the long run, will history.

Endnotes

1. e.g. Hirst, P. H. ‘Liberal education and the nature of knowledge’ in Archambault R. D.,(ed) Philosophical analysis and education, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965, pages 113-140.
2. Notable exceptions are Professors J. F. C. Harrison, T. Kelly and B. Simon.
3. Bartley, G.C.T. The schools for the people, London, l871
4. Sadler, M.E., (ed), Continuation schools in England and elsewhere, Manchester, 1907.
5. Edwards, H.J., The evening institute, London: National Institute of Adult Education, 1961.
6. Carr, E. H. What is history? London: Macmillan, 1962, page 24
7. Gardiner, P., The nature of historical explanation, Oxford: OUP, 1952; pages 49-51
8. Collingwood, R.G., The idea of history, Oxford, OU.P., 1961, 232 ff.
9. Berger P.L., and Luckmann, T., The social construction of reality, London: Allen Lane, 1967
10. McLeish, J., Evangelical Religion and Popular Education, London, Methuen, 1969, page 164
11. This research is reported extensively in Entwistle, N.J., Percy, K.A., and Nisbet, J.B., Educational Objectives and Academic Performance in Higher Education: summary of a preliminary report. Department of Educational Research, University of Lancaster, 1971.