The Concept of Progress in Educational Thought: instrumentalist theories considered

Abstract

Instrumentalist theories are older than liberal, reconstructionist or child‐centred ones and the concept of progress they embody seems very obvious at first sight: making schools and other educational institutions more relevant to social needs. In open market societies however social needs are even more fiercely contested than are intrinsic educational values or the needs of individual childen. When a social need is politically legitimated in newly closed societies, even resolute instrumentalists may blanch at what is required of schools, as Durkheim's disciples found in occupied France. In contemporary English‐speaking societies the paradox is noted that neo‐Marxists consider educational institutions to be instruments in the hands of the ‘ruling classes’ and to be part of an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), whereas all those who may be defined as members of such ruling classes bemoan that these institutions are dysfunctional to the needs of industry and commerce and hostile to market societies.