This study represents an attempt to investigate a comparison on a sociology of knowledge and education between the positions taken by the two theorists and present some suggestions to pursuit our school education.
The differences between the two theo...
This study represents an attempt to investigate a comparison on a sociology of knowledge and education between the positions taken by the two theorists and present some suggestions to pursuit our school education.
The differences between the two theorists on sociology of knowledge are over the methodology for the study of social reality. Durkheim considers that social facts are to be investigated and explained in the same way as facts in the natural order.
Mannheim considers that the meaning of social phenomena can not be justly stated in terms of causal connections.
In the view of understanding the relationship of thought and action, Durkheim is against taking account of individual motives in the explanation of social reality, but Mannheim is for attending to individual psychology in his thought. The interpretation which each gives to the nature of group and its relation to the individual attempts the same kind of synthesis between social realism and nominalism except relativism.
Over the role of the school in society, Durkheim attempts to explain that the goals which the school ought to pursue are those which express the social reality and the school system should never promote and ideal of the active role in transforming society. So his educational theory seems consistent with the position he takes in the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim understands that the school ought to do in relation to social change. The ideas and values of the reconstruction of society being determined by the complex patterns of forces in society are perceived and formulated by a concrete group, the intelligentsia. So his educational theory seems consistent with the rightful position to reconstruct the planned society through democracy.