TRIUMPH OF COMPATIBILISM OVER STRUCTUALISM AND INTERPRETIVISM

Chris Kaihatsu  guido@merle.acns.nwu.edu
Sociology/History major in the School of Education
Northwestern University
5-6-93

Ayn Rand makes a poignant observation in her pamphlet "Philosophy: Who
Needs It" that everyone has a philosophy, whether they are consciously
aware of it or not.  She points to the need for everyone to comprehend what
philosophy is residing in their brains.  For,

"A man who is run by emotions is like a man who is run by a computer whose
print-outs he cannot read.  He does not know whether its programming is
true or false, right or wrong, whether it's set him to success or
destruction, whether it his goals or those of some evil, unknowable power.
He is blind on two fronts: blind to the world around him and to his own
inner world, unable to grasp reality or his own motives, and he is in
chronic terror of both.  Emotions are not tools of cognition.  The men who
are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently: they are most
helplessly in its power."

This warning should especially be heeded when one involves oneself in
academic pursuits.  While the reader of a newspaper may have a difficult
time in fitting the day's events into a meaningful framework without the
tool of philosophy, the student involved in academic pursuits has even more
of a responsibility to understand not only his/her own philosophy but also
the philosophies used by others.  Understanding the perspectives of others
gives a human being the ability to critique and criticize the work of
others because the person can then look under ground to examine what kind
of foundation is holding up all the arguments in the thesis.

Therefore, the reader of either Kozol or Bowles & Gintis must have
knowledge of what systems are being used in each so that the reader may
determine if each has an accurate interpretation of the issues at hand.
Each of the authors makes subtle and blatant appeals to the reader's
emotions.  If taken at face-value, these emotional arguments could easily
sway an unsuspecting reader to immediate action.  The discerning reader
would understand what basis is used for the arguments and would then reach
an educated conclusion.  It is, therefore, the scope of this paper to
present a behind-the-scenes look at what methods are used by Kozol and
Bowles & Gintis.  Armed with a skeptical insight into the perspectives of
these authors, the reader will be assured that the most careful attention
has been made to the opinions of the two books.

The two sociological philosophies to be examined are structuralism and
interpretivism.  The curious reader might question the fundamental validity
of these two models when used to examine educational problems.  The sharp
reader will ask if these tools are the correct ones for the job.  Clearly,
a carpenter who brings warped rulers, rusty saws, and bent nails will have
difficulty making a high-quality house because s/he is using inadequate
tools.  Likewise, the tools of Kozol or Bowles & Gintis must be examined to
see if they will be valid at for the duties at hand

If structures of any sort exist, they must channel something.  Buildings
channel people, computers channel electricity.  The macro- and micro-level
structures described by Kozol and Bowles & Gintis channel one thing: Power.
In formalized structures, one can easily see the hierarchy of positions.
In utilizing structuralism the conduits of power are laid bare as the
author maps out a schematic diagram.  That power relations are so clearly
seen using the structuralist approach should not be surprising.
Structuralism posits that every element in a particular situation has no
significance unto itself --- its identity is defined in terms of its
relationship to all other elements in the same situation.  (Cherryholmes,
pp. 16-17) Structuration is defined by Giddens in Cherryholmes's book:

Structuration is the dual process by which individuals create social
processes and institutions through their choices and actions, and the
latter both constrain and provide opportunities for the former.  (p. 8)

Structuralism may be seen as focusing on the systems of relations among the
parts in a whole.  It does not emphasize the uniqueness of each of the
parts, but rather sees how some common aspects of the parts relate those
parts to the larger whole.  Meaning is reserved for the structures linking
individuals together, not the individuals themselves.  Structures also have
the characteristic of dealing with transformations.  As the structure can
only sustain itself by perpetuating a continuous likeness of its parts,
that is what it strives to do.

Examining the flow of power according to interpretivist tradition requires
a different stance.  Cherryholmes, in Power and Criticism, uses Michel
Foucault's ideas extensively to explain interpretivism.  Foucault employs
the concept of a discursive practice, defined as

"a body of anonymous, historical rules, always determined in the time and
space that have defined a given period, and for a given social, economic,
geographical, or linguistic area, the conditions of operation of the
enunciative function."(New York, 1988, pp. 34)

As the rules of discourse in everyday life govern what people say and don't
say to each other, their universal pervasiveness creates some unsettling,
often unrecognized, changes in our society.  Educators are no longer
defined primarily as people who educate, but rather as people who act like
educators.  Since no one is able to alter the rules of discourse, they are
the rules which no one escape from.  Society demands that only educators
can determine what educators look like, and so anyone wishing to become an
educator must look like one to educators.  If one doesn't make statements
that sound like an educator's statements, then one will not be considered
for the position of educator.  (Cherryholmes, pp. 33-36)

Interpretivism, then, points to the employment of restrictions by one's
immediate social contacts.  Operating on a micro level, interpretivism
shows power as travelling horizontally, the results and dynamics of the
past washing over and coloring the population of the present.  The channels
of power weave their path both visibly and invisibly.  When announcements
advise of certain criteria to be satisfied, the power is operating visibly.
When the power encroaches invisibly it takes the form of subtler social
controls.

Extending the example of how educators are influenced by the rules of
discourse a "walk-through" can be fashioned to put the model in motion: How
people act as educators becomes more telling in whether or not they will be
educators than how qualified they are to be educators.  This is so because
as people wish to identify themselves as educators, they strive to attain
some degree of educatorness, which they see embodied in current educators.
As everyone wishing to become an educator has to look to this same model ,
adherence to conventions is created within those who strive hardest to
become educators.  Once accepted as educators, the new initiates follow the
same rules in their new position in relation to educatordom.  Now
educators, they will form their community and their identities around what
they perceive to be personal qualities of educatorness.  These same
qualities will be expected in any persons seeking admittance to
educatordom, thereby perpetuating the cycle.

With structualism and interpretivism clearly identified, one can return to
the works of Kozol and Bowles & Gintis with a new knowledge of how they are
identifying and tackling the issue of school reform.  The two works each
wrestle with the stickiest, yet most fundamental, issues of schooling.
While each book is clear about what problems exist, more revealing is the
examination of how each does it.  Kozol sticks mostly to an interpretivist
approach where he looks at the most pressing concerns of the schools'
communities.  He points out the socio-political problems of communities,
schools, and individuals.  Throughout his book, he utilizes the approach of
proving that "he was there."  The bulk of Kozol's work gives the reader a
seat on Kozol's tour bus, allowing him/her to take a special itinerary so
as to get a closer look at the realities of dilapidated school systems.
Once in a while the bus's tour guide will explain how some structures are
contributing to what the sightseer (read: reader) is observing out the
window, but the shock of touring such decrepit schools is mostly allowed to
speak for itself.  The effect is that he allows his subjects to tell their
own story.  One example is when Safir Ahmed, a veteran reporter for the
Post-Dispatch, speaks the words about East St.  Louis which Kozol won't say
himself:

"The lottery advertises most in black publications.  So people who have
nothing to start with waste their money on a place that seels them dreams.
Lottery proceeds in Illinois allegedly go into education; in reality they
go into state revenues and they add nothing to the education fund.  So it
is a total loss.  Affluent people do not play the lottery.  The state is in
the business here of selling hopes to people who have none.  The city
itself is full of bars and liquor stores and lots of ads for cigarettes
that feature pictures of black people.  Assemble all the worst things in
America --- gambling, liquor, cigarettes and toxic fumes, sewage, waste
disposal, prostitution --- put it all together.  Then you dump it on black
people."  (Kozol, pp.  16-17)

By focusing on such immediate problems Kozol achieves two important
objectives: he proves through the power of anecdote that nightmarish
conditions exist for significant portions of American society.  Kozol
achieves the other objective by illuminating the ways in which channels of
power circumvent the concerns of the most desperate in the educational
system.

Kozol makes extensive use of first-person narratives in an interpretivist
style.  In one instance he elicits a comment from the principal of DuSable
High School in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes projects.  Principal Mingo
notes how little beauty is in his students' lives.  Their neighborhood is
so bleak and abandoned of life that the principal keeps several peacocks in
the school's courtyard.  He simply wishes to give his students some escape
from their dreary environment.  (p. 71) Kozol also quotes a former editor
of the Chicago Tribune who says that an "extraordinary combination of
greed, racism, political cowardice and public apathy" contributed to the
wretched state of Chicago's public schools.  (p. 72) Specific problems are
identified in a comment from a first-year English teacher in a Bronx high
school :

"I've got five classes --- 42 in each! We have no textbooks yet.  I'm using
my old textbook from the seventh grade.  They're doing construction all
around me so the noise is quite amazing.  They're actually drilling in the
hall outside my room.  I have more kids than desks in all five classes."
(p.  111)

While he does not dwell on the structuralist factors contributing to the
uneven levels of education across the country, Kozol does point out some of
the immediate structures which are set up to confound any attempts at
levelling education in America.  One very important structure, unable to be
ignored by anyone proposing a solution of levelling, is the property-tax
system of collecting revenue for school districts.  Kozol informs the
reader that most public schools depend on local property taxes for their
primary funding:

"[T]he property tax is the decisive force in shaping inequality.  The
property tax depends, of course, upon the taxable value of one's home and
that of local industries.  A typical wealthy suburb in which homes are
often worth more than $400,000 draws upon a larger tax base in proportion
to its student population than a city occupied by thousands of poor people.
Typically, in the United States, very poor communities place high priority
on education, and they often tax themselves at higher rates than do the
very affluent communities.  But, even if they tax themselves at several
times the rate of an extremely wealthy district, they are likely to end up
with far less money for each child in their schools."  (pp.  54-55)

Another example of Kozol's structuralist thought appears when he indicates
how government, through formalized and visible laws, condemns children to
unequal lives.  Since wealthy folk have extra resources , compared to
poorer people, in the form of private wealth, they have more choices open
to them.  Laws dictate that schoolchildren must spend a certain proportion
of their lives in school.  Public schools are provided to fulfill the
government's responsibilities under the law, so that no one needs to pay
directly for a private education.  However, the wealthy have the option of
using the system of private education if it is better than what is being
offered for "free."  Poorer children must make do with the public school
system which may not always provide a good education.  As Kozol indicates,
this is often the case, thereby effectively jailing schoolchildren in
boring and even dangerous schools.

With knowledge comes responsibility.  It is one thing to examine how Kozol
presents the reality of unequal education to the reader, but quite another
to examine what plans of action Kozol might suggest and the perspective
used to reach that conclusion.  As Kozol uses both interpretivism and
structuralism to identify the problems, he now uses them also to suggest a
call for reform.

Savage Inequalities presents the solution before the puzzle is seen.  Kozol
firmly states that for all the attention paid to social problems affecting
children, children are almost never invited to discussions involving them
as the subject, or consulted for decisions made which affect them.

This seems unfortunate because the children often are more interesting and
perceptive than the grown-ups are about the day-to-day realities of life in
school.  For this reason, I decided, early in my journey, to attempt to
listen very carefully to children, and whenever possible, to let their
voices and their judgments and their longings find a place within this book
--- and maybe, too, within the nation's dialogue about their destinies.  I
hope that, in this effort, I have done them justice."  (pp.  5-6)

Other calls to action are exhibited in the book, but in much subtler ways.
Throughout the book Kozol points out the horrible disparities in
school-building conditions and school financing.  Turning again to the
tour-bus analogy, Kozol is the tour guide who has control over what
information is given to the sightseers.  Being king of the bus, he has
"totalitarian" control over where the bus goes and what is told to the
sightseers about what they are viewing.

This dictatorial control is wielded masterfully by Kozol.  In providing the
context for the reader's assumed new experience, he works with a tabula
rasa and has the power to make a strong but subtle suggestion for a certain
course of action on the reader's part.  The suggestions he seems to be
making throughout the book are related to the observations he decides to
imprint upon the reader's consciousness.  By merely bringing to light
certain phenomena which he assumes the reader will find appalling he infers
that something should be done about this situation.  By bothering to even
enlighten the reader with this discovery he implies that some action should
be taken by the reader.  In comparing paradigms controlled for everything
but race, or class, he pinpoints the problem and silently appeals for the
caring reader to do something with his/her new knowledge of the crisis.
One instance can be seen where Kozol silently screams for an end to racism
in the educational system and in society:

"[W]hen Asbury Park --- predominantly non-white --- asked to rent
facilities in a white district, the white district was willing to take only
Ôa small number of students' and insisted that they Ôbe kept
separate.'" (p. 165)

Bowles & Gintis also take upon themselves the task of confronting the
problems in the American educational system.  However, unlike Kozol, they
point to a monolithic stumbling-block to educational progress.  The whole
capitalist system must be dismantled, they argue, because it is corrupting
the educational system to its own ends.  Therefore, Bowles & Gintis use a
highly structuralist approach to analyzing the problems confronting a fair
distribution of educational resources to American schoolchildren.

The argument "guy-wires " used by the authors to hold up their thesis
"tent" of capitalist influence are numerous and strong.  One of the poles
supporting the tent is the argument of how profit obfuscates all other
societal concerns.  While the wealthy have ownership of some means of mass
production, most workers own only their own labor power.  As such, their
labor power becomes commoditized under capitalism.  Like any other
commodity, labor becomes subjected to market forces.  As the price of labor
fluctuates, workers are hired or laid off.  The owners, or employers, of
labor wish to ensure that they will have a constant flow of labor available
to them in the future.  Capitalism, then, also promotes a rigid
reproduction of labor for the sake of the labor ownership. Like pens coming
off a factory conveyor belt, workers must also be as consistent as
commodities from one person to the next.  Capitalists interested in their
company's bottom line do not see their employees as people, but rather as a
homogeneous composite of workers.  Just as the owner of a bulldozer must
make sure that it is well oiled and fueled so that it produces the work
required of it, the owner of a labor force will tend to his/her workers
only as much as is needed for the labor to do what is required of it.  No
mind is paid to the fact that a person cannot be separated from his/her
labor.  If the worker has personal needs for a good home, clean parks,
health care, etc., they are irrelevant to the employer since those items
would only cut into the owner's profit margin without returning any more
labor.  Moreover, if the ownership and the workers are vying for control of
an educational system, the ownership will have more leverage to dictate
what goes on in the schools since they have more to invest in the
infrastructure.

These structuralist arguments abound in Bowles & Gintis'swork.  The book
goes on to indicate how the technocratic-meritocratic ideology which is
promoted by capitalism has also found its way into the educational system.
As capitalism is the only economic system in existence in the United
States, it profoundly permeates all sectors of economic and social life.
Education, purported to be the one universal social service guaranteed to
everyone, finds itself tamperedwith by capitalism.  It is the money which
dictates what gets looked at and what is paid attention to because money is
what pays the bills.  The corporation can benefit a nearby neighborhood
school by investing in some renovations, new computers, and teacher raises
for the school.  This money does not enter into the local school without
strings attached.  The corporation might "request" that the school obligate
the investment by allowing some capitalist propaganda into the school
currciculum.  Perhaps the corporation feels that a certain textbook should
be used instead of another.  That corporation will have the economic power
to pay for the textbook and present it "free of charge" to the school.  In
this way the school is determining whether or not future generations of
workers learn worker history, whether or not they are told about the
corporation's donation to the school, and whether or not they will be
trained for a job on the world market or one within the same city.

The same structure is presented throughout Bowles & Gintis, but the
structure's details which branch out are examined more carefully within the
book.  Noting, then, that corporations can influence the educational system
in a variety of ways, it is not difficult to move up the structure and see
how schools are really producing a commodity.  Schools are molding
well-disciplined and behaving workers out of a human form.  They are acting
like the mass-production cookie-cutter machine.  It stamps out little
cookies, looking the same and smelling the same and tasting the same.  As
the cookie-cutter machine is excellent at producing a consistent product in
great quantities, so too do public schools stamp out workers for the needs
of capitalist ownership.  Therefore, says Bowles & Gintis, the overarching
structure of capitalism reaches into and taints the structure of education.
The call for reform must make capitalism its enemy since it is at the root
of the educational problem.  The structural solution, then, is to overthrow
this system and replace it with a more efficient and humanitarian system
--- socialism.  Socialism itself is a structure which is explained in
detail so that the reader is given an idea of how much education would
improve through socialism.

Bowles & Gintis employ the use of a diagram in their book to map out the
structures which must be paid attention to when trying to find a
relationship between socioeconomic background and income/occupational
status.  It looks like this (p. 113):
                                          
Bowles & Gintis, then, work primarily with structuralism.  But do they work
with structuralism exclusively? The visible structures in place under
capitalism are not sufficient in strength to keep rebellions under control.
Counting the armed forces, police, and court systems, there is not enough
physical force present to keep the workers from overturning the capitalist
structure.  What other forces are at work to balance out this obvious
disparity of population and political strength? Bowles & Gintis point to
the everyday interactions in which we reinforce the dominant social mores
in each other.  Thought police do not need to be employed if they are
already installed into our own minds.  In the book it is stated this way:

Thus it is clear that the consciousness of workers --- beliefs, values,
self-concepts, types of solidarity and fragmentation, as well as modes of
personal behavior and development --- are integral to the perpetutation,
validation, and smooth operation of economic institutions.  The
reproduction of the social relations of production depends on the
reproduction of consciousness.  (p. 127)

Bowles & Gintis show what conditions are needed for a people to throw off
this cloak of inhumanitarian values.  In a socialist society people would
not be treated with as workers but as people.  That is to say that a
fundamental change in the economic system will trickle down revolutionary
changes in the social order.  As has been demonstrated above, the
capitalist economy is so directly linked to society that a revolution
against the economic order will coincide with a revolution against the
social order.

It must be noted, however, that Bowles & Gintis do not advocate creating an
economic revolution by starting a social revolution.  The authors shake
their heads at attempts to change mores --- that is, to alter millions of
peoples' ways of thinking so that changes in the economic system will
evolve with new consumer demands.  That approach would fall under the
rubric of reformism, which never insists on the immediate removal of the
capitalist system in order to pre-empt further injustices made by it.
Therefore, the authors take the hard-line structuralist viewpoint that only
revolution against the capitalist system will create the necessary changes
needed in the human condition.

As said at the beginning of this paper, both works investigated here are
excellent at making their points about what is wrong with the educational
system and how it needs to be changed.  Now that the reader is armed with a
basic understanding of the techniques used by Kozol and Bowles & Gintis and
comprehends the workings of these approaches, s/he may delve into analyzing
the techniques.  Two weaknesses immediately exposed are as follows: The
methodology itself may be fllawed, or its particular application may be
misapplied.

Howe, in "Getting Over the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate," turns to Brian
Fay to uncover some problems with using interpretivism.

"[Brian Fay] enumerates four shortcomings of what he calls the
"interpretive model": its neglect of (1) the external conditions that help
give rise to systems of actions, rules, and beliefs; (2) the unintended
consequences of actions; (3) the internal contradictions between actions,
rules, and meanings; and (4) historical change." (p.  242)

Fay asserts that a social scientist must be able to explain social
institutions, but an interpretivist perspective obfuscates recognizing
those overarching social institutions which reach into our ground-level
relationships.  Therefore, the only way an interpretivist can explain these
social orders is by borrowing from other, non-interpretive, disciplines.
(Howe, pp. 242-243)

Structuralism, too, has its deficiencies.  It rests itself on the
assumption that it can reside solely in, and be tested solely by,
observation.  This is the doctrine of "verificationism" --- the foundation
on which resides the theory of structuralism.  However, it is this demand
of verification which is too extreme.  Structuralism suffers from starting
with the theoretical models devised by the scientist.  That is, all
scientific theory is "value-laden" and is unpreventably colored by the
"conceptual schemes" or "paradigms" which the scientists employ.  (Howe, p.
240)

Then the reader of Kozol must be on the alert for weaknesses in his
arguments, which are based predominantly on interpretivism.  Likewise, as
Bowles & Gintis make extensive use of structuralism, their arguments must
be scrutinized under the light which reveals flaws in structuralism.  Kozol
continuously asks the reader to look where he's pointing so that we see the
people he wants us to see.  A possibility clearly exists for not seeing the
forest for the trees.  Kozol does acknowledge some structuralist forces at
work, but mainly keeps his attention focused on the surface-level of the
problems.  He shows a particular context, where the emissions from nearby
chemical plants are hazardous to the downwind population of East St.
Louis, Ill.  In another instance Kozol indicates the problems caused by a
particular corporate perspective.  In this instance, where Kozol presents
the blatant connection between business corporations and education, he
seems to be making the same observation as Bowles & Gintis do when they
warn of big business's power.  However, Kozol looks to the micro-level of
this situation and how a specific group of business-minded authors call for
a turn to "realistic goals" for impoverished schools.  While he is
obviously presenting the argument on behalf of all like-minded people, his
analysis is not structuralist because he speaks only of this "isolated
incident" and does not attempt to tie in into a bigger picture.

Bowles & Gintis, too, must be analyzed to see what liberties they may have
taken with the use of structuralism.  Over-dependence on Marxism can create
difficulties in the theory's use.  The inherent weakness of structuralism
lies in its casual use of functional attribution.  This action is used when
an identification is made between a particular function and a particular
practice or institutional feature.  Often distinctions and explanations are
confused, giving rise to spurious conclusions.  In other words, "the
citation of an effect is presented as an explanation." (Liston, p. 328)

So, then, even if it can be proven that a company's profit- motive causes a
decrease in worker benefits, the explanation doesn't uncover the reason for
its existence.  That is, the cause for decreased worker benefits has been
shown to be the company's pursuit of profit, but it hasn't explained
anything about what worker benefits are.  Linton uses this concern to
critique Bowles & Gintis:

They [Bowles & Gintis] note the need to identify mechanisms through which
this correspondence is maintained, but one senses that the identification
of mechanisms is a foregone conclusion.  In Bowles and Gintis's story, the
educational system now appears to be part of the "naturally required"
order: it all makes sense.  Schools are superstructural institutions in a
capitalist formation where the economic base rules.  (Liston, pp.  333-334)

If both structuralism and interpretivism contain irregularities, then what
perspective is to be used?A new approach would borrows mechanistic
explanations from the natural science model and intentional explanations
from interpretivism.

Whereas a structuralist has more expertise about structures people live in
than the people who live in them, their theories are often too detached
from the real lives being lived in those structures.  Taken to an extreme,
one could say that the structures are eloquently described, but they are
misrepresentations.  They take a "spectator view" of knowledge in that they
encourage viewing humans as passive, affected by exogenous causes.
Interpretivism contains the advantage of faithfully reflecting insiders'
perspectives , so it is able to represent the actual social workings quite
accurately.  It, however, lacks the ability to find institutions in the
melee of interactions.  It views humans as active and self-creating and as
being so totally different from everything else in the natural world that
they become inexplicable in these terms.

Now that the imperfections in the systems of interpretivism and
structuralism have been uncovered, it is necessary to see if a better
perspective can be put forth in their stead.  Howe suggests that both
structuralism and interpretivism are incomplete and untenable.  He posits a
new epistemological perspective which takes the best features of each, and
combines them into "compatibilism."  Howe:

" .  .  .  [R]ealizing an activist conception of human nature requires (1)
that humans have the basic capacities (physiological, psychological, etc.)
to be active and (2) that conditions exist that foster the development and
use of these capacities." (Howe, p. 245)

In applied-theory terms, the simple idea is called critical social
research.  Social research must be closer to interpretivism and must be
grounded in terms of the insider's perspective.  Critical social research
allows the researcher to use structural expertise, but Howe suggets that a
"citizen interlocutor" be used to inject doses of reality into the
researcher's generalizations.  (Howe, pp. 249-250)

The advantage of this synthesis is explained best by the author in the last
quotation of my paper:

Value constraints of both kinds set the boundaries for the conduct of
educational research at the most general level, and it is within these
boundaries that the compatibilist conception of social scientific
explanation comes into play.  Because the critical social research model
eschews the positivist- interpretivist epistemological split in favor of
compatibilism, educational research based on this model weds itself to the
"logics in use" that have proved themselves successful instead of wedding
itself exclusively to either the positivist or interpretivist models of
explanation.  (Howe, p. 251)