Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

80 P. F. Luzarsfeld
tics ; occasionally institutional arrangements are drawn upon. Comparisons
with other countries stress the business character of American unions in con-
trast to the ideological elements in the European scene; Australian and Canadian
unions stand somewhere in the middle. Often the link between a concrete cue
and the macrosociological variate it represents, requires several steps. An equal-
itarian, achievement-minded society will not be overly-concerned with the
means by which success is achieved. On the one hand, this can lead to tolerance
of corruption in unions - one of Lipset’s cues - and on the other, to a feeling
that the absolute amount of personal income is more important than the source
from which it is derived. On the latter point, the crucial cue is an interesting
set of opinion surveys comparing European and American respondents. The
question at issue was whether people preferred a higher income as workers or
white-collar status with a lesser income. European workers prefer the latter,
Americans the former.
The most direct use of a system of macrosociological variates is by Dahren-
dorf when he raises the question of why democracy in Germany has always been
endangered. He starts with four major factors, one of which is the German
value system. While Eckstein restricted himself to Norway, Dahrendorf bases
his argument on a comparison between Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries.
In this sense, his procedure is similar to Lipset’s. But while Lipset does not
convert the value system into a macrosociological variate, Dahrendorf does. He
distinguishes between public and private values. Public values include exhorta-
tions to keep smiling, to be fair in dealings with others, to respect the rights of
others; and so on. Among the chief private values are truthfulness to oneself,
devotion to one’s family, steadfastness under adversity. An especially good cue
was found in a comparison of the ways Germans and Anglo-Saxons think about
loneliness. For the German, to be lonely is a kind of heroic posture; for an
Anglo-Saxon, it is a sign of deficient socialization. Dahrendorf recognizes that
this is aphoristic and establishes as his mission the demonstration that private
values are predominant in German culture. He employs the general argument
that private values are likely to be transmitted by the family, and public values
through the schools. Thereafter, he must find evidence that in Germany, the
family has priority over the school by being able to compare the weights of
these two social structures.
Here is a brief summary of his cues. The Constitution of the Federal Republic
is the only one which mentions the right and the responsibility of the family to
educate its children; if conflicts between school and family come before the
courts, the decision is usually in favour of the family. Dahrendorf adds to this
certain features of school organization: instruction covers only half the day, so
that children can go home for lunch and remain there the afternoon; sports and
other social activities are not included in the school curriculum.
As in every country, controversies on education create a vast quantity of
documents. In scrutinizing their content, one finds a prevailing position : the
school, especially on the more advanced level, takes care of a general molding
of the mind, not related to any specific use or to any special responsibility. The
remaining socialization process is left to the family. Statements by teachers