Symposium Introduction: A New Approach to Understanding Children: Niklas Luhmann's Social theory

Abstract

This symposium centers on the English translation of sociologist Niklas Luhmann's 1991 article “Das Kind als Medium der Erziehung”¹ (“The Child as a Medium of Education”), which is being published for the first time in this issue of Educational Theory. This work forms part of Luhmann's broader long-term project — to develop a general theory of society — which included numerous writings on education. Although well-known in German-speaking countries, Scandinavia, and Latin America, Anglophone readers (other than specialists in the social sciences, including educational theory) are generally less familiar with Luhmann's work. For that reason, it seems useful to outline Luhmann's background and wider project before introducing his theory of education and the other papers in this symposium.

Niklas Luhmann was born in 1927 in Lüneburg, Germany. After studying law at the University of Freiburg, he embarked on a career in public administration, first in Lüneburg and subsequently in Lower Saxony. During that period, he was already showing an interest in conceptual questions related to the structure of administrations, meetings, and informal aspects of organization and power. Outside his working day as a civil servant, he immersed himself in scientific literature, and in 1961, a scholarship enabled him to develop this interest at Harvard's School of Government in the United States, where he discussed his project with the sociologist Talcott Parsons. On returning to Germany, he worked as a lecturer and researcher at a number of institutions while continuing his sociology studies. In 1968, he became a professor of sociology at the newly established University of Bielefeld, and his debate with Jürgen Habermas in 1970 brought him to the attention of a wider audience. He remained at the University of Bielefeld until his retirement in 1993. Before his death in 1998, he was awarded the city of Stuttgart's Hegel Prize.² During his extremely prolific career, he published more than seventy books and almost four hundred scholarly articles, and several more have been published posthumously.

Luhmann's sociological project is typically characterized as a system theory of society, with a conceptual emphasis on the terms system and theory. While his main focus was undoubtedly theoretical, it should not be assumed that Luhmann was an armchair theorist. For example, he and sociologist Renate Mayntz conducted large-scale statistical surveys and analyses of civil service career progression in their efforts to reform German civil administration.³ Luhmann also wrote extensively about changing semantics, notably in his book on love and intimate relationships, which was based on archival research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.⁴ Much of his writing on informal organizations is based on his own direct experience as a civil servant, and this is reflected in the ethnographic style of those works.⁵

The emphasis on systems in much of the commentary on Luhmann's work reflects a more general tendency to characterize a theory in terms of a limited subset of its elements. Some random examples from handbooks on educational studies and theory confirm that this is very common in Luhmann's case. For instance, Luhmann has been referred to as one of the “most distinguished contributors to … social systems theory”⁶ and as the originator of “sociological systems theory (founded by Niklas Luhmann)”⁷ or even its owner (“Niklas Luhmann's system theory”).⁸ While the term system is undoubtedly important in this context, these labels also have unwelcome side effects;⁹ as one commentator put it, “The term ‘system’ has acquired so many negative connotations as to cast an evil spell on the open mind.”¹⁰ Indeed, the term has been tarnished by its association with constraint, homeostasis, rigidity, and technocratic regimes, setting it against a seemingly spontaneous and nonprogrammable social world that connotes openness, freedom, and change. In light of these negative associations, the more positive critical and innovative connotations of his theory are easily overlooked, and his theory has sometimes been ignored or rejected for that reason, to the extent of overshadowing Luhmann's entire oeuvre. In fact, many of Luhmann's publications never even use the term system, but his use of other concepts like complexity, form or medium, meaning, memory, and observation is similarly overlooked. The translated text in this symposium is a case in point, as Luhmann foregrounds the concept of medium while system remains something of a side issue.¹¹ This rich use of concepts is perhaps unsurprising, as Luhmann situates education within a sociological theory of society. Moreover, Luhmann has arguably devoted greater attention to education than many other contemporary sociological theorists, publishing two monographs, six edited books, and numerous journal papers and book chapters on the subject. Finally, his work in this field is to some extent a collaborative project, as many of his publications from the mid-1970s onward were co-authored with educational scientist Karl Eberhard Schorr until Schorr's death in 1995. Their first co-authored monograph, which was published in German in 1979 and translated into English in 2000,¹² sparked significant debate among educational theorists and education studies scholars in Germany. As usual, reactions ranged from rejection and strong criticism to admiration. This mixed reaction may have encouraged Luhmann and Schorr to continue to “irritate” educational theory — not to lecture teachers or prescribe a new pedagogy but to question common education studies tropes from the perspective of a sociological theory of society. Between 1981 and 1995, Luhmann and Schorr organized a number of workshops titled “Questions for Pedagogy,” and these meetings yielded several edited books.¹³ They had planned to continue this debate in another workshop in 1996, but following Schorr's death, Luhmann instead produced an edited book with the educational scientist Dieter Lenzen,¹⁴ who organized one further workshop.¹⁵ The time and effort invested in those publications reflects a strong ambition to resist any status quo views and, indeed, the distance between educational theory and a sociological theory of society may have benefited both sides. However, as Luhmann noted, communication depends on mutual acknowledgment — not necessarily by always accepting each other's opinions but by taking each other seriously while actively presenting the theory in workshops, collaborations, and publications:

The sociological theory of society then enters the very thing that it describes — in this case into the way that the education system describes itself. This means that the theory and pedagogy are to be found in the same contextual framework. The result will be greater influence between them — whether this takes the form of the theory of society needing to correct or enrich its understanding of pedagogy or of pedagogy no longer being able to push to the side-line the idea of self-description in the theory of society.¹⁶

It seems worthwhile for educational theorists to continue this debate by addressing the “Questions for Pedagogy” and exploring Luhmann's theory of education.

As well as posing multiple questions for educational theory, these publications also reflect the development of Luhmann's broader theory of society over a period of almost two decades. Visible changes include a shift of emphasis from action to communication and the emergence of new theoretical terms like form and medium, which are clearly articulated for almost the first time in “The Child as a Medium of Education,” published here.¹⁷ The decision to translate and reflect on that work can best be understood in the above context; beyond Luhmann's theoretical concern with systems, the paper is rich in subtle empirical observations.

More importantly, this concise publication provides an excellent insight into Luhmann's methodology. While education clearly centers on the child, it was not until the 1980s that the essentialism of that term was problematized as the construction of “childhood” or the “child.” The term construction was itself ill-fated, as critics claimed that it treated childhood as a fiction. The idea of construction was also theoretically problematic, as it seemed to imply a constructor, thereby reintroducing essentialism through the back door. In that context, Luhmann's theoretical contribution was to re-problematize educational theory's assumptions about the child. Beyond criticizing prevailing approaches, he articulated a conceptual apparatus for a new theoretical direction that would address some of the issues around the construction of the child in educational theory.

Luhmann approaches these issues in a fairly “traditional” manner. In the first few pages, he offers a very brief review of the existing line of thinking. In typical fashion, Luhmann formulates the issues in general terms, focusing on prevailing ideas rather than pointing the finger at particular authors. Luhmann problematizes some common understandings of what education should achieve, referring to evidence from biology, psychology, neuroscience, cybernetics, and systems theory suggesting that direct educational intervention ignores self-referential meaning-making. If so, the tradition of education as a kind of direct intervention into the mind of a person seems impossible from the perspective of these theories, yet this mode of education is still practiced in schools and universities. On that basis, Luhmann would argue that the problem of the child's non-transparency must have been solved, as education clearly “exists.” This theoretical maneuver is typical of Luhmann's approach; an accepted problem formulation is defamiliarized, rendering it improbable or impossible. However, no one can deny the social reality of education, and Luhmann uses this tension to reformulate the initial problem and advance an alternative theoretical proposition. Here, Luhmann taps into fields such as history and sociology to show that the requisite reformulation relates to the construction of the child. To that extent, a different pedagogical approach is not enough; instead, we must ask why this construct is so central and what it entails. Luhmann proposes that the answers are not to be found in the mind of the so-called “child” but in a specific form of social meaning-making, which he refers to as the medium. In the translated text, his use of theoretical terms is minimal but suffices to support questioning, criticism, and a possible solution.

In challenging the prevailing understanding of education, Luhmann draws on Fritz Heider's work on the psychology of perception and the role of things and media.¹⁸ Luhmann is interested in this distinction, which he reformulated as form and medium, because it explains how complexity unfolds and is organized and how certain elements are combined. A medium can absorb forms, and a form can be imprinted into a medium. While a medium is characterized by a loose coupling of elements, a form exhibits more rigid coupling. The distinction is sufficiently abstract to be applied to a range of phenomena; for example, language can be formed into sentences, air into sounds, and money into payments. The medium exists only in relation to a given form, and a form can only subsist within a medium. Taken together, these ideas enable Luhmann to ask what kind of medium is needed to instantiate a particular form and vice versa. This links to the defamiliarization strategy described earlier and enables Luhmann to present a radically different conceptualization of the child that can accommodate the idea of construction without the essentialist presumption of the existence of elements such as innate qualities that inform selection.

This account also acknowledges the complexity of a given phenomenon as a form within a vast medium and facilitates empirical investigation; for instance, if the child is a medium, what is the form? If the school is a medium, what forming of forms is enabled? Similarly, one might ask follow-up questions about how various form/medium distinctions relate to one another — for instance, what is the relation between child and school hierarchies? Finally, the regeneration of form/medium distinctions invites questions about the changing forms of childhood.¹⁹

In this symposium, the contributions by Christian Morgner and Lars Qvortrup respond to this important text. In “The Medium in the Sociology of Niklas Luhmann: From Children to Human Beings,” Morgner addresses the misconception that Luhmann's sociology ignores the human being. Morgner shows that Luhmann has written and published extensively on this matter, including conceptions of the child. Despite growing interest in Luhmann's writings in the Anglophone world, this text and the key theoretical terms form and medium have attracted little attention in the sociology and education literatures. Morgner uses the translated text to explore this theoretical construction of the child and the new avenues it opens for educational theory and empirical research. To that end, Morgner also draws on unpublished archival material, including Luhmann's slip card box, to describe Luhmann's methodological strategy — for example, his use of historical comparisons and his borrowings from other fields of research. Morgner's analysis reveals how Luhmann's innovations offer a new way of thinking about children and human beings, prompting new lines of empirical inquiry.

In “The Impossibility and Necessity of Causality in Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Education,” Lars Qvortrup focuses on the concept of causality in Luhmann's writings as it relates to the child as medium and to education in general. Qvortrup explores the paradox that the educator's task is impossible because there can be no direct causal intervention into the child's mind, yet education cannot function without believing in the possibility of such an intervention. As in the case of the child, Luhmann proposes that causality can be conceptualized as a medium. Adopting this perspective, Qvortrup rereads some existing philosophical accounts and concludes that causality is not an ontological feature of the world but a medium that generates form. To that extent, the attribution of causality is contingent but can be conditioned. Pursuing this line of inquiry, Qvortrup argues that, in relation to other media such as the child, the infinite possibilities for attributing causality can be reduced. The connection of the two mediums with the system of education means that certain causal relations are observed, expected, averted, or normalized while others are ignored. Based on the idea of the medium, Qvortrup identifies new directions for educational theory and new avenues for empirical research that take account of attribution processes in pedagogical and scientific analyses of educational causalities.

This symposium would not have been possible without the support of Michael King, because translating Luhmann's complex ideas into readable English is always a challenge. For the recently published book of Luhmann essays The Making of Meaning,²⁰ which involved three translators, we devised a strategy for ensuring the accuracy and accessibility of the English version. A similar strategy was followed for the translation of “Das Kind als Medium der Erziehung.” After an initial discussion of the text's main ideas, King produced a draft for me to correct, comment upon and, where appropriate, suggest alternative wording. The final version met the approval of the Luhmann estate which agreed to its publication as a journal article. King was not only helpful in regards of the translation; his own academic career in the field of legal studies was an important contextual factor to this symposium. He has published several books and journal articles on this subject;²¹ he serves as a Special Educational Needs Tribunal Representative for the Independent Provider of Special Educational Advice (IPSEA), an organization that supports the rights of children with special educational needs and disabilities; and he has established a number of undergraduate and post-graduate taught modules on International Children's Rights. Therefore, this symposium is dedicated to him.

I hope that the translation and associated responses in this symposium will continue Niklas Luhmann's efforts to stimulate further debate in the field of educational theory, as well as introducing this important sociological project to a wider audience.