Ideological and institutional factors in the debates on African education in Kenya and South Africa.
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Abstract
Whereas social systems tend to close the normative problems of institutional ends, the impact of an external ideology on an institutional system will tend to open and accentuate such problems, that is, the problems of the ends that an institutional system ought to pursue. This hypothesis rests on the following assumptions which are derivable from the voluntaristic trend in sociological theory:
(a) institutional systems are instrumentalities of social systems as a result of devolution to their ends sectors of the value-goals of social systems for specialized pursuit;
(b) as a social system cannot move in all: directions at once, it will tend to close the normative problems of the ends of its several institutional systems by removing their ends sectors from the area of controversy as divergent solutions in that area may set up a strain in more than one direction at once;
(c) as a political ideology is a non-logical manifestation and disguise for the sectional sentiments of a ruling collectivity concerning legitimate social order, it is essentially normative for the social system, that is, it prescribes value-goals;
(d) therefore, as an institutional ends sector comprises delegated value-goals of a social system, ideological impact may be expected to focus on that sector and to open the problem of the ends that the institutional system which is being impinged upon ought to pursue if the ideologically conceived social order is not to be undermined. [TRUNCATED]
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University
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