Comparative Education and the Administrator
T HE aim of many nineteenth century pioneers of comparative education is well known. They were administrators, eager to reform their own educational systems, who looked to other countries for inspiration. Most of them recognized the dangers of cultural borrowing. They were aware that any educational innovation within the cultural pattern might have deleterious effects, since there was a close relationship between various social institutions. Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, William Torrey Harris, Matthew Arnold, and Michael Sadler, among others, wished to borrow from the educational systems of other countries without in the process destroying or damaging the traditions and values they cherished. This desire to reform education persists today. Everywhere, statesmen are seeing the schools as important agents in the social and economic development of their countries. Organizations like UNESCO are constantly being asked to provide realistic solutions to urgent educational problems. The possibility of creating new educational institutions to meet particular purposes is widely felt. The danger to traditional institutions of doing so is a constant fear. The implications of innovation are, indeed, often vague. What in fact comparative educators are being called upon to provide are accounts of the sociopolitical-economic consequences of educational reform. From this practical viewpoint, then, comparative education should be a predictive science. There is no reason, of course, why comparative educators should accept a practical purpose in the study of their subject. Few would deny, however, that they hope to gain some understanding of educative processes and the operation of educational institutions thereby. How far the objectives of administrator and scholar can be reconciled is of very real interest. Quite basic to these issues is the question of methodology. It was, naturally, answered in broad outline by the early pioneers of comparative education. Doubtless the prevailing climate of opinion left its mark on their thinking, for theirs was an age when the growing ability of natural scientists to control man's physical environment gave rise to hopes that, using the right method, it might be possible for him to control his social circumstances as well. An optimistic belief in the inevitable improvability of mankind was asso-