SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

Taranaki Daily News, 16 May 1930, Page 7

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

BMPHASIS ON “INDIVIDUALITY.” (CLAIMS OF DIVERSE MOVEMENTS. iSome doubt as to tho usefulness of sociological theories attaching emphasis • to individuality was expressed by Professor Anderson, of Auckland University College, when giving his presidential address at the opening of the conference of the Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy. .. ’ The word “individuality,” he said, was carried round to-day as a kind of fiery cross to summon them to the support of alt manner of diverse movements in the - social and educational field. They had often been told that this, the most precious of human activities, was threatened by certain tendencies in public policy or economic development. At other times they’ heard the principle of individuality being extolled as the greatest and most revolutionary discovery in the realm of human affairs, a discovery that had been reserved for their own day, and was now to be the foundation of sweeping reconstructions in all the fields of communal enterprise, which should relegate to oblivion the clumsy contrivances of their benighted ancestors. 7 They heard of ambitions to develop an educational system which.. would bring out the individual qualities of each boy and girl, and not .treat them so that they were all levelled to uniformity, as had been the case with the old academic system. They had heard pf the uniformity imposed by examination methods, and in the world of industrial production they heard much of the needs for the scientific allotment of workers to tasks or of tasks to workers on a new basis of temperament, etc., and this industrial psychology professed to do.. It was the business of philosophy in regard to these matters to examine the fundamental ideas . entailed. Did they really make sense? ; .. . < , , It seemed that there was an elementary confusion of thought running through the mass of contemporary social diagnosis and projects of . which they had provisionally taken stock. ‘ I believe,” said Professor Anderson, ‘that this - deficiency in fundamental thinking, bolstered up as it may be by all ..the fashionable adulation of the word ‘research,’ is going to lead in practice, as: it deserves to do, to profound disappointment for those actively concerned in these movements, .to reaction in place of progress, to the squandering of public resources, and in particular to the repression of the very tliihg it is sought to promote—the rights of individuality.” “The very word ‘individuality’ had about it, like justice, liberty and equality, a fringe of romantic suggestion. It spoke of liberation and enjoyment; it denoted something that could not be confined or defined by abstract rules and regulations, but a,s Shakespeare had reminded them, ‘The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.’ They banished the traditional values associated with the word .‘individuality,’ to recommend something that neglected those values altogether. The fallacy which he found in current ‘sociological’ and pedogogical talk about individuality was the illegitimate identification of the Individual with the particular. ‘lndividuality and difference are today being accepted as synonymous. Difference, however, is the hall-mark of the particular.. It is a structural category, referring to potentialities or qualities rather than to activity of process.” . . There seemed to be a rooted suspicion of everything that would subject to general law the self -expression of the particular. The repression of so-called instincts and impulses was regarded as so much pure loss; any attempt at formal discipline, the inculcation of general knowledge (which they stigmatised as "cramming” dr mere instruction, as contrasted with true education), the institution of written examinations, was regarded in the light of something op posed to Nature. “The truth,” concluded Professor Anderson, “is that the wretched jig-saw nuzzle which the vocationalists present to us as the picture of -the social order, does not begin to be community at all. Its plausibility is due to the way ui which we have, allowed ourselves to be satisfied with inadequate and physical accounts of the basis of socuety. Chief of these has been the idea of cooperation, particularly -ini the special form of ‘division of labour,’ or specialisation of function. The* trouble with this idea is that it admits of different interpretations; sometimes it is qoneetved so as to imply real mental life; at other times with no such implication.” I