Education for Economic Life: The Role of Communicative Action

Abstract

This article addresses the tension between the need to prepare students for functional activity in organizations on the one hand, and the need to instill dispositions and competencies that transcend these determinate roles on the other. I take for granted that schools must fulfill both tasks, and I suggest that they are failing at the latter in part because these social and moral purposes of education have not been constructively developed in relation to its economic aims. I first use Max Weber's theory of social action to explain the role of functional activity in modern schooling and society. I then argue that a qualified form of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action can provide a meaningful connection between functional activity and the kinds of participatory, open interactions and relationships that progressive educators seem to prioritize. I argue that communicative action plays a crucial role in a wide range of organizational contexts, even those that involve narrow functions within strict hierarchies. Communicative action thus shows how progressive educational ideals are relevant for work life, regardless of one's place in the economic hierarchy. It also exposes the common ground beneath a range of progressive ideals. I conclude by showing how the role of communicative action in functional work may motivate reform in the practices of teaching and learning.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Apple

(1990). Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge.

Aron

(1989). Main currents in sociological thought, (Vol. 2, R. Howard & H. Weaver, Trans). New York: Doubleday.

Bernstein

(1975). Class, codes and control: theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. New York: Schocken Books.

Bowles

, and Gintis

(1977). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books.

Carnoy

, and Levin

(1985). Schooling and work in the democratic state. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Coleman

(1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education.

Cookson

, and Persell

(1985). Preparing for power: America's elite boarding schools. New York: Basic Books.

Darling-Hammond

(1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Delpit

(1995). Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: New Press.

10.

Dewey

(1966). Democracy and education. New York: Free Press.

11.

Dewey

(1991). The school and society/The child and the curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

12.

Fine

(1991). Framing dropouts: Notes on the politics of an urban public high school. Albany: State University of New York Press.

13.

Freire

(1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

14.

Gee

(1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology and discourses. New York: Falmer Press.

15.

Giddens

(1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

16.

Giddens

(1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

17.

Giroux

(1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.

18.

Gutmann

(1987). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

19.

Habermas

(1984). Theory of communicative action, (Vol. 1, McCarthy, T., Trans). Boston: Beacon Press.

20.

Habermas

(1987). Theory of communicative action, (Vol. 2, T. McCarthy, Trans). Boston: Beacon Press.

21.

Habermas

(1993). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenardt & S. Nicholsen, Trans). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

22.

Heath

(1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.

23.

Horkheimer

, and Adorno

(1995). Dialectic of enlightenment. New York: Continuum.

24.

Kaestle

(1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and American society, 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang.

25.

Kliebard

(1987). The struggle for the American curriculum 1893–1958. New York: Routledge.

26.

Lareau

(2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

27.

Loewen

(1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York: Touchstone.

28.

McLaren

, and Lankshear

(Eds.). (1994). Politics of liberation: Paths from Freire. New York: Routledge.

29.

Milgram

(1983). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: HarperCollins.

30.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2002). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Retrieved January 10, 2003, from http://standards.nctm.org/document/chapter3/comm.htm#bp2

31.

Noddings

(1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.

32.

Noddings

(1992). The challenge to care in schools: An alternative approach to education. New York: Teachers College Press.

33.

Tyack

(1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

34.

United States Department of Education (n. d.). Testing for results: Helping families, schools and communities understand and improve student achievement. Retrieved June 5, 2004, from http://www.ed.gove/nclb/accountability/ayp/testingforresults.html

35.

Weber

(1993). Max Weber: Sociological writings (and and Heydebrand

. Ed.). New York: Continuum.