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pedagogy would be a theory of social practice. He claimed that social facts could be considered as
things. He also stated that society could be compared to an animal: society possesses a system of
different organs in which these have a specific role. Some organs have more privileges than
others. Those natural privileges represent a normal phenomenon. It also occurs in nature when
only the fittest organisms survive.
Those social and pedagogical ideas reflect the conservative and reactionary character of
positivist education. Positivist leaders believed that social and political liberation depended on the
development of science and technology whose control was in the hands of the elites. Therefore,
although positivism was a philosophy because it questioned about what was real and the existing
order, then positivism became an ideology since it tried to answer social issues.
Durkheims theory opposes Rousseaus. Rousseau believed that man was born innately
good but that it was society that corrupted man. On the contrary, Durkheim considered that the
man was born selfish, and just society through education, could make him a good person.
Therefore, according to Durkheim education is the action exercised towards those that are not
ready yet for social life. Its purpose is to challenge and develop in the child a number of physical,
intellectual and moral reaction that are demanded both by the political society in general, and the
specific environment to who it is addressed.
Emile Durkheim saw the major function of education as the transmission of society's norms
and values. He claimed that society can survive only if there exists amongst its members a
sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by
fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities which collective life demands. A vital
task of all societies is the welding of a mass of individuals into a united whole, in other words, the
creation of social solidarity. This involves a commitment to society, a sense of belonging, and a
feeling that the social unit is more important than the individual. Durkheim argued that to become
attached to society, the child must feel in it something that is real, alive and powerful, which
dominates the person and to which he also owns the best part of himself. Education, and in
particular the teaching of history, provides this link between the individual and society. If the
history of their society is brought to life to children, they will come to see that they are part of
something larger than themselves: they will develop a sense of commitment to the social group.
In relation to pedagogy, positivist ideas are closely related to pragmatism that valued what
could be used in the present moment. One of the thinkers who represent pragmatism is Alfred N.
Whitehead (1861-1947). Whitehead considers that the educator must avoid at all costs education
with inert ideas; that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized.
Whitehead insists that the child should be taught few but important ideas, in such a way that he
can make them his own and utilize them in all circumstances of his real life. From the beginning, a
child should experience the joy of discovery. What he should discover is that general ideas help
him understand the course of event throughout his life. Utilizing an idea means relating it to the
compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires and of mental activities adjusting
thought to thought, which forms his life. In brief, Whitehead considers that theoretical ideas
should always find important applications within the curriculum. The central issue of education is
to keep knowledge alive.