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Raf Vanderstraeten Sociology 2004 38: 255 DOI: 10.1177/0038038504040863 The online version of this article can be found at: http://soc.sagepub.com/content/38/2/255

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Sociology
Copyright 2004 BSA Publications Ltd Volume 38(2): 255272 DOI: 10.1177/0038038504040863 SAGE Publications London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi

The Social Differentiation of the Educational System

s

Raf Vanderstraeten
University of Leuven, Belgium and University of Bielefeld, Germany

A B S T R AC T

In line with a long sociological tradition, Niklas Luhmann has analysed the basic characteristics of modern society in terms of social differentiation. Luhmann has focused on the forms of differentiation, and argued that modern society is differentiated according to subsystems that concentrate on one function (e.g. the economy, law, science, politics, education). In the rst part of the article, I explore the backgrounds of this systems-theoretical framework. In the second part, this framework is used to analyse the structural characteristics of the educational system. This system has its basis in the schools complexes of interaction and organization. But education is also confronted with the consequences of its own autonomy, its own mode of operating. It is suggested that these secondary effects have more impact on the evolution of this system than its societal environment.
K E Y WO R D S

education / functional differentiation / interaction / Luhmann / organization / systems theory

ince its origins in the 19th century, sociology has endeavoured to make modern society intelligible as a historical unit. For this purpose, it has elaborated numerous theoretical schemes such as the contrasting concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tnnies), of mechanic and organic solidarity (Durkheim), or the theory of rationalization and Entzauberung of the world (Weber). Talcott Parsons pattern variables are another example of these classical either/or schemes. Since the last decades of the 20th century, and the breakthrough of novel social challenges, it has become clear that these theoretical approaches underestimated the complexity and diversity of modern

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society. An impressive new synthesis has been elaborated by the German scholar Niklas Luhmann (19271998). Modern society, as opposed to those before it, Luhmann argued, is differentiated according to subsystems that concentrate on one specic and primary function. The economy, law, science, politics, art, religion and education are examples of such subsystems or function systems. Our society no longer has a centre or apex from which communication in society can be controlled. Functional differentiation, in Luhmanns view, needs to be understood as the establishment of autonomous, autopoietic subsystems and not as the limited advantage of a division of labour, as has been the case in the past. The concept of differentiation acquires a twofold meaning; it refers to the division of a social system into two or more specialized subsystems, and to the emergence of autonomous subsystems. Luhmanns voluminous opus is largely devoted to the construction and use of a systems-theoretical armamentarium for the study of modern society and its function systems. When functional differentiation becomes the primary form of social differentiation, Luhmann argued, there emerges a range of general challenges, problems and solutions at the level of the subsystems. But this form of differentiation also leads to different problems and solutions in different subsystems. Their analysis requires a shift of focus toward particular subsystems. (And every solution to a problem generates new unsolved problems.) Against this background, one needs to understand Luhmanns persistent attempts to analyse the general and specic characteristics of the subsystems of modern society. As is now often observed, however, it is difcult to grasp the precise signicance of these sociological analyses. Luhmanns work continues to be perceived as a labyrinth of concepts and denitions (e.g. Blhdorn, 2000; Paul, 2001). How is his theory structured? How can this theory be used, rened and revised in new research? I apply this systems-theoretical framework to explore some basic characteristics of the function system of education. Core concepts of this framework are presented in the rst part of the article. This presentation concentrates on developments within general systems theory, and on the ways they are appropriated in Luhmanns social systems theory. Special attention is devoted to the consequences of functional differentiation. In the second part of the article, these systems-theoretical concepts are used to characterize the educational system. The discussion focuses on the autonomy of the system, on the selection code of schooling, and on the implications of the educational technology that is used in schools. Although this discussion deals primarily with systemstheoretical issues, it might also be of relevance to the eld of sociology of education. Since the 1990s (and the demise of the new sociology of education), it is commonly argued that theoretical and empirical approaches in sociology of education have lost their sense of direction (e.g. Hammersley, 1996; Shain and Ozga, 2001), and that education has become a marginalized topic in general sociology (e.g. Delamont, 2000; Shilling, 1993). This eld of research might benet from a theoretical perspective that is rmly rooted in a general theory of modern society.

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The Differentiation of the Societal System

In the introductions to his books, Luhmann mostly wrote about the outlines and ambitions of his entire research programme. In Soziale Systeme, which he also described as the introductory chapter of his theory of modern society (although it consists of 675 pages), Luhmann focused upon recent paradigm changes in general systems theory. The following considerations see themselves as an attempt to reformulate the theory of social systems via the current state of the art in general systems theory [T]he advances in abstraction and the new conceptual formations that already exist or are emerging in interdisciplinary contexts should be made usable in sociological research (1995: 11). Systems-theoretical and cybernetic perspectives played a very prominent role in Luhmanns work since the 1960s. By drawing on research in these elds, Luhmann steadily developed his particular approach.

System/environment
Since the 1950s and 1960s, systems-theoretical approaches have attracted attention in a broad range of scientic disciplines and sub-disciplines. The early applications in the eld of the social sciences owed much to the writings of the Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy. Von Bertalanffy introduced his noted system viewpoint in the 1940s in the context of discussions about the nature of a living organism. His aim was to unravel the systemness of all living organisms.
In a living being innumerable chemical and physical processes are so ordered as to allow the living system to persist, to grow, to develop, to reproduce, etc. What, however, does this notion of order mean, for which we would look in vain in a textbook of physics? (Von Bertalanffy, 1988: 13940)

Von Bertalanffy argued that order in an organism depends on the organized exchange of matter between this organism and its environment. A living organism is an open, not a closed system. It maintains and reproduces itself in its environment by means of specic forms of input, output and feedback control. On this basis, and with these concepts, a general systems theory developed, which focused on exchange relationships in all types of open systems, including human beings and social systems (e.g. Buckley, 1967; Kuhn, 1974). The strength of this type of systems approach had/has to do with the fact that it broadens the horizon of research in the social and behavioural sciences. Next to the traditional intra-unit orientation of the eld, it is able to focus attention on the relations between systems and their environments. But the theory of open systems has not come to sociology without its own bias. Concern has been raised that systems theory favours methods for planning, management and control (cf. Baecker, 2001). The ideas of Talcott Parsons are often cited in this regard. Following Parsons, the differentiation of the action system occurs, in an endless repetition, along the lines of his four-function or

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AGIL-scheme (Adaptation, Goal attainment, Integration, Latent pattern maintenance). The cohesion of this divided system is thought to depend upon orderly interchanges of inputs and outputs between each of the 4 4 4 subsystems. The many formalizations in Parsons later books, which graphically depict these input/output interchanges, not only express Parsons excessive concern with the architecture of his own theory; they also convey an outspoken interest in issues of integration, regulation and hierarchical control (e.g. Parsons and Platt, 1974: 42347). Although the classical armamentarium of open-systems theory is still used in the social and behavioural sciences (e.g. Parra-Luna, 2000), new developments in systems theory and cybernetics have led to far-reaching revisions of Von Bertalanffys system viewpoint. The most important single publication in this regard is a book written by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela entitled Autopoiesis and Cognition (1980). The basic idea of their work is that a living system produces, and is produced by, nothing other than itself. A cells organization causes certain products to be produced (e.g. mitochondria); these products in turn produce the organization characteristic of that living system. Living organisms, according to Maturana and Varela, produce the products out of which they exist by the products out of which they exist. The concept autopoiesis highlights this circularity (auto: self; poiesis: production, creation).1 Living organisms, of course, do not create a material world of their own. The environment is a necessary correlate of the operations of autopoietic systems. But living organisms do not import life from their environment; they need to produce their own mode of life. From this viewpoint, the distinction between closed and open systems needs to be replaced by the question of how autopoietic closure can create openness. Maturana and Varela point to the autonomy of organic systems. The interconnection of system and environment is dependent on the closing-off of the systems self-production from the environment. Knowledge of the external world (cognition) can only be acquired on the basis of internally circular structures (autopoiesis). This constructivist view makes use of well-known cybernetic research. Shortly after the Second World War, Claude Shannon already argued that the information transmitted by a particular message is not a quality of the message itself. A message is one selected from a set of possible messages (Shannon and Weaver, 1949: 31). Its information value depends on the number of alternative or competing messages from which it selects.2 In line with these considerations, Gregory Bateson concisely dened information as a difference which makes a difference (1972: 453). This noted denition couples Shannons idea of selectivity with the idea that a twofold context comes into play: a difference in the environment which makes a difference in the system. In other words, information is a product of the system itself and not something which exists out there. The information value of an environmental stimulus depends on the selectivity operative in the system (cf. Vanderstraeten, 2001b). The wide-ranging implications of using this view of self-referential closure in sociology can already be seen in Luhmanns essays from the late 1960s and

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early 1970s, in which he presented the foundations of his version of social systems theory for the rst time. In Soziale Systeme (1984), Luhmann described social systems as autopoietic systems that use communication as their mode of reproduction. As in living systems, autopoiesis or self-referential closure does not mean that a social system is not affected by its environment. It does mean that a social system can react to its environment only in accordance with its own mode of operation. A social system is closed with respect to the meaningful content of communicative acts; meaning can be actualized only by circulation in the network of ongoing communications. In comparison with open-systems theory, this autopoietic view of systems provokes remarkable shifts for example, from an interest in planning and control to an interest in autonomy and environmental sensitivity, and from structural stability to dynamic stability (King and Thornhill, 2003; Mingers, 2002). It makes it also necessary to analyse (and not just to formalize) the mechanisms that are used to establish and maintain boundaries between system and environment. This requirement explains the extensive historical explorations that characterize Luhmanns theory of society and societal differentiation.

Functional Differentiation
As indicated in the introduction, the ide matresse governing Luhmanns approach to the study of modern society is the concept of differentiation. It puts him squarely in line with several of the so-called founding fathers of classical sociology, with Herbert Spencer, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons (Alexander, 1990). But Luhmann deployed the concept of differentiation in a very particular way. He broke up the notion of increasing differentiation by distinguishing between different forms of differentiation or system formation. Differentiation, in this view, is not simply decomposition of the larger system into smaller chunks, but a process of growth by internal disjunction (1977: 31). This view brings to the fore that structural changes on the level of society will not necessarily affect, in the same sense, the way in which the religious system or the legal system perceive their changing environments. Likewise, compulsory school attendance is a different environmental problem for the economic system, the political system, the religious system, the families, and so on. Any action, Luhmann often repeated, has to rely on a complex network of selective boundaries that reduce the complexity of the world. Until now, according to Luhmann, only a few basic forms of societal differentiation have emerged. Luhmann (1997: 60918) has discussed the forms of segmentation (e.g. settlements, clans), centre/periphery, stratification (lower/higher ranks) and functional differentiation. These forms do not mutually exclude each other. But when one form becomes predominant, it can regulate the uses of other forms. In a functionally differentiated society, one can nd many examples of segmentation, stratication, or centre/periphery distinctions, but these differentiations are now by-products of the dynamics of function systems. The form of stratication, for example, is transformed into a distinction

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between social classes, which largely depends on the effects of the economy and the education system. Stated somewhat differently: the survival of new differences depends on already existing structures. From this perspective, the much-discussed great transformation of Western societies can be depicted as the transition from the primacy of stratication to the primacy of functional differentiation. In his rst publications on this topic, Luhmann argued that the emergence of function systems begins quite early as a differentiation of social roles. It gains momentum only when at least two distinct roles organize their complementary expectations around a specic function for example, clerics and laymen, politicians and the public, or teachers and pupils. This requires the emergence of special roles for receiving services (1977: 35). Functional differentiation is not only dependent on the emergence of specic professional roles, but also on the formation of the complementary client roles. This also means that the great transformation changes the conditions of inclusion; it changes the system/environment relations of functions. Functions have to be unequal, but the access to functions has to be equal, that is, independent of any relation to other functions (1977: 36). Function systems have to treat their environments as environments of equals, because nothing but function can justify discrimination. For example, it is only by minimizing the relevance of the familial, political, religious and economic status of persons that the legal system is able to implement a conception of formal, legal equality that accords everyone individual rights (cf. Vanderstraeten, 1999). The renewed emphasis on the normative ideal of equality in the 18th century has to be understood against this background. In his later work, Niklas Luhmann paid special attention to binary codes that divide the world into two values (e.g. true/false, legal/illegal, have/havenot, power/lack of power), and to the connection between coding and functional specication. The most important function systems attain universal relevance, Luhmann argued, because they are specialized according to the operations of a determinate code (1989: 39). Moreover, the codes, or positive/negative distinctions, ensure the autopoietic closure of function systems. Every value like true or false refers to its respective counter-value alone and never to other, external values [The systems] capacity for reaction rests on the closed polarity of its code and is sharply limited by this (1989: 40). The binary codes enable function systems to institute their own procedures for channelling information, for creating differences through differences. Each one can develop its own criteria to dene what is relevant and thus safeguard its autonomy. No function system can transcend itself and steer the operations of other systems, because these operations depend on the construction of differences in the context of these systems. The state can introduce compulsory education and use tax revenues to bear the costs of schools and universities, but, as an organization of the political system, it cannot educate itself. Binary codes lack integration to the extent that a positive valuation in one code, for example, true does not automatically entail a positive valuation in other codes, for example, as economically or legally or educationally signi-

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cant. Functional differentiation is synonymous with pluralization. There is no core or fundamental division driving the contemporary world, and there is no privileged position from which a rational overall view can be developed (Luhmann, 1998). This means that the contemporary form of functional differentiation cannot be conceived in terms of a division of labour, or in terms of the emergence of corresponding forms of integration or organic solidarity. Modern society maintains forms of order and orderly change without relying on societywide consensus about communal purposes. Its dynamic stability depends, to an important degree, on the self-organization of its single function systems. Its dynamics are claried through the fact that systems for law, politics, science, education, religion, art, etc., have become autonomous and mutually furnish environments for one another.

Structural Characteristics of the Educational System

These developments in systems theory direct attention to the autonomy of function systems. This viewpoint claries that individual autonomy of living systems is founded on the specicity of the operations of the organism, and not on independence vis-a-vis the environment. A system is autonomous if it can specify its own laws, what is proper to it . We are proposing that the mechanism that makes living beings autonomous systems is autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela, 1988: 48). Drawing on Luhmanns writings, I have explored some basic characteristics of modern society which grants autonomy to its primary subsystems. If education is an autonomous function system of society, it has to be able to maintain its own distinctiveness as system-in-its-environment. If it is characterized by autopoiesis, it can only make use of educationally relevant operations, and needs to reproduce these operations in a network of such operations. Viewing education in the context of the functional differentiation of modern society will help to grasp the particularities of its self-organization and autonomy.

Autonomy
It is well documented that the existing forms of socialization and education have rarely taken the lead in periods of structural renewal at the level of society. Instead, they have mostly followed at a distance (e.g. Collins, 2000). In the course of societys great transition, the formation of a function system for education took place at a relatively late moment. The lifestyle ideals of the upper ranks of stratied societies long remained dominant. After the differentiation of function systems for politics, economics, religion, and, in part, also for science, the prospects for education began to change.
As with the completion of a puzzle, the pieces that have already been differentiated (from the others) have a suggestive inuence on what can possibly and must

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necessarily be connected to them. But, unlike with a puzzle, it is not certain from the outset that a complete picture will be produced or that it will be understandable as a whole. (Luhmann and Schorr, 2000: 30)

The extension of educational services to whole populations, which occurred in most Western countries in the 19th century, would not have been possible without the social construction of childhood. The demarcation of childhood, as distinct from adulthood, made it possible to respond to the environmental changes with the formation of a system of education. In the educational literature of the 18th and early 19th century, interest clearly shifts from private education in family households to public education in schools. Around 1700, the responsibility for education was still largely attributed to the paterfamilias. John Locke (1902[1693]) or Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1722), for example, turned to fathers as the responsible gures, and discussed the relation between home and school education on this model. But in the course of the 18th century, increasing attention was paid to school teachers and curricular issues, and to the relation between education and society. The very rst university chair in education was established in 1779 in Halle (Germany); this can be seen as an indication of the professionalization of teaching. Although many authors continued to express doubts about the pedagogical effectiveness of teachers, professional education in schools became dominant (Welker, 1992). In fact, school results are now often being used to assess the role of parents in the education of their children (Maclure and Walker, 2000; Paterson, 1988; Smelser, 1990). The differentiation of the educational system does not simply depend on the increase of specialization and complexity at the level of the professional roles. There is a corresponding, decisive change at the level of the public roles. One of the earliest symptoms is Comenius demand that each and every child be raised and instructed in schools (Comenius, 1967[1638]). In the 18th century, many innovators including Rousseau did not yet take this form of inclusion seriously. But from the second half of the 18th century onwards, rst of all in France, there started to appear a large number of pleas and drafts for the organization of national education or public schooling. Moreover, it was argued that schools which include the whole population also need to serve this population and not just one privileged part of it. Curriculum planning was part of this revolutionary reform movement (e.g. De Mirabeau, 1791; Diderot, 1875[1776]). The reform movement also required the introduction of compulsory schooling which took place in Western Europe in the course of the long 19th century, from Prussia (1763) to Belgium (1914). It should be noted that this type of legislation focuses on a simple form of inclusion, namely presence in schools, and not on more demanding forms of equality of opportunity, and that compliance with these laws has remained a problem until the middle of the 20th century (Mangan, 1994). The morphogenesis of the modern educational system thus encompasses a number of interrelated changes: the inclusion of whole student populations, the

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professionalization of teaching, and the development of new curricular principles. Since the 19th century, the autonomy of the educational system is unmistakably connected with the omnipresence of state-controlled schools and universities (cf. Stichweh, 1991: 79113). But can these types of organization safeguard the autonomy of the educational system? In fact, sociological and historical studies have hitherto mostly concentrated on interest groups that operate behind school organizations and control what really goes on in schools. In Margaret Archers work, the take-off of modern educational systems in the 18th century is linked with the transition from private to public ownership and provision of physical and human resources (plants and personnel). She demonstrates at great length that the development of state systems radically alters the possibilities for external intervention in education. In summary: Control ceases to be entrepreneurial and becomes managerial (1979: 150). This is a viewpoint that I endorse, too. Archer also argues that assertive groups, which acquire legislative and political power, continue to be able to impose their denition of education on state systems and to serve their particular educational needs (if they play the game smartly). In line with recent historical research, I would like to argue that the complex machinery of governmental decision-making mainly replies to a need for regulation which emerges in the system of education itself, and which is generated by problems that cannot be settled in everyday instruction (Brehony, 2002; Chervel, 1998; Depaepe, 2000). The focus of this alternative approach is less on the macro-sociological determination of interpretations of the situation than on the chaotic diversity of educational communication in classrooms. This perspective emphasizes the (often neglected) shop-oor of education, the face-to-face interaction of teachers and students. It is well known that the course of this interaction cannot be programmed in political or organizational headquarters. An interaction order develops its own intangible particularities. It has a life on its own and makes demands on its own behalf (Goffman, 1966: 113). Educational interaction is a very demanding and difcult form of interaction (Vanderstraeten, 2001a). In fact, the question is how education is able to ensure its own reproduction. Why are these efforts continued? How can one ensure that it does not turn into a series of entertaining encounters or degenerates in other ways (Woods, 1990)? In my view, the signicance of school organizations can be elucidated against this background. The interaction order of education requires a kind of frame, which solves some difcult issues (e.g. regarding timetables, curricula, discipline, or school attendance). The interaction order externalizes the problems that it cannot handle itself. In this context, external control becomes managerial as Archer rightly argues. Also, it is easy to identify classroom education and to distinguish it from other activities and experiences in everyday life. It forms the heart of the system, even if (and also because!) it remains a black box with only limited transparency. In our society, education takes place in the organized context of school classes and the non-organized context of families. In families, there are normally numerous unplanned opportunities for interactions with educational

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goals. But the family context can hardly provide support for lengthy and difcult processes of learning. In fact, initiatives in this direction easily lead to an atmosphere of conict (recall the driving lessons with family members). Organizations, on the other hand, are able to specify a range of objective criteria for regulating and normalizing demanding processes. They can neutralize the improbability of systematic instruction and ensure the cooperation of the participants. Seen in this light, it should not surprise that classroom instruction has acquired a dominant position. Moreover, the interaction order of the classroom has determined the remarkable process of educational expansion. In this regard, Lortie has aptly spoken of cellular growth (1977: 1317). There are no economies of scale; the system has to multiply the number of its basic entities. This characterization does not deny the fact that patterns of educational expansion can be related to other social events and indices, such as labour market evolutions, status conicts or corporate competitions (e.g. Archer, 1982). It points to the central role of classroom interaction in the system of education. I return to this condition, and some of its side effects, after a discussion of the selection code of school education.

Coding
In the preceding section, I argued that education relies heavily on face-to-face interaction. Education takes place in households or in classrooms, where the physical presence of parent and child, teacher and student is guaranteed. While societal subsystems such as politics, the economy, law or science have become less dependent on interaction situations and on the existence of personal bonds between the partners, education has evolved into another direction (Vanderstraeten, 2000a). This exceptional evolution is related to the fact that educational interventions aim to alter the students inner world. In education and other forms of people changing (e.g. therapy, conversion) personal contact and face-to-face interaction remain vital. No person can look into the head or mind of another human being. Teachers cannot gain direct access to the results of educational interventions. They can only observe and record the patterns of visible behaviour of their students. What is the effect of this condition? How can education create an orderly structure, which is comparable to the forms of self-organization of the major function systems of society? With regard to these kinds of questions, Luhmann has argued that educational interventions produce almost automatically a situation in which particular patterns of behaviour are acceptable, while others are not. Outcomes of the interventions are compared with what was expected. Even if goals are not specied, these activities are likely to bring forth some sort of implicit or explicit evaluation (Luhmann, 1989: 1005). One might say, therefore, that education makes use of its own code, namely the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable patterns of behaviour, approval and disapproval, right and wrong, etc. There are numerous situations, particularly at school, which call for selective

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evaluations. Students are continually confronted with questions, remarks, tests, exams, and other communicated expectations. These evaluations and assessments are among the most penetrating characteristics of school life (cf. Crooks, 1988; Filer and Pollard, 2000). But how do assessments contribute to the reality that is constructed in the educational system? The form of educational selection can be specied in a number of ways. For example, teachers can observe that part of the class lives up to the norm and that the other part does not, or that one student is diligent during a particular course with a particular teacher but not during other courses. Students can observe each other and assess particular differences in their own terms. They are also able to anticipate the evaluations of teachers and peers. These reciprocal expectations and perceptions create a complex situation within which each student has to reckon with new alternatives for action, and within which the consequences of her/his behaviour become multiple. In his famous study Life in Classrooms, Philip Jackson has described the ensuing situation as follows:
In fact, he [sic] has three jobs. The rst, and most obvious, is to behave in such a way as to enhance the likelihood of praise and reduce the likelihood of punishment . A second job consists of trying to publicize positive evaluations and conceal negative ones . A third job consists of trying to win the approval of two audiences at the same time. The problem, for some, is how to become a good student while remaining a good guy, how to be at the head of the class while still being in the center of the group. (1990: 26)

The point to be stressed is that classroom education creates these conditions itself. Educational interventions elicit a form of selection which would not emerge without these interventions. The distinctions that are introduced (e.g. positive/negative, good/wrong, succeed/fail, praise/punishment) are internal constructions. The meaning of these evaluative selections is dened in the educational system, following an internal scale. Satisfactory is better than unsatisfactory but less than excellent. A report mark indicates how much one can do (or could have done) better or worse. It does not refer to other, external values (e.g. physical appeal, personal wealth). Also, each selection presupposes and enables other selections. Marks can be improved; school careers can be more or less successful; students can enrol in pre- and post-training, etc. In this sense, one might speak of the self-referential closure of the educational system. To avoid misunderstandings: this mode of autopoiesis does not deny that schools import knowledge from their environment, and the distinctions that are of importance in this context. The distinction between sine and cosine is not invented within education itself. But education determines who has to be able to use this distinction, and when, and what difference it makes when one does or does not know the distinction at the moment of evaluation. Only the latter type of distinction determines the further course of decision-making in schools (Luhmann,

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2002). Again, the distinctions that are meaningful in this system are made by this system. The coupling of education with other societal subsystems can be seen to depend on these selections. In fact, it is often argued that assessments in education reproduce and legitimate external conditions such as class distinctions (e.g. Broadfoot, 1996). These analyses presuppose too much correspondence between the level of education and the level of society. They depict the school as a kind of trivial machine, which reliably transforms a specic input into a corresponding output, and which internalizes and reproduces the principles of the dominant cultural elite. As indicated before, it is worth paying more attention to the plurality of meaning contexts that emerge in a functionally differentiated society. In this context, it makes sense to stress (again) the relation between differentiation and individualization. The modern world can be described as a world of self-management (Beck, 1986). Individuals are responsible for their own lives and careers. Because achievements at the beginning of someones career can have far-reaching results, individual career planning has come to rely heavily on education, especially on certicates and degrees. In schools and universities, careers appear as an almost automatic succession of sequences (as long as everything is normal). Students go from course to course, from year to year, from degree to degree. This standardization not only facilitates but also provokes comparisons. It generates a high pressure to perform in accordance with these criteria. School success has become an important item for students, parents, employers, etc. Its impact on lifelong, do-it-yourself careers might explain the increasing demand for schooling (Collins, 1979; Vanderstraeten, 2000b). School careers do not neatly match with professional careers, but this kind of coupling enables education to export its own standards to its environment (e.g. the labour market).

Secondary Effects
At school, students are prepared for entirely different situations. They learn things that might be of use in other contexts and at other moments in time (e.g. in professional life). Decisions about what and how students have to learn are often made without consulting the students families. This evolution cannot be interpreted in terms of rationalization or of adaptation to societal needs. There can be no complete coordination with developments in other function systems. The choices made in schools are rst of all determined by the possibilities and requirements of the educational system itself. One can also say that education has to deal with the consequences of its own mode of differentiation in modern society. The evolutionary course of this system is determined by the interactions and organizations at the school level, which ensure its autonomy, as well as by the structuring of its operations by means of a selection code. I focus here on these secondary effects of functional differentiation. It is not possible to deal at length with these issues, but I will link existing sociological research traditions with the systems-theoretical framework of this article.

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In organizational studies, the term technology is widely used to indicate the causeeffect or ifthen relations which are utilized at the shop-oor of an organization to achieve particular targets even if pure technical tools only play a marginal role (e.g. in some medical treatments or psychotherapy). Organizations can also be typied and classied on the basis of the reliability of their technology (Scott, 1992: 22656). Seen in this light, educational organizations clearly have to deal with a decit. They do not dispose of a robust technology that can be utilized in classrooms. Teaching is an uncertain technology: cause-effect relations are not well understood, and there is no consensus on the best teaching methods (Gamoran et al., 2000: 43). As indicated before, this decit is attributable to the fact that schools cannot enforce or guarantee the collaboration of their clients. In fact, students form a particularly critical group (in comparison with, for example, the inanimate material that many factories use). Their inner world cannot be controlled from the outside (Vanderstraeten, 2002). These observations do not imply that schooling cannot be successful, and that it cannot achieve its targets. But the uncertain shop-oor conditions are likely to bear an imprint on the entire process of schooling. In Karl Weicks work, which explicitly draws upon systems theory and cybernetics, particular attention is paid to the managerial and administrative consequences of the absence of a robust technology, and of organizational control on the transformation of input in output. Weick (1976) brings to the fore that this condition leads to the disappearance of a rational coupling of the parts of the organization; strict coupling is replaced by loose coupling. Schools establish explicit control on the allocation of students, rooms, lesson periods, curricular units, etc., but not on the details of the daily interaction between teachers and students. Instead, they burden teachers with many responsibilities for educational interaction. In view of this technology decit, Weick argues, it seems appropriate to rely on the expertise of professionals (Orton and Weick, 1990). This conclusion can, for example, be utilized to improve the management of schools, and to accommodate forms of quality control to the conditions of loosely coupled organizations (Bidwell et al., 1997; Weick, 1996). It is also clear that schools have to deal with the consequences of their own mode of functional specialization. The technology decit has an impact on the practical theories and programs for action that are developed in this system (Durkheim, 1956: 99102). It has frequently been illustrated that organizations that undertake complex and difcult activities develop highly abstract action and evaluation schemata. Their schemata often generalize and simplify in such drastic ways that they lose touch with the factual conditions on the operational level (e.g. Hughes, 1971: 31625; Vanderstraeten, 1997: 3289). Schemata are also necessary to motivate professionals who do not know how to be successful; they offer denitions of the situation that can provide comfort in uncertain circumstances. Without these idealistic schemata (e.g. regarding the nature of the child, or the effect of teachers care), professional interventions would probably not

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take place. An interesting question, which cannot be elaborated on here, concerns the consequences of this professional ethic. Much of Luhmanns work on educational topics is focused on the demystication of these professional ideologies, and on a criticism of the subject-centred schemata of educational theory (Luhmann, 1981: 10594; Luhmann and Schorr, 1979, 2000). The point that needs to be stressed is that these practical theories are developed in reaction to the shop-oor conditions and the technology decit of educational organizations. A nal observation concerns the so-called hidden curriculum of schools (cf. Margolis, 2001). Several authors consider the demand on behaviour within school classes to be representative of the demands of life in modern society not (only) on the level of the ofcial curriculum and its goals but (also) on the level of latent structures within an universalistic, affect-neutral, and performance-oriented modernity. Emile Durkheim already spoke of that social microcosm that the school is (1956: 131). As I have tried to clarify, however, the school rst of all socializes for the school, not for society because it produces its own differences and creates its own reality. At school, it is important to be a good student. Its way of working generates its own special side effects. It promotes attitudes that make it possible to handle educational problems in special ways via educators, teachers and schools. Luhmanns own sceptical conclusion about education should be interpreted against this background: A system that is structured too improbably and that tries to identify itself entirely with the transformation of input into output ends up having to deal with the problems resulting from its own increase-directed reductions (1995: 207). Most of the prevailing concerns in the educational system are consequences of its own differentiation in modern society. It is often argued that schools are in need of (more) evidence-based practices. But its technology problems are not just momentary problems that can be handled when more knowledge becomes available; they are a consequence of the structural characteristics of instruction. The motive behind referring to these structural uncertainties is anything but one of resignation. Rather, the difficulties can be analysed more easily if one no longer has any intention of solving narrowly framed problems. In my view, it is necessary to take into account that the technology deficit is closely related to problems of time management. The process of seeking success in educational interaction not only requires time; the process also reacts to itself and to the situation it has helped to create. This way, it changes its own foundations. Educational interaction becomes overburdened by its own, self-created, complex reality. This problem is intensified to the degree that the intention encompasses more than the direct effect (e.g. holding attention, working through a lesson) and attempts to control longer chains of effects. With every expansion of the time horizon, the probability of discrepancies increases. We should not wonder that the technology problems appear precarious and finally unsolvable, because technology involves time and in the case of education, we are talking about a long time!

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Notes
1 Autopoietic systems are dened as networks of productions of components that (1) recursively, through their interactions, generate and realize the network that produces them, and (2) constitute, in the space in which they exist, the boundaries of this network as components that participate in the realization of the network (Maturana, 1981: 21). For a good reconstruction of the backgrounds of the theory of self-producing systems, see Mingers (1995). Mingers provides careful explanations of the cumbersome denitions and expressions of Maturana. An uncomplicated example from W.R. Ashbys An Introduction to Cybernetics might clarify this point:
Two soldiers are taken prisoner by two enemy countries A and B, one by each, and their two wives later each receive the brief message I am well. It is known, however, that country A allows the prisoner a choice from I am well I am slightly ill I am seriously ill, while country B allows only the message I am well, meaning I am alive. The two wives will certainly be aware that though each has received the same phrase, the informations that they have received are by no means identical. (1964: 124)

There exists a direct relation between information and selection. Information creates order.

Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges funding by the European Commission (HPMF-CT200000835) and the Belgian federal government (DWTC). He would like to thank the reviewers of Sociology for their close reading of previous drafts of this article.

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Raf Vanderstraeten
Is a Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Leuven (Belgium) and at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Bielefeld (Germany). His research is in the eld of social theory, historical sociology and sociology of education. Address: University of Leuven,Vesaliusstr. 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: raf.vanderstraeten@ped.kuleuven.ac.be

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