Topic 4: George Counts (1889-

1974): Building a New Social

Order
4.  George Counts (1889-1974): Building a New Social Order

 Education is not based on eternal truths but is relative to a particular society living at
a given time and place.
 By allying themselves with groups that want to change society, schools should cope
with social change that arises from technology.
 There is a cultural lag between material progress and social institutions and ethnical
values.
 Instruction should incorporate a content of a socially useful nature and a problem-
solving methodology. Students are encouraged to work on problems that have social
significance.
 Schools become instrument for social improvement rather than an agency for
preserving the status quo.
 Teachers should lead society rather than follow it. Teachers are agents of change.
 Teachers are called on to make important choices in the controversial areas of
economics, politics and morality because if they failed to do so, others should make
the decisions for them.
 Schools ought to provide an education that afford equal learning opportunities to all
students.

Comments:
Schools and Teachers as Agents of Change

 For George Counts, schools and teachers should be agents of change. Schools are
considered instruments for social improvement rather than as agencies for
preserving the status quo. Whatever change we work for should always ne change
for the better not just change for the sake of change.
 Teachers are called to make decisions on controversial issues not to make decision
is to actually making a decision.
 Like Dewey, problem solving, should be the dominant method for instruction.

Lag Between Material Progress and Ethnical Values

            Counts asserts that “there is a cultural lag between material progress and social
institutions and ethnical values.” Material progress of humankind is very evident but
moral and ethnical development seem to have lagged behind. A friend once wrote: “the
Egyptians had their horses. Modern man has his jets but today it is still the same moral
problems that plague humankind.” Indeed with science and technology, we have
become very powerful and yet powerless. We have conquered a number of diseases
and even postponed death for many, we have conquered aging, the planets, the seas
but we have not conquered ourselves.