INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again - beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. 5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 I 75-26,630 NELSON, Richard Wayne, 1948- THE PATHOLOGICAL MODEL AND THE SCHOOLS: A CRITICAL INQUIRY. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1975 Education, history Xerox University Microfilms,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 © Copyright by Richard Wayne Nelson 1975 THE PATHOLOGICAL MODEL AND THE SCHOOLS: A CRITICAL INQUIRY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillm ent of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Richard Wayne Nelson, B.A., M.A, The Ohio State University 1973 Reading Committee: Approved by Dr. Robert Jewett Dr. Paul Klohr Dr. Bernard Mehl Adviser / Department of Curriculum and Foundations VITA May 5, 19^8 ....................................... Born, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania I 97O ...................................................... B.A., Capital University, Columbus, Ohio 1970-72 ................................................. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 1973 ....................................... M.A., Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1973-75 ................................................. Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FI ELDS OF STUDY History of Education and Social Criticism Bernard Mehl of American Education Curriculum Theory Paul Klohr Reformation and Renaissance History Wilhelm Pauck TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA .................................................................................................................................................... i i Chap ter I. INTRODUCTION: THE PATHOLOGICAL MODEL AS AN IDEOLOGY . 1 II. THE PURITAN COVENANT: THE POLITICAL ROOTS OF PATHOLOGY........................................................................................................ 18 I I I. PROPERTY, FREEDOM AND THE DEPRAVITY OF M A N .......................... 51 IV, THE ERA OF'IDEOLOGY: SOCIAL DARWINISM AND REFORM DARWINISM........................................................................................................ 91 V. CULTURAL DEPRIVATION THEORY: PATHOLOGY AND THE SCHOOL...................................................................................................................1^3 VI. CONCLUSION: BEYOND IDEOLOGY ....................................... 167 BIBLIOGRAPHY 17^ i i i CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE PATHOLOGICAL MODEL AS AN IDEOLOGY In The Souls of Black Folk, W illi am E. B. Duboi s , essayi st and sociologist, claimed that white America has made it a practice to ignore the beauty to be found in the black experience and has, as though wear­ ing blinders, seen only the pathological; broken homes, vice and the despair of poverty. According to Dubois, the racism so generic to the American experience has invaded our very view of the world denying to us the a b ility to trust in the essential beauty of the human condition 1 we a l 1 share. The question that immediately arises is the v a lid ity of Dubois' assessment of American life . Was he merely voicing the paranoia one black man felt toward the larger society, or did he rightly gauge the depth of our alienation. If correct, does this insight apply only to point out a particular abberation, one fault in an otherwise sound value system, or does it provide a key to a critique of a whole society? Jean Paul Sartre addressed himself to just this question in the essay Ant i Semi te and Jew. In Sartre's view the racist does not become such because of some bad experience with a Jew or Negro. Nor is preju- duce the result of a nasty attitude in the air which the individual ^Wi11i am E. B. Duboi s , The Souls of B1ack Folk, (New York: Sig­ net , 1969), p. 52.. 7 learns from his family and friends." Hatred of the Negro or the Jew is a stance toward life . It is a choice which represents a hatred of life its e lf. The racist does not hate the Jew, says Sartre, and love his wife, his dog, his friends. He is a man who hates everything and he is a man who is afraid: Not of the Jews to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his lib e rty, his. instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world -- of everything except the Jews. ^ "Anti-Semitism," says Sartre, "in short, is fear of the human condition.' The fear of the human condition is focused in the Jew or Negro, for he seems to represent the difference and solitariness of existence which cannot be further incorporated. In Hannah Arendt's words, "The alien is a frightening symbol of the fact of difference as such, of individuality as such, and indicates these realms in which man cannot change . ."^ The qualities of the Negro or Jew become necessary reflections of a changeless inner nature, a basic depravity.^ The evil of the Jew or Negro is not individual -- it is generic. Consequently, racism is not just a sociological phenomenon -- it is also a metaphysical one. The "Jean Paul Sartre, Anti Semite and Jew, Trans. George Becker (New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 1-5. ^ I b i d . , p . ' 21 . k Ibid., p. 5^. -’Ibid. ^Hannah Arendt, Origins of Tota1i tar ? ani sm (New York: Harcourt, 1951), p. 297. racist is a Manichaean. That is, he believes in a dual world s p lit ft between good and e v il. For the Manichaean, redemption from evil is an im possibility. Goodness and evil ore locked in immortal combat, a com­ bat which can end only when one is the victor. This is the point where the racist reveals himself to be not an anomaly, but an integral part of the larger society. Because race hatred has nothing to do with the object of its hatred, the stance toward life it embodies is rooted in the very structure of a society. The racist shares a common suspicion about the nature of reality with the rest of his fellows, even those who consider themselves quite liberal in matters oP race. This common structure, at least in Europe and America, is a Manichaean view of human exi stence. Only two ideologies were able to gain generalacceptance at the end of the 19th century and have been able to continue influence to such a degree that it is v irtu a lly impossible to find anyone who does not accept one: The ideology which conceives history as a struggle of classes and the ideology which views history as a natural struggle be- 9 tween races. Though each of these ideologies appeals to a different sort of man for different reasons, they both share a common Manichaean view of the world. The rise of these ideologies would have been incon­ ceivable without the almost universal belief in a dual world of good and evi 1 . ^Sartre, Ant i Semi te and Jew, pp. *+3-^8. ^Arendt, Origins of Total i tar i ani sin, p. 159. k To these two great historical ideologies we may add a third. Neither so overtly political in nature as these, nor so centered in particular aspects of man's social life , it nevertheless is b u ilt upon a Manichaean world view. Like the other ideologies, it claims to hold the key to the problems of the universe, the hidden knowledge necessary to save man (and it is this claim that separates an ideology from an 10 opinion). This third ideology may be termed the pathological, or medical model. This is not to deny that a pathological view of human problems was held as one opinion among many for centuries. However, as with the other ideologies, this model of existence could gain ascendency as an ideology only with the credence afforded it through science and the promise that science would eventually lead to ways of destroying the pathology. Perhaps the most controversy about the medical model, or patho­ logical model, has been in the area of psychiatry. C ritics such as Thomas Szasz have identified the medical model as an ideological inter- 11 pretation of what he likes to call "problems in living." By calling mental problems an illness, Szasz says, the psychiatric patient is labeled as having a defect that renders him incapable of responsible action. Since no physical cause can be demonstrated that results in the symptoms of mental illness, there is no basis for assuming that psychiatric 1 1 Thomas Szasz, Ideology and Insanity (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), p.