Conclusions

Summary

Emerging from the last two chapters the reader may have acquired a general impression of complexity. This impression is essentially correct. Making sense of all significant differences in educational behaviour found in the evidence presented, by reference to a simple set of theoretical statements, seems problematic. The distribution of individuals across possible educational options appears to be the result of a dense combination of mechanisms.

If this is our first general conclusion, there would not seem to be much cause for satisfaction. Charles Taylor once argued that ‘complexity’, rather than being an excuse, may be a symptom of error, ‘for any subject matter is complex in the light of a wrong theory once we try to apply it, in that we are forced to complicate our theory with ad hoc hypotheses’ (1964:271). Moreover – for quite separate reasons – a justifiable desire of scholars and laymen alike is that science, even if it enjoys (or suffers from) the mitigating adjective of ‘social’, should offer simplifying insights, leading us by the hand through the dismal intricacies of reality. Steven Lukes (1985) has even suggested that some degree of monomaniac obsessiveness is a desirable requirement for producing good results in the social sciences: those who have made significant contributions in the field ‘have all been in their several ways, one-sided, one-eyed, exaggerating, unreasonable and unjudicious focusing obsessively on certain relationships or aspects of social life and blind to others.