Technology deficit or technologies of schooling – seeing curricular planning and teachers’ knowledge within a systems-theoretical understanding of technology

This essay starts with the classical assertion of Niklas Luhmann that there exist no pedagogic technologies, but takes up parts of his conceptual understanding of technology to describe and understand mass schooling in the nineteenth century. It is argued that using his terminology and focusing on technologies of schooling brings into focus sources and actors that Luhmann and his colleagues oversaw and that can be integrated in a sociological understanding of the emerging modern mass educational systems. The paper introduces this understanding and contrasts it with other given approaches. It is argued that the theoretical frame of technology allows for a better understanding of causality, bringing back into the discussion actors and their pursued ends that are often left out in concepts and theories of technology and also in sociological interpretations of the history of schooling. The essay shows the possibilities of applying this perspectivisation by using two examples of a technology, “curricular planning” and “teacher’s education,” highlighting curriculum and teachers’ manuals as key sources and core elements of a technology of schooling that systematically aims at achieving given pedagogic ends.