Zachariah's "Plants" and "Clay": A Rejoinder

Abstract

Two points quickly come to mind on reading Mathew Zachariah's article: Lumps of Clay and Growing Plants: Dominant Metaphors of the Role of Education in the Third World, 1950-1980.' One point is that raised by Max Eckstein in his excellent CIES presidential address on metaphors and the comparative mind: the use of inappropriate metaphors can have a constricting effect on the study of phenomena in terms of analysis and understanding.2 The other is that caveats and qualifications preceding one's central thesis may sometimes conceal within them (without one's knowledge) the foundations for rendering it void. Consequently, it is argued here that Mathew Zachariah's use of the lumps of clay and growing plants metaphors to explain major trends in of education and national development in Third World countries (TWCs) over the period 1950-80, far from illuminating, simply obfuscates important developments in the field. As a result, he subverts the central purpose of his essay (albeit not specifically articulated): to advance the historiography of the discipline via periodization of part of its intellectual history. One very obvious difficulty that arises with Zachariah's thesis is the confusion between the realms of microand macroeducation. Accepting that the two metaphors do rightly belong to discourse, they belong to that part of the discourse that pertains to (micro-level domain).3 They have little expository or analytical value when discussing of (the macro-level domain). This distinction between educational and theories of systems is not a trite one. It is possible to group of education into two principal categories. One category is that of concerned with the content of systems: principally issues of what, why,