Education and State Formation: Europe, East Asia and the USA

446 Pages·2013·3.803 MB·English

by  Andy Green (auth.)

‘A book of Green’s scope is bound to provoke disagreement over one or
another interpretation and specialists will be able to point to scholar-
ship that he has missed, but that should not detract from its importance.
It is learned, thought-provoking, and well-written.’ – Patrick J. Harrigan,
HistoricalStudiesinEducation
‘Theauthorhimselfisshownasanhistorianofeducationpoliticswellversed
in developments in continental Europe as well as Britain. The book is emi-
nently readable, and well argued and documented.’ – Witold Tulasiewicz,
ComparativeEducation
‘Andy Green has written a very good book indeed. He has employed a
comparative historical focus to explain the very uneven development of
schooling in 19th-century Europe and North America, and more specif-
ically to explain the relative backwardness of education in England and
Wales, especially in the vocational area.... This programme is followed
through and its value outstandingly demonstrated in chapters on the rela-
tionship between education and state formation in Prussia and France, the
USAandEngland....Anysenseofbreathlessnessinthesebriefaccountsis,
though,largely obviated by the tightness and skill with which the theoret-
ical framework is elaborated in and through them and by the vitality and
overall coherence of the interpretations offered.’ – Roger Dale, Journal of
EducationPolicy
‘I think it would be a very exceptional minister, senior civil servant or
directorofeducationwhowouldnotbenefitfromacourseinthehistoryand
philosophyof education with a comparative bias – and from reading Andy
Green.Green’sseminalbooktreatstherelationshipbetweeneducationand
thestate.’–AnneCorbett,TimesEducationalSupplement
‘“The Rise of Education Systems in England, France and USA” – the first
serious,all-embracing,socio-historical,cross-nationalanalysisofthiswhole
phenomenon. In my view this should be required reading for all govern-
ment ministers, whatever their hue or degree of dampness, since it reveals
the historical roots of what has been called “the British disease” which has
landedusatourpresentlevelofrelativebackwardnesssovividly,andindig-
nantly high-lighted by Clause Moser.’ – Brian Simon, Centenary Lecture,
UniversityofNewcastle-upon-Tyne
‘Andy Green’s book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of
the changing role of the state in education provision. It should be read
widely – and particularly by leading policy-makers in all the main political
parties.’–ClydeChitty,Forum
‘In the successive revisions of the National Curriculum, there appears to
havebeenastrongemphasisonkeepinginterestgroupshappyratherthan
developingwell-theorizedcontent.Thisisatendencywhichisanenduring
featureoftheEnglisheducationsystem,accordingtoProfessorAndyGreen,
in his seminal Education and State Formation.’ – Tim Oates, Cambridge
Assessment
Education,EconomyandSociety
Series Editors: Andy Green, Institute of Education, University of London, UK; Lorna Unwin,
InstituteofEducation,UniversityofLondon,UK;KarenMundy,OntarioInstituteforStudiesin
Education,UniversityofToronto,Canada.
Titlesinclude:
AndyGreen
EDUCATIONANDSTATEFORMATION(2ndedition)
Europe,EastAsiaandtheUSA
AndyGreenandJanGermenJanmaat
REGIMESOFSOCIALCOHESION
SocietiesandtheCrisisofGlobalization
MahaShuayb(editor)
RETHINKINGEDUCATIONFORSOCIALCOHESION
InternationalCaseStudies
EmerSmyth,MaureenLyonsandMerikeDarmody(editors)
RELIGIOUSEDUCATIONINAMULTICULTURALEUROPE
Children,ParentsandSchools
Education,EconomyandSociety
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AlsobyAndyGreen
REGIMESOFSOCIALCOHESION:SocietiesandtheCrisisofGlobalisation(withGermJanmaat)
EDUCATIONANDDEVELOPMENTINAGLOBALERA:StrategiesforSuccessful
Globalisation(withothers)
EDUCATION,EQUALITYANDSOCIALCOHESION(withJohnPrestonandGermJanmaat)
HIGHSKILLS:Globalization,CompetitivenessandSkillsFormation
(withPhilBrownandHughLauder)
CONVERGENCEANDDIVERGENCEINEUROPEANEDUCATIONANDTRAININGSYSTEMS
(withAlisonWolfandTomLeney)
WHEREARETHERESOURCESFORLIFELONGLEARNING?(withAnnHodgsonandGarethWilliams)
FURTHEREDUCATIONANDLIFELONGLEARNING:RealigningtheSectorforthe
21stCentury(withNormanLucas)
YOUTHEDUCATIONANDWORK:WorldYearbookonEducation(withLesBash)
EDUCATIONLIMITED:SchoolingandTrainingsince1979(withothers)
Education and State
Formation
Europe, East Asia and the USA
2nd edition
Andy Green
InstituteofEducation,UniversityofLondon,UK
©AndyGreen1990,2013
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Contents
ListofFiguresandTables vi
Introduction 1
1 TheUnevenDevelopmentofNationalEducationSystems
intheWest 11
2 TheSocialOriginsofNationalEducationSystems 35
3 EducationandStateFormation 82
4 EducationandStatisminContinentalEurope 115
5 TheUSExperience:Education,Nationhoodandthe
DecentralizedState 170
6 EnglishEducationandtheLiberalState 204
Conclusion:EducationandStateFormationintheWest 297
Postscript:EducationandStateFormationinEastAsia 305
Notes 386
Bibliography 415
Index 431
v
Figures and Tables
Figures
P.1 TrendsinincomeinequalityinAsia 321
Tables
I.1 Truthtable 7
1.1 Percentageofwhitepopulationenrolled,5–19years,1840 22
1.2 Schoolchildrenaspercentageoftotalpopulation 23
1.3 Studentsaspercentageoftotalpopulation,1850 24
1.4 Ratioofpupilstoteachers 32
1.5 Percentageofadultilliteracy,c.1850 33
1.6 Percentageofadultilliteracy,1878 33
2.1 Regionalenrolmentrates 70
4.1 SocialoriginsofsecondarystudentsinGermanyandFrance
(inpercentages) 129
4.2 Percentageoftimespentoneachsubjectduringseven-year
lycéecoursein1852 159
4.3 Socialoriginsofstudentsinlycéesandcollègesbetween1864
and1868(inpercentages) 166
P.1 RatesofreturntoeducationinEastAsiaandelsewhere 347
P.2 SchoolenrolmentratiosinEastAsiaandotherregions 349
P.3 Averageyearsofschoolingattainedbypopulationover15,
1960and1990,regionsandcountries 349
P.4 PublicexpenditureoneducationasapercentageofGNP,1960
and1989,countriesandregion 350
vi
Introduction
Education and State Formation was originally published in English in 1990,
with subsequent translations into Chinese, Japanese and Greek.1 This –
somewhat belated – second edition provides a welcome opportunity to
correctsomeerrorsintheoriginaltextandtoaddasubstantialnewsection
onEastAsia.
The book originally grew out of my doctoral research, which began
in 1985 as an investigation into the historical origins of certain ‘pecu-
liarities’ in the English education system. In particular, I was interested
in understanding why technical education was relatively underdeveloped
in England by comparison with many continental European states, and
why the impulse towards mass participation in post-compulsory education
appeared to remain rather weak, even a century after the foundation of a
nationaleducationsystem(NES).Itsoonbecameapparentthatthecompar-
ativelyunimpressiveoutcomesofmasseducationformanyyoungpeoplein
England was the effect of a number of systemic characteristics which were
quiteexceptionalbythestandardsofmostNorthernEuropeancountriesand
whichhadtodowiththetraditionally‘liberal’casteoftheBritishstate.
Consequently, and by degrees, the study became a broader comparative
examination of the historical origins of national education systems in
nineteenth-century England, France, Prussia and the United States of
America (USA). Economic development was clearly part of the overall pic-
ture, but the focus became largely on the role of the state in educational
changebecausethatappearedtobethekeyfactorwhichcouldexplainthe
differentialnationalpatternsofeducationaldevelopment.Thecomparative
theorypropoundedinthebooksoughttoexplaintheformationofnational
education systems in the nineteenth century as part of the broader histori-
calprocessof‘stateformation’.Thetermequatestowhathistoriansusedto
refer to as ‘nation-building’ but is preferable in that it avoids the inherent
ambiguityintheterm‘nation’,whichcanreferto‘thepeople’ingeneralor
the‘ethnicgroup’,dependingonthehistoricalperiodortheoreticalpersua-
sion of the user.2 The uneven development of national education, at least
1
2 EducationandStateFormation
in the countries studied, was seen as an expression of the different ways
in which (nation) states were consolidated during the late eighteenth and
earlynineteenthcenturies.Morespecifically,thosestateswhichunderwent
what I have called an ‘intensive’ process of state formation tended to form
nationaleducationsystemsearlierthanotherswhichdidnot.
Anumberofvaluablecriticismsweremadeofthebookwhenitfirstcame
out(whichIhaveaddressedatmorelengthelsewhere).3Somecommentators
rightly pointed out that national-level studies such as this often pay inad-
equate attention to regional variation within states, and this is clearly an
areawheremuchworkneedstobedone,notleastasglobalizationreconfig-
uresthespacialdimensionsoftheworldandrequiresnewunitsofanalysis
in comparative work. There were also objections that state formation is a
somewhatelusive‘portmanteau’concept,involving,ontheonehand,both
the economic and political development of states and, on the other, an
ambiguity around state as political agent and state as ‘nation state’. The
first is, of course, true, although the primary emphasis in the term is on
theconstructionofnationalidentityandpoliticalstatehood.Regardingthe
second, the ambiguity – or rather double entendre – is deliberate and neces-
sarysince,toparaphraseEdwardThompsonontheformationoftheEnglish
workingclass,stateswerepresentattheirownmaking.However,itremains
the case that ‘nation state’ is an inadequate concept, subject to the same
ambiguities as the term ‘nation-building’. Other useful points were made
about the importance of patriarchy in explaining differential educational
development.4
Overall,however,theargumentabouttheroleofeducationinthedevel-
opment of states seems to have been generally accepted and there are, of
course, numerous historical studies of particular countries which similarly
focusontheroleofeducationandnation-building.Iwasfortunateenough
toreadVanHornMelton’sAbsolutismandthe18th-CenturyOriginsofCompul-
sorySchoolinginPrussiaandAustriabeforeIfinishedrevisingmyownoriginal
text,althoughnot,unfortunately,EugenWeber’sgreat1979studyofnation-
buildinginFrance(PeasantsintoFrenchmen:TheModernizationofRuralFrance,
1870–1914).5 Few books have better captured what I would call the epic
drama of national development. Since the publication of my book, other
studiesofeducationandstateformationhaveappeared,including,amongst
the major ones, Wong’s Hegemonies Compared: State Formation and Chinese
School Politics in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong6 and Chia’s The Loss of
‘WorldSoul’?EducationCultureandtheMakingoftheSingaporeDevelopmental
State,1995–2004.7
In retrospect, two decades later, many of the concerns of the book still
seem relevant. In England, debates around education still frequently focus
on the perceived national deficits in outcomes by comparison with many
Europeancountries.Despite‘europeanizing’measures,suchasthenational
curriculum and national testing, which appeared after 1988, there is still
Introduction 3
much that is ‘peculiar’ to the system in England. It has become more
‘centralized’, like many continental states, in terms of government control
over curriculum and assessment, but is still unique in the degree of auton-
omygiventoindividualinstitutions.Infact,thelattersingularityhasbeen
enhanced by the measures for local management of schools and colleges,
school choice and diversity, and other quasi-market reforms introduced
over the past 20 years, and also, more recently, by the proliferation of new
schooltypes,suchasacademiesandfreeschools,whichhavebeenaccorded
even greater levels of autonomy. The debate around the roles of the state
and the market in education still rages on. Several countries have followed
the English lead in introducing more competitive ‘quasi-market’ relations
into education, but England continues to be exceptional in its degree of
adherencetothisparticulardogma.
‘Exceptionalism’isnot,ofcourse,anEnglishmonopoly.Allnationaledu-
cation systems are peculiar in their own ways. Globalization may create
certain trends towards policy convergence in education. Certainly, higher
education is becoming increasingly internationalized, and there is a grow-
ingincidenceofpolicy-borrowingbetweenstates,facilitatedbythegrowing
availability of international data and by the work of supra-national policy
agencies.However,theevidenceisthatnationalsystems,atleastatthecom-
pulsorylevel,arenotdisappearingandnotbecomingmuchmorelikeeach
other.8 Governmentsmaybeincreasinglylosingcontrolovertheirnational
economies but education is one area where they do still seek to pursue
nationalpolicies.9
The policy issues discussed in this book thus do have modern reso-
nances.Nevertheless,EducationandStateFormationisessentiallyanhistorical
study, albeit brought closer to the present by the addition of post-war
East Asian nation-building to the text. The theory applies to particular
stages of national development and not to others. Developed democratic
states increasingly emphasize the economic functions of education, rather
than the ideological ones, at least in relatively ‘normal’ historical periods.
Economic competitiveness has become the major rationale for improved
education in all western states over the past 20 years. By comparison, the
ideologicalroleofschoolinginreinforcingnationalidentityandcitizenship
hasbeenrelativelyunderplayedintheolderdevelopedstates.
Intheolderdevelopeddemocracies,today,educationstillneedstoaddress
issues of cultural reproduction and identity formation. However, in plural-
istic, multinational and multicultural states, this cannot be a question of
formingasingularnationalcultureandidentity.Itisstillimportantforedu-
cation to promote social cohesion and solidarity; never more so, in fact,
than under the socially fragmenting effects of economic globalization. But
education must embrace complex cultures and identities. State formation
should be less about the reproduction of national identity and more about
theformationofactiveandawarecitizensindemocraticsociety.