Abstract
The social origins of national education systems remains a relatively unexplored question in comparative sociology. Despite the extensive debates about the nature of schooling in the nineteenth century, none of the classical founders of social science provided a systematic analysis of the origins of mass schooling. Saint-Simon, Marx and Weber were all interested in the development of education and made more or less casual allusion to it, but nowhere produced a formal theory. Durkheim, alone of the ‘founding fathers’, devoted a study to it and gave regular lectures on the subject, but he never produced a comparative theory on the scale of his studies of suicide and religion. Modern sociology has only recently begun to fill this gap. However, theoretical studies of the functions of schooling, of which there have been many, have remained largely ahistorical and rarely include a full comparative dimension. Margaret Archer’s two studies of the origins of education systems in France, England, Denmark and Russia, represent a sole, courageous effort to explore the field in depth.1 In the light of considerable advances made in recent years in comparative and historical sociology, this theoretical lacuna is somewhat surprising and leaves one of the most fascinating problems in historical development largely unexplored.
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Notes
M. Archer and M. Vaughan, Social Conflict and Educational Change in England and France, 1789–1848, 1971;
M. Archer, The Social Origins of Education Systems, 1979.
See H. Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, 1931.
C. M. Cipolla, Literacy and Development in the West, 1969, p. 61.
Quoted in J. Cavenagh (ed.), John Stuart and James Mill on Education, 1931, p. 12.
A. J. P. Taylor, The Course of German History, 1982, p. 37.
E. P. Cubberley, Public Education in The United States, 1934.
See E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. G. Simpson, 1933.
E. Durkheim, Education and Sociology, trans. S. D. Fox, 1956, p. 81.
E.Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, 1957, pp. 49–50.
Quoted in H. Haralambos, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 1980, p. 176.
A. H. Halsey et al., Education, Economy and Society, 1961, p. 1.
R. Collins, ‘Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification’, in R. Dale et al., Schooling and the National Interest, 1981, p. 278.
See, for instance, S. Bowles and H. Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 1976.
M. Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England, 1700–1870, 1983.
E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, 1969, p. 173;
D. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial Development In Western Europe From 1750 to the Present, 1969, pp. 339–48.
S. Cotgrove, Technical Education and Social Change, 1958, p. 58.
Sir E. Ashby, ‘Technology and the Academies. An Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution,’ in A. H. Halsey et al., Education, Economy and Society, pp. 446–75; M. J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980, 1984;
G. Allen, The British Disease, 1967;
A. Gamble, Britain in Decline, 1981.
W. W. Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth, 1960, p. 38.
F. K. Ringer, Education and Society in Modern Europe, 1979, pp. 45–52.
For an analysis of the advances of French technical education see: F. B. Artz, The Development of Technical Education in France, 1500–1850, 1966.
E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1977, p. 212.
S. Bowles and H. Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America; M. Katz, The Irony; R. Johnson, ‘Educating the educators: Experts and the State’, in A. P. Donagrodsky (ed.), Social Control in Nineteenth Century England, 1977.
H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1985, p. 117.
Quoted in K. Kumar, Prophecy and Progress, 1983, p. 64.
Quoted in D. Levine, ‘Industrialization and the Proletarian Family in England’, Past and Present, no. 107, May 1985, p. 178. See also E. Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family and Personal Life, 1976;
L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes. Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850, 1987.
F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1969, pp. 172–3.
D. Wardle, English Popular Education, 1780–1975, 1976, p. 87.
R. Johnson, ‘Education and Popular Politics,’ Unit one in H. Cathcart et al., The State and the Politics of Education, Open University reader for E353, Milton Keynes, 1981, p. 30.
J. Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling, 1988.
F. Carlton, Economic Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States, 1820–1850, 1965, p. 34.
S. Hirsch, The Roots of the American Working Class, 1800–1860, 1978, p. 78.
Quoted in M. Katz, Class, Bureaucracy and Schools, 1971, p. 31.
According to Dawley there were two slaves, two servants or tenant farmers and one industrial worker for every five freeholders at the mid-century. See A. Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution, in Lynn, 1976, p. 11.
A. Fishlow, ‘The American School Revival, Fact or Fancy?’ in H. Rosovsky (ed.), Industrialization in Two Systems, 1966, pp. 49–51
M. Archer (ed.), The Sociology of Educational Expansion, 1982, pp. 3–4.
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Green, A. (1990). The Social Origins of National Education Systems. In: Education and State Formation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20709-1_2
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