Changes in Mass Schooling: ‘school Form’ and ‘grammar of Schooling’ as Reagents

Abstract

During the nineteenth century many European countries proclaimed sovereignty of the people and simultaneously founded their national educational systems. In order to provide public schooling, free and compulsory education was established. Political and sociocultural revolutions led to the rise of nation states, based on democratic or democratic-inspired aspirations, that then turned into ‘teacher states’. Mass schooling and the worldwide — and furthermore enforced — dissemination of this schooling model characterise the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How can one best describe the concrete process of mass schooling? How should it be analysed, and what are the appropriate concepts to do so? How did nations contribute to its dissemination? By tackling these issues from a historical perspective and discussing, in particular, two concepts often addressed for understanding certain aspects of mass schooling — ‘school form’ and ‘grammar of schooling’ — the contributions of this volume shed a new light on the matter.