CHAPTER 9 - Citizenship and the Schooling Debate in the 19th Century

Abstract

This chapter discusses citizenship and the schooling debate in 19th century. The emerging institutional structure constituted a radical, far-reaching revision of the social script that was not easily comprehended; consequently, it took time for a new model of citizenship to develop and win wide acceptance. The chapter discusses the emergence of this new model and discusses how it implied that a new form of childhood socialization— mass schooling—was socially imperative. It also reviews the schooling debate of the first half of the 19th century to show how a consensus on the necessity of state action to promote the new model of citizenship and socialization emerged by the 1840s. Citizenship is the conjunction of basic social units and the polity; in the modern institutional framework, it is the conjunction of the individual and the polity. Correspondingly, the 19th century opened with a strong grassroots schooling movement in which the state played only a very minor role. This movement was not the subject of much public concern; the schooling debate tended to overlook it, focusing instead on whether and how much the state's role in schooling should expand.