Educational Institutions, History of

Abstract

Treatment of the topic in this article is restricted to institutions of general higher, secondary, and elementary education. It is important, however, to be aware that a clear distinction between these levels was not established before the eighteenth century. In the introductory section of the article a distinction between nonformal and formal educational institutions is proposed to characterize educational practice during the classical Greek period, compared with the schools established much earlier in the Sumerian city states or those later founded in the towns bordering the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas during the Hellenistic period. The liberal arts curriculum evolving in these latter schools had a strong impact on the course of studies in the cathedral schools and in the liberal arts faculties of the universities up to the early modern era. This is illustrated for the Middle Ages, focusing on the development of schools and of institutions of higher learning in France and somewhat later in Central Europe (Sect. 2). Section 3 examines the impact of the humanistic movement and of the Reformation on developments in the field of education. Changes in curricular contents and objectives are noted in the teaching of classical literature and languages. The role of the state in the control of educational institutions is considerably strengthened, although their relation to the church remains a close one. In the Protestant regions of northern and Central Europe a spurt in the spreading of literacy is to be observed, but even there, obligatory schooling was fully enforced only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas, in France, universities and colleges of the Ancien Regime were suppressed by imperial order in 1793 and, in their stead professional schools were organized, universities in Central Europe consolidated their dominant position in higher education and succeeded in safeguarding a sphere of autonomous decision making: Section 4 recounts the evolution of the modern university between 1694 (foundation of the University of Halle), 1734 (foundation of the University of Gottingen), and 1810 (foundation of the University of Berlin), a process characterized by, for example, the substitution of Latin by the vernacular as medium of instruction, the introduction of new fields of knowledge, an increasing emphasis on research relative to teaching increasing specialization in both teaching and research, with the consequence of the emergence of new disciplines. These developments affect the role of both teachers and students. Throughout the nineteenth century, remarkable changes are discernible also at the level of elementary education (rising enrolment rates, creation of institutes for the education of elementary teachers) and secondary schools (establishment of different types of secondary schools varying in curricular emphasis, rising enrollment rates for female students, although parity was not achieved until the second half of the twentieth century, expansion of regional and central bureaucracies for both elementary and secondary schools (see Sects. 5 and 6 for parallel developments in England France and Germany)). At the turn of the twentieth century coherent systems of education had emerged in the more developed European nations, representing what has more recently been termed a ‘global model of schooling.’ The thesis that we have been witnessing the ‘formation of a world educational system’ is discussed in the final section, with reference to the activity of international agencies in educational policy and to the situation in developing countries.