The stranger within: Luxembourg’s early school system as a European prototype of nationally legitimized international blends (ca. 1794–1844)

Abstract

This comparative analysis of Luxembourg’s early school (law) system reveals the extent to which European school systems reflect “national-cultural idiosyncrasies” apart from “structural isomorphism”. It first examines the legal soil into which the Luxembourg school system was implanted. Legislative pendular swings, reflecting shifts in power relations, cultural–linguistic affinities and so on, determined the direction in which the school system would develop. Indeed, these oscillatory motions had unexpected results, which the second section reveals by presenting similarities with laws that provided inspiration for the Luxembourg law. Despite criticism of Belgian policy, the Grand Duchy’s first school law system was very similar to it. The article then focuses on some key components of the Luxembourg system and identifies a pattern of borrowings: in more strictly administrative and pedagogical matters, the French and Dutch school laws served, while the Belgian school law constituted the reference for matters intersecting with religious interests. This synchronic analysis is extended by a diachronic analysis of the historical evidence for the selective borrowing of key components of the law. The final section suggests that incipient national–cultural particularities are perhaps to be found only on the level of “inner activities” of a school system’s organisation, and that they are the products of national historiography rather than historical features observable from a comparative–perspectivist viewpoint.