Teaching Social Order: Domestic Conflict, State-Building, & the Spread of Education

• In Event: By Sword and Market: The Comparative Politics of Education Regimes

Abstract

This book begins by documenting that most of the expansion of primary education around the world preceded the spread of democracy—and examines why. I argue that, in 19th-century Europe and Latin America, autocratic regimes conceived mass primary education not so much as a policy tool to promote social mobility or economic development, but as a state-building tool deployed when older forms of forging social order and internal political stability no longer seemed sufficient. Primary schools were designed to teach the masses obedience, discipline, and respect for the state’s authority. Drawing on an examination of the founding moments of state-controlled primary education in Prussia, France, Chile, and Argentina, I show that the main argument that political elites espoused in favor of schooling poor children had to do with the benefits of shaping their minds to control their future political behavior and beliefs and, with that, promote long-term social order and political stability. But these beliefs about the potential benefits of primary education were not sufficient to convince elites to invest in it. Doing so seemed not just costly but also unnecessary during relatively peaceful times. It was the occurrence of domestic conflict threatening the power of the central government that prompted elites at the center to take on the provision of primary education and expand it to unprecedented levels. Large-scale domestic conflict led elites to acknowledge that the traditional ways of maintaining order (e.g. repression and threats of repression) no longer seemed sufficient to deter conflict. In that context, state-controlled primary education emerged not so much to foster economic modernization or appease angry citizens through redistribution but to teach the masses to respect the state’s authority.

Author

• Agustina S Paglayan, UCSD