Education for Some versus Education for All

• In Event: Social Investment in Education: Implications for Equality and Social Solidarity

Abstract

This paper explores the origins of public opinion toward education, and in particular, focuses on whether countries pursue education for some versus education for all. I posit a difference between long-term enduring values and the short-term fluctuations due to shifting hegemonic ideas about education, interest group attention and politicians’ efforts to build reform coalitions (See Busemeyer et. al.) I argue that long-term depictions of education (as well as labor, the state and society), passed down through the symbols and narratives of cultural actors, provide a cultural constraint on reform moments. This is a different mechanism from policy legacies for continuity within institutional change. The first part of the paper explores how eighteenth and nineteenth literary corpora in Britain and Denmark document enduring narratives about education reform that persist through moments of institutional change. The second part of the paper explores how these narratives are echoed in an internet survey of 2100 young people in Britain and Denmark. Historical cultural views of education as are found in literary corpora shed light on choices of education for some versus education for all and these views echo in young people’s contemporary experiences with and attitudes toward education systems.

Author

• Cathie Jo Martin, Boston University