RAISED TO OBEY

The Prince­ton Economic History of the Western World

Joel Mokyr, Series Editor

A list of titles in this series appears in the back of the book.

 RAISED
TO OBEY
The Rise and Spread of Mass Education

AGUSTINA S. PAGLAYAN

PRINCE­T ON UNIVERSITY PRESS

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PARA MARTÍN
 CONTENTS

List of Figures ix
List of ­Tables xiii
Preface xv
Acknowl­edgments xvii

1 Education and Social Order 1

2 Two Centuries of Mass Education 38
3 Why Do Governments Regulate and Provide Mass Education? 87
4 Internal Threats and Mass Education in ­Europe
and Latin Amer­i­ca 123
5 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums as Instruments
of Social Order 183
6 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument 218
7 Indoctrination in Democracies 247
8 Does Education Promote Social Order? 283
9 The ­Future of Education 310

References 325
Index 345
 FIGURES

1.1. Percentage of countries in the world where the central

government monitors primary school enrollment,
1820–2010 9
1.2. Percentage of countries in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca where
the central government intervenes in primary education, and
type of intervention, 1800–2010 10
1.3. Average primary, secondary, and tertiary enrollment rates
around the world, 1820–2010 13
1.4. Average primary school enrollment rate before and ­after civil
wars and democ­ratization, 1828–2010 15
2.1. Primary school enrollment rates in E ­ urope, the Amer­i­cas, and
the rest of the world, as a percentage of the population ages
5–14 years and as a percentage of the school-­age population,
1820–2010 44
2.2. Historical evolution of primary school enrollment rates, as a
percentage of the population ages 5–14 years, in four E­ uropean
and four Latin American countries 46
2.3. Timing of democ­ratization and timing of state intervention in
primary education in ­Europe, the Amer­i­cas, and the rest of the
world 49
2.4. Distribution of primary school enrollment rates, as a
percentage of the school-­age population, five years before the
first democ­ratization in countries that ever demo­cratized,
1820–2010 51
2.5. Average primary school enrollment rates around the world and
by region, as a percentage of the school-­age population, before
and a­ fter democ­ratization, 1820–2010 52
x | List of Figures

2.6. Timing of industrialization and timing of state intervention in

primary education in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca 66
2.7. Average primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the
school-­age population, before and a­ fter the First and Second
Industrial Revolutions, in E ­ urope and the Amer­i­cas compared
to non-­Western countries, 1820–2010 67
2.8. Average primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage
of the population ages 5–14 years, before and ­after the onset of
interstate wars in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas compared to
non-­Western countries, 1830–2001 74
2.9. Average primary school enrollment rate, as a percentage of the
population ages 5–14 years, before and a­ fter the onset of civil
wars in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, 1828–2010 79
2.10. Primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the
population ages 5–14 years, before and a­ fter select civil wars in
France, Finland, Colombia, and El Salvador 83
2.11. Differential growth of primary school enrollment rates
between countries in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca that
experienced civil war versus countries that did not 85
4.1. Public primary education expenditures, number of primary
schools, and primary school enrollment in France,
1810–1900 147
4.2. Percentage growth in primary school enrollment and in the
number of primary schools a­ fter the Guizot Law of 1833 in
French departments that experienced high, low, or no vio­lence
between 1830 and 1832 150
4.3. Public primary schools maintained by the Chilean central
government, and primary school enrollment, in Atacama and
the rest of Chile, 1859–1878 163
4.4. Public primary schools maintained by the Chilean central
government in the mining provinces of Atacama and
Coquimbo, 1859–1878 166
4.5. Primary school enrollment rates in Argentina and in Latin
Amer­ic­ a, as a percentage of the population ages 5–14 years,
1860–1960 168
4.6. Number of primary schools and primary school enrollment
rates in Buenos Aires compared to the Interior provinces of
Argentina during the oligarchic regime, 1885–1912 179
 List of Figures | xi

5.1. Certification requirements for primary school teachers

according to the first national primary education laws of
­European and Latin American countries 190
5.2. School inspection policies according to the first national
primary education laws of E ­ uropean and Latin American
countries 193
5.3. Compulsory schooling provisions included in the first national
primary education laws of E ­ uropean and Latin American
countries 196
5.4. Mandatory subjects in the curriculum for lower primary
schools according to the first national primary education laws
of ­European and Latin American countries 200
6.1. Average education indoctrination index around the world
across dif­fer­ent types of non-­democratic regimes,
1946–2010 234
7.1. Indoctrination and critical thinking in the education systems
of democracies and autocracies, 1950–2021 278
8.1. Chilean statistics of convicted criminals by literacy status 303
9.1. Frequency of student exposure to diverse viewpoints,
by country, 2021 316
 ­TABLES

5.1. List of mandatory subjects in the national curriculum for

primary schools and for Normal Schools in Argentina and
Chile, circa 1880 210
 PREFACE

I grew up in a f­amily that put my education before every­thing ­else. My

grand­father would insist on its importance while he recounted with g­ reat
sadness the fact that he could not go to secondary school b ­ ecause he needed
to support his f­amily. My ­mother, who managed to raise five c­ hildren on
her own without the income and ­career opportunities that a college de-
gree would have afforded her, paid for an expensive education even though
that meant neglecting more basic needs. The sacrifices they made for me
­were rooted in their conviction that education would open up a world of
opportunities.
Growing up in Argentina, I began to sense contradictions between
what I observed and the narratives we tell ourselves about education sys-
tems at a young age. I was ten years old when I saw how teachers failed to
support my ­brother as he strug­gled to concentrate, eventually leading him
to drop out of high school. That same year I discovered the arbitrariness of
school rules when our fifth-­grade teacher prohibited me from ­going to the
bathroom while we w ­ ere dissecting a fish—­a terrible decision on her part,
which resulted in my throwing up right ­there. If schools ­weren’t available
when struggling kids needed their support, for whom exactly would they
open up a world of opportunities? Who ever thought it was acceptable
for a teacher to keep a child with an upset stomach from g­ oing to the
bathroom?
Despite the contradictions I observed, I bought into the mainstream nar-
rative about the promise of education in the same way that my ­mother and
grandparents did. What I learned in primary school reinforced this narra-
tive. Our education system, we ­were told, was created by Domingo F.
Sarmiento, whose importance in Argentina’s history is such that a national
holiday is dedicated to commemorate him. In school we learned that
xvi | Preface

Sarmiento, “the ­father of education,” wanted ­every individual to have access

to education. He zealously established primary schools all over the country,
founded the first teacher training institution, and traveled to E­ urope to learn
what the most developed nations of the world w ­ ere ­doing to educate chil-
dren. He wrote the country’s first national primary education law, thanks to
which a public primary education system was created. And Argentina’s edu-
cation system became a model for all other Latin American countries
­because it helped promote social mobility like no other.
And then I read Sarmiento’s Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie. In this book,
his most famous written work, Sarmiento blames the recurrence of civil
wars in nineteenth-­century Argentina on the upbringing of the “barbarian”
and “savage” population living in rural areas. This barbarism, he argues,
could be eradicated by changing the environment in which t­ hese ­children
­were raised, using schools to reform their morality and manners so as to
resemble the “elegant” and “civilized” ­children of Buenos Aires.
Sarmiento’s Facundo should have given me a clue about the questions that
had troubled me growing up. But it w ­ asn’t u
­ ntil much l­ ater, when I started
reading about and researching the history of education systems in other
countries, that I began to put the pieces together. This book reflects that
journey.
 ACKNOWL­EDGMENTS

This book is the joint product of my long-­standing interest in education

issues, several years working on education reform and international devel-
opment, and a ­decade of research on education systems. Throughout that
time, many colleagues and friends engaged with my ideas, asking probing
questions and offering thoughtful comments that helped improve the book
and made the ­process of writing it a g­ reat joy.
The initial intuition for the argument I advance in this book emerged—­
unbeknownst to me at the time—­from reading Facundo: Civilización y Bar-
barie as part of the admissions ­process at Universidad de San Andrés. Thanks
to a generous scholarship, an intellectual environment that welcomed my
inquisitive nature, and the mentorship of ­political economist Mariano Tom-
masi and economic historian Roberto Cortés Conde, the years I spent
­there sowed the seeds for a ­career as a researcher and educator.
Still, I took a rather scientific approach to choosing a c­ areer: While I knew
that I would enjoy working at a university, I de­cided to try other paths to
see if I liked anything ­else better. I tested and discarded vari­ous paths be-
fore being truly convinced that becoming a professor was indeed the best
path for me. Each of ­those alternative paths, from the years I spent as a mac-
roeconomist in Argentina to the years I worked on education reform
alongside Emiliana Vegas at the World Bank, ­shaped how I think about the
world in general and about education systems in par­tic­u­lar.
The first serious steps ­toward this book began when I was working on
one of the three studies that formed part of my doctoral dissertation at Stan-
ford University. Ken Scheve, Jeremy Weinstein, James Fearon, and David
Laitin in the Department of P ­ olitical Science, and Susanna Loeb at the
Gradu­ate School of Education, helped me advance my research agenda by
providing the right mix of enthusiasm and straightforward criticism. Above
xviii | Acknowledgments

all, Ken, Jeremy, Jim, and David embraced my interest in education

systems—­even if this was not their area of expertise—­and encouraged me
to follow my gut. Every­one should be so lucky.
I began to put pen to paper only a­ fter I became a professor at the Univer-
sity of California, San Diego. Many colleagues at UCSD read and com-
mented on dif­fer­ent portions of early drafts, provided feedback during
­presentations of the book proj­ect, connected me with resources, or helped
me navigate the mysterious ­process of publishing a book, including Claire
Adida, John Ahlquist, Sam Bazzi, Renee Bowen, Lawrence Broz, Karen
­Ferree, David Fortunato, Francisco Garfias, Peter Gourevitch, Stephan Hag-
gard, Thad Kousser, Sean Ingham, Federica Izzo, David Lake, Megumi Naoi,
Gareth Nellis, Simeon Nichter, Lauren Prather, Sebastián Saiegh, Christina
Schneider, and David Wiens.
A one-­day book workshop in December 2021 led to a significant revision
in the scope and ambition of the book. Christina Schneider hosted the
workshop and Ben Ansell, Thad Dunning, Beatriz Magaloni, David Stasav-
age, and Daniel Ziblatt participated as discussants. I thank them all for carv-
ing out precious time to read and discuss the initial manuscript and for
their perceptive ideas on how to improve it. A subsequent revision also ben-
efited from excellent suggestions from Pablo Beramendi and six anonymous
peer reviewers.
In the course of conducting the research for this book, I had the privi-
lege of presenting my work and receiving valuable feedback from ­political
scientists, economists, historians, and sociologists at Boston University, Co-
lumbia University, a joint Duke-­UNC workshop, Emory University, Harvard
University, Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics,
MIT, New York University, Oxford University, Stanford University, UC Berke-
ley, the University of British Columbia, the University of Gothenburg, the
University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, USC, the University
of V
­ irginia, Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de los Andes, Uni-
versidad de San Andrés, and Yale University, as well as APSA, CIES, RIDGE
Economic History, the Ibero-­American Economic History Webinar, the
Latin American Network in Economic History and ­Political Economy,
Brookings Institution, the Center for Global Development, the Inter-­
American Development Bank, and the World Bank. I thank seminar par-
ticipants at t­ hese institutions, as well as Ran Abramitzky, Katharine Baldwin,
Hoyt Bleakley, Carles Boix, Patricia Bromley, Rachel Brule, Manuel Cabal,
Alberto Díaz-­Cayeros, Alexandra Cirone, Volha Charnysh, Mark Dincecco,
 Acknowledgments | xix

Nick Eubank, Tulia Falleti, Leopoldo Fergusson, Vicky Fouka, Adriane

Fresh, Jeffry Frieden, Daniel Gingerich, Jane Gingrich, Guy Grossman, Anna
Grzymala-­ Busse, Allison Hartnett, Florian Hollenbach, John Huber,
Kimuli Kasara, Alan Jacobs, Steven Levitsky, Johannes Lindvall, Shelley Liu,
David Lopez, Isabela Mares, John Marshall, Daniel Mattingly, Cathie Jo
Martin, John Meyer, Gerardo Munck, María Victoria Murillo, Tomás
Murphy, Harris Mylonas, Tine Paulsen, Melina Platas, Macarena Ponce
de León, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, Adam Przeworski, Didac Quer-
alt, Nicolas Rodriguez Hedenbratt, Pia Raffler, Francisco Ramirez, Martín
Rossi, Arturas Rozenas, Hillel Soifer, Pavithra Suryanarayan, Tariq Thachil,
Omar Wasow, Htet Thiha Zaw, and Yang-­Yang Zhou. I also thank the Amer-
ican ­Political Science Review for allowing me to use materials I previously
published in that journal, and the APSR editors and anonymous reviewers
for helping me identify key questions that a broader book on the ­political
history of mass education should address.
The book reflects my own original research and also builds on the impor­
tant work of many historians who have studied the education systems of
their home countries. I have done my best to give them credit in ­these pages,
but ­because I began reading history of education books well before it ever
occurred to me that I would write my own book on this topic, I did not
initially keep track of all the historians whose work has ­shaped my own
thinking. For that, I apologize.
The case study of Argentina in chapter 4 benefited from historical statis-
tics that ­were digitized and generously shared by Roy Elis. The cross-­national
analy­sis in chapter 7 draws on the Va­ri­e­ties of ­Political Indoctrination in
Education and the Media Dataset, which I coauthored. I thank Anja Neun-
dorf, who led the creation of this dataset, for giving me early access to it.
For funding that enabled the research for this book, I thank the Stanford
Interdisciplinary Gradu­ate Fellowship, the Stanford King Center on Global
Development, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the
­Europe Center at Stanford University, the Center for Global Development,
the Hellman Fellowship, and UCSD’s Yankelovich Center Book Improve-
ment Grant, the School of Global Policy and Strategy, the Department of
­Political Science, and the School of Social Sciences.
I am also indebted to my students, including ­those who provided invalu-
able research assistance—­Audrey Byrne, Leonardo Falabella, Tomás Lava-
dos, Katy Norris, Lindsay Van Horn, and Samuel Williams—­and many
­others who have helped me improve my ability to promote critical thinking
xx | Acknowledgments

in the classroom. I hope this book w ­ ill give them a better understanding
of why I put so much emphasis on this.
At Prince­ton University Press, I want to thank Eric Crahan, Alena Chek-
anov, and especially Bridget Flannery Mc-­Coy for their enthusiasm for this
proj­ect, for helping me understand the book publication ­process, and for
their guidance and excellent suggestions on how to improve the manuscript.
I also thank Jill Harris for ensuring a smooth production ­process and Karen
Verde for careful and timely copyediting. Fi­nally, I was fortunate to receive
brilliant feedback from Joel Mokyr, to whom I remain grateful for includ-
ing the book in a series I hold in the highest regard.
I am grateful to friends from all walks of life—­scattered across Argen-
tina, Canada, Chile, the United States, Uruguay, and ­Europe—­for their con-
stant encouragement. Their interest in reading the book provided a boost
of enthusiasm and disciplined me to write it in a clear and accessible way.
My f­amily, too, supported me through this adventure. My s­ister Emilia,
Dona, my ­mother, her parents, my b ­ rothers, Fafi, my in-­laws, and my nieces
and nephews have all contributed to this book in more ways than they know.
My deepest gratitude goes to Martín, who in addition to helping me
improve this book with his sharp mind and careful read of e­ very draft, is
the most loving, patient, and supportive husband. T ­ here is no one ­else
with whom I would rather share this precious journey. This book is dedi-
cated to him.
RAISED TO OBEY
 CHAPTER ONE

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL ORDER

Education can be a power­ful policy tool to reduce poverty and income

­inequality. This much is widely conceded. Yet in many countries around
the world, the schools that low-­ income families access fail to teach
­children the skills they need to escape poverty. Although most countries
have attained universal access to primary education, about one-­third of
­children with four years of schooling are unable to read a s­imple sen-
tence. The most common explanation for such dismal learning is that
governments simply do not know how to promote skills among c­ hildren.
This line of thinking has spurred hundreds of expensive studies designed
to identify which education policies work best to promote skills. I depart
from this approach by looking at the p ­ olitical history of public primary
education systems to determine what motivated governments to provide
education to the lower classes in the first place. ­Were t­ hese systems set up
to reduce poverty and i­ nequality, or did they seek to accomplish a dif­fer­
ent set of goals?
Two major historical transformations that took place in the last two
centuries have ­shaped the character of modern education systems. First,
breaking with the tradition of leaving the upbringing of ­children entirely
to parents, local communities, and churches, central governments in the
nineteenth c­ entury began to intervene directly in the education of c­ hildren,
establishing rules about educational content, teacher training, and school
inspections, and mandating c­hildren to attend state-­regulated schools.
Second, ­these state-­regulated primary education systems expanded in size
and eventually reached the entire population. While in the early twenti-
eth ­century only a handful of countries had universal access to primary
2 | Chapter 1

education, ­today this is the norm virtually everywhere. What prompted

the expansion of primary education systems, and why did states become
involved in regulating them?
Much of what has been written in the last half c­ entury points to democ­
ratization, industrialization, and military competition as key ­factors that
prompted governments to expand primary education largely to improve the
literacy, numeracy, or other skills of the population. T ­ hese explanations,
we ­will see, do not adequately account for why the Western socie­ties of
­Europe and the Amer­i­cas led this expansion. What’s more, many existing
explanations ­either forget or ignore where education systems come from.
They assume, for instance, that ­because education systems ­today have the
potential to reduce income ­inequality, promote economic growth, or con-
tribute to military strength, they must have become p ­ opular among poli-
cymakers for ­these reasons—­and must have been designed to accomplish
­these goals. Or they assume, alternatively, that ­because education systems
­today often seek to inculcate nationalism, they must have emerged for this
reason. I do something dif­fer­ent by ­going back in time to examine what
the long history of state-­regulated primary education can tell us about the
systems we have ­today.
Looking at history teaches us that central governments in Western socie­
ties took an interest in primary education first and foremost to secure so-
cial order within their territory. Fear of internal conflict, crime, anarchy, and
the breakdown of social order, coupled with the perception that traditional
policy tools such as repression, re­distribution, and moral instruction by the
Church ­were increasingly insufficient to prevent vio­lence, led governments
to develop a national primary education system. Central governments went
to ­great lengths to place the masses in primary schools u ­ nder their control
out of concern that the “unruly,” “savage,” and “morally flawed” masses posed
a grave danger to social order and, with that, to ruling elites’ power. The
state would not survive, education reformers argued, ­unless it successfully
transformed ­these so-­called savages into well-­behaved ­future citizens who
would obey the state and its laws.
State-­regulated primary education systems, then, emerged fundamentally
as a state-­building tool. State-­building, understood as the p ­ rocess of con-
solidating the power of a centralized ­political authority commonly known
as the state, is a multifaceted ­process that unfolded over many centuries. Wars
between dif­fer­ent rulers played a role in driving this p­ rocess, leading rulers
to invest in creating a centralized taxation apparatus that could be used to
 Education and Social Order | 3

finance a permanent army.1 But external threats w ­ ere not the only f­ actor
affecting the consolidation of central rulers, and armies w ­ ere not the only
mechanism by which they sought to enhance ­political control. Mass vio­
lence within the bound­aries of a central ruler’s territory also posed a chal-
lenge to the ruler’s effort to develop a mono­poly over the legitimate use
of vio­lence. While rulers deployed the army, and ­later, police forces, to
repress the disorderly masses, internal threats also motivated them to in-
vest in primary education systems designed to forge social order through
indoctrination.
Key to this state-­building endeavor was the effort to inculcate a set of
moral princi­ples that exalted the value of obedience and rejected the indi-
vidual use of vio­lence. E ­ very aspect of primary education systems was crafted
to teach ­children to obey existing rules and authorities, and accept the sta-
tus quo. National curriculums emphasized moral education more than they
emphasized skills or the cultivation of nationalist sentiment. Teacher train-
ing and certification policies focused on recruiting teachers of exemplary
moral character who could model good be­hav­ior in the classroom and local
community. Centralized inspection systems attempted to safeguard a gen-
eral atmosphere of discipline and order in schools.
Primary education systems, then, w ­ ere conceived as part of a repertoire of
policy tools used by the state to consolidate its power. The ability to pro-
mote social order and prevent vio­lence lies at the core of what defines a state
and what gives it legitimacy, so much so that socie­ties afflicted by recurring
internal conflict are usually termed “failed states.” Throughout ­human his-
tory, ­those with ­political power have turned to three main strategies—­
repression, concessions, and indoctrination—to maintain and consolidate
not only social order but also the existing ­political order—­the status quo, so to
speak, in terms of who holds ­political power and who is subjected to that
power. Physical repression is the most obvious of ­these strategies: the threat
or ­actual use of force can often persuade p ­ eople to do or refrain from d
­ oing
something. It is no coincidence that in premodern socie­ties, and in many
socie­ties ­today, ­political power has often been concentrated in the hands of
­those who have the greatest capacity to repress o ­ thers.
Concessions are another common strategy used to promote social order
and acquiescence. Concessions—­ material, institutional, or symbolic—­
seek to reduce the reasons for fighting against the status quo by directly

1. Levi (1988); Tilly (1990); Dincecco (2011); Queralt (2022).

4 | Chapter 1

addressing the prob­lems and injustices that prompt p ­ eople to fight. An

extreme form of concession entails redistributing p ­ olitical power—­changing
the status quo—­but ­there are many other less radical concessions that can
promote social order without fundamentally altering the balance of power.
Redistributing economic resources to less affluent sectors of society or im-
proving the quality of ­people’s lives by providing public ­services they
value are examples of concessions that can reduce the incentives to fight, at
least in the short term.
­Because public education t­oday is often highly prized by families seek-
ing to improve their ­children’s job prospects, its provision is usually con-
ceptualized as a progressive policy tool that governments use when they
want to improve the lives of less affluent members of society. Indeed, one
of the reasons why the United Nations advocates for education provision in
post-­conflict settings is to address economic grievances that, if left unad-
dressed, could lead to a recurrence of vio­lence.2 However, during its early
stages, mass education was rarely conceived as a concession to appease re-
bellious sectors of society or address societal demand. In fact, many central
governments made efforts to expand education despite their perception that
parents largely objected to sending their ­children to school.3
The emergence of public primary education systems targeted at the
masses—­not secondary education or universities, which u ­ ntil recently ­were
­limited to elites—­fits into a third type of strategy used to promote social
order: indoctrination. If physical repression seeks to reduce the probability
that ­those who fight against the established order w ­ ill succeed, and conces-
sions seek to reduce the probability of conflict by addressing the grievances
that make ­people angry, mass education systems emerged to convince ­people
that the status quo was actually okay, that t­ here was no reason to rebel against
it, and that accepting and respecting the status quo would elevate them mor-
ally and earn them praise from ­others. T ­ hese systems ­were designed to
fulfill a task that churches had been fulfilling for centuries: to mold
­children’s hearts and minds to make them loyal subjects—­but loyalty to
God was replaced by loyalty to the state, the priest became a teacher certi-
fied by the state, and the t­ emple became a school regulated and inspected
by the state.

2. UNESCO (2011), pp. 160–171.

3. Andersson and Berger (2019); Squicciarini and Voigtländer (2016); Cinnirella and Hornung
(2016); Baker (2015); Tapia and Martinez-­Galarraga (2018); Cvrcek and Zajicek (2019).
 Education and Social Order | 5

The idea that primary education systems in Western socie­ties ­were origi-
nally designed to indoctrinate may be difficult to fathom for some readers.
­Today, the word “indoctrination” has a strongly negative connotation, espe-
cially in developed democracies, where it is usually reserved to describe the
brainwashing that takes place in totalitarian communist or fascist regimes.
But in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, education
­philosophers and reformers in the United States would routinely and openly
talk about the impor­tant indoctrination goal of schools. It was only a­ fter
World War I that they gradually s­ topped using the word to describe their
own systems and started talking instead about the “socialization” function
of schools.4 What they meant by socialization, however, was precisely what
indoctrination means according to the Oxford American Dictionary, which
defines indoctrination as “the ­process of teaching a person or group to ac-
cept a set of beliefs uncritically.” This is the definition I adopt. It implies
that one can indoctrinate c­ hildren to believe that their ruler was chosen by
God and therefore deserves absolute obedience, to believe that they belong
to a superior group that should exterminate all o ­ thers, or to believe that
they should give all their property to their ruler. But it also implies that one
can indoctrinate ­children to believe that poverty can be overcome through
hard work, that one should only express discontent through nonviolent
means, or that democracy is the best ­political system in the world. What
makes something indoctrination is not the content being taught; what char-
acterizes indoctrination is that the ­process of teaching this content leaves
no room for questioning or critical thinking.5
This characterization of education as a policy tool deployed for social con-
trol ­will surely encounter initial ­resistance from ­those who believe that
schools should give us the power and capabilities to pursue our goals and

4. The Oxford American Dictionary defines socialization as “the p ­ rocess of learning to behave in
a way that is acceptable to society.” But who decides what constitutes be­hav­ior that is acceptable
“to society”—is it members of society at large or only a few elites? For example, when oppressed
groups who have no formal voice in politics are taught that they should not use vio­lence to make
demands, is the “acceptable be­hav­ior” that is being taught one that serves societal interests or one
that serves the interests of power­ful elites who benefit from the status quo?
5. For a summary of how the usage of the word “indoctrination” has changed over time in the
United States, see Gatchel (1959). See also the influential speech delivered in 1932 before the Pro-
gressive Education Association by George S. Counts, Columbia University professor and former
president of the American Federation of Teachers (Counts 1932). A more recent discussion of how
indoctrination is defined by philosophy of education experts—­supportive of how the word is
used in this book—­appears in Callan and Arena (2009).
6 | Chapter 1

dreams. I should therefore clarify at once that ­there is no doubt in my mind

that schools should seek to empower us to lead autonomous lives. But the
main question that this book examines is not a normative one. I am not
asking what goals should guide the design of education policies. I am ask-
ing what goals actually guided the design of primary education systems. Was
an interest in empowering ordinary ­people what usually motivated states
to promote primary education for the lower classes? Historically, the answer
has been no. When central governments in Western socie­ties de­cided to take
over and increase the provision of primary schools for the poor, in general
they ­were not particularly interested in equipping them with the capabili-
ties to live autonomous, prosperous lives. In fact, it was not uncommon for
national elites who supported primary schooling to argue that primary
schools should refrain from promoting social mobility. What usually brought
elites together around proposals for mass education was a deep fear that
their power was at risk and a conviction that they could mitigate that risk
by teaching the masses what to believe and how to behave.
As a strategy for maintaining social order, indoctrinating ­children to ac-
cept the state’s unquestioned authority had primarily long-­term goals. Six-­
year-­olds who quarreled with each other, rolled their eyes at the teacher, or
spoke without permission ­were not themselves considered an imminent
threat to society. What elites feared was the danger that ­these ­children would
pose as adolescents and adults if their habits and manners ­were not re-
formed. The bet that elites made was that investing in c­ hildren’s moral
education ­today would lessen the need for repression and concessions to-
morrow, simply b ­ ecause ­there would be fewer episodes of social disorder
to begin with.
The argument that education systems have social control goals w ­ ill
be familiar to some readers. However, this argument never had much in-
fluence outside of sociology, and even t­here, it lost ground in recent
­decades.6 Some critics dismiss it as a “cynical” interpretation of history.7
The heavier blow, however, has come from critics who claim that social con-

6. Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Émile Durkheim are among the most influential writ-
ers associated with social control theories of education. For a synthesis of ­these and other sociolo-
gists’ contributions, see Nash (1990); Filloux (1993); Jasper (2005); and Van den Berg and Janoski
(2005).
7. Lindert (2004), p. 99.
 Education and Social Order | 7

trol theories suffer from “evidentiary failure.”8 This book revives t­ hese theo-
ries by providing a wealth of evidence that social control goals w­ ere, in fact,
at the heart of the rise and spread of primary education systems in Western
socie­ties. Furthermore, the book refines this class of theories by bringing
back and clarifying the impor­tant role that states played in designing and
deploying this policy tool—­shedding light on when, why, and how states
advanced social control goals through mass education.9
Why should we care about the origins of state-­regulated primary educa-
tion systems? Perhaps most impor­tant, ­because they remain deeply embed-
ded in the character of modern education systems. The World Bank has de-
cried that the developing world f­aces a “learning crisis” characterized by
the failure of education systems to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills,
while the OECD has warned developed countries of the need to abandon
rote learning and encourage critical thinking skills. Donors have invested
millions of dollars in studies that seek to identify which education policies
can address the prob­lem of ­limited skills acquisition among students.10 De-
parting from this focus on the limitations of current education policies,
this book offers a broader perspective that highlights the deep historical
roots of modern education systems’ lackluster ­performance with teaching
skills. It suggests that a key reason ­behind this phenomenon is that central
governments did not create or design primary education systems with the
aim of improving the basic skills of the population, much less their critical
thinking skills. While the goals of education have expanded over time, and
many education systems t­ oday do have the explicit goal of promoting skills,
the ­political motivations ­behind education reform have changed less than
we might think. ­Today, like in the nineteenth ­century, classrooms remain
­organized in similar ways—­centered around the authority of the teacher
rather than the interests of the child—­with docility and obedience remain-
ing impor­tant goals of mass schooling.

8. Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer (1985), p. 154. Interestingly, t­ hese critics rejected social control theo-
ries of education without providing any evidence against them.
9. The state is notably absent from Bourdieu’s work (Van den Berg and Janoski 2005). Foucault,
despite writing extensively about the disciplinary function of schools, famously argued for the
need to move away from a focus on the actions of the state (Foucault 1995). Norbert Elias’s influ-
ential book, The Civilizing ­Process, surprisingly neglects the effort that states made through pri-
mary education to teach ­children to self-­regulate their emotions and be­hav­ior in order to reduce
vio­lence in public spaces (Elias 1994).
10. World Bank (2018).
8 | Chapter 1

THE EMERGENCE AND EXPANSION OF MASS EDUCATION SYSTEMS

The history of mass education systems can teach us a lot about why ­these
systems look the way they do ­today. By examining when ­these systems
emerged, why they expanded, and what shape they took, we ­will be able
to say something about why mass education systems became a feature of
modern states and why a teacher-­centered approach to education became
the norm.

EMERGENCE OF MASS EDUCATION SYSTEMS

To understand why state-­regulated primary education systems emerged, we
need data that enable us to track when central governments around the
world began to intervene in primary education. Intervention often takes
many dif­fer­ent forms, including regulation, funding, and monitoring of pri-
mary education. I use two dif­fer­ent datasets to identify the timing of vari­
ous types of intervention. The first dataset covers 111 countries and includes
information about the year when the central government of a sovereign
country or its preceding colonial regime began to monitor primary educa-
tion systems and, in par­tic­u­lar, student enrollment. Monitoring enrollment
allows governments to track the pro­gress made in promoting primary
­education and can be used to inform decisions about where to fund or
construct new schools. To complement this information, for a subset of
thirty-­three countries in Western ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca I also col-
lected detailed data about other forms of intervention, such as the year
when central governments began to fund primary schools, regulate the
curriculum and teacher certification, mandate universal provision, and
establish compulsory schooling.
As a way of introducing the data, figure 1.1 shows the percentage of coun-
tries in E
­ urope and the Amer­ic­ as on one hand and in the rest of the world
on the other, where the central government monitored primary school en-
rollment from 1800 to the pre­sent. From the picture we can see that, while
in 1800 no central government in the world made systematic efforts to col-
lect information about primary school enrollment rates, all of them do so
­today. The figure also shows that in E ­ urope and the Amer­i­cas, central gov-
ernments took an interest in monitoring primary education much ­earlier
than in other parts of the world. Indeed, while all central governments in
­Europe and the Amer­i­cas ­were already collecting information about pri-
 Education and Social Order | 9

100

80 Europe and the Americas

60
Percent

40
Rest of the world

20

0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Figure 1.1. Percentage of countries in the world where the central government
monitors primary school enrollment, 1820–2010. See text and footnotes for
sources and methodology.

mary school enrollment before the end of the nineteenth ­century, it took
­until the mid-­twentieth c­ entury for the rest of the world to catch up.
In addition to monitoring the pro­gress made in promoting primary ed-
ucation, the nineteenth ­century saw the emergence of additional forms of
central government intervention in primary education in Western socie­ties.
In figure 1.2 we can see what percentage of central governments in E ­ urope
and Latin Amer­i­ca provided funding for primary education, imposed a na-
tional curriculum, became involved in certifying and / or directly training
teachers, and passed a compulsory education law, again from 1800 to the pre­
sent. The figure also shows what percentage of central governments regu-
lated primary education in any of ­these or other ways such as monitoring
enrollment, mandating local governments to provide universal access to pri-
mary education, or abolishing school fees for the poor. While in the United
States and Canada most of the regulation of primary education happens at
the subnational level, figure 1.2 shows that by the end of the nineteenth
­century, all ­European and Latin American countries not only monitored
10 | Chapter 1

100

80

60
Percent

40

20

0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
Any state regulation of primary education State funding
State regulation of teaching National curriculum
Inspection of enrollment Compulsory primary education

Figure 1.2. Percentage of countries in E

­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca where the cen-
tral government intervenes in primary education, and type of intervention, 1800–
2010. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

enrollment in primary schools but also provided funding to promote pri-

mary education, regulated the certification and / or training of teachers, and
imposed a national primary school curriculum. In fact, each of ­these forms
of state intervention tended to precede central governments’ efforts to mon-
itor enrollment. Compulsory schooling laws ­were the last form of state
intervention to be introduced, but by 1900, 70 ­percent of E ­ uropean and
Latin American countries had a compulsory schooling law, and all did so
by the 1920s.
While ­today we take for granted that central governments shape the ed-
ucation of young ­children in some way, figures 1.1 and 1.2 make it clear that
state intervention in primary education is a relatively recent phenomenon
in ­human history. Before states became involved, the task of educating
­children usually fell u ­ nder the responsibility of parents and religious
­organizations. However, starting with a few ­European countries in the eigh­
teenth ­century, a major transformation took place: central governments
began to play an increasing role in educating ­children. The move ­toward
the creation of state-­regulated primary education systems was led by ­Europe
 Education and Social Order | 11

and the Amer­i­cas during the nineteenth ­century, and eventually spread to
the rest of the world during the twentieth c­ entury.

EXPANSION OF MASS EDUCATION SYSTEMS

The second major educational transformation, one that accompanied the
state’s emerging regulatory role, was the expansion of access to primary
schooling. Access to education is typically m ­ easured by enrollment rates—­
the total number of students enrolled in primary school as a proportion
of the population ages 5–14 years or as a proportion of the school-­age pop-
ulation. Enrollment rates are not a perfect m ­ easure, but they are the most
common m ­ easure of education provision used to study the history of pri-
mary education systems b ­ ecause of their availability: almost all countries
have collected and reported student enrollment figures for a long time.11
The same cannot be said of statistics about the number of schools or the
level of public spending on education, whose availability varies a lot more
across countries and over time.
To examine how access to primary education changed in Western socie­
ties over time, I collected primary school enrollment statistics for forty-­two
countries in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas from 1828 to the pre­sent. Collecting
enrollment statistics ­going far back in time was a major undertaking that
involved consulting a large number of primary and secondary sources. This
effort yielded a new dataset that covers a longer time period for E ­ urope and
the Amer­ic­ as than any other previously assembled cross-­country dataset. To
compare how enrollment evolved in Western socie­ties and the rest of the
world, I complement my original dataset with a dataset on enrollment com-
piled by economic historians Jong-­Wha Lee and Hanol Lee.12 The main
difference between my dataset and theirs reflects the trade-­offs that are in-
volved in this type of time-­consuming data collection proj­ect: While their
dataset includes information from 111 countries across all regions, mine has
more complete historical coverage of Western countries during the nine-
teenth c­ entury. For example, my dataset contains four additional d ­ ecades of
historical data for Austria, Germany, and Norway; two additional d ­ ecades

11. A child’s enrollment in school depends not only on w ­ hether ­there is a school nearby but
also on w
­ hether families have any reason to send their c­ hildren to school. B
­ ecause primary school-
ing is compulsory everywhere, and has been for a very long time, it is reasonable to assume that
any statistics that fall below universal primary enrollment are likely to be driven by ­limited
access.
12. Lee and Lee (2016).
12 | Chapter 1

for Costa Rica, ­Ecuador, France, and Spain; and one additional d ­ ecade for
Argentina, Brazil, and ­England. On the other hand, Lee and Lee’s dataset
covers all regions, especially from 1900 on.13 Together, both datasets enable
us to examine global patterns of educational expansion over a longer pe-
riod than what has been pos­si­ble when relying on enrollment statistics from
UNESCO or other sources.
To illustrate some basic facts about the global history of mass education,
figure 1.3 depicts enrollment rates from 1820 on. The graph on the left shows
the mean enrollment rate in primary, secondary, and tertiary education
around the world.14 The graph on the right focuses exclusively on primary
school enrollment rates, comparing the world mean with the regional
means of ­Europe and Latin Amer­ic­ a using my dataset.15
Three basic facts are worth highlighting. First, the global expansion of
primary education unfolded gradually throughout roughly two centuries
from the 1800s to the new millennium, a period that also saw other major
transformations such as the spread of democracy, the transition of many
economies from agrarian to industrial, and the rise of ­independent postco-
lonial states in Latin Amer­ic­ a, Africa, and Asia. While in the 1850s only one
in ten ­children ­were enrolled in primary schools worldwide, by 1940 a ma-
jority of c­ hildren had access to schooling, and t­oday, almost all countries
provide universal or near-­universal primary education. Notice how gradual
and steady the expansion of primary education was, unlike the spread
of democ­ratization, which occurred in waves,16 or progressive taxation of
wealth, which took off ­after World Wars I and II.17

13. Although Lee and Lee estimate enrollment rates for all 111 countries from 1820 to 2010, the
vast majority of nineteenth-­century rates are extrapolated. For example, only nine countries in
their dataset have non-­extrapolated information before 1870, compared to seventeen countries in
my dataset.
14. The data for this graph come from Lee and Lee (2016).
15. The data for this graph come from my original dataset as well as Lee and Lee (2016). I
­measure primary school enrollment as a proportion of the population ages 5–14 years, whereas
Lee and Lee m ­ easure it as a proportion of the school-­age population. The population ages
5–14 years is usually larger than the school-­age population; the latter ranges from ages 6–12, 6–11,
5–11, ­etc. Therefore, enrollment rates computed as a proportion of the population ages 5–14 years
­will not only be smaller than t­ hose computed as a proportion of the school-­age population, but
also, they are unlikely to ever reach 100 ­percent, even when ­there is universal enrollment in pri-
mary education. Enrollment rates as a proportion of the school-­age population can be easier to
interpret, but they are also less accurate. This is b
­ ecause, while most historical censuses report the
number of inhabitants ages 5–14 years, the same is not true for the school-­age population, which
can only be estimated by making assumptions about the age distribution of the population.
16. Huntington (1991).
17. Scheve and Stasavage (2016).
 Education and Social Order | 13

a) Enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary education b) Enrollment in primary education

100 100
Percent of school-age population

Percent of school-age population

Percent of population 5–14 years
80 60
80

60 60
40

40 40
20
20 20

0 0 0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
Primary Secondary Tertiary Europe (left) Latin America (left)
World (right) Developing world excl. Latin America (right)

Figure 1.3. Average primary, secondary, and tertiary enrollment rates around the world,
1820–2010. Panel (a) shows average enrollment rates around the world in primary, sec-
ondary, and tertiary education institutions, as a percentage of the school-­age popula-
tion. Panel (b) shows average primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the
population ages 5–14 years and as a percentage of the school-­age population, around
the world and in E­ urope, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the rest of the developing regions. See text
and footnotes for sources and methodology.

Second, primary education became widely available ­earlier than secondary

and tertiary education. While much expansion of primary education
took place during the nineteenth ­century, secondary and tertiary education
only began to expand during the second half of the twentieth c­ entury. Up
­until that point, secondary and tertiary education ­were reserved and
­intended only for wealthy families; the lower classes only had access to
primary education.
Third, in addition to leading the global rise of centralized education in-
tervention and regulation, the Western socie­ties of ­Europe and the Amer­i­
cas also led the expansion of access to primary education. E ­ urope led the
expansion of primary schooling around the world. Several E ­ uropean coun-
tries began to regulate and provide primary education to the lower classes
already in the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, before statis-
tics became available. The leader was Prus­sia, which established comprehen-
sive education regulations in 1763 and developed a worldwide reputation
for having a model primary education system—­all while still maintaining
an absolutist regime and an agrarian economy. By around 1850, a majority
of ­children in ­Europe ­were already enrolled in primary school, almost a
­century before the world reached this milestone. The United States and Can-
ada followed ­Europe’s lead in the early nineteenth ­century and eventually
14 | Chapter 1

surpassed it in terms of the quantity of provision. Latin Amer­ic­ a came next:

central governments began expanding primary education in the second half
of the nineteenth c­ entury, several d
­ ecades ­after ­independence. By the 1930s,
a majority of school-­age ­children in Latin Amer­i­ca had access to primary
school. The rest of the developing world lagged considerably ­behind Latin
Amer­i­ca.

A PATTERN THAT NEEDS AN EXPLANATION

What drove the expansion of mass education in the Western world? To bet-
ter understand this expansion, we can look at how primary school enroll-
ment rates evolved within countries following impor­tant changes in their
­political, economic, or social conditions. We can ask, for instance: ­Were tran-
sitions to democracy, the rise of an industrial economy, or the need to wage
war with other countries followed by increased provision of primary edu-
cation? How did the provision of primary education change in the wake of
internal conflicts that made elites fearful of a breakdown of social order?
Knowing when a country’s primary school enrollment rate accelerated,
stalled, or declined can help us identify which ­factors drove the expansion
of primary schooling, which ones did not, and why.
Assessing the degree to which dif­fer­ent ­political, economic, and social
­factors drove the expansion of primary schooling in Western socie­ties ­will
be the task of chapter 2, but figure 1.4 previews one of the main patterns
identified in that chapter and explained in the rest of the book. The graph
on the left-­hand side shows how primary school enrollment rates changed
on average within ­European and Latin American countries before and ­after
they experienced a type of internal conflict that is known to bring about
considerable ­political instability and concerns about the state’s viability:
civil wars pitting the masses against the state. To contextualize the role of
internal conflict relative to the role of other f­ actors commonly proposed as
triggers of educational expansion, the graph on the right shows how enroll-
ment changed within countries before and ­after they became demo­cratic.
The pattern that emerges is clear: Violent internal conflict was followed
by an acceleration in primary school enrollment rates not seen ­after transi-
tions to democracy—­and, as we w ­ ill see in chapter 2, not seen e­ ither a­ fter
interstate wars or the transition to an industrial economy. Starting with en-
rollment rates before and ­after a civil war took place, we see a marked ac-
celeration in primary school coverage ­after the occurrence of a civil war. In
chapter 2 we w­ ill examine t­ hese empirical patterns in greater depth and see
 Education and Social Order | 15

a) Enrollment and civil war b) Enrollment and democratization

35 Before After Before After
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

civil war civil war 60 democratization democratization

30
55

25
50

20 45

15 40
–20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20 –20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20
Years since civil war Years since democratization

Figure 1.4. Average primary school enrollment rate before and ­after civil wars and democ­
ratization, 1828–2010. This figure reports average enrollment rates as a percentage of the
population ages 5–14 years in the twenty years before and the twenty years ­after a coun-
try’s first civil war or first transition to democracy from 1828–2010, across all E
­ uropean
and Latin American countries that experienced civil war or democ­ratization during that
period. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

that, indeed, civil wars that pitted one or more groups against the state led to
the expansion of mass schooling in ­Europe and Latin Amer­ic­ a. By contrast,
when we compare education patterns before and a­ fter democ­ratization, we
see that, in general, t­here was no acceleration; enrollment rates grew at
about the same rate ­after democ­ratization as they did before.18
The main point is not that civil wars specifically w­ ere a key driver b­ ehind
the expansion of mass schooling. The occurrence of civil wars simply pro-
vides us with a straightforward way to identify situations in which central
governments felt threatened by the power of mass vio­lence to upset the sta-
tus quo. But ­there are many other situations where governments can feel
this threat, too. Throughout the book we ­will consider a wide range of ad-
ditional types of internal conflict, from food riots and mass protests to
peasant revolts and revolutions, that also prompted the expansion of mass
schooling, the introduction of a new curriculum, or some other centralized
education intervention expected to pacify the population. The general story
that all this evidence points to is the crucial role that elites’ fears about the
breakdown of social order have played in catalyzing education reform.

18. The effect of democ­ratization on primary school enrollment rates is not the focus of this
book, but I have published an in-­depth study on this effect elsewhere; see Paglayan (2021).
16 | Chapter 1

MASS EDUCATION AS A STATE-­BUILDING TOOL

Understanding why Western states led the world in creating and expand-
ing primary education systems requires unpacking the goals of ­these sys-
tems and the conditions u ­ nder which they became a priority. Although
­primary education systems pursue multiple goals, I argue that the main goals
guiding their creation and expansion ­were ­political, not economic. And
while schools can pursue many ­political goals, from teaching a specific par-
tisan ideology to cultivating nationalist sentiments of superiority over
other countries, I show that a key goal guiding the development of primary
education systems was to promote internal peace and order and, with that,
preserve the ­political status quo and consolidate the state’s authority.
Education can in princi­ple pacify disadvantaged members of society by
imparting knowledge and teaching skills to obtain better jobs, thus address-
ing the economic inequalities that might other­wise lead p ­ eople to rebel
against the status quo. I argue that this was not the main goal of primary
education systems in Western socie­ties. ­These systems sought to pacify the
population by instilling in p ­ eople the importance of behaving well and
­accepting their place in society. If ­people learned to re­spect rules and au-
thority figures from a young age, education reformers reasoned, they would
continue d ­ oing so when they ­were adults. B ­ ecause ­children’s minds ­were
believed to be a tabula ra­sa, imprinting them with proper manners and be­
hav­iors was considered a more effective long-­term strategy for promoting
order than waiting u ­ ntil they ­were adults to shape their be­hav­ior with phys-
ical repression or concessions.
From ­today’s perspective, expanding primary education may seem like a
counterintuitive policy to ensure that ­people stay put. That is ­because we
often have in mind a liberal conception of education—­one that equips us
with useful capabilities to overcome early barriers and live prosperous, em-
powered, autonomous lives. Moreover, primary education t­ oday is often
thought of as just the first stage in a longer educational c­ areer encompass-
ing secondary schooling and higher education. However, this is not how
state-­regulated primary education systems ­were originally envisaged or de-
signed. In the nineteenth c­ entury, when ­these systems first emerged in
­Europe, elites ­were often explicit that primary education should teach
­people to accept their material condition and place in society, and refrain
from encouraging p ­ eople to develop aspirations for social mobility. Nor was
primary education during ­these foundational stages a stepping stone to
 Education and Social Order | 17

f­urther education. Recall that secondary schools and universities w ­ ere

­reserved for elites u­ ntil well into the twentieth c­ entury. Primary education,
often called “­popular instruction” or “­popular education,” was the one and
only type of education commonly available to the lower classes.
The idea of placing all six-­year-­olds in a school to teach them a common
set of beliefs and be­hav­iors as part of a strategy of social order was pop­ul­ ar­
ized u ­ nder absolutist Prus­sia in the late eigh­teenth c­ entury. We w
­ ill devote
much of chapters 3 and 4 to tracing the autocratic roots of primary educa-
tion in Prus­sia and the arguments made in ­favor of schooling the popula-
tion, precisely ­because of the influence that Prus­sian ideas had in other
countries. Indeed, the autocratic origins of ­these ideas did not prevent them
from traveling to more demo­cratic countries too, including the United
States. Horace Mann, the U.S. politician and education reformer who in an
1848 Report to the Mas­sa­chu­setts State Board of Education coined the fa-
mous phrase that education can serve as “the greater equalizer,” also argued
in that very same report that c­ hildren should receive a moral and ­political
education to prevent them from taking up arms or rebelling against the
status quo.19
Ideas about the social control function of education may sound conser-
vative ­today, but in the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries, when state-­
regulated primary education systems began to develop in Western socie­ties,
both conservatives and liberals agreed that the central goal of primary
schools was to teach ­children obedience, discipline, and good be­hav­ior to
support the stability of the state. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about
the role of education are especially telling given the influence he had on
liberals. In A Discourse on P­ olitical Economy, published in 1758, he articulates
that it is in the state’s own interest to regulate education in order to ensure
that ­children are taught to be obedient:

Inasmuch as ­there are laws for adulthood, ­there should be laws for
childhood that teach obedience to o ­ thers; and inasmuch as each man’s
reason is not left to be the sole judge of his duties, the education of
­children ­ought all the less to be left to their ­fathers’ lights and preju-
dices, as that education m
­ atters to the state even more than it does to
the ­fathers. 20

19. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann, National Education Association of the
United States (1848), p. 12.
20. Rousseau (2019a), pp. 21–22.
18 | Chapter 1

Despite the widespread circulation of arguments for state-­regulated pri-

mary education systems during the nineteenth c­ entury, ­these arguments
often preceded the a­ ctual emergence of ­these systems by several ­decades.
Why? Not all national elites ­were initially on board with the idea that edu-
cating ­children was a task that the state should take on. While education
reformers ­were convinced that placing the ­children of the lower classes in
state-­controlled primary schools was a good idea, oftentimes they encoun-
tered ­resistance from other national elites. The main opposition to ­these
ideas came from elites who claimed that moral education, or the task of
teaching ­people how to behave, should fall exclusively to the parents and
the Church, as had been customary for centuries. The state, t­hese elites
­argued, had no role to play in the upbringing of c­ hildren. Another, more
pragmatic, argument that prevented proposals for state-­regulated primary
education from coming to fruition was that the state simply lacked suffi-
cient resources to support such an expensive endeavor. Occasionally, some
members of the elite would also express their concern that educating the
masses could lead to their empowerment and would therefore destabilize
the status quo. However, this concern was less common than we might ex-
pect precisely ­because, throughout the nineteenth c­ entury, most elites be-
lieved that the type of education they would provide to the lower classes
would lead them to accept, not question, their place.21
How did proposals for state-­regulated mass education gain ­political trac-
tion? National elites who had previously opposed or been lukewarm about
the idea of placing all c­ hildren in primary schools regulated by the state
became more amenable to this option when their concerns about the effi-
cacy of traditional tools to maintain social order intensified. Of course, while
it is safe to assume that elites always want to maintain power and protect
the status quo from which they benefit, they have not always turned to
­primary education to accomplish this. Historically, physical repression,
concessions, and the moral education provided by the Church ­were consid-
ered enough to accomplish the goal of pacifying the population. But when
­these tools ­were no longer sufficient in the eyes of elites, proponents of a
national primary education system designed above all to shape the moral

21. ­England is an exception. ­There, as we ­will see in chapter 6, the idea that education could
empower individuals was much more common than in continental E ­ urope (Martin 2023). This, I
­will argue, helps explain why ­England expanded primary education much ­later than the rest of
­Europe.
 Education and Social Order | 19

character and be­hav­ior of the masses found a win­dow of opportunity to

convince other elites to support their proposal.
One common ­factor leading to the intensification of concerns about the
efficacy of existing tools to pacify the population was the occurrence of cri-
ses of internal order. T­ hese crises helped forge a large co­ali­tion of support
for primary education proposals among national elites. Crises of internal
order that interrupted a period of relative internal peace and stability led
to the diagnosis that existing policy tools ­were insufficient to promote order
and helped convince elites that they needed new policies to prevent f­ uture
crises. T
­ hese events increased elites’ fear of losing their property, lives, and
power to the masses, and often revealed the limitations of existing tools to
maintain social order on their own—­for instance, when police officers
joined hungry rebels in protest or when rebels ­were willing to risk life and
limb to bring about deep change.
This diagnosis in turn helped increase national elites’ support for shap-
ing the moral character of ­children through state-­regulated primary schools
designed to prevent ­future citizens from questioning the state or its laws.
Some elites who had previously opposed the creation of a national primary
education system on the grounds that moral education should be left to
the Church no longer argued that the state should not educate ­children—­they
argued, instead, that in educating ­children, the state should use religious
doctrine as the basis for teaching morality. Similarly, t­ hose who had previ-
ously argued that such a system could not be sustained by the state’s fiscal
revenues now turned to debating alternative ways to finance t­ hese systems.
Consistently, what emerged a­ fter periods of p ­ olitical instability and inter-
nal conflict, especially ­those in which repression failed to bring a quick end
to the conflict, was an effort to expand primary schooling to teach c­ hildren
obedience to the state.
A wide range of types of internal conflict motivated central governments
to invest in the education of the masses, including mass rebellions, peasant
revolts, insurrections, civil wars with p ­ opular involvement, social revolu-
tions, and conflicts whose nature ranged from class conflict to center-­
periphery, secular-­religious, or ethnic conflict. The commonality across the
diverse types of internal conflict that motivated central governments to
­invest in mass education was that they w ­ ere violent and included the par-
ticipation of the masses, even if not all conflicts ­were led by them. Regard-
less of ­whether the masses ­were acting on their own, or ­were mobilized by
local elites in the periphery, the Church, or some other actor, mass vio­lence
20 | Chapter 1

brought together previously divided national elites to support centralized

education efforts designed to protect their common state-­building proj­ect.
To be sure, central governments have not always responded to internal
conflict by turning their attention to mass education. Mexico, for example,
had per­sis­tent internal conflict throughout the nineteenth ­century and a
revolution at the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury, yet u ­ ntil the 1920s,
access to primary education in Mexico lagged considerably ­behind the rest
of Latin Amer­i­ca. Argentina, similarly, had recurrent civil wars that lasted
six ­decades a­ fter ­independence, yet it was not u
­ ntil 1884 that the central gov-
ernment began to regulate primary education. We w ­ ill spend an entire
chapter examining the conditions that must be in place for governments
to respond to internal conflict through mass education.
Furthermore, even if central governments respond to internal conflict by
expanding primary education, they might do so not necessarily ­because of
an interest in indoctrinating ­children to obey the state, as the book argues,
but for other reasons. First, governments might simply expand access to
­education to address societal demands for improvements in the standard
of living. That is, perhaps the expansion of primary education in the wake
of episodes of internal conflict represents a concession to angry citizens
rather than an effort in social control. Second, governments might expand
access to education in post-­conflict settings to increase the skills of the
population as part of a broader economic reconstruction strategy. Third,
governments might provide education not so much to shape the moral
character of ­future citizens but, more importantly, to promote a common
language or religious identity as part of a nation-­building proj­ect. We ­will
consider each of ­these possibilities before concluding not only that indoc-
trination through primary schools was a crucial component of the reper-
toire of state-­building tools used to promote long-­term social order, but
also that in the history of primary education systems, state-­building goals
usually preceded redistributive, economic, and nation-­building goals.
To understand the emergence and expansion of state-­regulated primary
education systems in Western socie­ties, we w ­ ill look beyond school enroll-
ment rates to learn how central governments in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca
throughout the nineteenth c­ entury designed primary education systems,
what goals they ­were hoping to achieve, and why education became sub-
ject to centralized control rather than being left to local parishes or com-
munities as it had been in the past. We w ­ ill devote several chapters to t­ hese
questions. Transcripts from parliamentary debates, letters between politi-
 Education and Social Order | 21

cians, special reports commissioned by the central government, and other

written materials w ­ ill give us useful information about the kinds of argu-
ments politicians made in ­favor of mass education.
The content of landmark national education laws ­will also help us un-
derstand how politicians designed primary education systems. T ­ hese laws
created centralized bureaucracies to regulate primary education, established
a common mandatory curriculum, dictated how teachers ­ought to be
trained and certified, and created mechanisms to monitor ­whether schools
­were ­doing a good job at accomplishing the state’s goals for primary edu-
cation. In addition to helping us picture the type of education that elites
had in mind, ­these landmark laws can also help us understand the under­
lying goals of primary education systems ­because the shape of ­these systems
reflected ­these goals.
Both the p­ olitical debates surrounding the passage of national primary
education laws and the content of ­these laws, we ­will see, point to the pri-
macy of moral education goals in explaining central governments’ effort to
regulate and expand primary education. When debating ­whether the state
should intervene in the education of c­ hildren, the arguments that found
most support among national elites w ­ ere ­those that stressed how a failure
to reform the savage and poor moral character of the masses would lead to
enduring prob­lems of anarchy, crime, p ­ olitical instability, and the inability
to consolidate the state’s power. The importance of moral education is also
evident in the first national primary education law passed in each ­European
and Latin American country. Moral education was a pervasive component
of national curriculums; typically, a standalone subject was devoted to it,
but regardless, moral education was a cross-­cutting component of all the
subjects taught and of the ­organization of classrooms and schools. National
textbooks used to teach reading and writing taught ­children about the im-
portance of behaving well and respecting authority, and teacher manuals
commissioned and distributed by central governments emphasized that stu-
dents should learn to sit quietly, comply with rules, and re­spect the teacher
at all times, and that failure to do so should be followed by public humili-
ation and other forms of punishment. The training of teachers emphasized
the development of their own moral character, too. In many countries, state-­
controlled Normal Schools became the only authorized teacher training
institutions, but even when nonstate actors w ­ ere allowed to train teachers,
states usually required aspiring teachers to demonstrate proof of their moral
aptitude to teach.
22 | Chapter 1

By contrast, the first national education laws placed l­ittle emphasis on

teaching math or scientific skills, and while some countries introduced a
common language of instruction—­a common marker of nation-­building
efforts—­this was not the norm. In some, like France, the state promoted a
common language of instruction for primary schools from the outset as part
of its state-­building endeavor to enhance the central government’s control
over the periphery by ensuring every­one could understand the state’s laws
and regulations. Still, we ­will see that, even in France, moral education took
center stage in primary schools. Moreover, in several countries, including
some of the leaders in primary education provision in E ­ urope and Latin
Amer­i­ca such as Prus­sia and Argentina, the moralizing role of primary ed-
ucation emerged several ­decades before the state made an effort to incul-
cate a national identity. What the evidence suggests is that nation-­building
efforts sometimes accompanied and supported state-­building goals, but fre-
quently, primary schools pursued state-­building goals through moral edu-
cation before they also began to pursue nation-­building goals.
In their effort to expand primary education, central governments often
took advantage of the existing educational infrastructure that had been put
in place by churches. While the Catholic Church made relatively l­ittle ef-
fort to educate the masses, Protestant churches founded schools, trained
teachers, and developed pedagogical methods to teach every­one how to read
the Bible in their own language.22 The ability to rely on this existing infra-
structure gave central governments in Protestant countries like Prus­sia and
Norway a clear advantage over Catholic countries like Spain or Italy in terms
of the level of access that already existed when they began to regulate pri-
mary education.23
Despite this greater initial stock, Protestant countries within ­Europe did
not tend to set up state-­regulated primary education systems any sooner—
or any ­later—­than Catholic ones. Prus­sia, the birthplace of Protestantism,
was among the first states to pass a national primary education law, but
­England, also Protestant, was among the last, and Spain and Italy passed a
national primary education law d ­ ecades before countries like Belgium or
Finland, which had a strong Protestant influence. In other words, what re-

22. Woodberry (2012); Gallego and Woodberry (2010).

23. Even within Prus­sia, ­those regions that had been more exposed to the Protestant Reforma-
tion exhibited higher levels of educational attainment than ­those less exposed to Protestantism;
see Becker and Woessman (2009).
 Education and Social Order | 23

ligious denomination predominated does not help explain who led the cre-
ation of state-­regulated primary education systems.
Moreover, the relationship between the state and the Church varied con-
siderably across countries during the foundational stages of public primary
education systems, from conflictive to cooperative. In Argentina, for exam-
ple, the state’s intervention in mass education came into conflict with the
aspirations of the Church to maintain a mono­poly over moral education.
In Prus­sia and Chile, by contrast, the central government and the Church
became allies in expanding access to primary education. In yet other cases,
such as France during the July Monarchy, they ­were neither enemies nor
allies: the central government made ­independent efforts to promote edu-
cation but, b­ ecause it lacked the capacity to expand mass schooling as fast
as it wanted, anti-­clerical politicians made the strategic decision to allow
the Church to operate its own schools while subjecting t­ hese to centralized
regulation. The common thread across t­ hese cases, we w ­ ill see in chapter 4,
lies not in the nature of the relationship between the state and the Church,
but in the fact that efforts to create a national primary education system
emerged out of centralizing rulers’ heightened fear of the masses.
Where religious conflict did leave an impor­tant mark was on the content
of the national primary school curriculums that emerged during the nine-
teenth ­century, as we ­will see in chapter 5.24 Perceptions about the break-
down of social order brought together conservative and liberal elites around
proposals for state-­regulated primary education to shape the moral charac-
ter of ­future citizens. However, the two groups disagreed fervently about
­whether moral education should include religious teachings or ­whether it
should be entirely secular. The balance of power between them at the time
when a national curriculum was introduced played a key role in shaping
the outcome of this conflict.25

24. This argument is similar to Ansell and Lindvall (2013), who argue that the Church-­State
conflict did not r­ eally influence the p
­ rocess of centralization of education but did affect w
­ hether
education became secular. While their ­measure of secularization focuses on who controlled the
daily operation of schools, I focus on the content of national curriculums.
25. The ability of the Church to influence education policy also depends on the extent to which
ruling elites, ­whether conservative or liberal, need the Church’s support to remain in power. Frag-
ile states such as ­those that rule immediately ­after a civil war, a demo­cratic transition, or a newly
­independent country, may provide concessions to the Church such as the inclusion of religious
teachings in schools in exchange for the Church’s cooperation in promoting primary education
in this fragile setting. See Grzymala-­Busse (2015, 2016).
24 | Chapter 1

COMMON ARGUMENTS ABOUT MASS EDUCATION

Education systems are a heavi­ly studied topic and this book both builds on
and departs from what has been written about them by historians and so-
cial scientists. To clarify how the book’s argument compares with other
common explanations of the rise and spread of mass education, it is help-
ful to classify t­ hese explanations into two groups. The first group comprises
what I ­will term ­human capital theories of education. ­These are theories that
conceptualize the provision of mass education as a policy tool that seeks to
improve the skills and knowledge of the population. Three main ­factors
have been proposed as triggers for governments’ decision to improve skills
through mass education: democ­ratization, which makes governments re-
sponsive to the demands for social mobility of the newly enfranchised
masses;26 industrialization, which increases the need for a large, skilled
workforce;27 and military rivalry with other states, which creates the need for
skilled soldiers.28
The book’s argument belongs within a second group of theories that I
­will refer to as value-­centered theories of education. ­These theories conceptu-
alize the provision of education as a policy tool that seeks to shape indi-
vidual values, beliefs, attitudes, and be­hav­iors (“values” for short). The most
famous class of value-­centered theories are nation-­building theories of edu-
cation, which argue that governments became engaged in mass schooling
in an effort to construct a nation, using schools to promote linguistic homo-
geneity and emotional attachment to an i­magined national community.29
Social scientists have proposed four main triggers that prompted central
governments to expand primary education for nation-­building purposes.
One is the diffusion of international ideas about the nation-­building power
of education. According to diffusion theory, governments created and
­expanded national primary education systems not ­because of domestic
conditions that incentivized them to do so but ­because of their exposure

26. This theory is part of a more general argument that holds that transitions from autocracy to
democracy, b ­ ecause they entail an increase in the ­political power of the newly enfranchised
masses to make demands from elected officials, w ­ ill result in more progressive redistributive poli-
cies. See Meltzer and Richard (1981); Acemoglu and Robinson (2006).
27. For a formal model of this common argument, see Bourguignon and Verdier (2000); Galor
and Moav (2000, 2006). See also Gellner (1983), who stresses the importance to industrialization of
having workers who could read and write in a common language.
28. Aghion et al. (2019).
29. Weber (1976); Gellner (1983); Darden and Grzymala-­Busse (2006); Laitin (2007); Darden and
Mylonas (2015); Ansell and Lindvall (2013); Alesina, Giuliano, and Reich (2021).
 Education and Social Order | 25

to international ideas in vogue during the nineteenth c­ entury that held

that having a national primary education system to inculcate a shared na-
tional identity was a key ele­ment of successful nation-­states.30 Another ar-
gument is that governments invested in mass schooling b ­ ecause industri-
alization, and particularly the rise of factories, created the need for factory
discipline and docile workers31—­which presumably required imprinting
in ­children the belief that they and their f­ uture supervisors w
­ ere united by
their customs, history, and nationality. A third possibility is that military
32

rivalry prompted governments to expand mass education to foster patrio-

tism and nationalism not only among soldiers but also among all ­future
citizens, so as to inoculate them from the territorial and sovereignty claims
of foreign states.33 Fi­nally, a fourth theory holds that governments invested
in primary education in response to the arrival of new immigrants whose
assimilation into a new national identity required them to learn the na-
tional language and culture.34
It would be inaccurate to characterize t­ hese theories as arguing that pri-
mary education seeks to promote only skills or only values—­and, by the same
token, the argument I advance in this book does not hold that schools seek
to shape values exclusively. All schools teach some amount of skills and some
amount of values, and few social scientists would contest this. But social
scientists are in the business of simplifying the world by identifying the
most essential components of the phenomena they study. In studying pri-
mary education systems, they have come to dif­fer­ent conclusions about
what their essence is: some argue that ­these systems seek above all to teach
knowledge and skills while o ­ thers, myself included, conclude that they
seek first and foremost to mold individual values, beliefs, attitudes, and
be­hav­iors.
The extent to which a theory helps explain why the Western socie­ties of
­Europe and the Amer­i­cas led the creation and expansion of state-­regulated
primary education systems is something we can only determine by looking

30. Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer (1985); Meyer et al. (1977); Meyer, Ramirez, and Soysal (1992).
31. Bowles and Gintis (1976); Gellner (1983); Mokyr (2002), pp. 120–162. The nineteenth-­century
economist Alfred Marshall was in ­favor of using education to develop in workers “a habit of re-
sponsibility, of carefulness and promptitude in ­handling expensive machinery,” and to instill punc-
tuality and a strong work ethic (Marshall 1890, p. 261). In contrast, Karl Marx and l­ater Antonio
Gramsci denounced the socialization function of schools to produce a class of workers who
would re­spect the power of cap­i­tal­ists.
32. Gellner (1983); Weber (1976).
33. Ramirez and Boli (1987); Darden and Mylonas (2015).
34. Tyack (1974).
26 | Chapter 1

at the evidence. Comparing the explanatory power of dif­fer­ent theories

­will be the task of chapters 2 and 5, where I examine the extent to which
each explanation is consistent with the patterns of emergence and expan-
sion of primary education systems, and with the characteristics of ­these sys-
tems. ­Here I preview key findings that ­will help readers contextualize the
importance of the book’s argument.
Let’s begin by looking at three f­actors that do not go far in explaining
why Western socie­ties led the global expansion of primary education:
democ­ratization, industrialization, and interstate military rivalry. Regardless
of ­whether we focus on their h ­ uman capital or value-­centered versions,
each of ­these theories makes predictions that do not align well with the
general timing of the rise and spread of primary education systems, or with
the characteristics of ­these systems in Western countries.
Consider, first, democ­ratization theories. If it w
­ ere true, as economic
­historian Peter Lindert has asserted in an influential book, that “the spread
of demo­cratic voting rights played a leading role in explaining . . . ​the rise
of primary schooling,”35 then we should observe that primary school
­enrollment rates ­were low before the spread of democracy and increased
considerably as a result of democ­ratization. Much effort has gone into quan-
tifying the precise magnitude of democracy’s impact on primary schooling,36
but ­these efforts miss the bigger picture: around the world, most of the ex-
pansion of primary education took place before the spread of democracy.37
Some autocratic regimes such as the USSR ­under Stalin are well known for
their efforts to educate every­one, but the non-­democratic roots of primary
education also extend to Western ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas. As we ­will see
in chapter 2, in Western countries that w ­ ere once non-­democratic, central
governments began to regulate primary education roughly one c­ entury be-
fore the arrival of democracy. Moreover, close to 70 ­percent of school-­age
­children in ­these countries ­were already enrolled in primary school before
democracy arrived ­there for the first time.
Was the expansion of primary education a response to the needs created
by industrialization? Let’s begin first with the argument that industrializa-
tion required a large, skilled workforce. A growing number of economic

35. Lindert (2004), p. 105.

36. Brown (1999); Brown and Hunter (1999); Mariscal and Sokoloff (2000); Engerman and So-
koloff (2002); Lindert (2004); Brown and Hunter (2004); Stasavage (2005); Ansell (2010); Paglayan
(2021).
37. Paglayan (2021).
 Education and Social Order | 27

history studies show that the First Industrial Revolution required a few
“knowledge elites” who could contribute scientific discoveries and techno-
logical innovation, and a large unskilled workforce—­a phenomenon that
has led economic historians to describe the first phase of industrialization
as a “deskilling” p ­ rocess.38 The Second Industrial Revolution did require
more skilled workers, and its arrival coincided with an acceleration of pri-
mary education provision in some Western countries, but in many ­others
it arrived too late to be able to explain the emergence and expansion of pri-
mary education systems. On average across E ­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca,
central governments created state-­regulated primary education systems six
­decades before the Second Industrial Revolution, and in a majority of West-
ern countries, most c­ hildren gained access to primary schooling before the
second phase of industrialization began to unfold. Moreover, as mentioned
­earlier, the first national curriculums that governments a­ dopted during the
nineteenth ­century placed considerably more emphasis on teaching moral
education than on teaching math, science, or practical technical skills.
The emphasis that curriculums placed on moral education is in princi­
ple consistent with the argument that state-­regulated primary education sys-
tems emerged in response to the industrial economy’s need for docile
workers, but again, the timing of the emergence and expansion of ­these sys-
tems does not appear to align well with explanations that stress the role of
industrialization. In addition, many national curriculums initially allowed
instruction in multiple dif­fer­ent languages—­not the unifying language that
Ernest Gellner and ­others had in mind when they argued that factory
­discipline required linguistic homogeneity. Moreover, if it ­were true that
governments regulated and expanded primary education ­because industri-
alization created the need for a docile working class, then we should see
more governmental efforts to expand primary education in industrial areas
than in rural regions. Three pieces of evidence are at odds with this predic-
tion. First, although industrialists eventually came to view mass schooling
as a desirable policy, many of them initially opposed it ­because it conflicted
with their ability to rely on child ­labor.39 Second, as we ­will see in chapter 4,

38. Mitch (1999); Allen (2003); Clark (2005); Mokyr (2005); Squicciarini and Voigtländer (2015);
De Pleijt (2018); Montalbo (2020).
39. The tension that existed between central governments and industrialists regarding mass
education is carefully documented by Anderson (2018), who argues that governments in E ­ urope
­adopted child l­abor laws ­because industrialists’ reliance on child ­labor hindered their efforts to
improve ­children’s moral character through primary schooling.
28 | Chapter 1

in countries that led the expansion of primary education in ­Europe and

Latin Amer­i­ca, central governments tended to prioritize the expansion of
primary education in rural, not urban, areas. Third, as I document in chap-
ter 5, central governments often imposed dif­fer­ent curriculums for rural
and urban schools precisely to prevent the ­children of peasants from learn-
ing skills that could be useful for industry.
Military rivalry theories do not do well e­ ither when trying to explain the
expansion of access to primary education in Western countries. Proponents
of ­these theories often cite the comprehensive education regulations ­adopted
in Prus­sia in 1763, immediately a­ fter the end of the Seven Years’ War, and
the 1880s Ferry Laws in France, ­adopted ­after the Franco-­Prussian War of
1870. Yet, as we ­will see in chapter 4, the timing of ­these cases is often mis-
understood. In Prus­sia, in fact, the king had approved similar education
regulations before the outbreak of the war. In France, the centralization of
primary education began in the 1830s and led to a rapid expansion of pri-
mary schooling such that, even before the Franco-­Prussian War, France had
already attained near universal primary education. Moreover, when we ex-
amine evidence from a larger set of countries, as I do in chapter 2, what we
see is that while Western countries experienced a marked increase in pri-
mary school enrollment rates a­ fter interstate wars, this increase was merely
a rebound to recover from the decline in enrollment observed during peri-
ods of war.
None of this is to say that democ­ratization, industrialization, and mili-
tary rivalry never explain the emergence and expansion of primary educa-
tion systems. ­There is some evidence, for example, that democ­ratization
played an impor­tant role in driving the expansion of primary schooling
in Sub-­Saharan Africa.40 ­There is also evidence that industrialization con-
tributed to the expansion of mass education in some E ­ uropean and Latin
American countries, even if ­there is no consistent pattern linking t­hese
two pro­cesses. Fi­nally, in non-­Western countries, both industrialization and
interstate wars ­were followed by an acceleration in primary school enroll-
ments. Still, for a consistent predictor of the emergence, expansion, and
characteristics of primary education systems in Western socie­ties, we need
to look elsewhere.
Immigration waves also do not go far in explaining why governments in-
tervened and invested in primary education. Two of the countries with the

40. Stasavage (2005).

 Education and Social Order | 29

greatest number of immigrants during the nineteenth ­century, the United

States and Argentina, both provided high levels of primary education, yet
in both cases, immigrants retained the right to send their c­ hildren to schools
whose language of instruction was not the national language. In the United
States, for example, public schools during the nineteenth ­century taught
not only ­English but also German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Polish, and Ital-
ian, depending on the composition of the local community.41 Moreover,
the arrival of immigrants prompted governments to adopt compulsory
schooling laws especially in ­those states that received immigrants from
countries that lacked a compulsory schooling law.42 The fact that states ­were
less interested in educating immigrant c­ hildren if they or their parents had
already gone to school abroad, even though, of course, the education ­these
immigrants had received did not instill an American culture or identity, is
a clear indication that inculcating a national identity was not a central goal
of education intervention during the Age of Mass Migration.
That leaves us with the diffusion theory of education, which provides
some helpful clues, and the argument I advance in this book builds to some
extent on this theory. We ­will see in chapter 3 that, before the eigh­teenth
­century, the idea that the state could or should educate ­children was virtu-
ally inconceivable. But during the eigh­teenth and especially in the nine-
teenth ­century, mass education came to be conceived as a policy tool that
could strengthen the state. The diffusion of this idea, I argue, was a precon-
dition for the emergence and expansion of state-­regulated primary educa-
tion systems. Still, the circulation of ­these ideas was not enough—­education
reform proponents also needed to garner sufficient ­political support to im-
plement ­these ideas.
This is where the role of crises of internal order proves helpful. Diffusion
theory flatly rejects the notion that ­these crises promoted the rise and spread
of state-­regulated primary education systems.43 By contrast, this book shows
that national elites’ fears of social disorder played a central role in giving
­political traction to the educational ideas that circulated during the nine-
teenth c­ entury, and ­shaped the patterns of education regulation and expan-
sion. Heightened fears of social unrest help explain, for example, why the
central governments of Chile and Argentina, despite being si­mul­ta­neously

41. Tyack (1974); Fouka (2020).

42. Bandiera et al. (2019).
43. Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer et al. (1985), pp. 154–155.
30 | Chapter 1

exposed to E ­ uropean educational ideas since the early 1840s, created state-­
regulated primary education systems many ­decades apart from one another;
or why the French government during the 1830s prioritized the expansion
of primary education in the rural departments of southern France. T ­ hese
are not isolated examples. We w ­ ill see that internal conflict involving mass
vio­lence against the state is a strong and consistent predictor of the expan-
sion of primary schooling in Western countries.
The second key difference between my argument and diffusion theory
lies in the types of values that each theory highlights. I emphasize schools’
effort to shape moral values and princi­ples—­especially ­those rejecting in-
dividual vio­lence—as part of a state-­building agenda to consolidate the
power of a central p­ olitical authority. Primary education, I argue, sought to
reduce long-­term vio­lence against the state by teaching ­people that killing,
fighting, vandalizing, and other forms of violent be­hav­ior w ­ ere wrong,
and conversely, that respecting rules and authority was the right ­thing to
do. Diffusion theory, by contrast, belongs to the class of nation-­building
theories of education that emphasize schools’ effort to inculcate a com-
mon language and shared national identity. We ­will see that while some
politicians believed that inculcating a national language and identity was
complementary to the goal of enhancing the state’s authority, many central
governments pursued their moral education goals without concurrently
advancing a nation-­building agenda—at least u ­ ntil ­later. When state-­regulated
primary education systems emerged, teaching c­ hildren good manners and
moral princi­ples—­turning “savages” into well-­behaved ­future citizens—­was
a more impor­tant educational goal than inculcating a common language
or national identity.
Now that we have a fuller understanding of how other theories of mass
education relate to the book’s state-­building argument, I ­will summarize
some appealing characteristics of my argument.

THREE APPEALING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ARGUMENT

The state-­building theory of education reform that I propose has three ap-
pealing characteristics: it explains education reform in a wide variety of con-
texts, it encompasses other existing explanations to provide a more general
theory of education reform, and it helps explain current prob­lems facing
education systems.
 Education and Social Order | 31

As I w
­ ill demonstrate in l­ ater chapters, conceptualizing education reform
as a response to internal threats to the power of ruling elites helps explain
education reform in a broad range of p ­ olitical contexts. For example, while
the book’s argument applies to autocracies, helping explain the puzzling
non-­democratic roots of primary education systems, it can also explain ed-
ucation expansion and reform in more demo­cratic contexts. Similarly, the
argument I propose can help explain not only the emergence and expan-
sion of primary education reform systems during the nineteenth c­ entury
but also education reform in more recent ­decades. Nor does the argument
apply only to governments that espouse a liberal ideology or, conversely, a
conservative one. Fi­nally, the argument I propose is not restricted to any par­
tic­u­lar type of internal conflict. It applies to conflicts of varying scale and
nature, including class conflict, conflict between the center and periphery,
and religious or ethnic conflict.
This is not to say that e­ very instance of internal conflict w ­ ill lead to edu-
cation reform, or that e­very instance of education reform constitutes
indoctrination—­far from it. An impor­tant contribution of the book is to
clarify the conditions ­under which we should expect governments to in-
vest in mass education to inculcate obedience, and the kinds of contexts
where this is less likely to occur. This is the task of chapter 6.
Another impor­tant feature of the book’s argument is that it can encom-
pass other common explanations of educational expansion as part of a more
general theory of education reform. The spread of democracy, industrial-
ization, interstate wars, and immigration waves are all ­factors that social
­scientists have proposed as d ­ rivers of the expansion of primary education.
Each of ­these phenomena are distinct and impor­tant in their own right,
but ­there is also a commonality across them: they have all been frequently
accompanied by considerable social disorder and instability or, at the very
least, heightened concern about ­these issues. Democ­ratization was often a
result of social revolutions or mass mobilization, and its arrival engendered
deep fear among traditional elites about how the lower classes might
­behave ­after acquiring more p ­ olitical rights. Industrialization and urban-
ization also engendered new fears among elites about the rise of l­abor
strikes, crime, homelessness, and the spread of diseases—­all of which elites
interpreted as signs of the deficient morality and be­hav­ior of the working
class. Immigration waves, too, have created concerns about the rise of crim-
inal be­hav­ior and the decline of law and order. And interstate wars often
32 | Chapter 1

give way to internal turmoil not only among losers but also in victorious
countries, where the transition from soldier to unemployed civilian can
create new social divisions and conflict. In other words, pro­cesses of
democ­ ratization, industrialization, immigration waves, and interstate
wars often coincide with crises of internal order and periods of social and
­political instability. When they do, I argue, states are likely to turn to mass
schooling.
Last but not least, the book’s emphasis on the centrality of indoctrina-
tion goals in guiding the creation, expansion, and features of primary edu-
cation systems can help us make sense of the failure of many modern
­education systems to reduce poverty and ­inequality. The World Bank calls
this failure a “learning crisis,” alluding to the fact that ­children are not
learning even basic literacy and numeracy skills despite attending school
regularly. The traditional explanation of the so-­called learning crisis is that
education policymakers do not know how to promote more learning, hence
the need to produce and disseminate experimental evidence about the ef-
ficacy of dif­fer­ent education policy interventions. This book points to a
dif­fer­ent answer. It suggests that a key reason why education systems fail to
reduce poverty and i­nequality is b ­ ecause that is not what they emerged to
do. Acknowledging this may be the best step forward.

SHIFTING PARADIGMS: EDUCATION AND POWER

Once we recognize that mass education may reflect social control goals, we
are urged to reconsider many influential theories that, implicitly or explic­itly,
conceptualize it as a policy tool that seeks to promote ­human capital. The
paradigm shift that stems from this book helps us understand, for exam-
ple, why autocracies provide a lot of mass schooling—­despite moderniza-
tion theory’s famous prediction that education brings about democracy.44
It also explains why state-­regulated primary education systems emerged
much ­earlier than the welfare state. And it offers a pos­si­ble explanation for
the frequent but puzzling observation that the spread of democracy has
often failed to bring about higher taxes on the rich or other forms of pro-
gressive re­distribution.45

44. Lipset (1960).

45. Ross (2006); Ansell and Samuels (2014); Scheve and Stasavage (2016).
 Education and Social Order | 33

But the most impor­tant implication of this reconceptualization of mass

education is that it puts education back where it belongs: at the center of
debates about power. It should hardly be surprising to academics, whose
reputation depends so heavi­ly on the influence of their ideas, that shaping
how p ­ eople think about the world can be an impor­tant source of power.
And yet, some of the most influential theories of how governments con-
solidate their power minimize or altogether neglect the g­ reat lengths to
which governments have gone to control the ideas that shape individual
be­hav­ior in the p
­ olitical, social, and economic spheres. Consider, for exam-
ple, Charles Tilly’s famous theory of state formation and state-­building,
according to which the state derives its power from a combination of capital
(taxes) and coercion (armies).46 When confronted with the question of
how states forged a mono­poly of vio­lence within their territory, Tilly argues
that they relied on the army and, ­later, police forces.47 This book shows that,
beginning with Prus­sia u ­ nder Frederick the ­Great, central rulers ascribed
considerable importance to a third source of power: ideological conformity.
In their quest to control the population, they made significant efforts to
exert ideological power over their subjects as a means of reducing the use
of vio­lence by anyone other than the state.48 The creation of state-­regulated
primary education systems should be understood as an internal security
policy, not a social welfare or h ­ uman capital policy.
A central question moving forward is ­whether education does, in fact,
promote social order and p ­ olitical stability, and how its efficacy compares
to other policy tools like repression and concessions. Exploring the conse-
quences of education—­how it shapes individual values, beliefs, attitudes, and
be­hav­iors, and what consequences it has for social order, p ­ olitical stability,
the strength of states, the stability of autocracies and democracies, demands
for economic re­distribution, e­ tc.—­are impor­tant questions stemming from

46. Tilly (1990).

47. When considering the question of how monarchs secured “the acquiescence of nearly all of
his subject population,” Tilly argues that “over and over, rulers sent troops to enforce the collection
of tribute, taxes, and levies of men of materials . . . ​At the level of the state, . . . ​­those oriented to
control the national population (police) developed only slowly” (Tilly 1990, p. 75; emphasis mine).
Only in the nineteenth ­century, he argues, did E ­ uropean states establish “bureaucratic police
forces specialized in control of the civilian population. They thus freed their armies to concen-
trate on external conquest and international war” (p. 76).
48. While Tilly (1990) does not consider the role of ideological power, Michael Mann’s influen-
tial The Sources of Social Power does acknowledge it but downplays its importance. In his extensive
volume, he makes no mention of the state-­driven transformation of primary education docu-
mented in this book (Mann 2012).
34 | Chapter 1

this book, albeit distinct from the book’s interest in explaining what moti-
vates the provision of education.
Perhaps most impor­tant, moving forward we should ask what drives gov-
ernments to curb some of their zeal to indoctrinate c­ hildren and instead
reform education systems to teach useful knowledge and skills. Understand-
ing this is key for anyone ­eager to improve the extent to which education
systems equip individuals with the capabilities to lead autonomous lives.

PLAN FOR THE BOOK

The plan for the rest of the book is as follows. Chapter 2 provides a com-
prehensive picture of global trends in primary schooling over the last two
centuries, with a special focus on the Western socie­ties of E ­ urope and the
Amer­ic­as that led the creation and expansion of state-­regulated primary
­education systems. Drawing on new cross-­country datasets, I document a set
of patterns that any theory of mass education systems needs to explain, such
as the fact that ­these systems emerged well before the spread of democracy
and reached a considerable portion of the population during non-­
democratic and pre-­industrial periods. In line with the book’s argument,
the chapter shows that internal conflict was a stronger and more consistent
predictor of the expansion of primary education than democ­ratization, in-
dustrialization, or interstate wars.
­After establishing this pattern, chapter 3 develops the book’s main argu-
ment for why internal conflict in general creates incentives for central
­governments to educate the masses. The chapter begins by surveying the
history of ideas about education and shows that, around the eigh­teenth
­century, social contract theorists and Pietist (Protestant) reformers con-
verged on the idea that mass education could support state-­building by
inculcating obedience. It also discusses the diffusion of ­these ideas among
statesmen and education reformers first in eighteenth-­century Prus­sia and
then in other parts of E ­ urope and the Amer­ic­ as. Crucially, I note that the
diffusion of ideas alone is insufficient to explain the timing of centralized
education intervention. To explain this timing, I develop an argument
for why and how internal conflict and fears of anarchy, crime, and social
disorder gave t­ hese ideas the ­political traction they needed for central gov-
ernments to regulate primary education and promote its expansion. The
chapter concludes by outlining the main predictions of the argument,
which are tested in chapters 4, 5, 7, and 8.
 Education and Social Order | 35

Chapter 4 illustrates, through four case studies, why and how internal
threats to social order and ­political stability led central governments to
­regulate and promote primary education. To do so, I trace the p ­ rocess of
adoption, examine the content, and analyze the implementation of the
foundational national education laws of Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Argen-
tina. The analy­sis draws on a large collection of historical evidence including
statistical data on school construction but also parliamentary debates, spe-
cial reports commissioned by central governments, state-­approved school
textbooks, and other primary sources, as well as existing research produced
by historians. Collectively, ­these sources show that internal conflict height-
ened national elites’ anxiety about the moral character of the “savage”
masses and increased elite support for mass education not to promote so-
cial mobility or industrialization but as part of an effort to promote long-­
term social order by indoctrinating ­children to become obedient citizens.
Where historical statistics are available, I also show that central govern-
ments’ efforts to expand primary schooling focused mainly on t­hose re-
gions that posed the greatest threat to the state. The four cases demonstrate
that internal conflict has played a key role in explaining the rise of modern
primary education systems across a wide range of non-­democratic regimes,
conservative and liberal governments, and types of conflict spanning the
long nineteenth c­ entury.
How did central governments design primary education systems, and
what does this tell us about the goals of ­these systems? Chapter 5 shows
that moral education goals pervaded the design of ­these systems, as evi-
denced by the content of the curriculum, teacher training and recruitment
policies, and school inspection mechanisms. I reach this conclusion a­ fter
conducting an unpre­ce­dented analy­sis of the content of the first national
primary education laws ­adopted in twenty-­five E ­ uropean and Latin Ameri-
can countries. The same chapter pre­sents the two competing models for
teaching moral princi­ples that existed in the nineteenth ­century, each re-
flecting a dif­fer­ent view about the roots of morality: the conservative model,
which viewed religion as the basis of morality, and the positivist liberal
model, which viewed reason and scientific laws as the ultimate source of
moral princi­ples. A key insight from this chapter is that when the balance
of power tilted ­toward liberal politicians, the curriculum included a good
dose of math and science in line with ­these elites’ belief that this was the
most effective way to teach moral values. Ironically, in t­ hese cases, the effort
to moralize the masses may have inadvertently equipped ordinary p ­ eople
36 | Chapter 1

with skills to move up the social ladder and, eventually, demand more
­political power.
­After devoting chapters 4 and 5 to the rise and spread of state-­regulated
primary education systems in E ­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca during the long
nineteenth ­century, chapters 6 and 7 examine the ability of the book’s ar-
gument to explain education reform in other contexts, too. Chapter 6 pro-
vides a conceptual framework for thinking about the conditions u ­ nder
which governments are likely to invest in mass education as an indoctrina-
tion tool to create obedient citizens. The framework posits that governments
are more likely to invest in mass education when politicians (1) fear the
masses, (2) believe that schools can indeed indoctrinate them, (3) expect to
be in power long enough to reap the benefits of indoctrinating c­ hildren,
and (4) have sufficient fiscal and administrative capacity to promote educa-
tion. ­These are, in ­political science jargon, the scope conditions of the
­argument. I illustrate the importance of ­these conditions through histori-
cal examples from ­England and Mexico, where the absence of at least one
of ­these scope conditions helps explain why primary education provi-
sion lagged considerably ­behind the rest of ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca
for ­decades.
Chapter 7, in turn, moves away from the focus on nineteenth-­century
non-­democracies to consider examples of democracies and recent cases
where a heightened fear of mass vio­lence led governments to invest in
­education for indoctrination purposes. Through examples from ­England,
Peru, and the United States, the chapter suggests that, u ­ nder certain condi-
tions, the book can help explain education reform in a wide variety of
contexts—­even demo­cratic ones. The same chapter also deploys a new
global dataset on the prevalence of indoctrination in education systems to
identify key differences and similarities between the education systems of
democracies and autocracies from 1945 to the pre­sent.
Although the book focuses on the ­causes, not the consequences, of mass
education, some readers may nevertheless want to know w ­ hether mass ed-
ucation actually succeeded in promoting social order. This is the focus of
chapter 8. Instead of providing a “yes” or “no” answer, this chapter exam-
ines the f­ actors that are likely to affect the success of education systems in
accomplishing their goal. The discussion builds on the lessons from chap-
ter 5 regarding how education systems ­were designed. In a nutshell, I argue
that some of the national curriculums, teacher training policies, and other
education policies commonly used to forge loyalty to the state, can and have
 Education and Social Order | 37

backfired. Still, as I explain in that chapter, w

­ hether mass education suc-
ceeded in promoting long-­term order and stability is irrelevant for the
book’s argument about what motivated the rise and spread of ­these systems.
What we should observe if the book’s argument is correct—­and what we
do observe, as I show in chapter 8—is that politicians believed that mass
schooling could produce social order, regardless of what prior evidence
­suggested, and regardless of ­whether their beliefs w­ ere ­later proven correct
or not.
Fi­nally, chapter 9 examines how the historical roots of primary education
systems continue to shape education t­ oday, helping explain current educa-
tion systems’ troubling ­performance in promoting skills. Understanding
­these roots is essential for well-­meaning educators and education reform-
ers, international o­ rganizations, and anyone committed to strengthening
democracy and reducing ­inequality.
 CHAPTER TWO

TWO CENTURIES
OF MASS EDUCATION

Starting in the nineteenth c­ entury, the world experienced an education rev-

olution characterized by the emergence of state-­regulated primary educa-
tion systems and their expansion to an unpre­ce­dented scale. The revolution
was slow—it lasted about two centuries—­and its timing and pace differed
across countries. ­European states, as I anticipated in chapter 1, ­were the first
to create primary school systems regulated by the state, in some cases al-
ready in the eigh­teenth c­ entury, and the first to reach high levels of primary
education provision. They w ­ ere followed by the United States and Canada,
and l­ater in the nineteenth ­century, by Latin American countries. The rest
of the developing world caught up much ­later. Explaining why the Western
socie­ties of E
­ urope and the Amer­ic­ as led the transformation of the educa-
tional landscape during the nineteenth c­ entury is one of the main goals of
this book. In this chapter, I introduce some basic facts about this transfor-
mation and discuss how they do or do not align with common explana-
tions of it.
One of the most pervasive beliefs ­today is that democ­ratization and the
spread of voting rights to the lower classes was a leading driver of the
­expansion of primary schooling in the West and around the world. An-
other possibility is that central governments became interested in regulat-
ing and promoting primary education—­even in the absence of electoral
pressure to do so—­because of the needs created by industrialization or
interstate military rivalry to train a literate and docile workforce or a cadre
of skilled and loyal soldiers. We ­will see that t­ hese arguments do not take
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 39

us very far in explaining why Western socie­ties led the creation and expan-
sion of state-­regulated primary education systems. In fact, the evidence pre-
sented in this chapter implies that we need a theory of the origins of mod-
ern primary education systems that is consistent with the fact that t­hese
systems emerged and expanded ­under non-­democratic regimes and in pre-­
industrial contexts.
The book argues that internal threats to the state-­building agenda of
­centralizing rulers played an impor­tant role in motivating central govern-
ments to educate the masses for the purpose of instilling obedience to the
state. As a first piece of evidence consistent with this argument, this chapter
shows that internal conflict is a stronger and more consistent predictor of
the expansion of primary schooling than democ­ratization, industrialization,
or interstate wars. P ­ olitical rulers ­were especially likely to expand primary
schooling in the wake of violent internal conflicts pitting the masses against
the state.

USING EVIDENCE TO TEST THEORIES

Social scientists have put forth many plausible arguments about the ­factors
that drove states to create and expand mass education systems. All ­these
­arguments are plausible in that they follow logically from a set of assump-
tions. However, an argument can be both logical and misleading—­for in-
stance, if it builds on false premises. Throughout this chapter, we ­will put
dif­fer­ent arguments to the test by assessing ­whether the claims they make
about the patterns of emergence and expansion of primary education sys-
tems find support in the data. The goal h ­ ere is not to explain the ­process of
educational transformation in specific countries—­that is something we w ­ ill
examine ­later in the book—­but to see w ­ hether t­hese dif­fer­ent arguments
are consistent with the broad patterns of educational transformation seen
across ­Europe and the Amer­ic­ as.
To assess w ­ hether an argument indeed explains the emergence and ex-
pansion of primary education, in this chapter we ­will look at the two
­measures introduced in chapter 1: first, the year when central governments
began to regulate primary education, and second, the provision of primary
education as captured by primary school enrollment rates at the country
level across two centuries. This is just a starting point. To further understand
the reasons why central governments invested in educating the popula-
tion, chapter 4 also pre­sents evidence about the construction of schools,
40 | Chapter 2

education funding, and other m ­ easures of investment in education, and

chapter 5 examines what the first primary education laws in E ­ uropean
and Latin American countries stipulated about the content of the primary
school ­curriculum, how teachers ­ought to be trained and recruited, and how
schools o­ ught to be inspected.

INITIAL TIMING OF STATE INTERVENTION IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

Explaining the emergence of state-­regulated primary education systems re-
quires us to identify when central governments began to regulate primary
education. Most states began to regulate and fund primary schools well
­before they became directly involved in the daily management of schools.
When exactly did governments take an interest in regulating primary edu-
cation? Was it before or ­after the spread of democracy? Was it before or ­after
industrialization?
To answer t­ hese questions, I collected information about the year when
central governments in thirty-­three countries in E ­ urope and Latin Amer­
i­ca began to: fund primary schools; manage them; establish a mandatory
curriculum for all primary schools; establish certification requirements
for primary school teachers; train prospective teachers; mandate local au-
thorities to provide universal access to schooling; mandate ­free provision
for the poor; and establish compulsory primary education.1 I compiled this
information by consulting more than eighty country-­specific history of
education books, articles, and doctoral dissertations published in E ­ nglish,
Spanish, or Portuguese, supplemented by email consultations with his-
tory of education experts.2
To encompass countries in other regions too, I examine an additional
form of governmental intervention that involves the use of official inspec-
tions and gathering of school-­level statistics to monitor the state of primary
schooling. Specifically, for 111 countries, I look at the first year when official
statistics about student enrollment in public primary schools became avail-
able. This information was compiled by Jong-­Wha Lee and Hanol Lee. The
timing of ­these statistics provides a conservative estimate of when central

1. This information does not necessarily capture the earliest expression of politicians’ interest in
education b ­ ecause sometimes subnational governments had begun to intervene in primary educa-
tion before central governments did, but it allows us to make conservative statements of the form
“politicians ­were interested in primary schooling at least as far back as X.”
2. Text sources provide 91 ­percent of the data; expert consultations, conducted when the dates
could not be found in texts in ­English, Spanish, or Portuguese, provide 9 ­percent of the data.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 41

governments became interested in primary schooling. This is ­because other

forms of state intervention in primary education, such as the funding of
education or the introduction of a mandatory curriculum, usually preceded
governments’ efforts to collect enrollment statistics.

TRACKING PRIMARY SCHOOL ENROLLMENT RATES FROM 1820 TO 2010

Explaining the expansion of primary schooling requires data that enable
us to track this expansion across countries and over time. Efforts to track
primary school enrollment rates at a global scale began in the 1960s u ­ nder
UNESCO’s leadership, but by 1960, two-­thirds of ­children ­were already en-
rolled in primary school. This means that if we rely on UNESCO statistics
alone, we w ­ ill miss most of the expansion of primary education. Moreover,
by the 1960s, most countries in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas had already at-
tained universal primary education or w ­ ere close to d
­ oing so, had already
under­gone democ­ratization and industrialization, and enjoyed peaceful
­relations with neighboring countries. If we want to understand the expan-
sion of primary schooling and the role that democ­ratization, industrializa-
tion, and interstate wars played in this expansion, we need data ­going much
farther back in time.
To track primary school enrollment rates from the nineteenth ­century
to the pre­sent, I w ­ ill use two dif­fer­ent but complementary datasets. The first
is a dataset I constructed that includes annual primary school enrollment
rates, m ­ easured as a proportion of the population ages 5 to 14 years, for
­forty-­two countries in ­Europe and the Amer­ic­ as from 1828 to the pre­sent.
Constructing this dataset involved consulting official statistical reports
from individual countries, statistics assembled by local historians, and
cross-­country data compiled by ­others. The starting point was annual
data compiled by Brian Mitchell on the number of students enrolled in
primary school at the country level ­going back to the nineteenth ­century.3
­After assessing the reliability of Mitchell’s annual data by contrasting it
with decennial data from 1870 to 1940 compiled by Aaron Benavot and Phyl-
lis Riddle, I extended Mitchell’s series several ­decades backwards using close
to sixty primary and secondary sources.4 This included official statistical
yearbooks published by central governments, datasets produced by h ­ istorians
specializing in a par­tic­u­lar country, cross-­national data on student enrollment

3. Mitchell (2007).
4. Benavot and Riddle (1988).
42 | Chapter 2

collected by the U.S. Bureau of Education from 1872 to 1915, and Peter Flora’s
well-­known statistical volume on Western ­Europe.5 The result of this effort is
a dataset on primary school enrollment rates that covers a longer period for
­Europe and the Amer­i­cas than any other existing cross-­national dataset.6
For example, while for nineteen countries the earliest data I found coincided
with Mitchell, for twenty-­three countries I extended the series backwards
by twenty-­six years on average.
The second dataset ­measures primary school enrollments rates as a pro-
portion of the school-­age population and was constructed by Jong-­Wha Lee
and Hanol Lee as part of the same data collection effort mentioned ­earlier.
It has the advantage that it covers more countries and regions—in total, 111
countries in ­Europe, the Amer­i­cas, Africa, and Asia. However, the data are
quinquennial rather than annual and the period covered is more l­imited.
In par­tic­u­lar, although Lee and Lee extrapolated enrollment rates backwards
to obtain estimated enrollment rates for all countries in their dataset start-
ing in 1820, in real­ity only nine countries in their dataset have a­ ctual (as op-
posed to extrapolated) enrollment data before 1870, compared to seventeen
countries in my dataset. Indeed, most countries in my dataset contain be-
tween one and four extra d ­ ecades of historical data than that in Lee and
Lee’s dataset. Despite the sparsity of data preceding 1870 in Lee and Lee’s
dataset, their dataset provides relatively good coverage for the twentieth
­century: sixty-­three countries have enrollment data beginning in 1900 and
eighty-­five countries have data preceding 1920. This enables us to cover a
longer period than if we relied only on UNESCO’s data, which begin in
the 1960s.
Using two dif­fer­ent datasets of primary school enrollment rates enables
us to balance a common trade-­off that researchers embarking on the time-­
consuming task of constructing historical cross-­national datasets face: the
trade-­off between breadth (how many countries one chooses to cover) and
depth (how well one covers ­those countries). My dataset provides the most
complete available information about how primary school enrollment rates

5. Flora (1983).
6. The full list of sources for each country and year is available in the online appendix (https://­
press​.­princeton​.­edu​/­books​/­paperback​/­9780691261270​/­raised​-­to​- obey). For a few countries, namely
France and Spain, the enrollment figures obtained from the work of historians specializing in a
given country differed markedly from t­ hose in Mitchell’s (2007) dataset; in t­ hose cases, I opted to
use the figures from ­these expert country historians. For most countries, however, the data in
Mitchell and other sources matched closely, but ­these other sources enabled me to extend the time
series backwards.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 43

evolved in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas, but I ­will complement ­these data with
Lee and Lee’s dataset to provide a sense of how the expansion of education
in Western countries compared to the rest of the world.
What do the data on the timing of central government intervention in
primary education and the expansion of primary school enrollment rates
tell us about when and why governments took an interest in primary school-
ing and expanded its provision? This w ­ ill be the question at the back of
our minds for the remainder of this chapter.

PRIMARY EDUCATION ACROSS COUNTRIES AND REGIONS

Before we explain why the Western world led the creation and expansion
of state-­regulated primary education systems, let’s look at some basic facts
and patterns about this educational transformation. Figure 2.1 shows average
primary school enrollment rates in Prus­sia, the rest of ­Europe, Latin Amer­
i­ca, the United States and Canada, and the rest of the world from 1830 to
2010. From this graph, we can observe that in most parts of the Western
world the rise of primary education systems began during the nineteenth
­century. Prus­sia was the precursor and world leader: its first comprehensive
primary education law dates back to 1763; by the 1820s, its primary school
enrollment rate was already around 70 ­percent of the population ages 5–14,
equivalent to near-­ universal primary education when enrollment is
­measured as a percentage of the primary school–­age population. In the rest
of ­Europe, the expansion of primary schooling usually lagged ­behind Prus­
sia, in some cases more than ­others. Nonetheless, ­Europe as a ­whole had
much higher levels of primary education provision than most other parts
of the world during the nineteenth ­century. Outside ­Europe, the United
States began expanding primary education at a fast pace in the 1830s, reach-
ing universal primary enrollment among white c­ hildren in the 1860s, while
Canada reached this milestone a few ­decades ­later. Latin American coun-
tries also began expanding primary education in the nineteenth c­ entury. Al-
though the region did not reach universal primary education u ­ ntil ­after
World War II, it did so e­ arlier than the rest of the developing world. This is
partly ­because central governments in Latin Amer­i­ca began to expand pri-
mary education ­earlier than Asian or African countries, gaining a consider-
able advantage during the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury.
Although primary school enrollment rates generally exhibited an upward
trend from the nineteenth c­ entury onward, the rate of expansion varied over
 44 | Chapter 2

100

Percent of school-age population

Percent of population 5–14 years

60 80

60
40

40

20
20

0 0
1825 1850 1875 1900 1925 1950 1975 2000
Prussia (left) Europe (left)
Latin America (left) United States and Canada (right)
Rest of the world (right)

Figure 2.1. Primary school enrollment rates in E­ urope, the Amer­i­cas, and the rest of the
world, as a percentage of the population ages 5–14 years and as a percentage of the school-­
age population, 1820–2010. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

time, and enrollment sometimes contracted before increasing again. This

is true at the regional level and becomes even more noticeable when we
look within countries. As an example of this temporal variation, consider
figure 2.2, which shows the historical evolution of primary school enroll-
ment rates in four E ­ uropean and four Latin American countries: Prus­sia / ​
Germany, France, ­Great Britain, Finland, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico,
and Uruguay. Enrollment rates in this figure are ­measured as a percentage of
the population ages 5–14 years; as a result, they lie considerably below
100 ­percent, especially in recent ­decades, when ­children ages 12–14 have typ-
ically been enrolled in secondary rather than primary school. What is clear
from figure 2.2 is that in most countries, primary schooling had ups and
downs despite a common upward trend.
Another impor­tant fact evident in figure 2.2 is that dif­fer­ent countries
began expanding primary education at dif­fer­ent times, did so at dif­fer­ent
speeds, and reached universal enrollment in dif­fer­ent years. Within E ­ urope,
Prus­sia and France ­were regional leaders, while Finland and, notably,
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 45

­ ngland ­were laggards. The French government created a state-­regulated

E
primary education system in 1833 with the passage of the Guizot Law, which
was followed by a rapid expansion of primary schooling that enabled France
to reach universal primary education by the 1860s, as shown in figure 2.2.
­England, by contrast, lagged considerably ­behind other ­European ­powers:
it only created a national primary education system with the 1870 Forster
Education Act, ­after which enrollment rates fi­nally caught up with Prus­sia’s
and France’s rates ­after ­decades of lagging ­behind them. Other ­European
countries took even longer to expand primary education. Finland, for ex-
ample, began to expand primary education in the 1890s, saw a sharp in-
crease in primary schooling between 1918 and 1921, and had caught up
with the rest of ­Europe by the early 1930s.
Within Latin Amer­i­ca, Argentina and Uruguay w ­ ere regional leaders—­
along with Chile and Costa Rica—in primary education, while Mexico and
Colombia ­were among the laggards. The Argentine government created a
national primary education system in 1884 with the passage of the landmark
Ley 1420. As in France ­after the Guizot Law and ­England ­after the Forster
Education Act, the passage of a comprehensive national law regulating
nearly all aspects of primary education was accompanied by centralized ef-
forts to expand the coverage of primary schooling. Starting in the 1880s,
Argentina saw a rapid increase in access to primary education, attaining near
universal primary education in the early 1940s. In Uruguay, the first com-
prehensive national law of primary education was passed in 1877, but access
to primary schooling only took off a­ fter the civil war of 1904. Mexico,
on the other hand, lagged b ­ ehind the region’s average throughout the
nineteenth c­ entury. It was only in the late 1920s that the primary school
system began to grow quickly. In Colombia, the expansion of primary edu-
cation began during the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury, then pla-
teaued during the first half of the twentieth c­ entury, and fi­nally accelerated
from the 1950s on.
The variation in the rate of expansion within countries w ­ ill be very help-
ful to us. Much of what we w ­ ill do in this chapter is to identify which f­ actors
predict an acceleration in a country’s primary school enrollment rate and
which ones do not. It is likely that the f­ actors that drove the expansion of
primary education differed across countries, and even within countries over
time. The aim of this chapter is not to explain each individual country’s
trajectory, but to determine ­whether t­here w ­ ere some ­factors that consis-
tently led to educational expansion in a large number of countries. Our
 Prussia France
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

100

80 100
Prussia
80
60
60
40 Europe
40 Europe
France
20
20

0 0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Great Britain Finland

Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 Europe 40 Europe

20 20
Great Britain Finland
0 0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Argentina Colombia
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 Argentina 20
Latin America Latin America
0 0 Colombia

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Mexico Uruguay
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 Mexico 20
Latin America Latin America
Uruguay
0 0
1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Figure 2.2. Historical evolution of primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of

the population ages 5–14 years, in four ­European and four Latin American countries.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 47

focus ­will be on identifying d

­ rivers of the expansion of enrollment rates in
­Europe and the Amer­ic­ as, as ­these are the regions that led the global ex-
pansion of primary education. This analy­sis is just a starting point. In ­later
chapters we ­will more closely examine why Prus­sia and France led the ex-
pansion of primary education within Europe, why Argentina and Chile
were leaders within Latin America, and why England and Mexico lagged
behind.

THE NON-­DEMOCRATIC ROOTS OF MASS EDUCATION

Many ­people believe that the spread of democracy played “a leading role”
in explaining the expansion of primary education around the world.7 Some
believe that democracies provide more primary education than autocracies
­because politicians in a democracy are more likely to listen to what a ma-
jority of ­people want, and presumably, most ­people want primary educa-
tion. O ­ thers believe that transitions to democracy w
­ ill be followed by greater
provision of primary education not ­because democracies respond to what
voters want but b ­ ecause politicians and traditional elites have an interest
in teaching the newly enfranchised classes how to use their ­political rights
responsibly. W ­ hatever the reason, if the spread of democracy played an
impor­tant role in explaining the expansion of primary education, we should
see a large increase in primary schooling ­after transitions from autocracy
to democracy.
History, however, shows that public primary education systems ­were a
non-­democratic invention. Barring a few exceptions like the United States,
almost all state-­regulated primary education systems in the world emerged
well before representative democracy was even conceivable. Historians have
devoted extensive attention to the case of Prus­sia ­because its primary school
system, developed ­under an absolutist regime in the eigh­teenth c­ entury, be-
came a model for the rest of the world. Already in 1717, King Frederick Wil-
liam I signed a royal school ordinance requiring that “in t­ hose places where
schools exist, parents, ­under threat of fine, be compelled to send their
­children to school.” Due to a lack of funding and poor enforcement capacity,
the order was never implemented, but it was a turning point that marked the
moment when the education of ­children became part of the royal agenda.8

7. Lindert (2004), p. 105.

8. Melton (2002), p. 46.
48 | Chapter 2

The king’s successor, Frederick the ­Great, continued and expanded his
­father’s efforts. In 1753, he allocated an annual grant to train primary
school teachers at the Berlin Normal School, imposed a new teacher train-
ing curriculum, and signed an order stipulating that all f­uture school va-
cancies throughout Prus­sia should be filled with teachers trained in that
Normal School. This marked the beginning of the central government’s
mono­poly in training primary school teachers.9 A new royal school ordi-
nance signed by Frederick the ­Great in 1763 imposed compulsory primary
schooling for c­ hildren in rural Protestant areas, followed in 1765 by a simi-
lar ordinance for rural Catholic areas.10
­These centralized efforts to regulate and promote primary education ­were
made while Prus­sia remained an absolutist regime. By the time democracy
emerged in 1918—or even by 1848, when a wave of revolutions sought, un-
successfully, to introduce a demo­cratic constitution—­Prussia already had a
well-­developed primary education system regulated by the central govern-
ment. In the 1820s, a c­ entury before democ­ratization and more than half a
­century before the introduction of Bismarck’s social welfare legislation,
70 ­percent of ­children ages 5–14 years ­were already enrolled in primary
school.
Far from being an anomaly, the Prus­sian case is illustrative of a general
pattern: most central governments around the world began to regulate and
promote primary education well before democracy emerged. This conclu-
sion comes from comparing the year when a country first transitioned to
democracy and the year when its central government first intervened in pri-
mary education. Using data from more than one hundred countries across
all regions, figure 2.3 shows that governments began to systematically mon-
itor primary schools on average sixty-­five years before democ­ratization.
The graph adopts a lenient definition of democracy that requires countries
to have open and competitive elections and at least 50 ­percent of males en-
franchised.11 A stricter definition of what constitutes a democracy, such as
one requiring universal female suffrage or, at the very least, universal male
suffrage, would imply an even larger gap between democ­ratization and cen-
tral government intervention in primary education.

9. Kandel (1910), p. 8.
10. Alexander (1919).
11. This ­measure of democ­ratization was developed by Boix, Miller, and Rosato (2013). The con-
clusions hold if we rely instead on other common m ­ easures, including the Polity Proj­ect’s
­measure of democracy. See Paglayan (2021).
 a) Europe and the Americas Rest of the world Rest of the world (cont.)
Haiti Russian Federation Ghana
United States
Belgium Sri Lanka Morocco
Switzerland Hungary Albania
Colombia Algeria China
Dominican Rep.
Chile Australia Iran
Ireland India Jordan
Netherlands
Portugal Japan Poland
Barbados Mauritius Turkey
France Myanmar Iraq
Guyana
Spain Serbia Mozambique
Trinidad and Tobago South Africa Uganda
Greece
Italy Indonesia Cambodia
United Kingdom New Zealand Congo, D.R.
Canada Cameroon Fiji
Sweden
Argentina Cyprus Kenya
Austria Romania Syria
Brazil
Denmark Bulgaria Zambia
Jamaica Lesotho Benin
Mexico Liberia Mali
Finland
Germany Malta Niger
Uruguay Gambia Senegal
Bolivia
Cuba Philippines Afghanistan
El Salvador Sierra Leone Bangladesh
Guatemala Taiwan Malawi
Honduras
Nicaragua Egypt Nepal
Norway Czech Republic Pakistan
Paraguay
Belize Kuwait Swaziland
Ecuador Republic of Korea Yemen
Luxembourg Sudan Libya
Peru
Venezuela Thailand Malaysia
Costa Rica Togo Tunisia
Panama
Iceland Zimbabwe Cote dIvoire

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

Earliest primary education statistics First democracy

b)
Prussia
Austria
Netherlands
Denmark
Norway
Ireland
France
Greece
Belgium
Sweden
Cuba
Trinidad y Tobago
Peru
Spain
Italy
Chile
Costa Rica
Portugal
Colombia
England
Paraguay
Venezuela
Ecuador
El Salvador
Switzerland
Guatemala
Uruguay
Brazil
Argentina
Jamaica
Bolivia
Mexico
Finland

1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

First primary education law First democracy

Figure 2.3. Timing of democ­ratization and timing of state intervention in primary edu-
cation in ­Europe, the Amer­i­cas, and the rest of the world. The top graph (a) compares
the timing of the first democracy and the first centrally reported primary education
statistics in 109 countries. The bottom graph (b) compares the timing of the first de-
mocracy and the first comprehensive primary education law in E ­ uropean and Latin
American countries. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.
50 | Chapter 2

That central governments began to intervene in primary education may

be unsurprising for countries like China, Egypt, or Rus­sia, which have pub-
lic primary education systems despite never having been demo­cratic. Yet the
same is true for regions that experienced democracy relatively early, such as
Western ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca. ­There, central governments began to
fund and build primary schools, set a mandatory curriculum for all primary
schools, and established teacher certification and state-­run teacher training
institutions more than a ­century before democ­ratization; and introduced
compulsory primary schooling laws—­one of the last forms of central gov-
ernment intervention—­about seventy-­five years before democ­ratization.12
The earliest forms of intervention usually came in the form of isolated
regulations that targeted only one or two policy areas, such as the curricu-
lum or teacher certification, but eventually central governments a­ dopted
a comprehensive national primary education law. T ­ hese landmark laws oc-
cupy a crucial place in the history of education in any country ­because they
created a centralized framework for education systems, regulating multiple
aspects of schooling such as the curriculum, teacher training and certifica-
tion, school construction, funding, inspection, e­ tc. Some examples of ­these
laws include Prus­sia’s 1763 General Rural School Regulations, France’s 1833
Loi sur l’instruction primaire, Argentina’s 1884 Ley 1420, and ­England’s 1870
Forster Elementary Education Act. The bottom panel in figure 2.3 compares
the timing of the first such education law and the timing of democ­ratization
in E
­ uropean and Latin American countries. The data reveal that central gov-
ernments in ­these regions ­adopted comprehensive primary education laws
on average sixty-­eight years before democ­ratization, thus reinforcing the
general conclusion that it was non-­democratic regimes that ­were respon-
sible for the creation of state-­regulated primary education systems.
Non-­democratic regimes went well beyond the adoption of laws to reg-
ulate primary education; they also promoted the expansion of primary
schooling. An example of this comes from the history of France. The first
French national primary education law, passed in 1833 u ­ nder the July Monar-
chy, gave way to the fastest expansion of primary school enrollment rates
in French history. By 1848, when universal male suffrage was introduced,
two-­thirds of ­children ­were already enrolled in primary school. What’s more,
the restriction of p­ olitical rights imposed when Napoleon III established the
Second French Empire in 1851 did not halt the expansion of primary school-

12. See the online appendix.

 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 51

30
Percent of countries

20

10

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Primary school enrollment rate 5 years before democratization

Figure 2.4. Distribution of primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the

school-­age population, five years before the first democ­ratization in countries that
ever demo­cratized, 1820–2010. Out of 111 countries with enrollment data, 87 expe-
rienced at least one transition to democracy. See text and footnotes for sources
and methodology.

ing. In fact, universal primary education was achieved by 1865—­before the

collapse of the second empire and the restoration of ­political rights ­under
the Third Republic.
The high levels of access to primary schooling attained in France during
non-­democratic periods are representative of a more general pattern:
Around the world, most c­ hildren gained access to primary schooling be-
fore the arrival of democracy, as shown in figure 2.4.13 The histogram shows
what proportion of countries that ever became demo­cratic had reached pri-
mary school enrollment rates above 90 ­percent before they first demo­
cratized, what proportion had reached enrollment rates between 80 and
90 ­percent before demo­cratizing, between 70 and 80 ­percent, and so on. If

13. This statement is true ­under two dif­fer­ent definitions of democracy: (1) universal suffrage,
competitive elections, and limits on executive power; and (2) open and competitive elections and
at least 50 ­percent of male adults can vote. The second definition is less demanding than the first.
Data for the first definition come from the Polity Proj­ect. Data for the second definition come
from Boix, Miller, and Rosato (2013).
52 | Chapter 2

Percent of school-age population 100

75

50

25

0
–20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20
Years since democratization
World average Western Europe
Latin America Eastern Europe
Asia & the Pacific North Africa & Middle East
Sub-Saharan Africa

Figure 2.5. Average primary school enrollment rates around the world and by re-
gion, as a percentage of the school-­age population, before and ­after democ­ratization,
1820–2010. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

we add up all the countries with enrollment rates above 50 ­percent, that
gives us the proportion of countries where a majority of c­ hildren had al-
ready gained access to primary schooling before democracy emerged. Seven
out of ten countries fall within this group. Put differently, only three out of
ten countries that transitioned to democracy w ­ ere not already providing
primary education to a majority of ­children before they became demo­cratic
for the first time.
Another way to understand the magnitude of education provision u ­ nder
non-­democratic regimes is to consider how primary school enrollment rates
evolved within countries before and a­ fter the arrival of democracy. This is
shown in figure 2.5. Not all countries that transitioned to democracy did
so at the same time, so to be able to compare them, the x-­axis normalizes
time so that “year zero” for each country is the year in which that country
became demo­cratic for the first time. The thick grey line tells us, across all
countries that ever became demo­cratic, what was the average primary school
enrollment rate in the twenty years before and the twenty years ­after democ­
ratization. The other lines break down this average by region.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 53

An impor­tant pattern emerges from figure 2.5: Across all countries that
at some point became demo­cratic, primary school enrollment had already
reached 70 ­percent on average before democracy emerged. If we disaggregate
the analy­sis by region, we can see that in all regions except for Sub-­Saharan
Africa, at least two-­thirds of school-­age c­ hildren w ­ ere already enrolled in
primary school before the arrival of democracy. Of special relevance is the
fact that in Western ­European and Latin American countries the bulk of
the expansion of primary schooling had already been completed five
years before democracy emerged, with enrollment reaching on average
78 ­percent of school-­age ­children in E ­ urope and 67 ­percent in Latin Amer­
i­ca years before the arrival of democracy. This means that the spread of
­democracy cannot explain why ­these Western socie­ties led the global ex-
pansion of primary education.
Some readers may won­der ­whether democ­ratization nonetheless led to
additional increases in access to primary schooling. This is a question I have
examined in g­ reat depth elsewhere.14 The next three paragraphs summarize
the results of that investigation.
When p ­ eople think of democracy as a key driver of the expansion of pri-
mary education, a case that often comes to mind is the United States, one
of the modern world’s oldest democracies and also one of the first countries
to attain universal primary education. By 1870, 90 ­percent of white ­children
in the United States ­were enrolled in a public primary school, thanks in
large part to the common school movement that since the late 1830s set out
to establish a public school in ­every community.15 But attributing this ex-
pansion of education to the fact that the United States was demo­cratic is a
big leap. Precisely ­because the United States had always been more dem-
ocratic than other countries at the time, at least for white males, we can-
not know if the country would have accomplished universal primary edu-
cation in the absence of democracy—­much like France or Prus­sia did.
To determine how democracy impacts education provision, a better ap-
proach is to look at countries that ­were once non-­democratic but eventu-
ally became demo­cratic and ask: did the expansion of primary schooling
in ­these countries accelerate a­ fter they transitioned to democracy? Figure 2.5
shows that, in most cases, the answer is no: in the average country, primary
school enrollment rates increased at the same pace before and ­after democ­

14. Paglayan (2021).

15. Own calculations based on U.S. Department of Education (1993).
54 | Chapter 2

ratization. Still, perhaps enrollment rates would have declined or grown at

a slower pace if democ­ratization had not occurred. A common strategy that
social scientists use to gauge the plausibility of this scenario is to compare
how enrollment rates changed in countries that transitioned to democracy
relative to countries that remained non-­democratic. If democ­ratization en-
hanced the level of access to primary education e­ ither by accelerating or
preventing declines in its provision, we should observe that enrollment rates
in countries that demo­cratized grew at a faster pace ­after democ­ratization
took place than in countries that during the same period remained non-­
democratic. Yet this is not what happened: in general, primary schooling
expanded just as fast in countries that experienced democ­ratization as in
­those that remained non-­democratic.
­There are several potential explanations for why, in general, democracy
did not lead to an increase in primary school coverage, but the explanation
that finds the most support in the data stems from a point made e­ arlier: In
most countries, by the time they became demo­cratic, a majority of p ­ eople
already had access to primary schooling and therefore did not want an ex-
pansion of it.16 In 40 ­percent of countries that became demo­cratic at some
point, including France but also Austria, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Rus­
sia, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and many ­others, access to primary schooling
was so far-­reaching ­under non-­democracy that ­there was ­little room left for
expansion ­after they became demo­cratic. But even in countries where t­ here
was room for expansion, democracy often failed to bring about an expan-
sion of primary schooling ­because, while a sizable minority lacked access
to it, the majority of voters already had access to primary education. Expand-
ing access to primary education in t­hese countries would prob­ably have
helped election-­oriented politicians win support from the minority of

16. In Paglayan (2021), I considered two additional explanations for the absence of a positive
impact of democ­ratization on primary school enrollment rates. First, perhaps most democracies
emerged as part of a power-­sharing pact between the rich and the ­middle class, as a result of which
institutions ­were created that gave t­ hese groups outsized influence over politics compared to dis-
advantaged groups who lacked access to primary education. Second, perhaps democracy failed to
bring about increased provision of primary schooling when right-­wing parties ­were elected but
brought about educational expansion when left-­wing parties won elections. While logically plau-
sible, the evidence does not provide much support for ­these explanations. Demo­cratic regimes
­were no more likely to promote the expansion of primary schooling when they resulted from so-
cial revolutions than when they resulted from intra-­elite pacts. Nor have left-­wing demo­cratic
governments been more likely to expand primary education than right-­wing ones.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 55

v­oters who still lacked access—­but minorities d ­ on’t win elections, and
politicians know this. 17

It is certainly pos­si­ble that the arrival of democracy did lead to profound

changes in the goals pursued by education systems or the quality of educa-
tion available to citizens. What democracy cannot explain is why Western
socie­ties led the emergence and expansion of primary schooling—­two trans-
formations that usually preceded the spread of democracy.

LEFT-­WING AUTOCRACIES AND MASS EDUCATION

Did non-­democratic regimes expand primary education b ­ ecause they
embraced a left-­wing ideology and relied on the lower classes for ­political
support? Left-­wing autocracies have often implemented large land re­distribution
programs, progressive tax schedules, and other policies that redistrib-
ute resources and income from wealthier to poorer members of society.
But do left-­wing autocracies also explain the rise of mass education? Not
consistently.
The argument that left-­wing autocracies expanded mass education as part
of a bundle of redistributive policies finds empirical support in the twenti-
eth c­ entury, when the rise of communist and socialist dictatorships often
gave way to an unpre­ce­dented expansion of primary education.18 Indeed,
between 1900 and 2010, primary school enrollment rates increased twice
as fast in left-­wing autocracies as in right-­wing ones.19 Three of the most
impressive examples come from Rus­sia, Cuba, and Ghana. In Rus­sia, follow-
ing the proliferation of public primary schools promoted by Stalin, the pro-
portion of the population ages 5–14 years that w ­ ere enrolled in a primary
school increased from less than 13 ­percent before the October Revolution
of 1917 to 50 ­percent by 1940. No other country in the world experienced
such a staggering expansion of primary education during that period. In

17. In line with this explanation, the only region where I find evidence that democ­ratization did
lead to an expansion of primary schooling is also the only region where most voters lacked access
to primary schooling before democracy emerged: Sub-­Saharan Africa. See the online appendix.
18. Manzano’s (2017) cross-­national study from 1960 to 2000 finds that autocrats who champi-
oned a left-­wing ideology favoring the interests of the working class ­were likely to expand access
to secondary schooling. Kosack’s (2012) study of 1950s Ghana, 1950s Taiwan, and 1930s Brazil simi-
larly finds that non-­democratic regimes that relied on the mobilization of poorer sectors of soci-
ety to assume and retain power made deliberate efforts to expand primary education.
19. The data on the ideology of governments comes from Brambor, Lindvall, and Stjernquist
(2017).
56 | Chapter 2

Cuba, the establishment of a one-­party communist regime in 1959 was fol-

lowed by a sudden expansion of primary school coverage, which increased
by more than ten percentage points within just two years (from 49 ­percent
in 1958 to 62 ­percent in 1960). In Ghana, u ­ nder the leadership of socialist
dictator Kwame Nkrumah, who introduced the Accelerated Development
Plan for Education, primary school enrollment rates increased by thirty-­six
percentage points (from 24 to 60 ­percent) between 1950 and 1965. To make
sense of the magnitude of this pace, if a country wanted to go from 0 to
100 ­percent enrollment, it would need sixty-­two years to accomplish that at
the pace of expansion seen in Rus­sia between 1917 and 1940, forty-­two years
at the pace seen in Ghana between 1950 and 1965, and fifteen years at the
pace seen in Cuba between 1958 and 1960. By contrast, if a country expanded
at the average rate of expansion observed around the world between 1820
and 2010, it would take 214 years to accomplish the same goal.
What the rise of left-­wing autocracies cannot explain is why the West led
the creation of state-­regulated primary education systems in the nineteenth
­century, or why it led the global expansion of primary schooling. Thirty out
of the forty-­two countries in E ­ urope and the Amer­ic­ as for which we have
historical data on primary school enrollment rates never had a left-­wing au-
tocracy, and another three countries had short-­lived left-­wing autocrats
who lost power a­ fter one or two years. In E ­ urope, almost eight out of ten
­children gained access to primary schooling as a result of the educational
efforts of right-­wing, and to a lesser extent centrist, autocratic regimes. In
Latin Amer­i­ca, the impetus for the creation of primary education systems
for the masses developed, and much of the expansion of such systems oc-
curred, ­under the oligarchic regimes of the late nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries, before the emergence of left-­wing dictatorships.20
Moreover, the rise of populist leaders in twentieth-­century Latin Amer­
i­ca produced mixed results in terms of the level of access to primary educa-
tion. Brazil’s populist dictator Getúlio Vargas, who came to power through
a coup in 1930, expanded primary education at the same pace, not faster,
than the right-­wing government that preceded him. In Argentina, primary
schooling u ­ nder the populist presidency of Juan Domingo Perón from 1946
to 1955 expanded at a slower pace than u ­ nder the right-­wing dictatorship

20. Eight Latin American countries had at least one left-­wing autocrat who stayed in power for
at least five years, but all of them ­rose to power ­after 1920, by which time Latin Amer­i­ca was al-
ready providing twice as much primary education as the rest of the developing world.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 57

that preceded him. In Mexico, the two periods of fastest educational expan-
sion from 1880 to 2010 took place when right-­wing factions of the PRI
controlled the presidency. The first big increase took place between 1926 and
1929 during the presidency of Plutarco Elías Calles, when primary school
enrollment rates increased from 25 to 35 ­percent, and the second took place
between 1958 and 1964, when enrollment increased from 47 to 58 ­percent
­under the presidency of Adolfo López Mateos.
In sum, although the rise of communist, socialist, and left-­wing autocra-
cies contributed greatly to the expansion of primary education in some parts
of the world during the twentieth c­ entury, it cannot explain the creation or
expansion of state-­regulated primary education systems in the West. The ab-
sence of left-­wing autocracies did not stop the West from being a leader in
the regulation and provision of primary education compared to the rest of
the world. What ­else could have prompted central governments to set up
primary education systems and promote their expansion?
One possibility is that right-­wing non-­democracies expanded primary ed-
ucation ­because they hoped that improving the well-­being of the lower
classes would prevent mass rebellion against the regime.21 Yet this explana-
tion is also unconvincing for two main reasons. First, as I document in chap-
ter 4, in the non-­democratic regimes that led the creation and expansion of
primary education systems in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca and served as ed-
ucational models for other countries, ­political rulers and education re-
formers w ­ ere explicit that economic re­distribution should not be a goal of
primary education, and argued, on the contrary, that primary schools should
refrain from promoting the social mobility of the lower classes. Second, and
crucially, central governments during the nineteenth c­ entury ­were not ­under
the impression that parents demanded education for their c­ hildren. On the
contrary, they believed that parents ­were largely uninterested in sending
their ­children to school b ­ ecause they preferred their c­ hildren to work at
home or in the fields or factories. In part b­ ecause of this belief, they a­ dopted
compulsory schooling laws, as we w ­ ill see in chapter 5. In other words, gov-
ernments in ­Europe and the Amer­ic­ as created and expanded primary edu-
cation systems despite their belief that this was an unpop­u­lar policy among
the masses.22

21. For evidence that autocracies have often ­adopted land re­distribution policies to garner
­political support from land-­poor individuals, see Albertus (2015).
22. Andersson and Berger (2019) show that Swedish elites expanded mass schooling even
though most parents w ­ ere uninterested in schooling b ­ ecause it competed with their c­ hildren’s
58 | Chapter 2

The remainder of this chapter shows that internal conflict explains the
Western rise of primary education systems better than other common ex-
planations, including the diffusion of ideas about the role of education for
nation-­building, industrialization, or interstate wars.

IDEAS ABOUT THE NATION-­BUILDING ROLE OF EDUCATION

Some have argued that the diffusion of fash­ion­able ideas about the nation-­
building role of education was the main driver ­behind the rise of mass ed-
ucation systems. According to this view, starting in the late eigh­teenth
­century, the idea emerged among ­European rulers, inspired by Prus­sia, that
in order to build a viable nation-­state the state had to provide education to
the lower classes to inculcate a strong national identity. This idea then spread
to other parts of the world as countries sought to emulate the E ­ uropean
nation-­state model. Proponents of this view argue that it was the arrival of
­these international ideas and not domestic forces that led to the creation
and expansion of state-­regulated primary education systems. Once ­these
ideas arrived in a country, the argument goes, states a­ dopted comprehen-
sive laws to create a unified primary education system, began to expand pri-
mary education, and continued ­doing so at a steady pace thereafter, almost
as if on autopi­lot. From this perspective, the fact that primary education
expanded considerably ­under non-­democratic regimes was simply a histori-
cal coincidence, driven by the real­ity that at the time when it became fash­
ion­able for central governments to provide education for the masses, most
regimes still happened to be non-­democratic.23
­There is no doubt that ­European ideas about the ­political role of mass
education ­were an impor­tant precondition for the emergence of primary
education systems. ­Europe led the rest of the world in the construction
and expansion of primary education systems controlled by the central gov-

work responsibilities. In France, too, the national government u ­ nder the July Monarchy (1833–
1848) promoted an unpre­ce­dented expansion of primary schooling even though demand for edu-
cation from the lower classes was low (Squicciarini and Voigtländer 2016). For additional evidence
that parental demand for education was low, particularly in rural areas and agrarian economies
where families relied on child ­labor for agricultural productivity, see Cinnirella and Hornung
(2016); Baker (2015); Tapia and Martinez-­Galarraga (2018); Cvrcek and Zajicek (2019).
23. Paglayan (2021) and the online appendix provide visual evidence that the expansion of pri-
mary schooling ­under non-­democracies was not merely a historical coincidence. T ­ hese regimes
appear to have incentives of their own to expand primary schooling as suggested by the observa-
tion that reversals from democracy to non-­democracy are, on average, followed by an acceleration
of primary school enrollment rates that is not observed in countries that remain demo­cratic.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 59

ernment. We saw this already in chapter 1 when we noted that no other

region in the world came close to the level of primary school coverage
seen in ­Europe during the first half of the nineteenth c­ entury. Central gov-
ernments in ­Europe ­were also precursors in intervening in primary educa-
tion to fund and monitor primary schools, control the curriculum, and pass
compulsory education laws. Prus­sia in par­tic­u­lar introduced compulsory
primary education ­under Frederick the G ­ reat in 1763, nine d
­ ecades before
Mas­sa­chu­setts became the first state in the United States to pass a similar
law. Indeed, by the time Mas­sa­chu­setts introduced compulsory schooling
in 1852, six ­European countries (Prus­sia, Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal,
and Sweden) had already ­adopted compulsory schooling laws. ­European
countries also led the way in establishing a system of government-­funded
Normal Schools to train primary school teachers. Throughout the nine-
teenth ­century, Normal Schools became the only institutions allowed to
train teachers in most of E ­ urope, the United States, and Latin Amer­i­ca.
­Here again, Prus­sia blazed a trail, as we saw ­earlier in the chapter, begin-
ning to fund Normal Schools in 1753. By the time the first state-­funded
Normal School was established in the United States in 1839, again in Mas­
sa­chu­setts, five ­European countries besides Prus­sia had already established
a system of state-­controlled Normal Schools: Denmark (beginning in
1790), Norway (1826), France (1833), Ireland (1834), and Spain (1836). Indeed,
when the first state-­funded Normal School was created in the United
States, ­there ­were already 264 Normal Schools throughout ­Europe.24
Hundreds of reports ­were written in the nineteenth c­ entury by govern-
ment officials who traveled to E ­ urope, and especially to Prus­sia and France,
to learn how to design and successfully run a public primary education
system. In 1836, Calvin Stowe was sent by the Ohio State Legislature on an
official mission to learn about primary school systems in E ­ urope. In his Re-
port on Elementary Education in ­Europe, he urged Ohio legislators to follow

24. This figure comes from Henry Barnard’s two-­volume report on Normal Schools, which he
wrote in 1851 when he was Superintendent of Common Schools of Connecticut. In the preface of
volume 2, devoted entirely to the history and characteristics of Normal Schools in E ­ urope, Bar-
nard stresses the importance of learning from E ­ urope to develop public education systems
throughout the United States: “This volume . . . ​embodies information which the author believes
can be made available in o ­ rganizing new, and improving existing systems of public instruction . . . ​
in ­every State of this ­Union. Its value does not consist in its conveying the speculations or l­ imited
experience of the author, but the matured views and varied experience of wise statesmen, educa-
tors and teachers, through a succession of years, and u ­ nder the most diverse circumstances of
government, society and religion” (Barnard (1851, v.2).
60 | Chapter 2

in Prus­sia’s footsteps by sponsoring primary schools and creating state-­

controlled Normal Schools to train primary school teachers. Horace Mann
traveled to Prus­sia in 1843 and upon his return advocated for the creation
of Normal Schools and the development of a primary school curriculum
focused, like the Prus­sian curriculum, on moral education. In Latin Amer­
i­ca, Domingo F. Sarmiento, who as President of Argentina founded the first
Normal School in 1869, had traveled to France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland,
the Netherlands, and E ­ ngland in 1845 to learn about t­ hese countries’ edu-
cation and immigration policies. In his book Educación ­Popular, published
in 1849, Sarmiento not only lays out influential arguments for why Latin
American countries should develop a national primary education system,
but also provides detailed information on how schools ­were ­organized
and how teachers ­were trained in France and Prus­sia. In its 320 pages,
Sarmiento’s Educación ­Popular mentions “France” 88 times, “Prus­sia” 43
times, “­England” 29 times, “Holland” 26 times, and “­Europe” 78 times. We
­will ­devote much of chapter 3 to discussing the role that educational ideas
played in driving states to intervene in the provision of primary education.
Despite the undoubted influence of E ­ uropean ideas about education,
their diffusion is insufficient to explain the patterns of creation and ex-
pansion of primary education systems we have seen so far. Three empirical
observations are inconsistent with the diffusion argument. First, countries
si­mul­ta­neously exposed to the same ideas nonetheless created and expanded
primary education systems at dif­fer­ent times. Take the cases of Argentina
and Chile, two neighboring countries that, during the nineteenth ­century,
shared many similarities—­independence from Spain in the 1810s, a strong
presence of the Catholic Church, a republican constitution, an oligarchic
regime, and similar levels of income per capita—­and where the same argu-
ments about the importance of having a national primary education sys-
tem to consolidate the power of the central government began circulating
si­mul­ta­neously during the 1840s. This was in part b
­ ecause Sarmiento, in ad-
dition to being the most fervent advocate for a system of mass education in
his home country, Argentina, also lived in exile in Chile during the 1840s,
during which time he became the director of the first Chilean Normal
School and published Educación ­Popular. Despite the widespread dissemi-
nation of Sarmiento’s ideas in both countries, in turn inspired by his long
trip to ­Europe, the Argentine and Chilean governments began to regulate
and promote primary education more than twenty years apart from one an-
other, with Chile passing its first national primary education law in 1860,
and Argentina in 1884.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 61

The diffusion argument’s prediction that the arrival of educational ideas

from ­Europe triggered a ­process of steady educational expansion is also in-
consistent with the fact that, in most countries, the rate of expansion of
primary schooling fluctuated over time. For example, in figure 2.2 we saw
that in Argentina primary schooling remained relatively stable throughout
the 1860s and 1870s but picked up considerably during the presidency of
Julio A. Roca in the 1880s. In Colombia, primary schooling expanded at a
relatively steady pace from the 1850s to the 1920s, then stalled for the next
three d­ ecades, and then expanded at an unpre­ce­dented pace starting in the
1950s. France experienced a strong expansion of primary schooling during
the early years of the July Monarchy in the 1830s, a deceleration in the 1840s,
and a renewed acceleration in the 1850s. ­These are just a few examples that
illustrate a broader point: the expansion of primary schooling did not pro-
ceed uninterruptedly as the diffusion explanation predicts; it had ups and
downs that differed across countries and that cannot be adequately ex-
plained by changes in the circulation of international ideas.
Fi­nally, the diffusion argument is also inconsistent with the evidence pre-
sented ­later in this chapter that the expansion of primary schooling experi-
enced an acceleration ­after periods of internal conflict. Recall that diffusion
proponents believe that domestic forces like internal conflict played an in-
significant role in the expansion of primary education. However, as we ­will
soon see, primary school enrollment rates more than tripled in the wake of
civil wars, an acceleration that cannot be explained by common global
forces. To understand when and why countries expanded mass education,
and when the provision of primary education accelerated within a country,
we need to look beyond global forces and ideas.

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MASS EDUCATION

Industrialization is one pos­si­ble domestic economic condition that could
have driven the creation and expansion of public primary education systems.
According to Ernest Gellner and other proponents of this argument, the
emergence of an industrial economy created the need for skilled and liter-
ate workers who could read machine manuals and understand instructions
from their supervisors in a common language.25 ­Others have argued that
the rise of the factory system of production also created the need for docile,
punctual, disciplined workers who w ­ ere predisposed to follow o
­ rders. Once

25. Gellner (1983); Galor and Moav (2006).

62 | Chapter 2

the locus of production moved from the home to factories with expensive
machinery, divided but interconnected tasks, and supervisors with whom
workers shared no kinship, the need to instill discipline became obvious.26
Governments, the argument goes, provided primary education to respond
to the workforce needs of this new economy.
In theory, three dif­fer­ent actors within society could have motivated gov-
ernments to respond to ­these workforce needs. One possibility is that the
emergence of an industrial economy gave rise to a power­ful class of factory
­owners who used their economic power to pressure the government into
expanding primary education. Another possibility is that with the emer-
gence of new job opportunities in factories and cities, ordinary citizens
demanded greater public provision of primary schooling so that they and
their ­children could acquire the skills needed to take advantage of ­these
new jobs. A third possibility is that the government, not the private sector,
was the main architect of the industrialization ­process and expanded
­primary education to create the skilled and docile workforce it needed to
support its own state-­led industrialization goals.
A common objection to the industrialization argument comes from con-
trasting the histories of ­England and Prus­sia: E ­ ngland was an industrial
leader and education laggard, whereas Prus­sia was the opposite. Economic
historians have documented that ­England’s First Industrial Revolution,
which began around the 1760s, relied not on a mass of literate workers but
on a few highly educated p ­ eople with advanced scientific and technical
skills. In fact, despite leading the Industrial Revolution, the government
27

did not make an effort to provide widespread access to primary education.28

In the early 1850s, many d ­ ecades ­after ­England had begun to industrialize,29
less than 9 ­percent of ­English ­children ­were enrolled in primary school. To
put this in perspective: of the nine ­European countries for which we have
data in the mid-­nineteenth ­century (Austria, Belgium, Prus­sia, Spain, France,
­England, Ireland, Norway, and the Netherlands), E ­ ngland was the only
one that had a primary school enrollment rate in the single digits. In Spain,

26. Bowles and Gintis (1976); Mokyr (2002), pp. 120–162.

27. Mitch (1999); Mokyr (2005). For similar findings but in the case of France, see Squicciarni
and Voigtländer (2015).
28. Green (2013); Mitch (1999).
29. The conventional wisdom is that E ­ ngland began to industrialize in the 1760s. According to
Rostow, however, E ­ ngland’s industrialization began sometime between 1783 and 1802. In e­ ither
case, ­England began to expand primary education more than a half ­century ­after beginning to
industrialize.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 63

the country with the second lowest primary school enrollment rate,
25 ­percent of ­children ­were enrolled in primary education in 1850. It ­wasn’t
­until 1870 that E ­ ngland’s first national law o ­ rganizing primary education
was passed, the Forster Elementary Education Act, initiating a ­process of
rapid expansion in primary school coverage and convergence with the pro-
vision levels seen elsewhere in E ­ urope. In other words, for about one
­century ­England was able to sustain the ­process of industrialization with-
out investing in primary education. By contrast, Prus­sia became a leader in
regulating and providing primary education in the late eigh­teenth c­ entury
despite the fact that its economy remained agrarian.
Are the cases of E ­ ngland and Prus­sia anomalies? That is, was industrial-
ization an impor­tant driver of the expansion of primary education in other
countries? And was the Second Industrial Revolution perhaps dif­fer­ent from
the First Industrial Revolution? A ­ fter all, the type of industrial economy that
Gellner appears to have had in mind when he argued that industrialization
led to the expansion of mass education was the one characterized by the
large, mechanized factories and assembly line production of the Second In-
dustrial Revolution more than with the textile factories associated with
the First Industrial Revolution. And economic historians, too, have argued
that having a skilled workforce helped boost economic productivity only
during the Second Industrial Revolution.30
To assess ­whether industrialization was an impor­tant driver of the rise of
primary education systems, we would want to know ­whether ­these systems
emerged before or ­after the onset of industrialization, and ­whether indus-
trialization led to an increase in primary school coverage. The prob­lem this
pre­sents is that historians and economists are still debating the precise start
date of industrialization, even for a country like E ­ ngland that has been ex-
tensively studied. One difficulty comes from the scarcity of historical data
on the proportion of the workforce employed in manufacturing and, more
generally, the composition of the ­labor force g­ oing back to the eigh­teenth
and nineteenth centuries—­the period when ­European countries indus-
trialized.31 Another difficulty comes from the fact that industrialization

30. Galor and Moav (2006).

31. For example, in Banks’s commonly used Cross-­National Time Series (CNTS) dataset, which
contains historical information about the proportion of the l­ abor force employed outside agricul-
ture, only fourteen countries in the dataset have information preceding the year 1900, and of ­these
fourteen, only two countries have a data point below 33 ­percent, which means that for the other
twelve countries, the earliest data point available is one in which one-­third of the ­labor force or
more was already employed outside agriculture.
64 | Chapter 2

looked dif­fer­ent across countries. In some, like E ­ ngland, it went hand in

hand with urbanization, but in o ­ thers the growth of cities occurred with-
out a concurrent ­process of industrialization.32
The approach I take to ­measure the onset of industrialization is to look
directly at the adoption of technological inventions that sparked the First
and Second Industrial Revolutions. For the First Industrial Revolution, I
­measure its onset by looking at the first year when a country had steam
ships, trains, or used the mule spindle for textile production, an innovation
that required cotton spinning to move from workers’ homes to factories.33
I ­measure the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution as the year
when a country first produced or incorporated steel into the manufactur-
ing ­process. Information about the adoption of ­these inventions was com-
piled by economists Diego Comín and Bart Hobijn as part of a larger data
collection effort on the historical adoption of 104 technological inventions
across 161 countries.34 In addition to providing us with a m ­ easure of the
onset of industrialization, this dataset covers a larger number of countries
than other efforts to ­measure the timing of industrialization across coun-
tries. Combining t­ hese data with Lee and Lee’s primary school enrollment
rates, ­there are thirty-­nine countries with information on primary school
enrollment rates both before and ­after the year of adoption of steel, nine of
which are in Western E ­ urope and the Amer­i­cas;35 and forty-­five countries
have enrollment data before and ­after the First Industrial Revolution, fif-
teen of which are in the West.
As an additional check on the conclusions I report below, I also use a
more holistic ­measure of industrial takeoff developed by Walt Whitman
Rostow, according to whom a country’s industrial takeoff occurs in the first
year when three conditions are met: (1) the rate of productive investment
rises from approximately 5 ­percent to more than 10 ­percent of national

32. Gollin, Jedwab, and Vollrath (2016); Jedwab and Vollrath (2015).
33. Mokyr (2002).
34. C
­ omin and Hobijn’s (2009) Cross-­country Historical Adoption of Technology (CHAT) da-
taset ­measures the year when each country first ­adopted a variety of technological inventions,
from the steam engine to the internet. It covers 104 technologies in 161 countries from 1800 to
2000. The dataset is an un­balanced panel. For a given technological invention, ­whether or not
­there is information on the degree to which that invention had been ­adopted in a given year varies
across countries. Moreover, t­ here are many countries for which ­there is no information at all—in
any year—on the degree of adoption of some technological inventions.
35. Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Repub-
lic, Egypt, Finland, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nether-
lands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, South K ­ orea, Romania, Rus­sia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland,
Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, the United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 65

i­ncome or net national product; (2) one or more substantial manufactur-

ing sectors develops, with a high rate of growth; (3) existence or quick
emergence of a ­political, social, and institutional framework that exploits
the ­impulses to expansion in the modern sector and the potential exter-
nal economy effects of the takeoff. The conclusions presented in this chap-
ter remain unaltered when we rely on Rostow’s alternative definition and
­measure of the onset of industrialization.36
Beginning first with the emergence of education systems, figure 2.6 com-
pares the timing of industrialization with the timing of landmark edu-
cation legislation in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca. The circles indicate the
adoption of the first comprehensive primary education law in each coun-
try for which we also have data on the timing of industrialization. The
solid and hollow triangles represent the timing of the First and Second In-
dustrial Revolutions, respectively, as proxied by the adoption of techno-
logical inventions, and the squares indicate the timing of industrialization
according to Rostow’s classification. Notice that t­here are only two coun-
tries (France and Sweden) with data on the timing of industrialization
based on all three ­measures. However, for most countries, we have at least
two dif­f er­ent ­measures.
Taking the vari­ous m
­ easures of the timing of industrialization together,
the main conclusion that emerges is the absence of a clear pattern linking
industrialization and the emergence of a state-­regulated primary education
system. In nine of the twenty-­four countries shown in figure 2.6, central gov-
ernments ­adopted landmark education legislation several ­decades before
the First Industrial Revolution. Prus­sia is well known for making incursions
into primary education while its economy was still agrarian, but the list also
includes Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Venezu-
ela, and ­Ecuador. In several other countries, the adoption of comprehen-
sive primary education laws occurred a­ fter the First and before the Second
Industrial Revolution. On average, central governments ­adopted education
legislation six ­decades before the Second Industrial Revolution.
Given the quality of the data, however, we cannot say with certainty that
industrialization and the rise of factories did not play a role in driving the
emergence of state-­regulated primary education systems in Western coun-
tries. By the same token, nothing in the data suggests that it did. T ­ here are
some countries where the central government began to intervene in pri-
mary education at roughly the same time as the onset of industrialization.

36. See the online appendix.

66 | Chapter 2

Prussia
Austria
Netherlands
Denmark
Norway
Ireland
France
Greece
Belgium
Sweden
Peru
Spain
Italy
Chile
Portugal
England
Venezuela
Ecuador
Switzerland
Uruguay
Brazil
Argentina
Mexico
Finland

1800 1850 1900 1950

First comprehensive primary education law
First Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution
Rostow's industrialization

Figure 2.6. Timing of industrialization and timing of state intervention in primary

education in E­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca. See text and footnotes for sources and
methodology.

Yet ­these cases represent only six of the twenty-­four countries for which we
have data: Denmark, France, Belgium, Sweden, Portugal, and Finland. More-
over, it is not clear ­whether this concurrence implies that industrialization
led to the creation of national primary education systems or w ­ hether both
pro­cesses coincided purely by chance. Cathie Jo Martin’s investigation into
the ideas that s­ haped Danish education policy suggests that the goals of the
1814 School Acts had l­ ittle to do with promoting skills for industrialization.37
In the case of France, we ­will see in chapter 4 that industrialists at first op-
posed the central government’s effort to promote primary education ­because
they thought that schooling c­ hildren would lead to a reduction in l­abor
supply and, with that, an increase in wages and a reduction of profits.
What about the relationship between industrialization and the expansion
of access to primary education? Figure 2.7 suggests that in ­Europe and the
Amer­ic­ as the spread of primary schooling was not associated with the emer-
gence of an industrial economy. The solid black line in figure 2.7 summa-

37. Martin (2023).

 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 67

a) Enrollment and First Industrial Revolution b) Enrollment and Second Industrial Revolution
100 Before After 100 Before After
Second
Percent of school-age population

Percent of school-age population

First Industrial
Industrial Revolution
80 Revolution 80

60 60
Europe and
the Americas
40 40
Europe and
the Americas
Non-Western Non-Western
20 countries 20
countries

0 0
–50 –40 –30 –20 –10 0 10 20 –50 –40 –30 –20 –10 0 10 20
Years since onset of the First Industrial Revolution Years since onset of the Second Industrial Revolution

Figure 2.7. Average primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the school-­age
population, before and ­after the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, in E
­ urope and
the Amer­i­cas compared to non-­Western countries, 1820–2010. See text and footnotes for
sources and methodology.

rizes how primary schooling evolved in the average Western country before
and ­after the onset of the First Industrial Revolution (on the left) and the
Second Industrial Revolution (on the right). In general, primary education
began to expand in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas more than a half ­century be-
fore large factories began to appear, maintaining a steady pace of expan-
sion before and ­after the transition to an industrial economy. Western coun-
tries reached high primary school enrollment rates before beginning to
industrialize: roughly 40 ­percent before the beginning of the First Indus-
trial Revolution and close to 70 ­percent before the beginning of the Sec-
ond Industrial Revolution. Moreover, the fact that primary schooling in
Western countries did not experience an acceleration in the years imme-
diately preceding or following the onset of the First or Second Industrial
Revolutions provides evidence against the view that governments expanded
primary education to support industrialization.38

38. One question is ­whether primary school enrollment rates in Western countries would have
declined or grown at a slower rate in the post-­industrialization period had they not industrialized.
To assess this possibility, I looked at how enrollment rates evolved in the post-­industrialization
period in countries that did not industrialize. The analy­sis, reported in the online appendix, does
not provide support for the claim that industrialization led to an increase in primary school cover-
age. Before industrialization, the enrollment rates of Western countries that eventually industrial-
ized ­were growing at a faster rate than ­those of non-­industrializing countries. However, ­after West-
ern countries industrialized, both groups’ enrollment rates ­were growing at the same pace. This
suggests that, if anything, industrialization led to a decline in primary school enrollment rates in
Western socie­ties.
68 | Chapter 2

A potential concern about t­ hese results stems from the fact that primary
school enrollment rates reflect not only governments’ efforts to provide ac-
cess to schooling but also parents’ decision to send their c­ hildren to school.
In princi­ple, it is pos­si­ble that governmental provision accelerated when
countries began to industrialize, but that parental demand for primary ed-
ucation declined as parents wanted their ­children to take advantage of new
job opportunities in factories. Although it is prob­ably true that some par-
ents wanted their c­ hildren to work in factories, it is unlikely that parental
demand declined compared to the pre-­industrial period. Many crops and
agricultural activities relied heavi­ly on child ­labor. If anything, economic
historians have found that the move away from agriculture led to greater
parental demand for education.39
Additional evidence that industrialization was not a leading driver of the
creation and expansion of primary education systems in the West comes
from the content of the curriculum. Prus­sia is again a useful example to
consider given its influence on primary education systems around the world.
In the 1760s, when Prus­sia introduced a mandatory curriculum for rural
­primary schools for the first time, it emphasized religious and moral edu-
cation. Not only did the curriculum not impose a common language for
primary schools, which according to Gellner was what industrialization
required, but it also deliberately sought to prevent c­ hildren in rural areas
from acquiring skills that might be useful in more industrialized areas. The
king’s concern that if rural schools taught “too much” they might encour-
age c­ hildren to “rush off to the cities and want to become secretaries or
clerks” led Prus­sia to impose entirely separate curriculums for rural and
urban schools in order to instruct ­children in rural areas “in such a way that
they ­will not run away from the villages but remain t­ here contentedly.”40
Many countries followed Prus­sia’s lead in curriculum m ­ atters: they im-
posed separate curriculums for rural and urban areas, focused on teaching
moral values and civic education rather than technical or scientific skills,

39. Baker (2015) takes advantage of an agricultural pest, the boll weevil, that spread across the
South from 1892 to 1922 and had a devastating impact on cotton cultivation, to examine how
changes in the production of cotton, a child ­labor–­intensive crop, affected schooling in the early
twentieth-­century American South. He finds that a 10 ­percent reduction in cotton caused a
2 ­percent increase in Black enrollment rates but had ­little effect on white enrollment between 1914
and 1929. Baker, Blanchette, and Eriksson (2020) investigate the pest’s long-­run effect on educa-
tional attainment. They find that both white and Black ­children who ­were young (ages 4–9) when
the weevil arrived saw increased educational attainment by 0.24 to 0.36 years. Their results support
the view that child ­labor in agriculture conflicts with school enrollment.
40. Thomas (1919), p. 18.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 69

and allowed instruction in multiple languages rather than imposing a com-

mon national language. In Sweden, for example, the 1842 School Act or
folkskolestadgan, which established a nationwide compulsory primary edu-
cation system, emphasized religious education, history, and geography—­not
what we would expect to see in a country seeking to promote industrializa-
tion.41 In Chile, the 1860 primary education law also established a narrow
curriculum that was more focused on teaching moral values than useful
skills. The greater emphasis on teaching values than skills or a common lan-
guage is something we ­will return to in chapter 5 when we examine how
the first national school curriculums w ­ ere designed to accomplish the goals
of primary education.
Where the industrialization argument finds stronger support is outside
the West, in countries that during the twentieth ­century expanded primary
education as part of a state-­led industrialization p
­ rocess. ­These countries are
represented by the dashed line in figure 2.7. The figure shows that non-­
Western countries had achieved much lower levels of primary schooling
than Western countries before they began to industrialize, and that indus-
trialization was followed by an acceleration of primary school enrollment
rates. This is especially true for the Second Industrial Revolution: in the
ten years following the adoption of steel, primary school enrollment rates
increased on average by close to nine percentage points, twice as much as
the increase that occurred in the ten years before steel began to be used in
the economy.
Rus­sia ­under Stalin exemplifies this pattern of educational expansion in
non-­Western countries accompanying a ­process of state-­led industrializa-
tion. During the First Five-­Year Plan, compulsory schooling was introduced
in the countryside and extended in urban areas, and the total number of
­children enrolled in primary school increased from eleven million in 1927–
1928 to twenty-­one million—­near universal enrollment—in 1931–1932.42,43

41. Cermeño, Enflo, and Lindvall (2022).

42. On July 25, 1930, the Central Committee introduced three years of compulsory schooling in
rural areas and extended compulsory schooling from four to five years in urban areas. The Central
Committee also ordered that all ­children in both rural and urban areas must complete seven years
of education by the end of the First Five-­Year Plan (Fitzpatrick 1979, p. 170).
43. In Stalin’s 1934 Report on the Work of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the So-
viet ­Union to the 17th All-­Union Communist Party Congress held in Moscow, January 26 to Febru-
ary 10, 1934, which refers to the period 1929–1934, Stalin writes: “Of all the successes achieved by
industry in the period ­under review the most impor­tant is the fact that it has succeeded in this
period in training and forging thousands of new men and w ­ omen, of new leaders of industry, of
a ­whole stratum of new engineers and technicians, of hundreds of thousands of young skilled
workers who have mastered the new technique, and who have advanced our socialist industry.
70 | Chapter 2

Public primary schools followed the princi­ple of “polytechnization,”44 which

meant that schools must prepare ­children not just to become efficient work-
ers, but also to understand the scientific basis of production.45 The Soviet
regime’s deliberate expansion of mass education in support of industrial-
ization and economic world supremacy was what most impressed the offi-
cial education missions sent by the United States to the USSR in the 1950s.46
One of the U.S. mission’s reports concludes:

­ hese aspects ­were particularly emphasized by the Soviet educational

T
authorities: the basic formation in mathe­matics, natu­ral sciences, and
polytechnic knowledge related to economic production . . . ​From the
moment we stepped into the Soviet jet TU-104 in Copenhagen, . . . ​we
sensed the technological push that ­later would be evidenced to us in
the educational work ­going on in the Soviet U ­ nion . . . ​In the school
classroom and workshop, in the machine building plant, in the coun-
tryside, and wherever we went, we felt the pulse of the Soviet Govern-
ment’s drive to educate and train a new generation of technically skilled
and scientifically literate citizens.47

Another well-­studied example comes from colonial Taiwan during the

first ­decades of the twentieth ­century. Between 1905 and 1935, primary school
enrollment rates climbed from a mere 6 ­percent to 70 ­percent; by 1940,
­universal primary education had been achieved. In a detailed study, the
historian E. Patricia Tsurumi argues that the ­Japanese colonial government
expanded primary schooling to support the rapid mechanization and
commercialization of agriculture. It timed the school terms to align with
agricultural seasons and allowed some absences so c­ hildren could work in
the farms but made it compulsory for c­ hildren to attend classes on agricul-
ture, commerce, and manual work. In ­these classes, c­ hildren learned work
habits, re­spect for manual work, and practical knowledge about soil culti-
vation, livestock, tree and fish farming, and account-­keeping. Perhaps
­surprisingly, ­because the ­Japanese colonists feared that imposing their own

­There cannot be any doubt that without ­these men and ­women industry could not have achieved
the successes it has, and of which it has a perfect right to be proud” (Stalin 1934, p. 405).
44. Polytechnization should not be confused with vocational education, which only began ­after
primary education (Charques 1932, pp. 21–25).
45. King (1937), p. 56.
46. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1959, 1960).
47. U.S. Department of Education (1960), pp. xiv–­xv.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 71

culture and language would backfire, they maintained the teaching of

written Chinese in primary schools up to 1918.48
In sum, although transitions from an agrarian to an industrial economy
appear to have been accompanied by an accelerated expansion of primary
education in non-­Western countries, the same cannot be said about E ­ urope
and the Amer­i­cas. In countries that led the global expansion of primary
schooling, primary education provision reached high levels before indus-
trialization, transitions to an industrial economy were not accompanied by
a faster rate of expansion of primary education, and the first national curric-
ulums imposed by central governments ­were more focused on moral and
civic education than on teaching a common language or skills relevant to
an industrial economy.

MILITARY RIVALRY AND MASS EDUCATION

Interstate wars ­were commonplace in E ­ urope during the nineteenth ­century
and their occurrence often motivated rulers to protect their borders through
investments that contributed to developing a centralized bureaucracy. Much
attention has gone into understanding the role that interstate wars played
in incentivizing the development of a bureaucratic apparatus capable of col-
lecting taxes to finance the armies needed to wage war. However, social
scientists in sociology, economics, and ­political science have also argued that
interstate wars led central governments to expand mass education as a means
to defend their territory from foreign threats.49 Fighting wars with other
countries, the argument goes, taught (or reminded) central governments
about the importance of investing in mass education as a nation-­building
tool to instill among new generations the belief that their nation was su-
perior to any other, thereby predisposing citizens to eagerly defend their
homeland if it came ­under attack. In addition, if in school every­one learned
a common language, received physical education, acquired basic reasoning
skills, and knew enough geography, the national army would be better
equipped to win wars against rival countries.
What does the evidence say about the argument that governments ex-
panded primary education in response to interstate wars, seeking to create
loyal and skilled soldiers? Proponents of the interstate wars argument often

48. Tsurumi (1977).

49. Ramirez and Boli (1987); Darden and Mylonas (2015); Aghion et al. (2019).
72 | Chapter 2

turn to the history of Western ­Europe, especially Prus­sia and France, to sup-
port their argument. A closer look at t­ hese cases suggests a dif­fer­ent story.
In the case of Prus­sia, Frederick the G
­ reat’s signing of the General Rural
School Regulations of 1763, which extended compulsory primary education
to rural areas, coincided with the end of the Seven Years’ War that same year.
This coincidence has often been misinterpreted as evidence that what
spurred the king’s interest in mass schooling was foreign military rivalry.50
However, in his book on the origins of compulsory primary schooling in
absolutist Prus­sia, the historian James Melton notes that already in 1754—
before the war broke out—­the King had approved education plans similar
to ­those introduced in 1763; they just ­couldn’t be implemented ­because
of the war. This indicates that something e­ lse, preceding the war, prompted
the king’s interest in primary education.
In France, the education laws passed in 1881 and 1882, known as the Jules
Ferry Laws, w­ ere motivated partly by Prus­sia’s victory in the Franco-­Prussian
War of 1870 and partly by the working-­class insurrection in Paris the fol-
lowing year. A ­popular saying in France a­ fter its military defeat was that
the Franco-­Prussian War had been won by the Prus­sian schoolmaster.51
However, the significance of the Ferry Laws lies not in the creation of a pri-
mary school system regulated by the central government, which had al-
ready existed since the July Monarchy, nor in what ­these laws did for access
to primary education. The most consequential changes introduced by the
Ferry Laws concerned ­those affecting the structure of education funding,
which became more centralized than ever before, and the content of the
curriculum. Specifically, the 1882 law removed Catholic instruction from
the French classroom and replaced it with a secular form of moral and civic
education, hoping thus to strengthen nationalist sentiment.52 It also intro-
duced gymnastics and, for boys, military exercises as part of the effort to
prepare a new generation of patriotic soldiers. In addition to this curricu-
lum reform, the 1880s laws also introduced the princi­ples of compulsory and
­free primary education. However, France had already achieved universal
primary education in 1865, fifteen years before the Ferry Laws and five years

50. Ramirez and Boli (1987), pp. 4–5.

51. Reisner (1922), p. 82.
52. Writing soon a­ fter France’s defeat in the Franco-­Prussian War, the French historian Ernest
Renan says: “A pupil educated by Jesuits w ­ ill never be an officer able to compete with a Prus­sian
officer; a pupil of Catholic primary schools ­will never be able to participate in a scientifically
­organized war with perfectioned weapons” (Renan 1871, pp. 95–97).
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 73

before the Franco-­Prussian War.53 This means that w ­ hatever drove the ex-
pansion of primary schooling in France preceded the Franco-­Prussian
War. I w­ ill return to this in chapter 4, but for now, it is enough to note that
France’s first national primary education law was passed in 1833, resulting
in an unpre­ce­dented expansion of primary schooling at a time of relative
peace between France and neighboring countries.
In the Amer­i­cas, the inability of the interstate war argument to explain
the expansion of primary education is more straightforward. In the United
States, for example, proposals to develop a system of publicly funded com-
mon schools emerged t­ oward the end of the eigh­teenth ­century and gained
traction among elites starting in the late 1830s—­that is, about twenty-­five
years ­after the War of 1812 against ­Great Britain. In Latin Amer­i­ca, access to
primary schooling expanded during the nineteenth c­ entury more than in
any other developing region despite the fact that most of the wars affect-
ing Latin Amer­i­ca during that ­century ­were civil wars, with interstate wars
accounting for only one-­fourth of the fighting.54 For example, Argentina
and Chile, the top two providers of primary education in Latin Amer­i­ca by
the turn of the ­century, passed their first national primary education law in
1884 and 1860, respectively, both during a relatively peaceful period in in-
ternational relations.
To investigate the role of interstate wars systematically, figure 2.8 graphs
how average primary school enrollment rates evolved twenty years before
and twenty years a­ fter an interstate war in countries that fought interstate
wars in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.55 The vertical line in the

53. The incorrect view that the Jules Ferry Laws catalyzed the expansion of access to primary
education in France is pre­sent in Peter Lindert’s influential book, Growing Public, which claims
that France “lagged ­behind” the rest of E ­ urope in primary education provision ­until the 1880s
(Lindert 2004, p. 100) but that the Ferry Laws of the 1880s helped France “rise to the top of the
­European schooling ranks.” Lindert does not provide any evidence to substantiate the claim that
access to primary education increased in France with the introduction of the Ferry Laws. How-
ever, the statistics of primary school enrollment analyzed by Raymond Grew and Patrick Harrigan
(1991) show that Lindert’s assessment is incorrect. The statistics I assembled are consistent with
Grew and Harrigan’s conclusions: In 1850, 75 ­percent of ­children ages 5–14 ­were enrolled in pri-
mary schools in France, compared to 73 ­percent in Prus­sia. By 1860, 91 ­percent of French c­ hildren
ages 5–14 w­ ere enrolled in primary school, and by 1865, universal primary education had been ac-
complished in France.
54. Centeno (1997).
55. The primary school enrollment rates used to construct this figure come from Mitchell
­because that is the data source used in the main quantitative study of the impact of interstate wars
on primary schooling, conducted by Aghion et al. (2019). Aghion and colleagues report that inter-
state wars led to an increase in primary school enrollment rates. I reproduce their analy­sis but
distinguish between the Western and Non-­Western worlds. I find that the patterns differ across
74 | Chapter 2

70
Before interstate war After interstate war
Percent of population 5–14 years

60
Europe and
the Americas

50

Non-Western
40 countries

30
–20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20
Years since onset of interstate war

Figure 2.8. Average primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the popu-
lation ages 5–14 years, before and ­after the onset of interstate wars in ­Europe and
the Amer­i­cas compared to non-­Western countries, 1830–2001. See text and foot-
notes for sources and methodology.

graph corresponds to the year in which an interstate war began, but the con-
clusions remain unchanged if instead we look at enrollment rates before
and ­after the end of an interstate war. For any given country, the graph takes
into consideration the first interstate war for which data exist on primary
school enrollment rates before and ­after the war.56 As before, enrollment
in ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas is depicted by the solid black line, while en-
rollment in other regions is depicted by the dashed line.

regions, and that Aghion and colleagues’ conclusion that interstate wars led to an expansion of
primary school enrollment rates is driven by non-­Western countries. The conclusion that, in the
Western world, primary school enrollment rates experienced a drastic decline during periods of
interstate war, which was followed by a rebound in enrollment rates, also holds if instead of
Mitchell’s enrollment data we use my dataset or Lee and Lee’s (2016) dataset.
56. For a few countries, this corresponds to a late-­twentieth-­century war. For example, Argen-
tina fought interstate wars in 1836–1839, 1837–1839, 1851–1852, 1865–1870, and 1982, but we lack data
on primary school enrollment rates before 1869, so the war included in figure 2.8 for Argentina is
the Falklands War of 1982. Looking at the role of late-­twentieth-­century wars is a bit removed from
the purpose of this book, given our interest in explaining the origins of primary education sys-
tems. However, the conclusion remains unchanged if we re-do figure 2.8 focusing only on wars
preceding 1950 or 1930.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 75

The data show that in Western countries primary school enrollment rates
experienced a sudden and drastic reduction at the beginning of interstate
wars, possibly reflecting ­children’s participation in armies or their need to
find jobs while older members of their f­amily ­were away fighting. This
­initial decline in enrollment was soon followed by a gradual rebound dur-
ing the first d
­ ecade ­after the war. However, the postwar rebound was sim-
ply that—­a partial recovery back to the enrollment levels that existed before
the war broke out.57 This pattern of decline and recovery does not provide
much support for the argument that military rivalry between states explains
the Western world’s global leadership in primary education. Moreover, ad-
ditional analyses found in the online appendix (https://­press​.­princeton​.­edu​
/­books​/­paperback​/­9780691261270​/­raised​-­to​- obey) show that postwar periods
have been characterized by educational expansion in all countries, not just
­those that participated in a war.

INTERNAL CONFLICT: A KEY DRIVER OF MASS EDUCATION

Although many explanations for the expansion of primary education sys-
tems have been proposed and investigated, social scientists have ignored or
discarded the role of internal conflict as a plausible driver of this expan-
sion. In one influential study, sociologists John Boli, Francisco Ramirez, and
John Meyer have gone as far as to argue that expanding the education of
the unruly lower classes was “unthinkable” when maintaining order was
seen as most problematic. In their view, governments “facing prob­lems of
disorder, ­labor unrest, or failure of social control mechanisms have not re-
sorted to education. They have relied on straightforward repression.”58 In a
similar spirit, economic historian Peter Lindert writes that “educating the
poor was not viewed as a way to prevent insurrections.”59 ­These assertions,
however, have not been accompanied by an empirical investigation of the

57. When we look country by country, the story that emerges is more complicated but, never-
theless, it remains true that ­there ­isn’t a consistent pattern of acceleration in primary school en-
rollment rates a­ fter interstate wars. In ten countries (Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Finland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, and Paraguay) primary school enrollment rates accelerate ­after
interstate wars; in five countries they decelerate (Canada, Cuba, Germany, Netherlands, Peru);
in six countries, primary school enrollment rates experience no change in the pace of growth
(Argentina, Spain, France, G ­ reat Britain, Poland, El Salvador); and in four countries ­there is a
rebound to prewar levels (­Ecuador, Greece, Hungary, and Nicaragua).
58. Boli, Ramirez, and Meyer (1985), pp. 154–155.
59. Lindert (2021), p. 49.
76 | Chapter 2

relationship between internal conflict and education. In the remainder of

this chapter, I show that internal conflicts that brought about considerable
­political instability ­were in fact a crucial driver of the expansion of primary
education in Western socie­ties.
The common belief that internal conflict does not promote education
expansion may stem partly from the fact that, when thinking about how a
destabilizing internal conflict impacts schooling, social scientists have found
that, in the short term, conflict harms education provision. In times of civil
war, for example, schools are often destroyed, and ­children may drop out
of school b ­ ecause roads are blocked, attending school is unsafe, or rebel
forces recruit child soldiers. Moreover, governments ­will often refrain from
investing in education during a period of intense conflict. Recall that the
attractiveness of education as a peace-­building strategy operates over the
long term by reducing the probability of rebellion from f­ uture, not current,
citizens. Politicians who face extremely high levels of uncertainty about
­whether they ­will remain in power, as is common for politicians fighting a
civil war or social revolution, are likely to focus on their immediate survival,
setting aside long-­term proj­ects ­until some level of p
­ olitical stability is tem-
porarily restored.60 It is not surprising, then, that studies find that civil
wars produce a short-­term decline in education access and provision.61
What social scientists have not considered, however, is the possibility that
central governments threatened by a destabilizing internal conflict may
­later on, as a result of that traumatic experience, become more interested
in the education of the masses than they would have been had they not
experienced conflict. The long-­term educational consequences of internal
conflict, then, are also worth examining. Does the occurrence of internal
conflict lead to a long-­term increase in education provision? The answer is
yes, as we w ­ ill see in this chapter.
Studying ­whether and how internal conflict shapes education provision
pre­sents us with a major challenge—­that of identifying periods of conflict
and periods of peace. The reason this is a challenge is that, depending on
who we ask and what criteria they use to define what constitutes internal
conflict, we might conclude that virtually ­every country at e­ very point in
time experienced some instance of internal conflict. And t­here would be

60. Garfias (2018).

61. Shemyakina (2011); Chamarbagwala and Moran (2011); Swee (2015); Leon (2012).
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 77

some truth to this conclusion ­because perfect peace does not exist; ­there is
always some quarrel or dispute ­going on, no ­matter how small its scale or
how inconsequential in the ­grand scheme of ­things. This perpetual pres-
ence of internal conflict poses a challenge to our investigation b ­ ecause, in
order to assess how internal conflict affects the coverage of primary school-
ing, we need to have periods of peace interrupted by internal conflict, much
like we identified periods of non-­democracy followed by democ­ratization
or pre-­industrial periods followed by industrialization.
I tackle this challenge ­here by focusing on the consequences of one type
of internal conflict that is well-­known to be destabilizing: civil wars pitting
the masses against the state. The absence of civil war does not imply that
­there is perfect peace, but the occurrence of civil war does imply an ­escalation
of internal conflict beyond what we may consider normal levels. If the ar-
gument I previewed in chapter 1 is true, the intensification of internal con-
flict that is inherent in civil wars should incentivize governments to invest
in mass education. In chapter 4 we ­will examine other types of internal
conflict that, in line with the book’s main argument, also played a major
role in triggering the emergence and expansion of state-­regulated primary
education systems in Western socie­ties.
Studying the effects of civil war also makes sense ­because this constitutes
what p ­ olitical scientists would call a “hard test” of the book’s theory. Based
on every­thing that has been written so far, we should not expect this type
of conflict to have positive effects on education provision. If anything, civil
wars have been shown to depress education access and provision in the short
term. If we can find evidence that civil wars have a positive long-­term effect
on education provision, that should give us confidence that we are ­after a
more generalizable pattern of education reform triggered by a wide range
of types of internal conflict.
Another advantage of focusing on civil wars as a starting point to inves-
tigate the role of internal conflict in shaping education provision is that
­experts have coded the occurrence of civil wars across countries from 1816
to the pre­sent as part of the Correlates of War Proj­ect. Relying on this ex-
ternal source of information is useful ­because it ensures that t­here is no
subconscious cherry-­picking of what constitutes an episode of considerable
internal conflict and what does not. Even the most conscientious and ethi-
cal researcher could inadvertently classify what constitutes threatening in-
ternal conflict and what ­doesn’t in a way that biases the findings in f­ avor of
78 | Chapter 2

their argument. The availability of a reputable and widely used dataset that
tells us when and where a civil war has occurred guards against this
possibility.
In our study of how primary school coverage evolved a­ fter civil wars, we
­will focus on ­those wars that involve the state as one of the actors. This in-
cludes civil wars fought over central control as well as ­those fought over
local issues but with state involvement. We w ­ ill exclude from consideration
regional internal wars or intercommunal internal conflicts in which the
state does not participate. This is b ­ ecause we are interested in internal con-
flicts that are perceived as threatening by national-­level politicians. An
­internal conflict in which the state does not participate is unlikely to be
perceived as threatening to national elites; their inaction suggests as much.
To examine the long-­term educational consequences of civil war, we ­will
need information about primary school enrollment rates not only a­ fter a
war but also in the years that preceded it. This implies that we ­will not be
able to analyze the impact of civil wars that occurred before the nineteenth
­century, or even wars of the nineteenth ­century that occurred before a coun-
try had started collecting education statistics. For example, according to
the Correlates of War Proj­ect, Brazil had civil wars in 1835–1845, 1893–1894,
1896–1897, and 1932. However, ­because annual primary school enrollment
rates are available for Brazil starting in 1871, we ­will not be able to analyze
the effect of the 1835–1845 war.
Twenty-­three countries in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca experienced at least
one civil war since 1800 that involved the state as an actor and for which we
can observe primary school enrollment rates both before and ­after the war.62
Most of ­these wars began and ended within one year, but some lasted some-
what longer, such as the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, and a few lasted
much longer, such as Colombia’s period of La Violencia between 1948 and
1958. Several countries had more than one civil war during the period of
study. In the analy­sis presented below, I focus on each country’s earliest civil
war with pre-­and postwar enrollment data b ­ ecause of the book’s interest
in explaining the early stages of public primary schooling.63
Figure 2.9 replicates a graph from chapter 1 which shows that in ­European
and Latin American countries that experienced civil war, ­there was a large

62. Details by country are provided in the online appendix.

63. The concern that subsequent wars might be endogenous to the provision of education trig-
gered by previous wars is an additional reason for focusing on the first civil war with pre-­and
postwar enrollment data.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 79

35
Before After
civil war civil war
Percent of population 5–14 years

30

25

20

15
–20 –15 –10 –5 0 5 10 15 20
Years since onset of civil war

Figure 2.9. Average primary school enrollment rate, as a percentage of the popu-
lation ages 5–14 years, before and a­ fter the onset of civil wars in E
­ urope and Latin
Amer­i­ca, 1828–2010. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

acceleration of primary school enrollment rates in the fifteen years a­ fter

the war. On average, primary enrollment grew more than twice faster
­after civil war compared to before. In the graph, the vertical line indi-
cates the onset of civil war, normalized to period zero for comparability
across countries, but the results remain unchanged if we look at enroll-
ment trends before and a­ fter a civil war ends. While this pattern is consis-
tent with the argument that civil wars led to the expansion of primary
schooling, figure 2.9 on its own is not sufficient proof of a civil war’s ef-
fect on schooling.
One question we may ask ourselves is w­ hether the average acceleration
of primary school enrollment rates in the postwar period shown in
­figure 2.9 is driven by a few isolated but influential cases, or w­ hether it
reflects a relatively common phenomenon among conflict-­afflicted countries.
To answer this question, I looked at each of the twenty-­three countries in
­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca that experienced at least one civil war and for
which we have data on primary school enrollment rates. Using ­simple
statistical methods, for each country I assessed w
­ hether the slope of the
80 | Chapter 2

enrollment rate trend became steeper in the postwar period, and w ­ hether
­there was a one-­time increase in primary school coverage when the war
occurred.64
The results of that statistical analy­sis show that in the majority of coun-
tries that experienced civil war, the primary school enrollment rate trend
did experience a slope acceleration, a one-­time increase, or both, ­after the
war occurred. Figure 2.10 shows a few (though certainly not an exhaustive
list of) examples of postwar acceleration in primary schooling from France,
Finland, El Salvador, and Colombia. In chapter 4 I ­will discuss in depth how
internal conflict resulted in the centralization and expansion of primary
education in four additional cases: 1760s Prus­sia, 1830s France, 1860s Chile,
and 1880s Argentina.
­Here, I pre­sent briefer examples to give some life to the data. In France,
the central government expanded primary education during the first years
of the July Monarchy, when a series of violent rebellions in the countryside
created a sense of urgency among ­Parisian elites regarding the need to teach
the rural masses to re­spect the sovereign and its laws. However, in the d­ ecade
following the impulse of the 1830s, efforts to expand primary education
stalled. The Revolution of 1848 renewed national elites’ interest in primary
education. Conservatives argued that “society is ill,” that teachers w ­ ere to
blame for propagating socialist doctrines, and that in order to promote so-
cial order, it was necessary that schools teach religious doctrine and “resig-
nation to the order desired by God.” ­After conditioning their support of
Louis-­Napoleon Bonaparte on the appointment of a pro-­Church Minister
of Education, a new minister was appointed, and a new law named a­ fter
him—­the Falloux Law—­gave new impulse to primary education through-
out France.65

64. Specifically, I estimated a regression model of the linear relationship between primary
school enrollment rates and time, allowing for dif­fer­ent pre-­and postwar linear slopes and an in-
tercept shift at the beginning of the civil war: Yi, t = β0 + β1(yeari, t—­t*) + β2Treatmenti, t + β3[(yeari, t—­t*)
xTreatmenti, t] + ϵi, t. In this model, estimated separately for each country i, β1 provides the slope of
the primary school enrollment rate trend before the occurrence of civil war, β2 indicates ­whether
the occurrence of civil war was accompanied by an intercept shift, and β3 tells us how the coun-
try’s linear trend in primary school enrollment rate changed a­ fter the occurrence of civil war. A
total of twenty-­three regression ­tables, one per country, are available in the online appendix. A
country is considered to have experienced a slope acceleration (deceleration) if the estimated coeffi-
cient for β3 is positive (negative) and statistically significant at least at the 5% level; an upward
(downward) intercept shift if the estimated coefficient for β2 is positive (negative) and statistically
significant; and no slope change and no intercept shift if the estimated coefficients for β3 and β2, re-
spectively, are not statistically dif­fer­ent from zero.
65. Prost (1968), pp. 172–173.
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 81

Another example comes from the Finnish Civil War of 1918, one of the
most violent civil wars in twentieth-­century ­Europe, with a death toll of
36,000 in only six months. Finland had become an ­independent state in 1917,
but soon ­after became immersed in a bloody civil conflict between the con-
servative Whites and the socialist Reds. The Reds’ extensive recruitment of
peasants and factory workers left the victorious conservative forces with a
heightened concern about the education of the lower classes.66 Soon ­after
the war ended, the government introduced a bill for general compulsory
education that emphasized that “civic education would provide society with
protection against shocks.” Mikael Soininen, the politician who introduced
the bill in parliament, presented the events of 1918 as justification for com-
pulsory education. The atrocities of the Finnish Civil War, he argued, would
not have taken place if the masses had been enlightened and ­there had been
compulsory education in the country.67
El Salvador’s civil war of 1932, also known as La Matanza (“the massacre”)
­because of the deaths of tens of thousands of rebelling peasants and indig-
enous communities at the hands of the Salvadoran Army, was followed by
a period of sustained expansion of primary education. ­After the war, the
authoritarian central government, led by military officer Maximiliano
Hernández Martínez, introduced the first comprehensive primary educa-
tion law. This law created a centralized primary education system focused
on the moral and civic education of c­ hildren, especially the inculcation of
good manners and be­hav­iors consistent with the maintenance of social
order, compliance with duties, re­spect for the state, and patriotism.68 ­Under
this new centralized system, the coverage of primary schools increased from
a relatively stable 13 ­percent in the d
­ ecade before the civil war to 21 ­percent
ten years ­later.
In Colombia also, Bogotá elites blamed the civil war of 1948–1958 on the
poor moral development of rural areas. From the 1950s on, the government
centralized the provision of primary education, increased the level of ­funding
devoted to education to 10 ­percent of the national ­budget, and supported
the construction of new primary schools across the territory. A ­ fter more
than a d ­ ecade of stagnating access to primary schooling, the enrollment
rate increased from 27 ­p ercent of c­ hildren in 1950 to 55 ­p ercent in 1970.

66. For an analy­sis of the c­ auses, participants, events, and vio­lence of the Finnish Civil War, see
Haapala and Tikka (2013).
67. Arola (2003), pp. 141–142.
68. Gómez Arévalo (2012), pp. 101–103.
82 | Chapter 2

Alberto Lleras Camargo, president of Colombia in the first four years

­following La Violencia, called for renewed state intervention in education,
arguing that the civil war had been caused by the failure of both families
and churches to provide a strong moral foundation:

The insurgency of brutal pressures, the cruelty that characterized this

very recent period of our history, would not have caught on so violently
on an educated nation, on a civilized country . . . ​The home and the
moral and religious education of Colombia failed. That’s a historical
fact.69

­ hese are just some examples that, together with the cases we w
T ­ ill exam-
ine in depth ­later in the book, help illustrate a pattern. Of the twenty-­three
civil wars considered in figure 2.9, fourteen experienced an acceleration of
primary school coverage a­ fter the war. In the remaining nine countries,
seven saw no change in their enrollment trend, and only two countries ex-
perienced a decline in primary schooling a­ fter the civil war.70
One potential objection to the evidence presented in figures 2.9 and 2.10
is that other major ­political or economic events that coincided with the oc-
currence of civil wars, and not ­these wars themselves, may have driven the
expansion of primary schooling. For example, the dramatic expansion of
primary education in Finland between 1918 and 1922 could have been the
consequence of many dif­fer­ent ­factors, including the civil war of 1918, but
also, Finland’s ­independence in 1917, the end of World War I a year ­later, or
the consolidation of a representative democracy and the increase in the rela-
tive power of parliament ­under the Constitution of 1919. Indeed, civil wars
and social revolutions often catalyze transitions to democracy, and interstate
wars often bring about domestic conflict. Could it be that democ­ratization
and interstate wars are in fact the key d­ rivers of the acceleration of primary
schooling observed in figure 2.9? I considered this possibility by dropping
from the analy­sis any countries that experienced a p ­ olitical regime transi-
tion around the time of the civil war, and any countries where the civil war

69. Lleras Camargo (1954), quoted in Ramírez and Téllez (2006).

70. In Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and
France, enrollment rates experienced a slope acceleration a­ fter civil war; in Paraguay and Cuba, an
upward intercept shift; and in Uruguay, Colombia, Greece, and Nicaragua, both. Of the remaining
nine countries (out of twenty-­three), seven countries had no change in their trend (Austria, Chile,
Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Finland, and Italy), and only two countries saw a deceleration and / or
downward intercept shift (Spain and ­Ecuador).
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 83

France Finland
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

French Revolution of 1848

Finnish Civil War of 1918

100 70

60
90
50
80
40

70 30

60 20
1840 1850 1860 1870 1910 1920 1930 1940

Colombia El Salvador
Percent of population 5–14 years

Percent of population 5–14 years

50 35

El Salvador Civil War of 1932

La Violencia of 1948–58

45 30

40 25

35 20

30 15

25 10
1940 1950 1960 1970 1920 1930 1940 1950

Figure 2.10. Primary school enrollment rates, as a percentage of the population ages
5–14 years, before and a­ fter select civil wars in France, Finland, Colombia, and El
Salvador.

overlapped with an interstate war. I did not find evidence to support t­ hese
alternative interpretations. Even if we consider only t­hose civil wars that
­were preceded and followed by a non-­democratic regime and that occurred
during periods of relative peace with other countries, we still observe a
major acceleration of primary school enrollment rates a­ fter civil wars.
A second potential concern is that perhaps civil wars simply coincided
with other forces that led to the expansion of primary education everywhere.
For example, 1848 was a year of ­political upheaval in France and many parts
of ­Europe. Even in countries where a revolution did not take place, p
­ olitical
elites nonetheless took note of the ideas advanced by revolutionary move-
ments. It is pos­si­ble that ­these international ideas, not the occurrence of
­p olitical upheaval itself, prompted the expansion of primary education.
Likewise, from the 1940s through the 1960s, several countries experienced
major civil wars that w ­ ere followed by an acceleration of primary school-
ing, including Colombia between 1948 and 1958, Greece between 1944 and
84 | Chapter 2

1949, and the Dominican Republic in 1965. However, this was a period when
many countries redoubled their education efforts even in the absence of
civil war, in part b­ ecause of international competition for economic suprem-
acy during the Cold War and in part ­because of increased pressure from
the United Nations and the World Bank.
To net out the role of international forces that could have led to educa-
tional expansion even in the absence of a civil war, I compared how pri-
mary school enrollment rates evolved in countries that experienced a civil
war vis-­à-­vis countries where civil war did not occur. This is a helpful com-
parison ­because the evolution of the enrollment trends in countries that
did not experience civil war can give us an indication of how the trends of
countries that did experience civil war would have evolved had they not had a
war. Figure 2.11 shows this comparison by plotting how much more primary
school enrollment rates grew in countries with civil war versus ­those with
no civil war. What figure 2.11 tells us is this: enrollment rates ­were growing at
the same pace in t­ hese two groups of countries before civil war broke out,
but ­after it did, conflict-­afflicted countries’ enrollment rates began growing
at a much faster rate compared to countries that did not experience civil
war. Averaging across all civil wars, ten years ­after a civil war the primary
school enrollment rate of war-­afflicted countries had grown by an addi-
tional seven percentage points compared to countries that did not experi-
ence civil war. Twenty years l­ater, it had grown by an additional eleven
percentage points. This is a large effect not matched by the effect of any
other ­factors.
A third potential concern is related to the fact that social revolutions and
civil wars in nineteenth-­century ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca often brought
a liberal co­ali­tion to power. It is pos­si­ble that liberals’ ascension to power,
and not civil war per se, gave greater voice to ­those who argued that ­every
individual has the right to education and that, therefore, the state should
ensure universal access to schooling. If this w ­ ere true, we should observe
that civil wars that brought liberals to power had a greater impact on pri-
mary school enrollment rates than t­ hose that did not. Likewise, it is pos­si­
ble that civil wars during the twentieth ­century brought about educational
expansion ­because they ushered left-­wing groups concerned about the
­welfare of the lower classes into power. However, the data show that this is
not what happened. Throughout ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, about half of
the wars ­were won by liberals or left-­wing groups, while the other half
­were won by conservatives or right-­wing groups. The impact on primary
 Two Centuries of Mass Education | 85

10
Before After
in countries with civil war vs. without
Difference in enrollment rate growth

civil war civil war

–10 0 10 20
Years since civil war

Figure 2.11. Differential growth of primary school enrollment rates between

countries in E­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca that experienced civil war versus coun-
tries that did not. Primary school enrollment rates are ­measured as a percentage
of the population ages 5–14 years.

schooling of civil wars did not differ depending on the ideology of the
winners.71 El Salvador in the 1830s and Chile in the 1860s are good exam-
ples of postwar state efforts to expand primary schooling by a conservative
regime. But even in cases like Finland, where the end of the civil war coin-
cided with an increase in the parliamentary power of the more progressive
Social Demo­cratic Party, interest in expanding primary education to prevent
a ­future civil war transcended ideological and party lines, and the conserva-
tive National Co­ali­tion Party’s platform included compulsory education as
an urgent task to preserve society by bringing up c­ hildren and youth to
be moral and civilized.72
A fourth potential concern is that perhaps the patterns shown in fig-
ures 2.9, 2.10, and 2.11 simply reflect the fact that crises in general, including
not only crises of internal order such as civil wars but also economic cri-
ses, tend to catalyze demand for policy innovation, which could result in

71. See the online appendix.

72. Arola (2003), p. 127.
86 | Chapter 2

e­ ducational expansion. To consider this possibility I investigated w ­ hether

banking crises—­a common type of economic crisis—­that ­were not accom-
panied by crises of internal order brought about an acceleration of primary
school enrollment rates. I found that they did not.73 This provides an ad-
ditional piece of systematic evidence that ­there is something specific about
crises of internal order, and not crises in general, that drove the expansion
of primary schooling.
Fi­nally, some readers may won­der ­whether the effect of civil wars on pri-
mary schooling depends on ­whether the incumbent won the war. Both the
cross-­national data and the individual cases discussed in greater depth in
chapter 4 suggest that the occurrence of civil wars led to the expansion of
primary schooling regardless of ­whether the war was won by the incum-
bent or brought a new government to power. As I explain in the next chap-
ter, this finding is in line with the book’s main argument.

CONCLUSION
Taken together, the evidence presented in this chapter suggests that internal
conflict was a stronger and more consistent driver of the spread of primary
education in Western socie­ties than democ­ratization, industrialization, or
interstate wars. Given t­hese findings, chapter 3 develops an argument to
explain why internal conflict in general—­not just civil wars—is likely to lead
to increased state effort to regulate and expand mass education. Chapters 4
and 5 provide extensive evidence for this argument from non-­democratic
regimes in nineteenth-­century ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca. Chapters 6 and
7 show that the logic of conflict-­driven education reform travels across
time and space and can apply also to modern times and democracies.

73. See the online appendix.

 CHAPTER THREE

WHY DO GOVERNMENTS REGULATE

AND PROVIDE MASS EDUCATION?

Starting in the late eigh­teenth and especially during the nineteenth ­century,
central governments in the Western socie­ties of ­Europe and the Amer­i­cas
began regulating, funding, and expanding the provision of primary educa-
tion for the masses—­a sharp departure from a decentralized past in which
the education of c­ hildren had been left entirely up to families, churches,
and local governments. In chapter 2 we saw that this phenomenon—­the
emergence and expansion of primary education systems regulated by
the state—­preceded the spread of democracy by many ­decades and was
not driven by the needs created by industrialization or external military
threats. What explains the emergence and expansion of public primary
school systems in the West?
I argue that mass education emerged as a crucial state-­building strategy
designed to accomplish the state’s main function of promoting social order
by indoctrinating ­future citizens to obey the state and its laws. From Thomas
Hobbes to Frederick the ­Great, during the early modern period, primary
education came to be viewed by centralizing rulers, p ­ hilosophers, and edu-
cation reform advocates as a useful policy tool that could be used to enhance
the long-­term stability of the state by instilling among the population
­values and be­hav­iors of discipline, obedience, and re­spect for the state’s
authority. Targeting c­ hildren was considered a particularly effective long-­
term strategy b ­ ecause ­children ­were believed to be more malleable than
adults, and impressions made during early childhood, more long-­lasting.
Still, the idea that the state should play a role in the education of c­ hildren,
88 | Chapter 3

especially their moral education, met considerable r­ esistance at first, not

only from parents but also from some members of the ­political elite. What
turned the t­ ables in ­favor of proposals for state-­regulated mass education?
The argument I propose highlights the power­ful role that fear of the
masses played in increasing national elites’ support for proposals to create
and expand a state-­regulated primary education system. Concerns about the
threat that mass vio­lence posed to the stability of the state, coupled with
the perception that existing policy tools ­were insufficient to safeguard it,
helped convince ­these elites that their state-­building agenda would be bet-
ter served by an education system designed to instill obedience to the state
and its laws.
This chapter fleshes out this theory sequentially. I begin by unpacking
both the idea that mass schooling can be used to mold c­ hildren into well-­
behaved f­uture citizens, as well as its intellectual history, given that this
idea is an impor­tant precondition for the development of primary educa-
tion systems. As ­we’ve seen, however, ideas alone are insufficient to explain
the rise of mass schooling; threats from below to the state-­building aspira-
tions of centralizing politicians played a key role in giving ­political trac-
tion to the idea that central governments should regulate and promote
primary education.1
Episodes of mass vio­lence that make national elites fear for the stability
of the central government, I argue, ­will help unite ­these elites ­behind the
idea that the state should play an active role in educating f­uture citizens,
and that the main goal of such education should be to shape the moral char-
acter of the masses in order to promote orderly be­hav­ior and re­spect for
the state and its laws. National elites may disagree considerably about what
exactly that education should look like—­whether, for example, the moral
education provided by the state should be secular or religious. However,
under­lying this disagreement between national elites we should also find

1. I use the terms “centralizing rulers,” “centralizing elites,” “national elites,” and “state-­building
elites” interchangeably to refer to elites who exert power mainly at the national or central level of
government. This includes Paris elites in France, Buenos Aires elites in Argentina, Santiago elites
in Chile, e­ tc. The term includes both elites who control the central government and ­those who
form part of the opposition to it at the national level. For example, both liberal and conservative
politicians in Santiago comprised the group of centralizing or national elites in 1850 Chile, even
though conservatives controlled the presidency and a majority of seats in Congress. National
elites, even if they belong to dif­fer­ent p
­ olitical parties or factions, all share the goal of protecting
and consolidating the central government’s power. Crucial to the accomplishment of this goal is
the central government’s ability to maintain social order and promote widespread ­acceptance of
its authority throughout the territory.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 89

broad agreement about the role of the state in regulating and providing
mass education to “moralize” the masses. Concerns about anarchy, crime,
peasant riots, strikes, social revolution, civil war, and other forms of inter-
nal conflict involving mass vio­lence, to the extent that they are perceived
by national elites to threaten the state’s viability, ­will play a crucial role in
forging this shared agreement among elites. This chapter explains why.

IDEAS ABOUT EDUCATION, INDOCTRINATION, AND STATE-­BUILDING

Before primary education came to be viewed as a useful tool to promote a
common national identity or industrialization, the education of the masses
by the state came to be viewed as a state-­building tool that could be used to
promote long-­term social order by teaching unquestioned re­spect for the
state’s authority. Early advocates for the development of such systems argued
that primary schools had the power to shape the preferences, beliefs, moral
character, and be­hav­ior of the masses. The state, according to ­these advo-
cates, should take control of the provision of primary education ­because
the moral values, manners, habits, and aspirations developed by f­ uture citi-
zens had repercussions for the state’s stability and its ability to fulfill its main
function to promote social order. Educating ­children, they agreed, was espe-
cially impor­tant ­because if ­people learned to re­spect the state’s authority
early on, they would continue ­doing so throughout their lives. By shaping
the moral character of ­children, primary schools could instill re­spect for
the state and its laws, preventing vio­lence, crime, and dissident be­hav­ior,
and promoting long-­term p ­ olitical stability.
Proponents of state-­controlled primary education systems argued that
­these systems would foster long-­term order through three main indoctri-
nation mechanisms. First, primary schools could shape be­hav­ior by instill-
ing fear of punishment for misbehavior, or conversely, the anticipation of
rewards for proper be­hav­ior. Stealing, vandalism, quarreling, cheating, lying,
and cursing, w
­ ere typically punished, as w ­ ere questioning the teacher, speak-
ing out of turn, or disobeying school rules or teachers’ instructions. G ­ reat
thought was given to the type of punishment that was most appropriate
for c­ hildren, with influential education thinkers arguing that disciplining
­children through physical vio­lence could backfire, leading them to learn
violent be­hav­iors themselves. For this reason, other methods of punishment
such as public scolding and humiliation or the threat of eternal damnation
­were considered preferable. By contrast, sitting quietly and completing tasks
90 | Chapter 3

as instructed ­were praised publicly. School punishments and rewards sought

to teach ­children that their be­hav­ior had consequences, and that obedience,
compliance, and re­spect for existing rules and authorities ­were in their own
best interest.
Second, mass education proponents argued that primary schools could
teach the masses from a young age to be content with what they had. The
crucial goal h ­ ere was to teach p
­ eople that, even if rebellion was costless and
punishment for misbehavior was avoidable, they had no reason to rebel
against the status quo. Sometimes ­these lessons ­were taught by inculcating
a love of one’s country or nation, but even before cultivating national iden-
tity became an impor­tant goal of primary education, schools often taught
values of moderation and self-­sacrifice and tried to instill in ­children the
belief that happiness resulted from accepting one’s lot.
Third, proponents argued that schools could cultivate unconscious
­habits of compliance and deference simply through repetition. The mere
act of attending school ­every day and following schedules, routines, and
rituals, such as marching in silence from classroom to breakroom, would
develop habits of discipline and obedience and lead individuals to inter-
nalize from a young age what constituted good manners and civil be­hav­
ior.2 Repetition of specific words, sentences, and paragraphs, as part of the
­process of learning how to read and write, was also considered a useful
means for teaching specific p ­ olitical values and beliefs. An example of this
is found in a French primary school textbook authorized by the Royal
Council on Public Instruction in 1841 for teaching reading and writing; in
the first section of the textbook, the words chosen to exemplify dif­fer­ent
sounds emphasize authorities like “King” and “God” and values like “kind-
ness,” “goodness,” “­acceptance,” and “order.” In addition, in this and other text-
books, the passages used to teach ­children how to read are filled with moral
lessons about the importance of obeying one’s parents and teachers, fulfilling
one’s duties ­toward ­others, treating o­ thers with kindness and re­spect, staying
away from vio­lence, and other messages that the state wanted ­future citi-
zens to internalize.
The commonality across t­hese three mechanisms, and the reason I call
them indoctrination mechanisms, is that the educational p ­ rocess left no
room for questioning the norms, values, beliefs, habits, and be­hav­iors that

2. Firsthand descriptions of routines and their expected effect on c­ hildren’s be­hav­ior include,
e.g., Sarmiento (1849), Alexander (1919), and Kandel (1933).
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 91

schools ­were trying to inculcate. The norms to be taught in schools w ­ ere

crafted by elites, often to their own benefit, and engaging in a p ­ rocess of
critically evaluating the merits of ­these norms was inconceivable. ­Whether
adults with well-­developed reasoning capabilities agree with the desirabil-
ity of some of ­these norms is beside the point.
Education reformers ­were prolific in their writing, devoting many essays,
letters, books, and speeches to articulate t­hese three impor­tant functions
of mass education. One influential example is Educación ­Popular, a book
commissioned by the Chilean government to Argentine politician Do-
mingo F. Sarmiento. Published in 1849, Educación ­Popular quickly became a
must-­read among nineteenth-­century Latin American politicians interested
in the development of a mass education system. In it, Sarmiento argues that
the newly i­ ndependent states of Latin Amer­i­ca have inherited “savage races”
characterized by their “hatred of civilization” and “rebellion against culture,”
and that “the fate of the state” depended on the education it gave to c­ hildren.
Educación ­Popular describes the expected consequences of primary schooling
by highlighting its moralizing effects and its ability to instill obedience to
a common authority that operates beyond the realm of the ­family:

Attending school w ­ ill have on c­ hildren a moralizing effect from spend-

ing ­there time that, in the absence of school, would go ­towards laziness
and abandonment; habituating the spirit to the idea of a regular, con-
tinuous duty gives the child habits of regularity in his way of o ­ perating;
adding an authority besides the paternal one, which does not always
work constantly ­toward the moral development of ­children, begins to
form in the spirit the idea of an authority that operates outside the
­family; fi­nally, the grouping of masses of individuals, the need to con-
tain in them their passions and the opportunity to strengthen relation-
ships built on sympathy put down without them feeling it the first
rudiments of morality and socialization, so necessary to prepare them
for obligations and duties of life as adults.3

­There are additional ways in which primary education could serve to pro-
mote social order besides the three indoctrination mechanisms discussed
above.
The first, highlighted by French p ­ hilosopher Michel Foucault, is that
schools can act as daytime prisons, keeping young ­children and adolescents

3. Sarmiento (1849), p. 57.

92 | Chapter 3

off the streets and away from opportunities to engage in any kind of be­hav­
ior that threatens the public order.4 The second concerns the use of primary
schools as a tool to monitor the individual be­hav­ior of ­children and their
parents through teachers who are embedded in their communities and act
as loyal agents of the state.5 This monitoring function of primary schools
was certainly of interest to the state as it sought to gather information
about the population across the national territory, and the creation of pri-
mary school inspection systems also helped to fulfill this informational
goal of primary education. However, for the act of monitoring to have an
effect on p­ eople’s a­ ctual be­hav­ior, and in par­tic­ul­ ar for monitoring to pre-
vent ­people from rebelling against the state, ­people must understand the
consequences of their be­hav­iors and the costs of rebellion. Teaching about
­these costs was a central goal of primary education systems.
Targeting ­children to maintain social order was primarily a long-­term in-
vestment; while schools could keep c­ hildren from the streets in the short
term, their main function was to shape the values and be­hav­ior of ­future
citizens. The under­lying belief ­behind this targeting was that molding the
child’s individual character was a more cost-­effective way to promote s­ ocial
order than trying to alter the be­hav­ior of adults.
Importantly, during the nineteenth ­century primary education was usu-
ally considered a terminal degree for the masses, not a stepping stone to
acquire further education.6 In fact, the terms “primary education,” “­popular
education,” and “­popular instruction” w ­ ere used interchangeably. Second-
ary schools and universities remained reserved for the upper classes well into
the twentieth ­century, as we saw in previous chapters.7 This conception of
primary education as a terminal degree for the masses helps explain why
many elites w ­ ere not fearful of its provision; the masses, they believed, would
simply be compelled to attend primary schools in which they would learn
how to behave. Primary education would not lead to other kinds of edu-
cational opportunities that could expose the masses to subversive ideas,
they reasoned, b ­ ecause ­those opportunities simply would not be available
to them.

4. Foucault (1995).
5. E.g., Foucault (1995) writes that the school “must not simply train docile ­children; it must
also make it pos­si­ble to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their re-
sources, their piety, their morals. The school tends to constitute minute social observatories that
penetrate even to the adults and exercise regular supervision over them” (p. 211).
6. E.g., Guizot (1816); Pigna (2009), p. 286.
7. Brockliss and Sheldon (2012), pp. 91–92.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 93

To explain why national elites set up primary education systems, we need

to understand their beliefs about the likely benefits of mass education. The
rest of this section delves deeper into the intellectual history of educational
ideas as articulated by influential ­political p ­ hilosophers, rulers, and their
education advisers. To preview the main takeaways, during early modernity,
as new ideas for ­organizing social and ­political life emerged in the hands
of social contract theorists, the education of all ­children emerged as an
impor­tant task that the state should take over for its own sake, to promote
internal social order and the p ­ olitical legitimacy of the state. In the late eigh­
teenth ­century, ­these ideas combined with Pietist pedagogical thought to
influence the creation of the Prus­sian primary education system; from ­there,
they traveled to other states that throughout the nineteenth ­century looked
to Prus­sia as a model for state-­building. However, while impor­tant, ­these
ideas are insufficient to explain the rise of state-­controlled primary education
systems—­even in the case of Prus­sia. What often gave p ­ olitical traction
to ­these ideas ­were violent episodes that heightened national elites’ fear of
the masses.

EDUCATION IN SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES

What should be the goals of education? Who should attend school, and what
should be taught ­there? Should the state be involved in its provision, and if
yes, how? T­ hese are centuries-­old philosophical questions on which thou-
sands of essays and books have been written. H ­ ere I ­will attempt to sketch
out the history of ­those ideas in just a few paragraphs, focusing on the ele­
ments that are most relevant for my argument.
The idea that the state should educate c­ hildren goes back at least to Plato,
who in the context of thinking about how to maintain social order in a soci-
ety where conflicting interests could evolve into dangerous civil wars, argues
that lawmakers should take charge of educating all c­ hildren to create social
peace. Plato fears that if a child’s “upbringing is inadequate,” the child w ­ ill
become “the most savage creature on earth. For that reason,” he argues, “the
lawgiver must not allow the upbringing of ­children to be something second-
ary or incidental.”8 Rulers “must cling to education” in order to “tame”
­children, “guiding c­ hildren t­ owards correct reason, as defined by law,”9 direct-
ing their souls to “become good,” and preventing the teaching of anything

8. Plato (2016), 766a, p. 218.

9. Plato (1992), 424b, p. 99; Plato (2016), 766a, p. 218; Plato (2016), 659d, p. 77. Plato highlights that
what constitutes “correct” reasoning is defined by the laws established by ­political authorities.
Education should teach ­children to understand and accept ­these laws. Emphasis is mine.
94 | Chapter 3

“that is ­counter to the established order.”10 Mass education, in P ­ lato’s view,

must be compulsory and controlled by a Superintendent of Education.11
­These ideas notwithstanding, during most of Western history the legiti-
macy and power of ­political rulers emanated from their military capacity—­
that is, their capacity to both defend and repress the population—­and
from religious doctrines such as the divine right of kings. Such doctrines
­were spread by the Catholic Church who, along with parents, took on the
task of providing a moral education to ­children, teaching them right from
wrong. Religious education, however, was quite l­imited in scale, content,
and frequency: it was neither universal nor compulsory, it focused on the
Bible, and church-­run schools usually operated on Sundays only.
It was during the early modern period and especially during the Enlight-
enment, when the power of absolute monarchies and the Church came to
be questioned and ideas about a new type of p ­ olitical system based on a
social contract started to gain support, that the idea of state-­regulated mass
education emerged with greater force. Influential ­political thinkers from
Hobbes to Rousseau helped shape the idea that mass education was a cen-
tral component for promoting social order and p ­ olitical legitimacy, and that
this education had to be provided by the state.
One of the most compelling arguments about the need for the state to
provide mass education comes from Thomas Hobbes’s social contract the-
ory as articulated in Leviathan. Given the huge influence of this book, I ­will
first unpack the relevance of education in Hobbes’s ­political thought, be-
fore turning to influential ideas by other ­political ­philosophers who also
place education at the center of theories of social order and p ­ olitical legiti-
macy. Written during the E ­ nglish Civil Wars of 1642–1651, which forced
Hobbes to go into exile, in Leviathan Hobbes asks how socie­ties can avoid
“the war of all against all.” His well-­known conclusion is that civil wars can
be avoided if every­one agrees to give up the right to govern themselves and
instead delegates the authority to govern to one person, the sovereign.
What is less well-­known t­ oday is how central the educational duty of the
sovereign was, according to Hobbes. ­Political theorist Richard Tuck explains
that, ­because of his own training in rhe­toric, Hobbes became convinced that
almost every­thing we believe to be “right” or “wrong” is a m ­ atter of subjec-
tive conviction and is therefore open to debate. “A sovereign is created by
men who (in a ‘state of nature’) are conscious of the fallibility and conten-

10. Plato (1992), 424b, p. 99.

11. Plato (2016), 765d-e, p. 217.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 95

tiousness of their own opinions, in order to have a common source of judge-

ment in disputed m ­ atters, and thereby to avoid civil strife.” The role of the
sovereign, therefore, is to judge what is true and what is false, and what is
right or wrong. Given this, “the chief enemies of civil order are (on Hobbes’s
account) any persons who seek to persuade their fellow citizens of the truth
of anything disputable, without the permission of the sovereign. Since an
education system looks precisely like a mechanism for persuading p ­ eople
of certain t­ hings, his theory required in princi­ple an extremely close man-
agement by the sovereign of what was taught in both schools and universi-
ties, just as it required a close management of what was taught by churches.”12
Hobbes argues that education is what makes man fit for society and what
ensures social order.13 Internal peace, he says, “cannot be maintained by any
civil law or terror of ­legal punishment”; it can only be maintained by edu-
cating ­people.14 This education, he stresses, is one of the sovereign’s main
duties; he must define what princi­ples should be learned in school, and then
see that they are taught correctly, never renouncing the power of “appoint-
ing teachers and examining what doctrines” are taught to ensure ­these are
not “contrary to the defence, peace, and good of the ­people.”15 ­People must
be taught the grounds and reasons b ­ ehind the sovereign’s rights, he says;
other­wise, they become “easy to be seduced and drawn to resist him.” The
“instruction of the ­people in the essential rights of sovereignty” by the sov-
ereign is therefore “not only his duty, but his benefit also,” ­because this edu-
cation provides “security against the danger that may arrive to himself in
his natu­ral person from rebellion.”16
In addition to teaching ­people the grounds for the sovereign’s power, the
Hobbesian education system places a major emphasis on teaching obedi-
ence to the sovereign ­because his unquestioned authority, says Hobbes, con-
stitutes the basis of social order. “The ­people are to be taught, first, that
they ­ought not to be in love with any form of government they see in their
neighbour nations, more than with their own, nor . . . ​to desire change. For
the prosperity of a ­people” comes not from ­whether they are ruled by aris-
tocrats, a demo­cratic assembly, or a king, “but from the obedience and con-
cord of the subjects. . . . ​Take away, in any kind of state, the obedience (and
consequently the concord of the ­people) and they ­shall . . . ​in short time

12. Tuck (1998), p. 153.

13. Hobbes (1991), De Cive I.2.
14. Hobbes (1994), XXX.3.
15. Hobbes (1994), XXX.3.
16. Hobbes (1994), XXX.6.
96 | Chapter 3

be dissolved.”17 Second, says Hobbes, ­people should “be taught that they
­ought not to be led with admiration of the virtue of any of their fellow
subjects, . . . ​nor of any assembly (except the sovereign assembly)”; their obe-
dience is “to the sovereign only.”18 Third, the p ­ eople “­ought to be informed
how ­great a fault it is to speak evil of the sovereign representative (­whether
one man or an assembly of men), or to argue and dispute his power, or any
way to use his name irreverently, whereby he may be brought into contempt
with his p ­ eople, and their obedience (in which the safety of the common-
wealth consisteth) slackened.”19
The idea that educating ­children was crucial to promote good moral be­
hav­ior gained strength during the Enlightenment, as new ideas about the
basis of morality emerged. From Locke to Rousseau, Voltaire, or Kant, En-
lightenment ­philosophers shared the view that ­human beings are born nei-
ther good nor evil; our moral princi­ples, they argued, are molded by our
experiences and by the education we receive. This idea of ­human nature
challenged the prevailing Christian doctrine of the original sin according
to which we are born with a natu­ral predisposition to evil and ill be­hav­ior.
From Voltaire’s ­metaphor that we become wolves not ­because we w ­ ere born
wicked but ­because we did not receive a proper education,20 to Kant’s
­argument that man “is merely what education makes of him,”21 Enlighten-
ment ­philosophers stressed the power of education to shape our moral char-
acter. For Rousseau, “the first education ­ought to be purely negative” in the
sense that it must be focused on preventing vices rather than cultivating
virtue; “prevent vices from arising, you ­will have done enough for virtue.”22
Voltaire highlighted the power of education to develop our conscience so
that we ­will refrain from performing bad actions simply to avoid the con-
sequences that t­ hose actions would have on our conscience.23 For Kant, the
first goal of education was to make individuals “subject to discipline; by
which we must understand that influence which is always restraining our
animal nature from getting the better of our manhood.”24 Discipline, Kant
wrote, “is merely restraining unruliness.”25

17. Hobbes (1994), XXX.7.

18. Hobbes (1994), XXX.8.
19. Hobbes (1994), XXX.9.
20. Voltaire (1901b), p. 181.
21. Kant (1900), p. 6.
22. Rousseau (2019b), p. 195.
23. Voltaire (1901a).
24. Kant (1900), p. 18. Emphasis in the original.
25. Kant (1900), p. 19.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 97

Enlightenment ­philosophers also had something to say about w ­ hether

the state should be involved in educating the masses or w ­ hether this educa-
tion should be left to parents. Rousseau was among the strongest proponents
of a state-­run education system. In his Discourse on ­Political Economy, he
stresses that education is too impor­tant a m­ atter to be left in the hands of
­fathers; like Hobbes, he argues that education should be directed by the
state to teach obedience to ­children:

Inasmuch as ­there are laws for adulthood, ­there should be laws for
childhood that teach obedience to o ­ thers; and inasmuch as each man’s
reason is not left to be the sole judge of his duties, the education of
­children ­ought all the less to be left to their ­fathers’ lights and preju-
dices, as that education m ­ atters to the state even more than it does to
the ­fathers . . . ​Public education ­under rules prescribed by the govern-
ment, and ­under magistrates established by the sovereign is, then, one
of the fundamental maxims of p ­ opular or legitimate government.26

The focus on the education of ­children specifically reflected a belief, sub-

stantiated by neuroscience t­ oday,27 that early childhood is the period when
­human beings are most susceptible to external influence. Investing in mold-
ing a child’s mind was therefore believed to be a way to secure proper val-
ues and be­hav­ior among ­future citizens. The idea that c­ hildren are more
“malleable” than adults has a long tradition in p ­ olitical philosophy dating
back at least to Plato’s Republic, where he writes: “You know, d ­ on’t you, that
the beginning of any p ­ rocess is most impor­tant, especially for anything
young and tender? It’s at that time that it is most malleable and takes on
any pattern one wishes to impress on it.”28
Similar ideas about the long-­term term benefits of “imprinting” ­children’s
minds, to borrow the term used by Hobbes,29 can also be found among
­political ­philosophers during the Enlightenment. Locke refers to the minds
of ­children as a tabula ra­sa, “as easily turned this way or that way as ­water
itself.” For this reason, “­great care is to be had of the forming of c­ hildren’s
minds and giving them that seasoning early which s­ hall influence their lives
always ­after.” Adulthood was too late a stage to discipline ­people according
to Locke: “He that is not used to submit his w ­ ill to the reason of o­ thers when
he is young, ­will scarce hearken or submit to his own reason when he is of

26. Rousseau (2019a), pp. 21–22.

27. National Research Council, Institute of Medicine (2000).
28. Plato (1992), 377a–­b, 52.
29. Hobbes (1994), XXX.6.
98 | Chapter 3

an age to make use of it.”30 In a similar vein, Kant argued that “discipline
must be brought into play very early; for when this had not been done, it
is difficult to alter character a­ fter in life.”31 Rousseau also emphasized that
the training of ­future citizens must begin early in their lives: “To form citi-
zens is not the business of a single day, and to have them be citizens when
they are men, they have to be taught when they are c­ hildren.”32
­There was also among several of ­these influential p ­ hilosophers a concern
about the use of physical coercion to straighten c­ hildren’s be­hav­ior. Plato
believed that “Forced bodily ­labor does no harm to the body, but nothing
taught by force stays in the soul. . . . ​[D]on’t use force to train the ­children
in t­ hese subjects; use play instead.”33 Some Enlightenment ­philosophers had
an even more extreme view. Locke, for example, thought that if “rough meth-
ods” ­were applied, c­ hildren would pay attention to and learn from t­hose
methods, and this would “introduce a contrary habit.”34 Essentially, Locke
was arguing that we teach by example; if ­children are disciplined through
physical force, they ­will learn to use force themselves to obtain what they
want, which is contrary to the goal of education to promote a well-­ordered
society.
The preceding ideas about how ­children o ­ ught to be educated, stressing
discipline and obedience from a young age, are perhaps unexpected com-
ing from Enlightenment ­philosophers like Rousseau or Kant. Indeed, the
Enlightenment also gave rise to a current of thought that affirmed that
­human beings have the right and responsibility to deploy their f­ ree agency
and capability for inquiry to the pursuit of an autonomous life uncon-
strained by doctrines or traditions.35 This alternative idea is more akin to
how we would describe the goals of a liberal education and did in fact make

30. Locke (1996), Some Thoughts Concerning Education, pp. 32, 36.
31. Kant (1900), p. 4.
32. Rousseau (2019a), p. 20.
33. Plato (1992), 536d–­e, 208.
34. Locke (1996), Of the Conduct of the Understanding, p. 30.
35. History school textbooks tend to stress ­these emancipatory ideas when describing the En-
lightenment. However, in recent d ­ ecades historians have criticized this as an outdated and mis-
guided description (De Dijn 2012). One particularly influential historian of the Enlightenment,
Jonathan Israel, distinguishes between two competing groups of Enlightenment p ­ hilosophers
and ideas. The progressive ideas that ­today we associate with the rise of Western liberal democra-
cies and secular politics, writes Israel, stem from what he calls the Radical Enlightenment, whose
main ­philosopher was Baruch de Spinoza. By contrast, mainstream Enlightenment p ­ hilosophers
such as Voltaire and Locke emerged in reaction against Radical Enlightenment ideas, espousing
conservative ideas and defending the status quo. Voltaire, for example, felt an “inexplicable sympa-
thy ­toward Louis XV’s regime” (De Dijn 2012, p. 799) and expressed that “he was not in the least
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 99

its way into the design of secondary schools and universities for members
of the elite. However, it had ­little influence on the foundational debates that
­shaped the rise of state-­regulated education for the ­popular classes.
Rousseau’s work illustrates the dif­fer­ent types of education that Enlight-
enment ­philosophers envisioned for elites versus the rest. In Émile, or On
Education, he proposes a child-­centered education that nurtures the child’s
curiosity. Émile, however, is not a book about mass schooling; it focuses
on the upbringing of a rich man’s son by his private tutor. The pedagogy
that Rousseau proposes h ­ ere, with its emphasis on cultivating the child’s
holistic development, differs from the idea he advances in other works that
the state should educate all c­ hildren for the sake of cultivating obedience.
­There is a tension in Rousseau and other Enlightenment p ­ hilosophers’
work between their interest in safeguarding the state’s legitimacy and au-
thority, and their defense of individual freedom. In Rousseau’s case, he
reconciles ­these through the concept of the general ­will, defined as “the
collective w­ ill of the citizen body taken as a w ­ hole. The general w
­ ill,” he
argues, “is the source of law and is willed by each and e­ very citizen. In
obeying the law each citizen is thus subject to his or her own w ­ ill, and
consequently, according to Rousseau, remains f­ree.” The question of how
good laws that every­one would willingly obey emerge in the first place
pre­sents a prob­lem for Rousseau. To address it, he turns to the role of an
authority—­the legislator in Discourse on ­Inequality or the tutor in Émile—­
who has the function to persuade ­others—­before they can discern for
themselves—to accept that the laws are in their own best interest. Similar
to the role he ascribes to mass schooling or even to “the tutor in Émile, the
legislator has the role of manipulating the desires of his charges, giving
them the illusion of ­free choice without its substance.”36
A testament to the ­limited influence that child-­centered pedagogies had
in the everyday functioning of primary schools is the fact that John Dewey,
a proponent of this type of pedagogy, was considered revolutionary for his
time. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth c­ entury, Dewey reacted to
the prevailing model of education, criticizing schools for their “strict disci-
plinarianism which was the style of education in his day” and teaching
methods focused on students’ “passive reception of ideas.”37 He proposed,

interested in ‘enlightening’ or emancipating the man in the street, his coachman or any other
‘servants’ ” (Israel 2006, p. 528). See also Israel (2001).
36. Bertram (2023).
37. Cooney, Cross, and Trunk (1993), pp. 134–135.
100 | Chapter 3

instead, that teachers take the child’s own initiatives and interests into ac-
count to promote individual curiosity, inquisitiveness, and autonomy. And
he argued that the ­things learned in school should serve as an instrument
not for the maintenance of the status quo but, on the contrary, for social
change. ­There would have been no Dewey, or at least he would not have
been considered progressive, if the liberal ideas about education that we
associate with the Enlightenment had penetrated the public primary edu-
cation systems that emerged in the nineteenth ­century.38
It should be clear from this section, but it is worth stressing, that the main
arguments that s­ haped the early stages of mass education ascribed to it a
state-­building role. Nation-­building arguments emerged ­later in the history
of mass schooling.39 Primary education, its proponents argued, should focus
not necessarily on teaching a common language or national identity, but
should definitely teach moral princi­ples and inculcate obedience to the
­sovereign and its rules as part of the state’s interest and its function to
preserve social order and prevent civil strife.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PRUS­SIA

The educational ideas of Hobbes, Rousseau, and o ­ thers did not just stay
within the circle of ­philosophers; they reached and influenced E ­ uropean
rulers and their counselors, providing them with new ways of thinking
about how to promote social order. From E ­ urope, they then traveled to the
Amer­i­cas, and l­ater to other parts of the world, shaping ­there too the de-
velopment of public primary education systems.
One of the first states to put ­these educational ideas into practice was
Prus­sia during the eigh­teenth c­ entury, ­under the absolutist regime of Fred-
erick II, perhaps better known as Frederick the G ­ reat. The king was an
­admirer of Enlightenment p ­ olitical ­philosophers, with whom he often
corresponded, and even granted asylum to Rousseau when he fled France
­after the publication of Émile and The Social Contract in 1762. Often referred
to as an “enlightened absolutist” for the kinds of reforms he pursued, in
1763 Frederick II signed the General Rural School Regulations, a royal de-
cree that introduced compulsory primary schooling in all Protestant rural

38. Cooney, Cross, and Trunk (1993), pp. 133–148. See also Dewey (1916), especially pp. 300–301,
where he explains how German philosophy ­shaped the goals and characteristics of education sys-
tems during the nineteenth ­century.
39. The exception is Rousseau (2019b), who as part of the Considerations on the Government of
Poland did discuss the usefulness of education to “give souls the national form,” turning individu-
als into loyal, devoted citizens by immersing them in the culture and history of their country.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 101

areas of Prus­sia, followed in 1765 by a similar decree for Catholic areas. This
school law established the basic princi­ples that would guide Prus­sian
primary schooling for the next ­century and beyond, regulating almost
­every aspect of primary education—­the school day and school year, school
fees, discipline, the curriculum, methods of instruction, teachers, and
school supervision and administration.40 ­Every aspect of schooling was
tightly regulated by the state. This marked the beginning of the Prus­sian
primary education system.
The significance of the Prus­sian case lies in the impact it had on the de-
velopment of primary schooling worldwide. Prus­sia’s ascendance to the cat-
egory of “­great power” beginning with Frederick II led statesmen around
the world to look at Prus­sia to understand the roots of its success. As they
did, a common view emerged that Prus­sia’s power relied in large part on
its ability to control its population, which in turn was the result of its edu-
cational efforts. As this view gained strength, more and more countries
began to send public officials on education missions to Prus­sia to observe
its primary schools and identify lessons that could be applied back home.
Education reformers from other parts of E ­ urope and from the Amer­i­cas bor-
rowed ideas from Prus­sia. For this reason, looking at the educational ideas
that circulated in Prus­sia can tell us something broader about the ideas that
­shaped the global rise of primary education systems.
The educational ideas pop­u­lar­ized by Prus­sia starting in the late eigh­
teenth ­century bear a striking resemblance to ­those of early modern
­political ­philosophers in highlighting that primary schools should be reg-
ulated by the state and should focus above all on shaping the moral char-
acter of c­ hildren to teach them discipline, self-­restraint, and obedience to
rules and authorities. The General Rural School Regulations of 1763 tasked
teachers precisely with providing a moral education to all ­children—­which
in the case of Prus­sia was to include the teaching of religion—­and placed
special emphasis on the inculcation of habits and values of discipline and
obedience. The decree explic­itly called for educating “the young for the fear
of God”41 and stipulated that “discipline must be done wisely so that . . . ​
[the child’s] stubbornness, or self-­will, are broken . . . ​and lying, cursing, dis-
obedience, rage, quarreling, brawling, ­etc. are punished.”42

40. Alexander (1919), p. 14.

41. Prus­sia (1763), p. 1.
42. Prus­sia (1763), p. 22.
102 | Chapter 3

­ here is virtually no disagreement among historians, says Kenneth Bar-

T
kin, that compulsory schooling in Prus­sia was conceived by the state “as a
mechanism of social control to indoctrinate c­hildren in p ­olitical
submissiveness.” Con­
43
temporary observers throughout the nineteenth
­century also highlighted this aspect of Prus­sian primary education. Con-
sider, for example, what the U.S. intellectual and preacher Orestes Brown-
son wrote in 1839:

Let it be born in mind that in Prus­sia the ­whole business of education

is lodged in the hands of government. The government established the
schools in which it prepared teachers; it determined both the meth-
ods of teaching and the m­ atters taught. It commissions all teachers and
suffers no one to engage in teaching without authority from itself. Who
sees not then that all the teachers ­will be the pliant tools of the gov-
ernment and that the ­whole tendency of the education given ­will be
to make the Prus­sians obedient subjects of Frederic the king? Who sees
not that education in Prus­sians is supported merely as the most effi-
cient arm of the police and fostered for the purpose of keeping out
revolutionary or, what is the same t­ hing, liberal ideas.44

Similar impressions about Prus­sian schooling persisted through the early

twentieth ­century.45
In addition to the influence of Enlightenment ­philosophers, the Prus­sian
school system’s emphasis on teaching discipline and obedience incorpo-
rated the ideas of Pietism. Since its emergence in the seventeenth c­ entury,
Pietists wanted to restore Luther’s message that “God judges according to
that which lay within the depths of your heart” and “the sincerity of your
beliefs.” They focused on “inward reflection,” not outward manifestations of
religiosity, as “the core of all worship and observance,” insisting that God’s

43. Barkin (1983), p. 32. W­ hether the state succeeded in accomplishing its social control goal,
and in par­tic­u­lar, the extent to which teachers complied with education regulations, remains a
subject of controversy among historians. I return to this point in chapter 8.
44. Brownson (1839).
45. In a book published by Thomas Alexander in 1919 based on his study of the history of the
Prus­sian primary education system as well as firsthand observation of primary schools in Prus­sia,
he concludes: “A careful study of the Prus­sian school system ­will convince any unbiased reader
that . . . ​the ­whole scheme of Prus­sian elementary education is ­shaped with the express purpose of
making ninety-­five out of ­every hundred citizens subservient to the ruling ­house and to the state”
(Alexander 1919, p. v).
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 103

word must “penetrate our hearts” and the individual “must serve God from
deep within the ­temple of his very soul.”46
Cultivating the individual’s heart and inner convictions, Pietists claimed,
was impor­tant both for spiritual salvation and for maintaining the hierar-
chical social order. Pietists wanted ­people to accept their societal role not
through external coercion but out of personal conviction that this was the
right ­thing to do. One Pietist educator explained the Christian duty to ac-
cept one’s place in society through a s­ imple analogy: “The body of Christ
consists of dif­fer­ent members. Not e­ very member can be a hand, foot, eye,
or ear. Each member has its own task. . . . ​The foot should not desire to be-
come an eye, nor the hand an ear.”47
Pietist ideas had begun to enter schools at the beginning of the eigh­teenth
­century through the work of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), who
stressed that, through inward reflection, individuals could acquire both the
self-­discipline required to exercise their duties and the calmness to accept
their place in society.48 Obedience to authority was among the most impor­
tant of such duties, Francke told his students. Foreshadowing the language of
the 1763 General Rural School Regulations commanding teachers to break
the child’s w ­ ill, in the 1690s Francke wrote that teachers’ task was “to break
the natu­ral willfulness of the child; the schoolmaster who seeks to make the
child more learned had forgotten his most impor­tant task, namely that of
making the ­will obedient.”49 Obedience to a master or ruler, Francke told his
students and the teachers he trained, must be rooted in an inner conviction:
“Genuine obedience is not merely outward, but comes from deep within the
soul. It is not rendered out of coercion but with a willing heart.”50
The two main education advisers to Frederick II, the Protestant Johann
Hecker and the Catholic Johann Felbiger, ­were both admirers of Pietists’
pedagogical ideas. Felbiger earned the king’s trust when he advised him that
teachers should instill in their students not only a sense of their spiritual
duties but also secular obligations such as “loyalty, obedience, and devotion
to the king.”51 Like Francke and Locke, Felbiger believed that physical force
was usually an unadvisable method for disciplining ­children and should

46. Phillip Jacob Spener, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 26.

47. Francke, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 29.
48. Melton (2002), p. 30.
49. Francke, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 43.
50. Francke, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 40.
51. Melton (2002), pp. 185–186.
104 | Chapter 3

only be reserved for situations when other methods had failed to induce
obedience. According to the king’s adviser, c­ hildren ­were more likely to
comply with rules if they internalized that this was the right ­thing to do,
hence the importance of providing a moral education to ­children that em-
phasized the importance of respecting rules and authorities. Moreover, this
internalization of the value of obedience among ­children would provide
a safeguard against rebellion once they became adults, too. In Felbiger’s
own words:

­ uman beings are by nature moved by kindness and reason rather than
H
force. Despotic methods ­will not induce pupils to obey. They must be
convinced that it is useful and correct to follow the schoolmaster’s
wishes. Only then ­will they learn to obey even in situations where force
is absent. In this way, the schoolmaster accomplishes his most impor­
tant task: his pupils w
­ ill observe their duties not only in school, but
throughout their lives.52

A useful method for impressing obedience upon ­children, claimed Fel-

biger, was the use of state-­approved textbooks including classroom exercises
in which c­ hildren had to repeat and memorize certain phrases and para-
graphs that emphasized concepts of obedience, discipline, ­etc. For example,
a school manual for teachers written by Felbiger in 1768 instructs teachers
that ­every student must memorize the following answers:
“Q: Who is subject to the power of the ruler?

A: Every­one . . .

Q: From whence comes the power held by the ruler?

A: This power comes from God.

Q: Whom does God ordain?

A: Every­one who holds authority. B ­ ecause all who exercise author-

ity are ordained by God, subjects must be submissive, loyal, and obe-
dient, even to a ruler not of our religion . . .

Q: What does it mean to resist authority?

A: To resist authority is to rebel against the divine order.

52. Felbiger quoted in Melton (2002), p. 187.

 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 105

Q: What happens to ­those who do not submit to authority?

A: They ­will suffer eternal damnation.53

This passage illustrates a common technique used throughout the nine-

teenth ­century: the embedding of structured dialogues within textbooks
by which c­ hildren learned, through the power of repetition, that they must
re­spect the ruler’s unquestioned authority and obey his laws, or ­else they
would be punished. The specific type of punishment varied, sometimes fo-
cusing on “eternal damnation” as in the passage above, other times high-
lighting more mundane consequences, such as losing the esteem of one’s
parents, teachers, and friends. By contrast, t­ hose who ­were obedient, ­children
­were told, would be rewarded by ­going to heaven, or by earning the praise
and love of ­others.
If ­children’s moral education was a crucial goal of Prus­sian primary
schools, it is equally clear that promoting social mobility was not. On
the contrary, Prus­sian rulers wanted primary schools to teach ­children in
rural areas to be content with what they had and prevent them from devel-
oping aspirations for more. Frederick II himself told his Minister of Educa-
tion in a letter written in 1779 that “teachers in the countryside [must] in-
struct the young in religion and morals . . . ​and educate them far enough
that they neither steal nor murder.” However, concerned that if ­children
learned “too much, they rush off to the cities and want to become secretar-
ies or clerks,” the king told his Minister that c­ hildren “must be taught in
such a way that they w ­ ill not run away from the villages but remain t­ here
contentedly.”54 His successor, Frederick William III, also warned that pri-
mary education must not promote social mobility but should instead teach
common ­people to accept the social position they ­were born into: “We do
not confer upon the individual or upon society any benefit when we edu-
cate him beyond the bounds of this social class and vocation, give him a
cultivation which he cannot make use of, and awaken in him pretensions
and needs which his lot in life does not allow him to satisfy.”55
The Prus­sian education model emphasizing the teaching of discipline,
­acceptance of one’s lot, and re­spect for the sovereign’s authority is signifi-
cant ­because it heavi­ly influenced the design of primary education systems

53. Melton (2002), p. 186.

54. Alexander (1919), p. 18.
55. Frederick William III quoted in Reisner (1922), pp. 143–144.
106 | Chapter 3

elsewhere. Some of this influence was driven by a relocation of Prus­sian

education reformers, including Felbiger. In January 1774, Maria Theresa of
Austria asked her ambassador in Berlin if Frederick II would be willing to
grant Felbiger a leave of absence, a request to which the king acceded. ­After
arriving in Vienna in May of the same year, Felbiger was appointed to the
Commission on Education and given ample authority over primary educa-
tion, first in Austria, and ­later in Hungary.56
A more impor­tant channel for the diffusion of educational ideas w ­ ere
the dozens of visits from government officials who traveled from ­Europe
and the Amer­i­cas to Prus­sia to learn about its primary schools. Among
them, two of the most famous visitors w ­ ere Domingo F. Sarmiento, author
of the influential book Educación ­Popular, and Horace Mann, who led the
Common School Movement in the United States. A fervent advocate for
the creation of a national primary education system, Sarmiento agreed with
early modern ­philosophers and education reformers from Prus­sia that
“moral education is precisely the goal of primary instruction”57 and primary
education should especially target the masses, whom he referred to as “un-
disciplined hordes”58 in need of restraint. The Prus­sian primary education
system also made a strong impression on U.S. education reformer Horace
Mann, who traveled to Prus­sia in 1843 while he was Secretary of the Mas­sa­
chu­setts State Board of Education. The trip convinced Mann that the United
States should emulate the Prus­sian proj­ect of using primary schools to teach
­political values and re­spect for p­ olitical institutions to the masses, writing:

if Prus­sia can pervert the benign influences of education to the sup-

port of arbitrary power, we surely can employ them for the support and
perpetuation of republican institutions . . . ​If a moral power over the
understandings and affections of the ­people may be turned to evil, may
it not also be employed for good?59

I ­will discuss education reforms in Argentina and the United States fur-
ther in chapters 4 and 7, respectively, but one point worth highlighting ­here
is that the educational ideas of Prus­sia found a receptive audience in many
dif­fer­ent ­political contexts, including other absolutist regimes, the oligar-
chic regimes of nineteenth-­century Latin Amer­i­ca, and more demo­cratic

56. Melton (2002), pp. 211–212.

57. Cousin (1833a), p. 4.
58. Sarmiento (1845), p. 140.
59. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann (1844), p. 23.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 107

contexts.60 We ­will illustrate this point in coming chapters when we examine

a range of cases that, despite featuring dif­fer­ent ­political regimes, share a
common logic under­lying their educational reforms.
A similar observation applies to the pervasiveness that t­ hese educational
ideas had across elites of dif­fer­ent ­political ideologies and dif­fer­ent disposi-
tions ­toward the Church. Considering that Protestant pastors like Johann
Hecker, Catholic priests like Johann Felbiger, and anti-­clerical Enlighten-
ment ­philosophers, all advanced a similar idea that the state had an interest
in shaping the moral character of the masses, it should come as no surprise
that this idea became quite p ­ opular throughout the nineteenth c­ entury
among both conservative and liberal elites, as well as among Protestants,
Catholics, and Church opponents. To be sure, t­ here ­were differences between
them with re­spect to the curriculum, something we ­will examine in depth
in chapter 5. But to preview one of the conclusions of that chapter, conser-
vatives and the Church believed that the basis of morality was religious
doctrine and, therefore, that the moral education of the masses should be
based on the teaching of the Bible and the catechism. Liberals and Church
opponents, on the other hand, believed that moral princi­ples could be ac-
cessed through reason regardless of one’s religious beliefs. They therefore
advocated for a curriculum where moral education was secular and where
reasoning skills ­were cultivated to enable ­people to access ­these princi­ples.
Beneath ­these differences and strug­gles over how to teach morality, how-
ever, elites from across the ideological spectrum came to view mass edu-
cation as a power­ful moralizing and state-­building tool to mold ­children
into well-­behaved adults.

AN INCOMPLETE EXPLANATION
The rise of public primary education systems in Western socie­ties was tightly
linked to the circulation of ideas about the state-­building role of mass edu-
cation. ­These ideas provided ­political rulers with new ways of thinking
about the strategies they could deploy to carry out one of the state’s most
impor­tant functions: to promote internal peace and social order. Although

60. Most common ­measures of regime type, such as the Polity Proj­ect and Boix, Miller, and
Rosato’s (2013) database on p­ olitical regimes, classify the United States as a democracy in the 1830s
and 1840s, when the Common School Movement emerged ­under Horace Mann’s leadership.
However, the right to vote was ­limited to white men; in par­tic­u­lar, neither ­women nor enslaved
Black individuals could vote during this period. Therefore, by present-­day standards, the United
States in the 1830s and 1840s would be considered, at best, a ­limited democracy.
108 | Chapter 3

the emergence of a conceptualization of mass education as a policy tool that

could be used by the state to indoctrinate ­future citizens was necessary for
the rise of ­these systems, the circulation of this idea was often insufficient
to prompt rulers to expand primary education.
At any given point in time, multiple ideas and policy proposals abound,
and not all of them find enough p ­ olitical support. Take the case of climate
change: global warming is a well-­documented fact, and environmentalists
have been incessant in their efforts to educate society and advocate for re-
forms to reduce climate change, but p ­ olitical support for reforms that would
reduce our negative impact on the environment has been elusive. Some-
thing similar often happened to mass education advocates in the eigh­
teenth and nineteenth centuries: although they w ­ ere convinced of the
power of public schooling to promote social order, other p ­ olitical elites
whose support they needed to advance education reform w ­ ere not as con-
vinced about the importance of having a state-­regulated mass education
system.
The rise of public primary education systems, then, required not just the
circulation of ideas about the benefits to the state of regulating and provid-
ing mass education but also the popularity of ­these ideas among national
elites. Explaining the rise of ­these systems requires understanding what led
the educational ideas we have discussed so far to gain sufficient ­political trac-
tion, especially among national elites who had the power to introduce or
block centralized education reforms. This is the task for the remainder of
this chapter, in which I argue that episodes involving mass vio­lence that
heightened national elites’ fear of the masses helped increase elite support
for state-­regulated mass education.

THE CATALYZING ROLE OF INTERNAL CONFLICT

A central argument of this book is that episodes involving mass vio­lence
that contribute to an atmosphere of social unrest and ­political instability
are likely to increase national elites’ willingness to invest in primary educa-
tion in order to prevent f­ uture threats against the state. The key character-
istics of ­these episodes are: one, they involve mass vio­lence; two, they are
perceived by national elites as destabilizing; and three, they lead elites to
conclude that repression and redistributive concessions alone are insuffi-
cient to prevent social disorder.
Many dif­fer­ent types of episodes involving mass vio­lence, of varying scales
and driven by dif­fer­ent c­ auses, can feel threatening to national elites. Some
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 109

examples include crime waves, food riots, peasant revolts, ­labor strikes, civil
wars between a peripheral province and the central government, civil wars
between an ethnic or religious minority and the group that controls the
national government, social revolutions, e­ tc. The nature and roots of the
conflict are also not particularly relevant to the argument; social strife may
be driven by economic, geographic, p ­ olitical, ethnic, racial, or religious in-
equalities, to name some common sources of conflict. What the argument
does require is that the conflict involve mass vio­lence and that it be per-
ceived by national elites as destabilizing. It would be unlikely for a conflict
that does not involve the masses to lead national elites to become more
­concerned about mass be­hav­ior than they w ­ ere before the occurrence of
that conflict. Likewise, the state is unlikely to invest in mass education if
the conflict involves mass participation but does not threaten the state’s
stability.
Why would episodes of internal conflict that involve mass vio­lence in-
crease national elites’ willingness to regulate and promote mass education?
The starting point of this argument is the assumption that national elites
care about maintaining power and promoting social order. This, ­after all, is
arguably the main function of the state—­hence the use of the term “failed
state” to refer to socie­ties that are trapped in a cycle of recurring civil wars.
To accomplish the goal of promoting social order, national elites can choose
from a set of policy tools: physical repression, re­distribution to buy off po-
tential or former rebels, and mass indoctrination (including primary edu-
cation). Each of ­these policy tools operates in a dif­fer­ent way.
Repression can restore social order in the short term by jailing or killing
unruly individuals and forcing their leaders to go into exile. However, the
need to use repression implies that the state has failed, at least temporarily,
to accomplish the goal of preventing social disorder. It is pos­si­ble for the
anticipation of state repression to prevent rebellion from emerging in the
first place. For this to be true, however, p­ eople must believe that the expected
costs of repression are greater than the expected benefits of rebellion. ­These
costs ­will depend both on the probability of being repressed and on the
consequences should they be repressed—­spending two months in jail, los-
ing one’s ­house, a limb, a child, or one’s life, are not likely to be perceived
as having the same cost.
Concessions that improve the well-­being of unruly individuals can also
help to restore order in the short term. Whereas repression can help increase
the expected costs of rebelling, redistributive policies that address rebels’
grievances can help reduce the expected benefits of rebellion. If national
110 | Chapter 3

elites know that the masses are angry about the level of economic ­inequality
in society and are willing to fight for an improvement in their material well-­
being, elites can introduce redistributive policies to reduce the reasons
for rebelling. T ­ hese policies can take many dif­fer­ent forms, from land re­
distribution to progressive taxation, l­abor policy reform, improvements in
infrastructure, social welfare programs, or public employment opportuni-
ties, to name just some examples. By reducing potential rebels’ economic
grievances, national elites can reduce the probability of rebellion. From the
perspective of elites, though, re­distribution comes at a cost: it reduces their
relative economic power. Moreover, redistributive policies also come with a
commitment prob­lem: re­distribution may enable elites to appease rebels in
the short term, but once re­distribution takes place, what is to prevent ­people
from rebelling again in the ­future and demanding more concessions?
The indoctrination of ­children offers an entirely dif­fer­ent approach. While
redistributive concessions and repression seek to restore social order in the
short term through the use of carrots and sticks, indoctrination is a long-­
term strategy that focuses not on trying to end an existing conflict between
elites and the masses, but instead, on preventing ­future conflict from emerg-
ing in the first place. Indoctrination efforts seek to promote social order
by convincing p ­ eople that they have no reason to rebel against the state’s
authority. If p­ eople internalize the value of peace, discipline, and obedi-
ence to the sovereign and its laws, and develop unconscious habits of def-
erence to authority, this ­will reduce the probability of rebellion even in the
absence of repression or re­distribution. Primary education for the masses,
as we have seen, was believed to serve precisely this function: to inculcate
values and habits that would prevent unruly be­hav­ior.
As appealing as this policy tool may sound based on its potential bene-
fits to a ruler, it also has considerable costs associated with it. The creation
and expansion of a national primary education system that teaches loyalty
to the state is no small task, least b­ ecause of the resources needed to con-
struct schools and hire teachers in often remote areas, but also b ­ ecause of
the centralized bureaucratic infrastructure needed to ensure that what
schools teach is in fact aligned with the state’s goals. The decision to ex-
pand primary education ­will therefore depend on both expected benefits
and costs.
Episodes of internal disorder, particularly t­ hose involving mass vio­lence
and perceived by national elites as destabilizing, can lead elites to recalcu-
late the costs and benefits of mass indoctrination, resulting in increased elite
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 111

support for educational expansion. During times of internal peace, it is natu­ral

for elites to focus on the substantial costs of expanding education (e.g.,
school construction, teacher training and recruitment, e­ tc.). Although edu-
cation reformers may insist that the long-­term benefits of expanding edu-
cation ­will offset ­these costs, many elites ­will likely remain unconvinced.
The observed internal peace suggests to them that the existing policy mix
used to promote order is adequate, and therefore expanding education
would be an unnecessary cost. However, when internal disorder tangibly
upsets the central government’s authority, national elites previously content
with existing policies can be persuaded that they need new policies to pro-
mote order, including mass education. Elites who experience destabilizing
internal conflict may conclude that providing primary education ­will be
more beneficial than they thought before the conflict occurred.
Exposure to internal conflict can lead elites to update their perceptions
of the costs and benefits of mass education through at least two informa-
tional channels. First, although elites care about the possibility of mass re-
bellion even in peaceful times, they have imperfect information about the
magnitude of this threat. In par­tic­u­lar, elites do not know if the masses are
moral or immoral. All they observe is mass be­hav­ior; based on that be­hav­
ior, they form beliefs about ­whether the masses are more likely to be moral
or immoral. The occurrence of internal conflict involving mass vio­lence can
lead elites to update their perceptions and conclude that the masses are
more immoral, dangerous, and prone to rebellion than they previously
thought. Alternatively, national elites may know that some individuals in
society (call them “radicals”) are immoral and are likely to revolt at some
point in the f­ uture, but they do not know to what extent radicals w ­ ill have
widespread support ­because they do not know how moral or immoral each
member of society is. ­Here again, experiencing internal conflict can prompt
elites to confirm their beliefs about radicals and, more importantly, update
their beliefs about the immorality of individuals whom they knew ­little
about before the conflict occurred.
It is also pos­si­ble for internal conflict to reveal information about the lim-
itations of existing policy tools to promote social order. If elites’ diagnosis
is that existing policies are insufficient or inadequate, this can create a win­
dow of opportunity for new approaches to promote social order. One pos­
si­ble limitation may lie in the state’s repressive apparatus. For instance, the
unexpected difficulty of accessing rebel regions, or police forces’ joining the
protesters they w ­ ere supposed to repress, could suggest that repression can
112 | Chapter 3

fail to quash rebellion, and that indoctrination to prevent conflict in the

first place may be worthwhile. The occurrence of internal conflict again op-
erates by modifying elites’ beliefs about the expected net benefit of mass
education. If national elites believe they can control the masses easily
through repression, then making long-­term investments in changing the
masses’ morality w ­ ill not be appealing to them—­doing so would add a cost
that, according to elites’ beliefs, is unnecessary given that other efficacious
policies are already available. However, if an internal conflict emerges and
the central government has difficulty defeating rebels, national elites are
likely to update their beliefs about the efficacy of existing policies such as
repression and re­distribution, conclude that ­these are less effective than they
previously thought, and become more open to investing in costly but po-
tentially more effective long-­term tools like indoctrination.
Internal conflict can also reveal information about the inadequacy of
­existing approaches used to shape the moral character of the masses. If fam-
ilies, local communities, and the Church ­were previously responsible for the
moral education of ordinary p ­ eople, the outbreak of an internal conflict that
threatens the stability of the state may increase national elites’ belief that
new approaches t­ oward moral education are needed. In par­tic­ul­ ar, internal
conflict can heighten elites’ concerns about a misalignment between the
interests of the state and ­those of the Church. If traditional moral educa-
tion was focused on teaching ­people to obey God’s laws only, the occur-
rence of internal conflict can make national elites become more interested
in a type of moral education that teaches obedience to the sovereign and
its laws. This again would increase national elites’ support for a system of
mass education controlled by the state.
Would this pose a threat to the Church and therefore lead the Church to
oppose the state’s intervention in mass education? Not necessarily. As the
case of Prus­sia illustrates, sometimes public schools teach loyalty to both
God and the sovereign, thus helping advance the goals of both the Church
and the state. Religious authorities ­will often welcome increased state pro-
motion of mass education, even if this means giving up some control over
moral education, ­because in exchange they obtain a larger audience of
­children exposed to religious teachings. Of course, ­there are other cases
where the Church and national elites w ­ ill come into tension. In some of
­these cases, Church supporters are too weak po­liti­cally to prevent the secu-
lar state from displacing the Church in education m ­ atters. Argentina in the
1880s is an example of this, as w ­ ill become clear in chapter 4. In other cases,
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 113

liberal politicians may offer concessions to win over some of the Church’s
supporters within the national government. This occurred in France dur-
ing the 1830s, as we ­will see in the next chapter. Such concessions can take
many dif­fer­ent forms, such as providing public resources for Church-­run
teacher training institutions, including religious instruction within public
schools, or allowing pastors and priests to retain some school supervision
functions. To be sure, t­hese concessions come bundled with greater state
intervention in education, and the most fervent Church supporters are un-
likely to be swayed by them. Yet what is necessary for the advancement of
state-­led education reform is not the support of all national elites but the
support of a majority of them. Fear of the masses in contexts of internal
conflict can help move the needle in that direction.
All the channels I have discussed so far are consistent with a view of
­individual be­hav­ior as driven by a rational consideration of costs and
­benefits. From this point of view, internal conflict can lead to a rational
recalculation of the expected net benefits of mass education by providing
new information about the morality of the masses, outlier “radicals” and
their influence, the efficacy of repression and re­distribution, and the suc-
cess of existing moralizing forces.
In addition to t­hese channels, a more visceral response to internal con-
flict on the part of elites may also explain their decision to adopt education
reform. We know from neuroscience and psy­chol­ogy that personal experi-
ence of catastrophes tends to activate primitive brain regions such as the
amygdala, generating exaggerated responses due to fear.61 The vividness of
lived experiences can activate responses that would be less likely to emerge
if left entirely to the parts of the brain responsible for logical thinking. One
area of public policy where the role of lived experiences versus rational rea-
soning has received considerable attention is climate reform. Educating
­people about the dangers of global warming has proved in­effec­tive in gar-
nering public support for reform; in fact, even among individuals who do
not dispute the fact of global warming and are aware of its dangerous con-
sequences, including wildfires and tsunamis, climate reform is usually not
a priority. However, ­actual exposure to wildfires in one’s neighborhood
does increase an individual’s support for climate reform, pointing to the
­importance of lived experiences in shaping individual be­hav­ior. A similar
mechanism could explain the expansion of mass education following internal

61. Weber (2006).

114 | Chapter 3

conflict. Even if elites have heard and considered arguments for the expan-
sion of state-­controlled mass education as a means to promote social order,
it is pos­si­ble that their support for ­these policies ­will only materialize when
they have actually lived through a crisis of internal disorder that puts their
lives, property, and power at risk. According to this view, fear, not reason,
would explain elites’ increased support for mass education proposals follow-
ing episodes of acute mass vio­lence.
Separating rational and visceral responses to internal conflict is unfeasi-
ble in historical settings ­because the tests that scientists typically use to
­assess the presence of a visceral response involve, for example, ­measuring
the level of skin conductance. What we can do, though, is analyze w ­ hether the
arguments and language used by national elites to discuss education reform
changed ­after experiencing internal conflict. Do elites become more con-
cerned about the masses’ immorality or the inefficacy of repression a­ fter fac-
ing internal conflict? Does their speech become more emotional? ­These
are questions we ­will examine in the next chapter, but the short answer to
both is yes. This should not be surprising. Trying to adjudicate ­whether
­rational or visceral responses to internal conflict drove the post-­conflict
expansion of primary education is a futile exercise; although as social sci-
entists we strive for simplicity, the h ­ uman beings we study are complex
and varied. What drives one person may not drive another. Some p ­ eople
may be more inclined to respond to logical and abstract arguments, while
­others may be more sensitive to lived experience and emotional stimuli.
The key point is that, for multiple reasons that may differ across elites, we
should see that internal conflict leads to an increase in national elites’ sup-
port for mass education proposals.
In this way, the occurrence of internal conflict can help forge a suffi-
ciently large co­ali­tion of support among national elites to advance the cre-
ation and expansion of a primary education system. Some members of the
elite ­will have been convinced about the value of such a system prior to
the occurrence of internal conflict—­the Felbigers, Sarmientos, and Manns
of each country. However, by instilling fear and concern about the masses
and the set of existing policy tools used to control their be­hav­ior, violent
internal conflict can bring additional elites on board, enlarging the co­ali­
tion that supports mass education. If large enough, this co­ali­tion ­will
choose to invest in primary education for the masses ­under the direction
of the state.
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 115

The co­ali­tion size needed to develop a primary education system w ­ ill de-
pend on the type of ­political regime in place. In an absolutist regime like
Prus­sia ­under Frederick II or Austria ­under Maria Theresa, the king or queen
may move forward with reform unilaterally. In a constitutional monarchy
with a ­limited franchise but some degree of parliamentary politics such as
France u ­ nder the July Monarchy, or in the oligarchies of nineteenth-­century
Latin Amer­i­ca, kings and presidents could in princi­ple introduce education
reforms via royal or executive decree; however, the creation of a national
primary education system typically requires a comprehensive education law
supported by a parliament or congress. Violent internal conflict that threat-
ens the stability of the central government could contribute to forging this
co­ali­tion by creating a sense of urgency among members of parliament
about the need for such a system. The impact of internal conflict in democ-
racies is more difficult to predict. In well-­functioning democracies that
represent the interests of the electorate, we would expect congressmembers
not to respond to mass rebellion by introducing education reforms aimed
at indoctrinating the population; in such democracies, congressmembers
would likely respond to mass rebellion by addressing the grievances that
led to rebellion in the first place. In real­ity, however, t­ here is often a discon-
nect between the policy agenda of elected representatives and the policy
preferences of the electorate. In such contexts, it would not be surprising
to observe national representatives responding to internal conflict by pur-
suing education reforms that, instead of empowering individuals, seek to
control them.
Episodes that involve mass vio­lence against the state are likely to lead na-
tional elites to recalculate the costs and benefits of education even if the
masses ­were not the instigators of the conflict. Internal conflicts in which
two groups of elites fight against each other—­for instance, elites in one
­province contest the power of the central government, or members of the
bourgeoisie fight against the king and aristocracy—­can still create incen-
tives to expand primary education when the masses join in the rebellion
against the state’s authority. Even if the idea of rebelling did not originate
with the masses, their participation in it—­and the ­political instability that
this engenders—­can provide sufficient reasons for national elites to become
more interested in teaching the masses to re­spect the state’s authority.
Some readers may won­der ­whether the theory of conflict-­driven educa-
tion reform I have outlined applies only to cases where incumbent elites
116 | Chapter 3

come out victorious from the conflict, retaining their position of power
within the central government. While the theory may be more intuitive for
­these cases, we should observe a similar dynamic when a new group of elites
comes to power as a result of internal conflict. Consider one of the most
dramatic forms of p ­ olitical turnover; that which occurs a­ fter a revolution
brings a new dictatorship to power. As Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way doc-
ument in their book, Revolution and Dictatorship, revolutionary govern-
ments often face an initial period during which counterrevolutionary forces
seeking to remove the new government from power become activated.62
To consolidate their newly acquired and fragile power, ­these regimes must
invest in state-­building. While Levitsky and Way focus on new regimes’ ef-
forts to strengthen the repressive apparatus of the state, this book provides
a complementary argument that highlights the role that mass education can
play in enhancing the stability of new regimes. In chapter 2 I discussed evi-
dence in support of this argument when I noted that civil wars led to an
expansion of primary schooling regardless of ­whether the war was won or
lost by the incumbent. L ­ ater on, we w
­ ill review specific examples from
France and Mexico where new elites turned to indoctrinate the very same
­popular sectors that had supported their violent ascension to power.
Not all episodes of internal conflict ­will lead to education reform, and
we ­will spend all of chapter 6 considering the limits of the argument. One
­thing that must be true for this to occur is that elites must have a sufficiently
long time horizon to reap the expected long-­term p ­ olitical benefits of edu-
cating ­children. Investments in mass education are primarily a long-­term
investment; elites are unlikely to incur the costs of expanding primary
­education ­unless they expect to be around long enough to reap the bene-
fits. This condition can hold in vari­ous types of non-­democracies—­from
absolutist to constitutional monarchies, oligarchies, hegemonic-­party re-
gimes, and personalist dictatorships—­and sometimes also in democracies,
­either ­those captured by an entrenched elite, or ­those in which a stable and
institutionalized party system exists and ­there is regular rotation between
parties in power. Indeed, in chapter 4 I discuss examples from dif­fer­ent
types of non-­democratic regimes where mass rebellion against the status
quo led to the expansion of primary education as a means of indoctrina-
tion, while in chapter 7 I pre­sent evidence of conflict-­driven education re-
forms in demo­cratic contexts.

62. Levitsky and Way (2022).

 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 117

One in­ter­est­ing question is w ­ hether internal conflict must come to an

end before education reform takes place. On one hand, during an internal
conflict, the state is likely to prioritize allocating resources to activities that
can directly help end the conflict; education, from this perspective, may not
be a priority. In addition, ­because the provision of education by the state is
a long-­term form of investment in social order, national elites who face high
levels of uncertainty about their ­political ­future may not have incentives to
make such long-­term investments. This is especially true in countries af-
flicted by chronic internal conflict; ­there, elites’ short-­term concerns about
their immediate survival ­will likely supersede long-­term concerns. In t­ hese
circumstances, an end to the conflict would be necessary for national elites
to expand primary education. However, in situations where the state has suf-
ficient resources to fight rebels and expand education and national elites
anticipate that the conflict ­will come to an end, they may choose to expand
primary education before the conflict ends.
To summarize, proposals for the creation of a national primary educa-
tion system often encountered ­resistance from elites who argued that the
state lacked the funds to support primary schooling or that moral educa-
tion was best provided by individual families, local communities, or the
Church. A key ­factor that helped forge consensus among national elites for
the expansion of primary education was the occurrence of violent episodes
of internal conflict pitting the masses against the state. When acute enough
to threaten the state’s authority, ­these episodes made national elites more
fearful of the masses and more convinced that expanding primary educa-
tion was necessary to prevent ­future mass vio­lence against the state.

USING HISTORY TO EVALUATE THE ARGUMENTS

The theory of education reform I have articulated in this chapter may seem
intuitive in retrospect, but it departs sharply from the way most ­people think
about the ­factors that drove the global rise and spread of mass education.
Further, my argument departs from most of what has been written about
the consequences of internal conflict for both state-­building and education
provision. For ­these reasons, it is crucial to assess ­whether my theory finds
support in the real world.
What should we observe in the real world if the argument I have out-
lined in this chapter is a good explanation of the rise and spread of state-­
regulated mass education systems? The theory predicts that, u ­ nder certain
118 | Chapter 3

conditions, internal conflict involving mass vio­lence against the state ­will
(1) lead to an increase in state-­regulated primary education; (2) lead to an
increase especially in ­those regions where repression was less effective in
containing the conflict; (3) increase the salience of arguments about the role
of primary education in maintaining social order; and (4) increase the state’s
efforts to promote moral education in primary schools.
First, the theory I have articulated predicts that internal conflicts involv-
ing mass vio­lence and perceived by national elites as destabilizing w­ ill tend
to lead to an increase in state-­regulated primary education. This increase
can be manifested in three main ways: (1a) an increase in the level of state
regulation of existing primary schools; (1b) an increase in the level of pri-
mary education provision in contexts where the state was already regulat-
ing primary schools; or (1c) a combination of both an increase in the level
of state regulation and an expansion of primary schooling.
Note that an increase in the level of state regulation of primary educa-
tion does not necessarily imply that the central government ­will become
the main authority in charge of overseeing, funding, constructing, and
­running the daily operations of primary schools. This would be the most
extreme case, but the theory is also consistent with a situation in which
schools continue to be run by local authorities and the Church, while be-
coming subject to more national regulations specifying what they can teach,
who can teach, ­etc., in order to better align ­these schools with the goals of
the state. To ensure that mass education serves the indoctrination goals
of the state, and to prevent it from empowering the masses, central govern-
ments can introduce comprehensive education laws and regulations that,
for example, give the state extensive powers to train and recruit teachers,
create centralized inspection systems to monitor teachers and schools, im-
pose a national curriculum to control the content of education, and spec-
ify what textbooks can be used. All t­ hese forms of central government in-
tervention in primary education are designed to increase the probability
that, regardless of who runs the daily operation of schools (e.g., the state,
local governments, the Church), primary education serves the state’s goals
of maintaining power and promoting order.
Besides an increase in the level of state regulation of primary schools (pre-
dictions 1a and 1c above), an alternative—or additional—­manifestation of
the state’s increasing interest in mass education following episodes of in-
ternal conflict would be an expansion of primary education by the state
(prediction 1b). The evidence I presented in chapter 2 is consistent with this
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 119

prediction; recall that in that chapter I described a pattern of primary edu-

cation expansion following civil wars in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca. This
finding stands in contrast with a common argument that civil wars
­disincentivize investments in state capacity,63 and with the finding that civil
wars have often led to lower access to education during the war.64 The
source of this difference lies in the fact that, while other studies focus on
the short-­term consequences of civil war for state capacity and education
provision, the question I consider in this book is w ­ hether, in the long term,
the occurrence of internal conflict is likely to lead states to promote mass
education above and beyond what they would have done if internal con-
flict had not occurred. To answer this question, in the next chapters I draw
on a wealth of historical data spanning two centuries to provide a deep
understanding of how internal conflict and elites’ fear of the masses led to
educational reform in the Western world. While some of the evidence I
pre­sent comes from contexts afflicted by civil wars, I also provide evidence
from additional types of internal conflict such as peasant revolts, food riots,
and other forms of social unrest.
The second prediction of the theory is that the expansion of primary
schooling by the state ­will be greater in areas where repression was less
­effective in containing the internal conflict, as t­hese are the areas where
national elites are most likely to conclude that other strategies besides re-
pression are needed to promote long-­term social order. Chapter 4 explores
this theoretical prediction in two cases, 1830s France and 1860s Chile, where
the magnitude of internal conflict varied across departments and ­provinces.
Using historical statistics on educational expansion, that chapter shows that
central governments’ effort to promote primary education was greater in
departments and provinces where the level of conflict was greater. Chap-
ter 7 discusses more recent examples of national efforts to promote educa-
tional expansion in violence-­afflicted regions.
Third, the theory also implies that ideas and arguments about the role of
primary education in maintaining social order w ­ ill become more salient
among national elites who experience internal conflict. This is a crucial im-
plication as it relates to the reasons why internal conflict w
­ ill tend to lead to
educational expansion. I propose that experiencing internal conflict w ­ ill
change the beliefs and arguments espoused by national elites about the costs

63. Collier et al. (2003); Besley and Persson (2008); Cárdenas (2010).
64. Shemyakina (2011); Chamarbagwala and Moran (2011); Swee (2015); León (2012).
120 | Chapter 3

and benefits of expanding primary education. However, ­there are alterna-

tive reasons why internal conflict could lead to educational expansion. For
example, it is pos­si­ble that, in the aftermath of an internal conflict, p­ olitical
elites expand primary education in an effort to improve the economic well-­
being of former and potential rebels. This would imply the use of primary
education as a redistributive tool more than as a tool to indoctrinate ­future
citizens. Alternatively, perhaps the ­process of fighting a civil war or other
type of acute internal conflict leads to an improvement in the capacity of
the state to raise revenue and reach remote areas. This could then lead to an
expansion of primary education not b ­ ecause of an increased interest but
­because of an increased ability among national elites to expand education
for the masses. Much of chapter 4 w ­ ill be devoted to considering t­ hese alter-
native channels ­behind the post-­conflict expansion of primary education.
Fourth, the theory implies that we should observe increased effort by the
state to promote moral education in primary schools following internal
conflict. Promoting the state’s moral education agenda requires, on one
hand, that parents send their ­children to school, and on the other, that
schools advance the state’s education agenda. Efforts to accomplish the for-
mer can include the adoption of compulsory schooling laws, penalties for
parents whose ­children do not attend school, or rewards for t­ hose who do.
Efforts to ensure the latter can include state intervention in teacher training
and recruitment to screen aspiring teachers based on their moral qualifica-
tions, the adoption of a national curriculum that emphasizes moral educa-
tion, and centralized school inspections. As I explain ­later in the book, the
state could approach the design of the curriculum in dif­fer­ent ways. First,
as previewed ­earlier and as ­will become clear in chapter 5, moral education
can be secular or religious—an issue on which liberals and conservatives
are likely to disagree given their differing views about the roots of morality.
Second, moral education can be promoted by requiring all primary schools
to teach a specific subject on moral education or by embedding moral les-
sons across all subjects. For example, textbooks used to teach c­ hildren how
to read and write may be full of moral lessons that the state wants all
­children to learn. Even science and math textbooks could include moral
lessons. The content of national curriculums and additional policy tools
by which states can attempt to promote moral education w ­ ill be the sub-
ject of chapter 5.
It is also impor­tant to clarify what the theory does not imply. I do not
argue that national elites ­will respond to internal conflict only with educa-
 Why Do Governments Educate the Masses? | 121

tion; primary education is one of several tools used by central governments

to promote order. Repression and re­distribution may be used b ­ ecause they
are thought (rightfully or not) to help restore order in the short term by
quashing rebellion and addressing rebel grievances. By contrast, mass edu-
cation is mostly used to promote long-­term social order by convincing
­future citizens to accept the status quo and re­spect the state’s authority.
Nor do I argue that internal conflict ­will always lead central governments
to invest in mass education as an indoctrination and state-­building tool.
Four main conditions must be true for this to occur, and we w ­ ill discuss
each one in detail in chapter 6, but to preview the discussion from that chap-
ter: Governments are more likely to invest in mass education to indoctri-
nate ­future citizens, first, when social unrest heightens their fear of the
masses; second, when they believe that schools can indoctrinate—­and not
empower—­the masses; third, when they expect to be in power long enough
to reap the benefits of indoctrinating ­children; and, fourth, when they have
sufficient fiscal and administrative capacity to regulate and promote educa-
tion. ­These conditions are not always in place, and when they are not, it is
unlikely that internal conflict ­will result in increased central government
efforts to indoctrinate the masses through education.
Fi­nally, the theory does not imply that primary education w ­ ill succeed
in promoting order. My goal is to explain central governments’ decision to
invest in primary education systems, not the consequences of ­these invest-
ments. In other words, my argument concerns the motivations b ­ ehind
­governments’ support for primary education, not ­whether education ac-
complished the intended goals. What needs to be true for my argument to
be valid is not that education in fact succeeded in promoting social order,
but that national elites believed that education had this power when they
chose to invest in it. It is common for education policies not to produce
the outcomes reformers had in mind; that is, it is entirely pos­si­ble that, de-
spite national elites’ intentions, primary schooling contributed to social
mobility, economic modernization, and ­political instability. This can hap-
pen, for instance, if students and families react in unforeseen ways that
defy the state’s goals, or if the state fails to ensure teachers’ compliance and
accurate implementation of education policies. While not the primary
focus of the book, in chapter 8 I discuss the conditions u ­ nder which pri-
mary education is likely to accomplish the goal of promoting social order.
That chapter also provides evidence that when governments came to be-
lieve that an education system had failed to promote social order, they did
122 | Chapter 3

not stop believing in the promise of education but instead reformed the
curriculum or the teaching profession to better realize that promise.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have asked what may be ­behind the patterns we saw in
chapter 2 concerning the expansion of primary education in Western socie­
ties. To explain this pattern, I have articulated a theory that highlights the
emergence of ideas linking state-­regulated mass education with the accom-
plishment of the state’s goal to promote social order, and the crucial role
that violent internal conflict can play in giving ­these ideas p ­ olitical traction
by increasing national elites’ fear of the masses and convincing them that
existing policies ­were insufficient to promote social order. I argue that ex-
periencing internal conflict w ­ ill likely increase elites’ support for the idea
that the state should regulate and promote mass education in order to shape
the moral character of f­ uture citizens and inculcate obedience to the sover-
eign and ­acceptance of the status quo.
In the next chapters, I provide a wealth of historical evidence, including
primary education statistics, parliamentary debates, and education laws and
regulations, to illustrate why internal conflict increased elites’ support for
mass education proposals in E ­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca, and how primary
education systems ­were designed to accomplish the state’s goals. Chapter 4
shows why and how internal conflict s­ haped the foundation of a state-­
regulated primary education system in four non-­democratic regimes: 1760s
Prus­sia, 1830s France, 1860s Chile, and 1880s Argentina. Chapter 5 examines
how the original design of national primary education systems across
­Europe and Latin Amer­ic­ a sought to accomplish the state’s indoctrination
goals. Chapter 6 discusses the four conditions that must be true for my ar-
gument to explain education reform in other contexts beyond ­those con-
sidered in chapters 4 and 5. The absence of one or more of ­these conditions
can explain, for example, why Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Argentina created
a state-­regulated primary education system when they did—­and not
­earlier—­and why primary education in ­England and Mexico lagged ­behind
the rest of E ­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca, respectively. Chapter 7 provides
­concrete examples of the theory’s power to explain education reform in
demo­cratic contexts.
 CHAPTER FOUR

INTERNAL THREATS AND MASS

EDUCATION IN ­EUROPE AND
LATIN AMER­I­CA

Internal conflict was a key driver of the expansion of access to primary ed-
ucation in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, as we saw in chapter 2. The last chapter
articulated a theory that explains why and how internal conflict led central
governments to regulate and promote primary education. This chapter
illustrates that theory with concrete evidence by tracing the ­process of adop-
tion and implementation of landmark national education laws in four
countries. The analy­sis provides qualitative and quantitative evidence for
three main predictions of the book’s theory as developed in the previous
chapter. First, episodes of mass vio­lence heightened national elites’ anxiety
about the flawed moral character of the masses, led them to conclude that
existing policy tools (e.g., repression, re­distribution, and moral education
exclusively in the hands of the Church) w ­ ere insufficient to promote social
order, and created a sense of urgency about the need to promote the “mor-
alization of the masses” through a system of state-­regulated primary schools.
Second, the main goal driving the creation of national primary education
systems was to shape the moral character of the lower classes to eradicate
their “barbaric,” “violent,” “anarchic” predisposition and thus prevent ­future
episodes of mass vio­lence. Third, central governments expanded primary
schooling more strongly in t­ hose regions where they had experienced greater
difficulty restoring social order through traditional policy tools such as re-
pression or re­distribution.
124 | Chapter 4

The evidence comes from two E ­ uropean and two Latin American cases:
1760s Prus­sia, 1830s France, 1860s Chile, and 1880s Argentina. The periods
correspond to the adoption of the first comprehensive national primary ed-
ucation law in each country: the 1763 General Rural School Regulations in
Prus­sia; the 1833 Primary Instruction Law in France, also known as the
Guizot Law; the 1860 General Law of Primary Education in Chile; and the
1884 Law of Common Education in Argentina. For each case, I examine
what ­were the main debates concerning the provision of mass education,
how internal conflict ­shaped ­these debates, what was the content of the re-
sulting laws, and how the passage of ­these laws altered the provision of
primary education across the territory.
Two main criteria guide the se­lection of ­these four cases. First, I chose
four cases where the passage of a landmark education law was preceded by
acute internal conflict involving mass vio­lence against the state. This would
be an inappropriate case se­lection strategy if the chapter sought to estab-
lish ­whether internal conflict shapes primary education, but that was the task
of chapter 2. In this chapter, the goal is to understand more deeply why
­internal conflict is followed by greater state promotion of primary educa-
tion. Choosing cases where a temporal correlation between internal con-
flict and education reform exists gives us an opportunity to examine what
mechanisms underlie this correlation: Is the temporal correlation purely a
coincidence? Is it driven by the book’s argument that crises of internal order
can exacerbate elites’ fear of the masses and increase their interest in indoc-
trinating the masses to prevent f­ uture vio­lence against the state? Is it driven
by something ­else—­for instance, an increase in national elites’ interest in
addressing economic grievances to promote peace?1
Second, I selected ­these four cases not only to have cases from both ­Europe
and Latin Amer­ic­ a, but also to have variation across cases in the time p
­ eriod,
the type of non-­democracy, the dominant ­political ideology, the scale and
nature of the internal conflict, the relationship between the Church and the
State, and w
­ hether the incumbent elites remained in power a­ fter the inter-
nal conflict. As explained in the previous chapter, the theory of conflict-­

1. The case se­lection strategy I adopt in this chapter entails choosing cases “on the regression
line.” According to Lieberman (2005), this strategy “provides a check for spurious correlation and
can help to fine-­tune a theoretical argument by elaborating causal mechanisms. Although inten-
sive investigation of ‘on-­the-­line’ cases may lead to the identification of alternative explanations,
the primary goal is to assess the strength of a par­tic­u­lar model. As such, ­there is ­little value to the
pursuit of cases that are not well predicted by the model” (p. 444). For a complementary discus-
sion of cases “off the regression line,” see chapter 6.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 125

driven education reform I propose should apply regardless of ­these ­factors.

Indeed, the cases of Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Argentina presented herein
collectively show that the book’s argument applies across a wide range of
contexts. The cases span more than a c­ entury of history and differ from
one another in impor­tant re­spects: an absolutist regime with a legacy of
Protestantism and ties to Pietist education reformers in Prus­sia; a constitu-
tional monarchy with l­imited franchise but active parliamentary politics
and a complicated relationship with the Catholic Church in France; a con-
servative oligarchic regime strongly allied to the Catholic Church in Chile;
and a secular oligarchic regime heavi­ly influenced by anti-­Church liberals
in Argentina. Similarly, the scale of the conflict also differs across cases: peas-
ant revolts in Prus­sia, rural riots in France, and civil wars in Chile and Ar-
gentina. The nature of the internal conflict varies across cases as well, with
the conflicts in Prus­sia and France representing primarily class conflict, and
the cases in Chile and Argentina representing primarily center-­periphery
conflicts. Moreover, while in Prus­sia and Chile the incumbent government
remained in power despite the internal conflict, in Argentina the civil wars
had no clear-­cut winner, and in France a new ­political regime and elite as-
sumed power aided by the very same social unrest it sought to suppress.
The chapter shows that, despite their many differences, in each of the four
cases the landmark moment in the formation of a national primary educa-
tion system, the pattern of educational expansion, and the characteristics
of ­these systems, all responded to an episode of acute internal conflict that
increased elites’ interest in educating the masses for the purpose of social
control.

PRUS­SIA
Prus­sia’s first comprehensive primary education law was issued by Freder-
ick II in June 1763. Known as the General Rural School Regulations (General-­
Landschul-­Reglement), the 1763 law applied to all Protestants living in rural
areas, thus encompassing the vast majority of the population.2 The law’s
long-­lasting influence cannot be overstated. When, more than 150 years l­ ater,
the progressive American educator Thomas Alexander criticized Prus­sia’s
primary education system, he described the 1763 Regulations as “the first
and last law which Prus­sia has had that touches all sides of the question,”

2. Separate school ordinances for Catholics and urban residents ­were introduced in 1765.
126 | Chapter 4

pointing “very clearly the direction which the German elementary school
was to take.”3 Not only did the Regulations compel parents in the coun-
tryside to send their c­ hildren to primary school, they also established a uni-
form curriculum for all rural primary schools centered around moral and
religious instruction, required schools to use state-­approved textbooks,
charged teachers with cultivating discipline and obedience and breaking
the child’s ­will, and required them to track daily attendance to identify and
fine noncompliant parents. Rural primary schools ­were removed from the
care of the nobility; pastors w­ ere charged with weekly inspection of schools
but on behalf of the state, a consistorial inspector was made responsible
for conducting an annual inspection, and the provincial consistory was
given the final say over the appointment of teachers.4 The introduction
in 1765 of primary school ordinances for Catholics and for urban residents
completed the regulatory framework needed to create a Prus­sian primary
education system.
The passage of the General Rural School Regulations in August 1763, just
a few months ­after the end of the Seven Years’ War, has led some scholars
to conclude that “the u ­ nion of state and schools . . . ​was sparked by a clear
challenge to Prus­sia’s position in the E ­ uropean state system.” According to
this view, what prompted the rise of Prus­sia’s primary education system w ­ ere
military threats from abroad, its main goal being to ensure a steady supply
of loyal and skilled soldiers who could communicate in a common language
and who shared a national identity and patriotic sentiments against neigh-
boring countries.5
At least three historical facts cast doubt on the nation-­building and mili-
tary interpretations of the rise of Prus­sian primary schooling. The first is
the content of the state-­mandated curriculum for rural primary schools. The
Prus­sian education laws of the 1760s allowed schools to teach in German
or Polish,6 and allowed religious teaching according to Protestant or Catho-
lic doctrine.7 In other words, neither linguistic nor religious homogeneity—­

3. Alexander (1919), p. 14.

4. To ensure that teachers’ character was in line with the state’s moral goals for primary school-
ing, the Regulations prohibited anyone who worked or owned a tavern, or drank heavi­ly, or pro-
moted discord in their community, from working as a teacher. The Regulations also regimented
the school day, indicating precisely how many hours should be devoted to the catechism, how
many to reading instruction, and how many to writing.
5. Ramirez and Boli (1987), pp. 153–154.
6. Melton (2002).
7. Lamberti (1989), p. 15.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 127

two common markers of a shared national identity—­were goals of pri-

mary schooling. The inculcation of a national identity that replaced any
ethnic or religious identities would not become a goal of Prus­sia’s primary
education system u ­ ntil 1808.8 Further, if the 1763 Regulations had sought to
train skilled soldiers, we would expect that goal to be reflected in the cur-
riculum it established. Historically, the main subject used to train soldiers
was physical education or gymnastics, which involved teaching military ex-
ercises as well as exercises to strengthen the body. Other subjects comple-
mented physical training; geography often taught students how to read
maps, while history could inculcate a sense of superiority vis-­à-­vis other
countries. Yet physical education was not among the subjects that rural pri-
mary schools had to teach u ­ nder the 1763 Regulations—­nor w ­ ere geogra-
phy or history. ­Under the Regulations, one-­third of school time had to be
devoted to prayer, chanting, and catechism, a subject designed to instill
moral values grounded in religious doctrine; another third was to be de-
voted to reading, taught using the Bible and other religious texts; and the
remaining third focused on teaching writing. In fact, gymnastics and so-
cial studies entered the official curriculum for rural areas for the first time
in 1872, ­under Bismarck’s administration—­more than a full ­century a­ fter
the creation of Prus­sia’s national primary education system.
A second prob­lem with the military argument comes from the observa-
tion that Prus­sian military officers usually opposed the 1763 General Rural
School Regulations and tried to block its implementation. They considered
the recruitment of teachers—at the time primarily men—­a threat to their
ability to recruit soldiers and preserve the army’s strength. Acknowledging
­these concerns, Frederick II subsequently instructed provincial authorities
not to approve the appointment of tall schoolmasters so as not to deprive
the army of “­giant brigades.”9 We may won­der ­whether Frederick II him-
self saw in primary education a means to strengthen the army, even if that
view was not shared by military officers. The army’s course during the
­decade following the end of the Seven Years’ War does not support this
­hypothesis: Frederick II reduced the army’s total size and increased the
proportion of foreign mercenaries, which came to roughly equal that of
Prus­sian recruits.10 The king’s increased reliance on foreign mercenaries,

8. Anderson (2013), pp. 94–95.

9. Melton (2002), pp. 177–178.
10. Melton (2002), p. 173.
128 | Chapter 4

e­ ither uneducated or educated abroad, is inconsistent with the view that

he introduced compulsory primary education ­ because he wanted to
strengthen the nationalist sentiment, unity, and loyalty of the military.
But the main prob­lem with attributing Frederick II’s interest in primary
education to military concerns heightened by the Seven Years’ War is that
the king had already expressed interest in the education of peasants before
the war started. This lesser-­known fact is documented by the historian James
Melton, author of a detailed book on the eighteenth-­century origins of com-
pulsory schooling in Prus­sia. In 1754, two years before the outbreak of the
Seven Years’ War, Frederick II had already approved educational plans very
similar to ­those introduced in 1763, the implementation of which had to
be suspended when the war broke out. The 1754 plans had been drafted by
Johann Hecker, one of the main advocates—­along with Johann Felbiger—­
for education reform during the 1740s and 1750s. Although the war’s out-
break prevented the implementation of ­these plans, once the war ended
Frederick II immediately turned to Hecker for support drafting a plan for
primary education. The result of Hecker’s work was the General Rural
School Regulations of 1763.
What, then, prompted Frederick II’s and his advisers’ interest in primary
education as early as the 1750s? Melton documents that the king’s unusual
interest in primary education at a time when Prus­sia was still overwhelm-
ingly rural was tightly linked to the peasant rebellions of the 1740s and 1750s,
which signaled the breakdown of traditional sources of authority in the
countryside.
Historically, the maintenance of order had relied heavi­ly on the deep, con-
tractual ties that bound peasants and lords living on the same land. The
landed nobility protected peasants who lived in their estate from outside
threats; in exchange, peasants ­were required to work on the lord’s land for
a certain number of days per week. The remaining days could be used
for subsistence farming. The lord had the right to prevent peasants from
leaving their farms without prior permission, to increase the amount of
­labor ­services required of peasants, and to turn to corporal punishment,
fines, or imprisonment if the peasants w­ ere deemed—by courts controlled
by the lords—to have v­ iolated their contractual obligations.11
Several economic and demographic changes contributed to the break-
down of this social order in rural areas during the eigh­teenth ­century.

11. Clark (2006).

 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 129

First, from the beginning of the ­century, ­there had been an increase in the
number of landless rural workers who worked in the lord’s land part-­time
but also held other jobs, sometimes outside the lord’s estate. In Branden-
burg in 1743, 52.5 ­percent of rural h­ ouse­holds w­ ere landless; in East Prus­sia
in 1750, this figure ­rose to 70 ­percent.12 ­These landless day workers did not
feel the sense of duty and deference ­toward the lord common among peas-
ants brought up ­under the lord’s patriarchal wings. Second, the growth of
commercial agriculture and rising grain prices during the mid-­eighteenth
­century led new investors to purchase lands. The increasing frequency with
which estates changed hands also contributed to erode peasants’ sense of
duty.13 Suddenly, peasants found themselves working for someone they did
not know, and not infrequently, for someone who owned but did not live
in t­ hose lands.
Against this backdrop of eroded seignorial authority, the main trigger of
the peasant rebellions that began multiplying across Prus­sia in the 1740s was
the sudden rise in hunger coupled with Prus­sian lords’ untimely increase
in the ­labor obligations of peasants. ­These two developments ­were inter-
related. Between 1739 and 1742, anomalous weather patterns in much of
Western ­Europe, including Prus­sia, shrunk harvests and increased grain pric-
es.14 As starvation and mortality r­ ose, Prus­sian landowners seeking to capi-
talize on grain price increases began to intensify the ­labor obligations of
peasants living in their estate.15 ­Because estates changed hands frequently,
­every new landlord tried to exploit peasants to their limit.16 In parts of Bo-
hemia, Silesia, East Prus­sia, and Pomenaria, where large-­scale commercial
agriculture was more common, peasant l­abor obligations reached as high
as six days per week during the 1740s and 1750s.17 This left peasants no time
for subsistence farming—­again, in a context where food deprivation was
pervasive.
Some peasants responded to the increase in ­labor obligations by attempt-
ing to flee the lord’s estate, o
­ thers turned to lawsuits against the lord, but
the most common form of ­resistance was collective action. This took many
dif­fer­ent forms including strikes, destroying fields and granaries, abusing

12. Melton (2002), p. 125.

13. Clark (2006).
14. Post (1984).
15. Clark (2006); Ford (1919); Carsten (1989).
16. Carsten (1989).
17. Melton (2002), p. 149.
130 | Chapter 4

seignorial farm equipment and ­cattle, setting fires in the village, rioting in
the towns during market day, and violent peasant rebellions, which in-
creased in number and intensity during the m ­ iddle ­decades of the eigh­
teenth ­century. Social banditry multiplied as Prus­sia entered, in the words
18

of historian Karl Schleunes, “a period of protracted social and p ­ olitical

­instability.” Peasants also responded to food shortages through infanti-
cide, child abandonment, and declaring ­children illegitimate. Like social
banditry and rebellion, the upper classes interpreted t­ hese actions as signs
of the moral degradation of the rural lower classes. The p ­ olitical conse-
quence of this moral degradation, according to a con­temporary observer,
was “a propensity t­ oward disobedience and disloyalty.”19
As peasant rebellions spread, with unrest in one village giving rise to un-
rest in neighboring ones, the situation in the countryside became “an urgent
­political issue” for Frederick II and his advisers.20 The king initially re-
sponded to the social upheaval through agrarian reforms that recognized
and sought to address peasants’ grievances.21 Compulsory ­labor ­services
­were the most impor­tant issue targeted by t­ hese reforms. Cognizant that the
increase in peasants’ l­abor obligations had been the main trigger behind
rural unrest, in 1748 the king ordered a sizable reduction of ­labor ­services in
Pomenaria, and in 1753 he issued a similar order for Silesia.22 In addition to
limiting l­abor obligations via royal decrees, additional reforms ­were intro-
duced that favored peasants, including the 1747 reform of the patrimonial
courts responsible for resolving disputes between peasants and landlords,23

18. Schleunes (1989), pp. 20–21; Melton (2002), p. 149.

19. Schleunes (1989), p. 18.
20. Melton (2002), p. 151.
21. Other reforms targeted the lords. For example, b ­ ecause it was believed that the frequent sale
of estates to new o ­ wners was one of the c­ auses of increased peasant insubordination, the king in-
troduced tax concessions and ad hoc gifts to families in financial trou­ble to reduce their need to
sell their land. “When t­ hese m ­ easures failed,” Frederick tightened “state control of land sales, but
this proved counterproductive;” limiting the nobility’s “freedom to dispose of property” damaged
“the dignity and economic stability” of the estate-­owning class that this policy was supposed to
help. “The quest for a less interventionist and controversial method of supporting the noble inter-
est ultimately led to the foundation of state-­capitalized agricultural credit ­unions (Landschaften)
for the exclusive use of the established Junker families” (Clark 2006, pp. 158–159).
22. Melton (2002), pp. 152–153.
23. Since 1747, all patrimonial courts ­were required to employ government-­certified, university-­
trained jurists as judges, effectively placing the courts ­under the authority of the state instead of
the nobility. Some of the most prominent litigation cases reveal that royal judicial officials often
sought to restore rural harmony through compromise decisions that provided some satisfaction
to peasants as opposed to siding with the traditionally power­ful nobility. See Clark (2006), p. 164;
Dwyer (2014), p. 119.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 131

and the Edicts of 1749, 1752, 1755, and 1764, which prohibited lords from ex-
propriating peasants’ landholdings. As Guy Ford has noted, the very fre-
quency of ­these edicts demonstrates the king’s interest in peasants as a class
and his failure to extinguish the disputes between peasants and lords.24
Concessions to peasants proved insufficient to promote social order. One
example of the inadequacy of concessions comes from the Stavenow estate
in the rural district of Prignitz. In 1753, as a result of government media-
tion, the estate had agreed to reduce peasants’ l­abor ­services, and peasants,
in turn, had agreed to work the newly established (and lower) number of
days. However, in 1756, Conrad Kleist, whose f­ amily had owned the Stave-
now estate since 1717, petitioned the king “for himself and in the name of
his ­brothers . . . ​for remedy against . . . ​insubordination.” Peasants ­were again
refusing their l­ abor duties even though, as the exasperated Kleist reminded
the king, in 1753 ­these had been “in vari­ous ways infinitely reduced.”25
Conflict in Stavenow and elsewhere illuminated the commitment prob­
lem inherent in using agrarian reform to promote social order: while re-
ducing ­labor ­services could placate peasants t­oday, nothing prevented
them from making further demands tomorrow. Making concessions to
peasants could not solve the ultimate prob­lem of mid-­eighteenth-­century
Prus­sia, a prob­lem that James Melton aptly refers to as a “crisis of seigniorial
authority.”26
The peasant rebellions of the 1740s and 1750s also revealed the limitations
of relying on repression and threats of repression to restore order in the
countryside. In 1749, peasants in two districts close to the Lithuanian fron-
tier formed an alliance to demand their freedom. When troops arrived to
the area, not only did the armed peasants resist, but they ­were also supported
by soldiers on leave from the army.27 Although sending soldiers sometimes
helped end peasant rebellions, stories of “stubborn” peasant ­resistance be-
came increasingly common. Conrad Kleist faced his own share of “recalci-
trant” peasants. In his petition to the king, Kleist had asked Frederick II for
authorization to announce that ­those who did not accept their ­labor obli-
gations would be dismissed and replaced with “loyal and obedient c­ hildren
of this land.” The king gave the Kleists freedom to “remove insubordinate
colonists, if incorrigible, and put ­others in their place.” Although Kleist

24. Ford (1919), p. 366.

25. Hagen (2002), p. 539.
26. Melton (2002), p. 145.
27. Carsten (1989), p. 62.
132 | Chapter 4

­ ublicized this ruling in 1757, and subsequently secured support from the
p
sheriff of Prignitz to enforce the order, he faced considerable difficulty re-
moving disobedient peasants from his estate.28
Nor ­were priests and pastors able to contain peasants’ insubordination.
In the Stavenow estate, for example, “communal insubordination . . . ​was a
susceptibility . . . ​which the Lutheran pastors could not banish from their
flocks’ minds and hearts.” Although peasants respected pastors’ guidance
­toward Christian salvation, they did not trust them with their secular con-
cerns, as “pastors often appeared captives of their own interests, if not also
the lordship’s.”29
It was this context of crisis in rural authority, coupled with the failure of
agrarian policies and repression to halt the spread of peasant rebellions, that
gave education reformers a receptive audience in Frederick II. According
to Melton, proposals to educate the rural lower classes had been circulat-
ing since before Frederick II’s reign, but the crisis of the mid-­eighteenth
­century, by illuminating the weakness of seigniorial authority and the need
for new ways to exercise control in the countryside that did not rely on the
threat of coercion from lords, made agrarian reformers more receptive to
education reform:

It was the issue of l­abor ­services that brought reformers face to face
with the central issue posed by the crisis of seigniorial authority. The
paternalist ideal of seigniorial control had presumed the physical pres-
ence of an external, coercive force. . . . ​The issue of ­labor ­services be-
came a ­metaphor for more fundamental changes in the structure of
seigniorial authority during the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century.
In their efforts to reduce the ­labor obligations of the peasantry, Prus­
sian . . . ​agrarian reformers grappled with the central dilemma posed
by their changing agrarian landscape: How could the lord exact the
­labor and obedience of his subjects once the coercive mechanisms of
seigniorial control had been removed? In the face of economic changes
that weakened the direct and personal exercise of seignorial authority,
how could one induce rural subjects to perform their social and eco-
nomic obligations? Schools w ­ ere to provide reformers with an answer
to ­these questions. 30

28. Hagen (2002), p. 540.

29. Hagen (2002), p. 442.
30. Melton (2002), pp. 151–152.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 133

Proposals for mass education had existed at least since the late seventeenth
­century, when Pietists began to advocate for the education of the lower
classes as a means to cultivate discipline, obedience, and re­spect for author-
ity.31 As I explained in chapter 3, in the 1690s, the Pietist August Hermann
Francke founded elementary schools that introduced concrete pedagogical
innovations to accomplish t­ hese goals, including taking roll to monitor
­children’s attendance and be­hav­ior, requiring ­children to raise their hand
to ask a question, and constantly monitoring c­ hildren “­whether sitting in
class, playing in the schoolyard, eating in the dining hall,” or “wherever pu-
pils may be.”32 Pietist reformers ­were also pioneers in the standardization
of elementary school textbooks, and Pietist schools ­were the first to re-
quire formal training for elementary school teachers, giving rise to the first
Normal Schools.33
In addition to Pietism, the Enlightenment also helped change prior
­beliefs about mass education. Enlightenment p ­ hilosophers, as we saw in
chapter 3, challenged the historical notion that the lower classes w ­ ere un-
educable, proposing instead that ­human beings are ­shaped by their environ-
ment and the education they receive. Moreover, like Pietist reformers, En-
lightenment ­philosophers supported soft methods for disciplining students,
focusing on students’ conscience, not physical coercion.
While Pietism and the Enlightenment proposed new ways of thinking
about the role of mass education in promoting discipline and obedience,
and Pietism in par­tic­ul­ ar offered concrete education innovations that would
eventually become appealing to the state, it was not ­until the mid-­eighteenth
­century that t­hese ideas found an audience interested in implementing
them on a large scale.
One of the first votes of confidence for proposals to create a state-­
controlled mass education system came in 1750, when Frederick II appointed
the Pietist educator Johann Hecker to the Supreme Consistory. Hecker
(1707–1768) had taught at one of Francke’s schools and then went on to es-
tablish his own, introducing several pedagogical innovations. In par­tic­u­lar,
while teachers in other schools rotated from student to student, teaching

31. In the 1690s, the Piestist August Hermann Francke had founded several schools—­elementary
schools for the poor, vocational schools for the ­middle class, boarding schools for elites—­and the
Seminarium selectum praeceptorum, the first teacher training institution in Central ­Europe, estab-
lished to ensure that ­future teachers had the training needed to be agents of spiritual and moral
reform. See Melton (2002), p. 36.
32. Francke, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 44.
33. Melton (2002), p. xiv.
134 | Chapter 4

each one individually, Hecker, building on Francke’s idea that unsuper-

vised ­children had the tendency to become unruly, introduced group
teaching, creating a hallmark feature of modern education systems. Seek-
ing to further his educational agenda, in 1750 Hecker convinced Frederick
II to create the Supreme Consistory, a state body directly responsible to the
king and in charge of the supervision of Lutheran churches and schools.
Through this appointment in the consistory, Hecker obtained a new plat-
form to implement his educational ideas. In 1753, the king provided annual
funding to Hecker’s teacher training institution in Berlin and gave it spe-
cial status as the preferred institution to recruit teachers, effectively convert-
ing it into the first state-­sponsored Normal School for training primary
school teachers. Frederick II would go on to support Hecker’s 1754 compre-
hensive school reform plans for Minden-­Ravensberg, which would then
serve as a model for the 1763 General Rural School Regulations, also drafted
by Hecker at Frederick II’s request.34
The king’s support of Pietist pedagogy was a strategic choice reflecting
not religious conviction but his primary goal of consolidating the state’s
authority.35 Contrary to his ­father’s devotion to Pietism, Frederick II was
not a religious man; in fact, he held a personal hostility ­toward Pietism and
felt attracted by the ideas espoused by Enlightenment p ­ hilosophers, sev-
eral of whom he corresponded with on a regular basis.36 Yet, like his ­father,
Frederick II became convinced that Pietism could be of strategic use for his
goal of buttressing monarchical authority. Pietist religion emphasized a
conception of spiritual growth through obedience, discipline, and love of
one’s neighbor at e­ very waking hour. The latter, according to Pietist re-
formers like Francke and Hecker, required working for societal good, un-
conditional ­service to the state, and blind obedience to the King—­princi­
ples that any absolutist king would find attractive.37 But at the same time
that he took advantage of Pietist ideas to strength the state’s authority,
Frederick II advanced four m ­ easures that made it clear he had no intention
of making Pietism the official state religion: first, he allowed religious plu-
ralism in an effort to reduce religious conflict between Lutherans, Calvinists,
Pietists, and Catholics; second, he ­adopted a separate set of education reg-
ulations for Catholic areas which enabled moral and religious instruction

34. Vollmer (1918); Melton (2002).

35. Erxleben (1967), pp. 60–61; Gawthrop (1993), p. 275.
36. Gawthrop (1993), p. 275.
37. Gawthrop (1993), pp. 4, 9, 143–146.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 135

to rely on Catholic, not Protestant, doctrine; third, he placed the Supreme

Consistory created in 1750 to oversee education u ­ nder the authority of the
Ministry of Justice; fourth, he established through the 1763 General Rural
School Regulations that the pastors who supervised the work of teachers
had to report to a Superintendent appointed by the state.38
While Hecker was the king’s trusted adviser on education issues in Prot-
estant regions of Prus­sia, Johann Felbiger became his main adviser in Cath-
olic areas. Although trained by Jesuits, Felbiger admired Francke’s and
Hecker’s educational work and visited Hecker in Berlin to observe how he
implemented his pedagogical ideas. The influence of Pietism on Felbiger’s
educational ideas is evident in the striking similarity between Francke’s
­arguments about the goals of education and Felbiger’s idea that students
“must be convinced that it is useful and correct to follow the schoolmas-
ter’s wishes. Only then w ­ ill they learn to obey even in situations where force
is absent. In this way, the schoolmaster accomplishes his most impor­tant
task: his pupils w ­ ill observe their duties not only in school, but through-
out their lives.”39 Like Francke and Hecker, Felbiger believed that schools
had to educate not only good Catholics, “creatures of God, instruments of
his holy ­will, and good members of the Church,” but also “honest subjects
of their ruler, useful members of the state.”40
The assessment that the rural crisis of social order was fundamental in
triggering the rise of state-­regulated mass education in mid-­eighteenth-­
century Prus­sia is further supported by Karl Schleunes’s study of the his-
tory of Prus­sian schooling. Schleunes argues that the proposal to introduce
compulsory mass schooling for rural areas “was born and nurtured within
the womb of gathering social crisis. ­Those who proposed [it] did so in re-
sponse to that crisis, not merely ­because of the notion that peasants had
suddenly become educable.” While Schleunes acknowledges that notions
of crisis are problematic and “any historian worth his salt should be able
to find one,” he insists that mid-­eighteenth-­century “contemporaries did
perceive a crisis and that they did begin to act accordingly. . . . ​Social dislo-
cations . . . ​contributed to the questioning of long-­held p ­ olitical and social
assumptions. The ultimate question of what it was that held society together

38. Erxleben (1967), pp. 60–61, 89, 92–98.

39. Felbiger, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 187.
40. Felbiger, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 102.
136 | Chapter 4

drew the attention of an ever-­widening circle, reaching far beyond t­hose

who ordinarily reflected upon such ­matters.”41
The crisis in agrarian relations, and the inadequacy of repression and con-
cessions to deal with it, also helped convince landowning elites to support
proposals for the education of the rural lower classes, especially their moral
education. Historically, landowners had opposed educating peasants, fear-
ing they would develop greater aspirations. But in the 1750s, an increasing
number of economic elites began to support mass education, finding in
­Pietist pedagogy a promising solution to the prob­lem of peasant disobedi-
ence. Support for mass education grew in journals and manuals read by
landowners and estate man­ag­ers. For example, an article published in a Sile-
sian economic journal in 1757 advocated for the establishment of schools
focused on teaching moral princi­ples and “inner contentment” to peasants,
and claimed that as a result of this education, “disloyalty, laziness, idleness,
disobedience, disorder, . . . ​would all dis­appear.”42 One vehement supporter
was the minister of Silesia, Ernst Wilhelm von Schlabrendorff, who sup-
ported compulsory schooling since 1755, and who, ­after touring Silesia in
1756, became further convinced that the reduction of peasants’ l­abor obli-
gations had to be coupled with mass schooling.43 Schlabrendorff’s views
echoed t­ hose of Carl Egon von Fürstenberg, governor of Bohemia between
1771 and 1782, who argued that the ­future stability of society depended on
peasant education:

As long as the peasant’s moral character is not reformed, his indolence

and resentment ­toward his lord w­ ill persist . . . ​But if one improves his
character before reducing his excessive l­abor obligations, this educa-
tion ­will muffle his discontent and suppress the dangerous impulses
bred by constant maltreatment.44

In sum, proposals to shape the moral character of the lower classes

through mass schooling had circulated in Prus­sia since the mid-­seventeenth
­century, but only gained support from rulers in the m ­ iddle ­decades of the
eigh­teenth ­century, when peasant rebellions increased in frequency and in-
tensity, creating an urgent prob­lem for social order. As rebellion spread
throughout the countryside, it signaled the end of an era in which social

41. Schleunes (1989), p. 18.

42. Melton (2002), p. 158.
43. Melton (2002), pp. 153–158, 185.
44. Fürstenberg, quoted in Melton (2002), p. 165.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 137

order had been maintained by the physical, coercive presence of the lord.
To promote order in the periphery, Frederick II responded with two policy
innovations: agrarian reform to address peasants’ immediate grievances, and
the creation of a public primary education system to inculcate moral val-
ues of obedience among the lower rural classes. State-­controlled schooling
emerged during a crisis of internal order as a new mechanism to promote
long-­term order through self-­coercion, or the internalization of values of
loyalty, obedience, and devotion to the king.

FRANCE
The most impressive expansion of primary schooling in the history of France
occurred in the 1830s u­ nder the July Monarchy (1830–1848). Previously, the
provision of primary education had been the domain of local towns and
parishes. Although the revolutionaries of 1789 had passed legislation seek-
ing to ensure universal primary education, the French Revolution had left
the state with no resources to implement this vision. Subsequent central
governments during both the Napoleonic Era and the Bourbon Restora-
tion ­were content to leave primary education to municipal governments
and the Catholic Church. This changed drastically during the July Monar-
chy. Between 1830 and 1833, several proposals w
­ ere introduced in parliament
seeking to promote the expansion of primary education in the entire
­territory and to increase the central government’s regulatory power over
primary schools. Parliament passed the first comprehensive national law of
primary education in June 1833. Named ­after François Guizot, the Minister
of Public Instruction who spearheaded the reform, the Guizot Law of 1833
was considered by contemporaries the “most far-­reaching primary education
law in French history.”45 Its passage not only created a primary education
system regulated by the central government but also, as we ­will see, was
followed by a marked increase in public spending on primary education
and by the fastest expansion in the number of primary schools that France
has ever seen. The result of this was a massive growth in enrollment rates,
which increased from 32 ­percent at the beginning of the July Monarchy
to 71 ­percent by the end of the regime.
The July Revolution of 1830 had overthrown the Bourbon dynasty, bring-
ing the bourgeoisie to power and replacing the old regime with a new

45. Toloudis (2012), p. 41.

138 | Chapter 4

constitutional monarchy that constrained the king’s legislative powers and

reduced the power of the Catholic Church. However, contrary to the Re-
publican party, most of the July revolutionaries opposed the expansion of
­political rights, including the extension of voting rights. In addition, when
it came to Church-­State relations, supporters of the regime held varying opin-
ions about how much the power of the Church ­ought to be reduced, with
the more liberal faction of the regime supporting complete Church-­State
separation and the more conservative faction accepting some level of Church
participation in civil affairs as long as the state remained the supreme
authority.
The Guizot Law of 1833 was a product of the mass vio­lence that the July
Monarchy had to deal with in its early years and reflected the regime’s con-
cern about the moral roots of this vio­lence. Although the July revolution-
aries had fought with the support of the working class in Paris, once they
came to power, workers, artisans, and peasants turned against the govern-
ment. In the months following the ascension of the July Monarchy, p ­ opular
unrest reached alarming proportions not only in Paris but also in the
countryside.46
The ­popular discontent of the early 1830s had economic roots. The har-
vest of 1830, the smallest since 1816 due to poor weather conditions, and a
tariff policy that restricted wheat imports had led to a 50 ­percent increase
in bread prices. The wine, iron, and textile industries also experienced se-
vere prob­lems, creating widespread unemployment. Riots and attacks on
farmers and merchants selling or transporting grain became ubiquitous,
reaching peak levels in late autumn and winter of 1830–1831 and in the spring
and early summer of 1832. The lower classes blamed the new government
for their economic misfortune and demanded price controls—­including a
“fair price” for bread—as well as more jobs and higher wages.47
The level of mass vio­lence that spread throughout France between 1830
and 1832 had not been seen since the Revolution of 1789. Pamela Pilbeam,
who has studied this period of French history in g­ reat depth, describes the
protests as “common, violent and often supported by the forces of order.”48

46. Pilbeam (1976), p. 278.

47. Pilbeam (1976), pp. 279–283; Gonnet (1955); Pinkney (1961).
During the period of vio­lence in 1830–1832, the July revolutionaries accused the Republican
party of “exploiting the anarchy” of the lower classes and inciting “vio­lence” and “subversive” be­
hav­ior to advance their p
­ olitical agenda. The government refused to make concessions. It instead
placed restrictions on club meetings and prosecuted many clubs where Republicans met.
48. Pilbeam (1976), p. 288.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 139

Approximately 139 violent protests occurred during ­those years, involving

more than 181,000 participants and resulting in 1,300 deaths and 3,500
wounded citizens.49 Initially, the vio­lence was confined to Paris and sup-
pressed by the national guard without difficulty,50 but starting in Febru-
ary 1831, it began spreading geo­graph­ic­ ally, eventually reaching forty-­eight
dif­f er­ent départements, with particularly high levels of vio­lence in the rural
departments of southern France. The escalation of vio­lence and the central
government’s rising concern about the “barbaric,”“turbulent,” and “anarchic”
be­hav­ior of the lower classes51 prompted a replacement of the cabinet,
which in March 1831 became headed by Casimir Périer, a member of the
most conservative faction among the July revolutionaries. ­Under his lead-
ership, the government redoubled its efforts to suppress the riots by turning
to the national guard, the gendarmerie, and other military reinforcements.
However, the limits of relying on repression to maintain social order soon
became evident.52 Not only ­were the crowds “too numerous for existing
police resources to h ­ andle,” but also, and more problematically, t­ here ­were
a “large number of national guardsmen who participated in p ­ opular pro-
tests” ­either actively or by refusing to obey ­orders to quash the riots.53 In
an episode in Besançon, which like many ­others was interpreted by the gov-
ernment as an embryonic revolution, a large crowd burst into the streets,
insulting grain merchants and smashing the win­dows of the tax office to
destroy its rec­ords. Many members of the national guard, ordered to sup-
press the rebellion, threw down their weapons and joined the crowd, while
­others deserted.54
Guizot had deep first-­hand knowledge of the limitations of repression:
Before he became Minister of Public Instruction in October 1832, he had
been the July Monarchy’s Minister of Interior. In his memoirs, he recalls
that episodes like the one in Besançon ­were common. In an entire chapter
devoted to the prob­lem of “anarchy” that Casimir Périer’s government had
to deal with in 1831 and 1832, he highlights that “administrative authority

49. The figures are based on data collected by Tilly and Zambrano (2006).
50. In October 1830, recalls Guizot, crowds “belonging to that idle, corrupt and turbulent popu-
lation that lives deep in Paris . . . ​strolled the streets and came to assail the Palais-­Royal with cries:
Death to the ministers! Polignac’s head!” (Guizot 1860 t.2, pp. 124–125).
51. Guizot (1860), t.2.
52. Pilbeam (1991), pp. 177–178.
53. Pilbeam (1976), pp. 288–289.
54. Pilbeam (1976), p. 287.
140 | Chapter 4

was ignored” and the intervention of the army in violent disorders “aggra-
vated the evil instead of suppressing it”:

In Grenoble, . . . ​in Strasbourg, in Tours, in Toulouse, in Montpellier,

in Carcassonne, in Nîmes, in Marseilles, similar disturbances broke out.
And it was not only among the p ­ eople that the spirit of disorder
reigned, it penetrated even into the army.55

For Guizot and his contemporaries, the mass vio­lence that emerged dur-
ing the early years of the July Monarchy was caused by moral deficiencies
that needed to be corrected through public primary education. Multiple
reports published during the early 1830s pointed to the moral deficit of the
lower classes as the under­lying culprit of unruly be­hav­ior. One of the most
innovative reports—­a real precursor in the use of statistics to study social
phenomena—­was André-­Michel Guerry’s Essai sur la Statistique Morale de
la France, published in 1833. It included choropleth maps of the level of “im-
morality” in the French departments as proxied by statistics on crime, sui-
cides, illegitimate c­ hildren, poverty, and illiteracy, and fueled the perception
that crimes against persons w ­ ere particularly high in the south of France,
where lack of education was also greater. It was not uncommon for advo-
cates of mass education to cite crime statistics as proof that primary
­“instruction moralizes the population, since ­there are relatively more indi-
viduals accused of committing crimes among ­those who are illiterate than
among ­those who have received some instruction.”56 The validity of ­these
conclusions is beside the point; what is relevant is that French ­political elites
argued that schooling was a good idea ­because it would moralize the masses
and thus reduce crime.
­There are in princi­ple many reasons why education could reduce crimi-
nal be­hav­ior and mass vio­lence, and some of ­these reasons have nothing to
do with the role of education in improving the moral character of the
masses. It could be, for example, that education enables ­people to find bet-
ter jobs, in turn reducing the economic motivation to commit a crime or
rebel. Social mobility and financial security aspirations are certainly one of
the reasons why p ­ eople t­ oday pursue education degrees, but the question
we must ask ourselves is ­whether in 1833, when the French government
­proposed and parliament approved the creation of a primary education

55. Guizot (1860), t.2, p. 209.

56. M. Allard, quoted in Sarmiento (1849), p. 55.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 141

system, it did so to improve the economic well-­being of the lower classes.

This is certainly a possibility we must consider. The vio­lence of the early
1830s had been triggered by escalating bread prices and unemployment,
and the government made efforts to address ­these economic grievances: it
relaxed the restrictions on wheat imports and a­ dopted redistributive poli-
cies including subsidies for bread and the creation of large public works
programs. Was the government’s effort to promote primary education also
a redistributive strategy designed to improve the earnings and job prospects
of the poor?
The historical rec­ord does not support this interpretation. While some
Republican politicians favored an education system that in addition to
teaching moral values also helped lift ­people out of poverty, liberals—­who
controlled the cabinet and a majority of parliament—­were not interested
in the redistributive aspect of mass education. In 1831, parliament commis-
sioned Victor Cousin to study the Prus­sian primary education system,
­resulting in the publication of two reports that significantly s­ haped parlia-
mentary debates on primary education. In the first report, Cousin described
the Prus­sian education system in detail as a model to be emulated, high-
lighting its emphasis on “inculcating in young ­people obedience to the
laws, fidelity and attachment to the prince and to the State so that t­hese
combined virtues may early germinate in them the sacred love of the Fa-
therland.” The second report, addressed directly to members of parliament
to advise them on how to design a primary education system for France,57
made no mention whatsoever of social mobility as a goal of mass education.
Instead, Cousin wrote that “moral and religious education is precisely the
end of primary education.” In fact, the entire report focused on the question
of how parliament should structure the primary education system in order
to accomplish this goal.
Guizot himself was also clear that his priority—­and the goal of his pri-
mary education bill—­was to improve the moral character of the masses, not
their economic well-­being:

It has often been said that I did not like the ­people, that I had no sym-
pathy for their miseries, their instincts, their needs, their desires. . . . ​
While feeling for the material distress of the p ­ eople a deep sympathy,
I was especially touched and preoccupied by their moral distress, being

57. Cousin (1833b).

142 | Chapter 4

certain that . . . ​to improve the condition of men, it is first of all their
soul that must be purified, strengthened and enlightened.58

The state must provide primary education to all families, argued the Min-
ister of Public Instruction, “and in this it does more for the moral life of
­peoples than it can do for their material condition. This is the true princi­
ple on this point, and it was the one ­adopted by my bill.”59
In this context of heightened concern about the moral roots of mass vio­
lence, the king signed several royal ordinances that sought to increase the
state’s control over primary education, and two Ministers of Public Instruc-
tion before Guizot—­Barthe on January 20, 1831 and Montalivet on Octo-
ber 24 of that year—­introduced primary education bills to parliament. The
bills w
­ ere similar to Guizot’s in many re­spects, and Guizot in fact integrated
many provisions from them into his own bill.60 However, the Barthe and
Montalivet bills ­were introduced at a time when education legislation was
not a priority for parliament. In January 1831, when Barthe introduced his
bill in the Chamber of Peers, the “anarchy” had not spread across France
yet, and concerns about the moral education of the masses ­were not salient
among parliamentarians. Knowing that the bill would find l­ittle support,
the minister removed his bill from consideration before it reached the
Chamber of Deputies.61 In October of that year, when Montalivet intro-
duced his proposal, the government did perceive a crisis of social disorder,
but its priority at the time was to contain it through repression and a reform
of the national guard. As a result, the bill was hardly discussed in parlia-
ment and failed to reach the Assembly by the end of 1831. Montalivet him-
self explained that at the time when he introduced the education bill,
the government had to deal with numerous proj­ects on “­matters much
more impor­tant or at least more urgent and requested with much more
authority.”62
By the end of 1832, however, the conservative and liberal factions b ­ ehind
the rise of the July Monarchy ­were united in agreement that “­popular
­instruction is a need.”63 When Guizot introduced his bill in January 1833,
economic conditions had improved and the wave of mass protests had

58. Guizot (1860), t. 3, pp. 54–55.

59. Guizot (1860), t. 3, p. 64.
60. Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique (n.d.).
61. Gontard (1959), p. 469.
62. Gontard (1959), p. 485.
63. Gontard (1959), p. 493.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 143

subsided.64 In this more peaceful yet still fraught context, despite few sub-
stantive differences with re­spect to Montalivet’s bill, Guizot’s proposal re-
ceived overwhelming parliamentary support.65 As both Guizot and Mon-
talivet recalled many years l­ater, the two years of acute social disorder had
helped forge unity within the government. In Montalivet’s words, “the
anarchic tragedy” of ­those years “at least had the merit of precipitating
the only ­measure of salvation which could be effective, that is to say, the
restoration of unity in the government.”66
While most of Guizot’s original proposal was approved without hesita-
tion or amendment,67 a long debate emerged in parliament about the dis-
tribution of school oversight powers between the central government,
­municipalities, and the Church. While Barthes’s education proposal of
January 1831 excluded religious authorities entirely from the supervision of
schools, the more pragmatic Guizot, seeking to build a broader co­ali­tion
of support for his bill, proposed the creation of local school supervision
committees consisting of the mayor, three municipal councilors appointed
by the municipal council, and the parish priest or pastor.68 Through an
amendment made by the Chamber of Deputies, the final law included two
additional members, “a principal, college dean, professor, regent” and “a
­primary school teacher residing in the constituency,” both appointed by
the Minister of Education.69 The inclusion of religious officials on local

64. Only 7,500 protest participants w ­ ere identified in 1833, compared to 55,000 the year before
(Tilly and Zambrano 2006).
65. The debate of the Guizot Law began with Guizot’s ­presentation of the bill on January 2,
1833. The Chamber of Deputies introduced amendments and approved the amended bill on
May 3, 1833: of the 256 deputies pre­sent, 249 voted in f­ avor and only 7 voted against. The bill was
then sent to the Chamber of Peers, which introduced amendments and approved the amended
bill, with 114 in f­ avor and 4 against. The revised bill returned to the Chamber of Deputies, where
additional amendments ­were introduced; 219 members voted in ­favor and 57 against. This version
of the bill returned to the Chamber of Peers, where 86 members voted in f­ avor and 11 against. The
king signed the bill into law on June 28, 1833.
66. Gontard (1959).
67. Despite the back and forth that took place in parliament during the months of May and
June 1833, most of the amendments introduced ­were ­simple editing changes that did not alter the
content of the law in any way. On issues related to the obligation of municipalities to maintain
primary schools for boys, the content of the curriculum, the additional primary education oppor-
tunities to be made available in urban areas, departments’ obligation to create Normal Schools to
train primary school teachers, the remuneration of teachers, and the procedures for certifying and
appointing teachers, the original bill remained essentially intact. The issue of girls’ education, to
which Guizot’s original bill devoted one article, was removed altogether from the final law.
68. “Projet de loi pre­senté par Guizot le 2 janvier 1833 et projet tel qu’il a ete modifié par la
Chambre des Deputés dans sa Séance du 3 mai 1833” (1833), Art. 17.
69. France (1833), Loi sur l’instruction primaire—­Loi Guizot du 28 juin 1833, Art. 19.
144 | Chapter 4

supervisory committees helped garner support from conservative members

of parliament, while still maintaining the support of liberals in parliament
by ensuring that secular authorities held a majority in ­these committees.
But the more impor­tant point about the parliamentary debates is that
the main goals of primary education as articulated by Guizot ­were never
questioned by conservatives or liberals. In Guizot’s own words, the main
goal of primary schools was to promote long-­term order and ­political sta-
bility by teaching ­children to re­spect the sovereign and its laws:

When men have learned from childhood to understand the fundamen-

tal laws of the country and to re­spect its sovereign, the sovereign and
the laws become a kind of property which is dear to them, and they
do not refuse the obligations that it imposes upon them . . . ​Thus the
public mind is formed, thus a true patriotism is maintained, thus for-
tifying and consolidating socie­ties and thrones.70

The French historian Antoine Prost notes that “the quarrel” in parliament
took place “against a background of una­nim­i­ty” in which “the need for
moral education and the princi­ples of order, authority, property, are beyond
debate.”71 This una­nim­i­ty, argues Maurice Gontard in his seminal book on
the history of education in France, reflected a growing and widespread be-
lief among elites in Paris that primary education, if regulated by the state
and staffed by teachers loyal to the state, would “teach ordinary p
­ eople obe-
dience, re­spect for the law, love of order, thus strengthening social stability
and the security of the Monarchy.”72
Even members of the opposition like Baconnière de Salverte, a member
of the Left within the Chamber of Deputies who criticized several provi-
sions of Guizot’s proposal,73 nonetheless agreed with Guizot that the
main goal of primary education was to shape ­children’s moral character.
Speaking in the session of April 29, 1833, he began: “In the first part of his

70. Guizot (1860), p. 86.

71. Prost (1968), pp. 8–9.
72. Gontard (1959), p. 493.
73. Salverte in par­tic­u­lar advocated for revising Article 1, which outlined the national curricu-
lum for primary schools. In the session of April 29, 1833, he proposed adding language to specify
that ­children should not only receive “moral and religious instruction,” but also learn about their
­political rights and duties, especially the princi­ples of equality before the law and of just compen-
sation for duties. While other members of the left supported this proposal, center and right-­wing
members, who held a large majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies, ­were aligned with
Guizot and the conservative central government in this re­spect and did not support Salverte’s
proposal (France. Assemblée Nationale (1871–1942), SER2 V83 1833, p. 246).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 145

speech, the Minister spoke of the importance of morality and religion in

primary education. No one, gentlemen, ­will dispute this importance.”
Indeed, a comprehensive analy­sis of the full transcripts of parliamentary
debates on the Guizot Law reveals that no-­one disputed that the main goal
of primary education was to shape the moral character of c­ hildren. Precisely
­b ecause t­ here was widespread agreement on this, the fiercest debates be-
tween the left, right, and center w ­ ere ­those concerning who should have
the power to ensure that primary schools w ­ ere d
­ oing a good job in terms
of “the maintenance of discipline” and “the maintenance of good manners
and public order.”74
The Guizot Law increased the central government’s control over primary
education and promoted its expansion across France. It did not make the
central government the only or even the main authority in charge of pri-
mary education; u ­ nder the law, authority to oversee schools was shared be-
tween the central and municipal governments and the local priest. But
while before 1833 the question of ­whether to provide primary education and
what type of education to provide had been left entirely to municipalities
and the Church, the Guizot Law altered this forever. It established a man-
datory national curriculum for all primary schools that focused heavi­ly on
moral and religious instruction. It also made it mandatory for e­ very town
with at least 500 inhabitants to establish and maintain a primary school for
boys and required municipalities to raise additional taxes if their ordinary
revenues ­were insufficient to fund primary education. State subsidies w ­ ere
also contemplated by the law, but only ­after municipal and departmental
sources of funding had been exhausted. A crucial provision of the law gave
the central government the power to use royal decrees to impose new taxes
on municipalities that failed to raise education funds voluntarily, thus giv-
ing the state the power to effectively compel municipalities to expand and
fund primary education as required by the law.
Beyond regulating the content, supply, and funding of primary education,
in the 1830s the central government also increased its regulation of teacher
training and recruitment and its oversight of primary schools. The Guizot
Law required all departments to establish teacher training institutions and
gave the state the final say over teacher certification. In the realm of school
oversight, the law required municipalities to provide a “report of the state
of affairs for all primary schools u ­ nder their jurisdiction” to the prefect and

74. France. Assemblée nationale (1871–1942), SER2 V83 1833, p. 296.

146 | Chapter 4

the national Minister of Education. In addition, in the fall of 1833 the

­central government conducted the first comprehensive survey of all pri-
mary schools in the country. Known as the Guizot Inquiry (L’enquête Guizot),
the survey resulted in rich baseline information about the number, loca-
tion, characteristics, and quality of primary schools. With re­spect to school
quality, Guizot instructed inspectors to concentrate especially on w ­ hether
schools ­were succeeding in promoting morality and maintaining order.
This effort to monitor primary schools was consolidated in 1835 with the
creation of a centralized primary school inspectorate.
The Guizot Law was followed by a marked increase in primary educa-
tion expenditures and by the fastest expansion in the number of primary
schools that France has ever seen. Figure 4.1 illustrates ­these developments.
The top graph displays the evolution of public primary education expendi-
tures from 1820 to 1900, while the bottom graph shows the number of
­primary schools and students enrolled in them, both adjusted by popula-
tion size.75 Beginning with the level of funding, figure 4.1 shows that an-
nual public expenditures on primary education increased markedly ­after
the Guizot Law: during the first year of the law’s implementation, expen-
ditures more than tripled compared to the year before, increasing from
49 million francs in 1833 to 160 million in 1834. This marked increase in pri-
mary education spending was not driven by an increase in national income
or in total public spending. The number of primary schools also increased
considerably ­after the Guizot Law: although the expansion of schooling
had accelerated in the early years of the July Monarchy, between 1830 and
1833, during the first years of implementation of the Guizot Law the rate of
expansion more than tripled. Accompanying all this was a massive growth
in enrollment rates, which increased from 32 ­percent at the beginning of
the July Monarchy to 71 ­percent by the end of the regime.
Although most of the increase in public expenditures a­ fter 1833 came
from municipal and departmental coffers,76 the fact that municipalities and
departments increased education funding suddenly and markedly a­ fter 1833

75. Data on the level of aggregate public and private expenditures on primary education come
from Carry (1999). Data on primary education expenditures as a percentage of GDP and as a per-
centage of total public expenditures come from Toloudis (2012), ­table 3.1, pp. 43–44. Data on the
number of primary schools and student enrollment in primary schools, both adjusted by popula-
tion size, come from Grew and Harrigan (1991). For the years before 1837, when data about the
number of girls schools are unavailable, I use Grew and Harrigan’s (1991) estimates of the total
number of primary schools, which are based on data about the number of boys’ and mixed
schools and their estimate of the number of girls’ schools (table S.1, p. 251).
76. See the online appendix.
 a) Public expenditures
2000
.8

Jules Ferry Laws

Thousands of new francs, 1820 prices

1500 .6
July Monarchy begins

July Monarchy ends

Percent of GDP
Falloux Law
Guizot Law

1000 .4

500 .2

0 0
1820 1840 1860 1880 1900
New francs (left) % of GDP (right)

b) Schools and enrollment

25 1500
July Monarchy begins

July Monarchy ends

Falloux Law
Guizot Law

Enrollment per 10,000 inhabitants

Schools per 10,000 inhabitants

20 1250
Jules Ferry Laws

15 1000

10 750

500
5
1820 1840 1860 1880 1900
Schools (left) Enrollment (right)

Figure 4.1. Public primary education expenditures, number of primary schools, and
primary school enrollment in France, 1810–1900. See text and footnotes for sources
and methodology.
148 | Chapter 4

suggests that most of the expansion of education funding at t­hese levels

was the result of the new national law, which required subnational gov-
ernments to invest in primary education.77 My own analy­sis of how mu-
nicipalities funded ­these increases in education expenditures provides
additional evidence that the central government played an impor­tant role in
incentivizing—or outright forcing—­municipalities to devote resources to
primary education. In the typical French department, only about 21 ­percent
of municipalities w ­ ere able to comply with the law’s funding provisions
using ordinary revenues, and another 33 ­percent established new taxes vol-
untarily in response to the Guizot Law. However, the remaining 46 ­percent
of municipalities did not take active steps to fund primary education; ­here,
the central government intervened by imposing new taxes via royal decrees,
a power accorded to it by the new law.78 State subsidies for primary educa-
tion also increased considerably in the first two years a­ fter the passage of
the Guizot Law to fund school construction and textbook distribution.79
In sum, the timing of the Guizot Law of 1833, the concerns about the
moral character of the masses that influenced its passage, the increased con-
trol over primary education that the law gave to the state, and its conse-
quences for education funding and the supply of primary schools, are all
consistent with an explanation of educational expansion promoted by the
state in response to the mass vio­lence of the early 1830s.
If mass vio­lence was indeed an impor­tant driver of the state’s efforts to
expand primary education, we should observe not only increased state ef-
fort to regulate and expand primary schooling in the wake of internal con-
flict but also greater effort in regions where the crisis of social order posed
a greater threat to ­political stability. This is an implication of the book’s
argument that we could not test for the Prus­sian case given the lack of
­available statistics on primary education,80 but French statistics do allow

77. Data on w ­ hether public expenditures on primary education w ­ ere funded by municipalities,
departments, or the central government, come from Carry (1999). Data on primary education ex-
penditures as a percentage of GDP and as a percentage of total public expenditures come from
Toloudis (2012), ­table 3.1, pp. 43–44.
78. Data on ­whether municipalities funded primary schools through ordinary tax revenues
alone, through a new tax introduced by the municipality following the Guizot Law, or through a
new tax imposed on the municipality via royal decree, come from statistics published by the cen-
tral government for the year 1834. T ­ hese are available in digital format in: Inter-­university Consor-
tium for P­ olitical and Social Research (1992).
79. See the online appendix.
80. Prus­sian official statistics on primary education begin in 1816. In par­tic­ul­ar, ­there are no
available statistics to examine ­whether the location of peasant rebellions in the 1740s and 1750s is
associated with the intensity of efforts to expand primary education during the 1760s and 1770s.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 149

this type of analy­sis.81 Figure 4.2 shows the growth in primary school en-
rollment and in the number of primary schools (both adjusted for popula-
tion size) ­after the Guizot Law of 1833 in three dif­fer­ent groups of French
departments: ­those with no registered violent events, ­those with low levels
of mass vio­lence, and ­those with high levels of mass vio­lence between 1830
and 1832. The latter group, composed primarily of departments in the South,
includes the top 25 ­percent most violent departments based on the num-
ber of ­people who participated in violent events (adjusted for population
size).82 The results should be reviewed with some caution b ­ ecause it is dif-
ficult to ascertain the quality of department-­level statistics in 1830s France,83
but they do suggest that primary education ­after the Guizot Law of 1833
expanded more in departments that experienced more mass vio­lence be-
tween 1830 and 1832.
Multiple ­factors could of course be ­behind this finding besides the ex-
planation I propose. For example, while it is pos­si­ble that the expansion of
primary schooling in violence-­afflicted departments was greater ­because the
central government had a par­tic­u­lar interest in expanding primary educa-
tion due to the vio­lence in ­those departments, it is also pos­si­ble that ­these
departments happened to have more local fiscal capacity, more local demand
for education, more need for workers who could contribute to industrial-
ization, or a greater presence of the Catholic Church—­factors that could
also have contributed to the expansion of primary schooling. I considered
each of ­these plausible explanations and did not find support for them.

81. For department-­level data about enrollment and number of primary schools, I rely on Inter-­
university Consortium for ­Political and Social Research (1992), which digitized information col-
lected by the French central government during the 1830s. For department-­level data about vio­
lence, I rely on Tilly and Zambrano (2006).
82. Figure 4.2 groups departments based on the level of vio­lence in 1830–1832 as ­measured by
the number of participants in violent events over t­ hose three years (adjusted by the department’s
population size); 36 departments experienced no conflict, 48 departments experienced violent
conflict, and 2 departments had missing data. Among the 48 departments with violent conflict, the
distribution of vio­lence intensity is not symmetric; most departments exhibit low levels of vio­
lence, but some departments exhibit higher levels of vio­lence. Departments with 50 or more par-
ticipants in violent conflict per 10,000 inhabitants represent the top 25 ­percent most violent de-
partments; ­these are the “high vio­lence” departments in figure 4.2. Paris was an outlier, with 1,015
participants in violent conflict per 10,000 inhabitants, and is excluded from the analy­sis. Tilly and
Zambrano (2006) also compiled information about other m ­ easures of vio­lence, including the
number of violent events and the number of resulting deaths, and ­these are highly correlated with
the number of participants involved in violent events. However, I do not use ­these other variables
in the analy­sis ­because they contain more missing data.
83. It is pos­si­ble that some departments underreported and ­others exaggerated the number of
schools and students. T ­ hese potential inaccuracies are more likely to cancel out when we aggre-
gate the data at the national level than when we aggregate departments into several groups, hence
the need to be more cautious about the conclusions.
 a) Per capita primary school enrollment
200

July Monarchy begins

July Monarchy ends

150

Falloux Law
Guizot Law
High violence
% growth since 1833

100

No violence
50
Low violence

–50
1830 1835 1840 1845 1850

b) Per capita number of primary schools

150
July Monarchy begins

July Monarchy ends

Guizot Law

Falloux Law
% growth since 1829

100
High violence

No violence

Low violence
50

0
1830 1835 1840 1845 1850

Figure 4.2. Percentage growth in primary school enrollment and in the number
of primary schools a­ fter the Guizot Law of 1833 in French departments that expe-
rienced high, low, or no vio­lence between 1830 and 1832. See text and footnotes
for sources and methodology.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 151

With re­spect to the concern that primary education may have expanded
more in violent departments ­because t­ hese departments had more resources,
available evidence on the capacity to fund education suggests that this was
not true. Municipal revenues ­were lower, not higher, in ­those municipali-
ties that had higher levels of mass vio­lence. In par­tic­u­lar, while in depart-
ments with high levels of conflict, an average 14.5 ­percent of municipalities
had sufficient resources to fund primary education out of their ordinary
revenues, this figure ­rose to 21.6 ­percent of municipalities in departments
with low or no conflict.84
Two pieces of evidence suggest that local demand was also not a crucial
driver ­behind the expansion of primary education during the July Monar-
chy. The first comes from the letters of grievances that the clergy, nobility,
and third estate sent to King Louis XVI in 1788; in a systematic study of the
content of ­these letters, economic historians Mara Squicciarini and Nico
Voitgländer found, first, that demand for modernization and for education
in par­tic­u­lar was very low among the lower social classes, and second, that
places where this demand was higher did not experience more educational
expansion during the July Monarchy.85 The second piece of evidence comes
from how primary education was funded in the 1830s. If we believe that a
municipality’s voluntary decision to introduce a new tax to fund primary
education—as opposed to having that tax imposed by the central govern-
ment via decree—is a good proxy for the level of local demand for educa-
tion, then what we see is that demand for primary education was lower in
municipalities with high levels of vio­lence: In ­these departments, on aver-
age 45 ­percent of communes ­were imposed a tax by royal decree ­after fail-
ing to voluntarily impose a tax on their own, compared to 38 ­percent of
communes in departments with low or no conflict.86
­There is also l­ittle evidence that the French government had economic
reasons for expanding primary schooling in departments that experienced
more mass vio­lence. We have already seen that Guizot, who pushed the bill
through parliament and oversaw the initial implementation of the law, had

84. My calculations rely on data on education funding in 1834 from Inter-­university Consor-
tium for P­ olitical and Social Research (1992) and data on violent events from Tilly and Zambrano
(2006).
85. Squicciarini and Voitgländer (2016).
86. See the online appendix. My calculations rely on data on education funding in 1834 from
Inter-­university Consortium for ­Political and Social Research (1992) and data on violent events
from Tilly and Zambrano (2006).
152 | Chapter 4

l­ ittle interest in using primary education to improve the material well-­being

of the lower classes. Still, we might won­der ­whether the government had
other economic goals. In par­tic­u­lar, southern France, where the prob­lem
of vio­lence was greater, also tended to be more rural than the rest of the
country. Did the government seek to expand primary education in that re-
gion to promote industrialization? Two pieces of evidence suggest it did not.
First, like in Prus­sia, French education legislation prescribed dif­fer­ent types
of primary education for rural and urban areas. In the latter, c­ hildren had
access to “upper” primary schools that taught subjects that might be useful
for city jobs, including “geometry and its usual applications” and “notions
of physics and natu­ral history relevant to everyday life.” However, in rural
areas ­children only had access to “lower” primary schools. “In the most with-
drawn countryside and for the most h ­ umble social conditions,” Guizot in-
sisted that primary schools “must be very ­simple” and must focus on moral
and religious instruction.87
Moreover, industrialists themselves—­whom we would expect to support
policies designed to promote industrialization—­were not keen on the state’s
efforts to expand primary education. In 1833, a group of large manufactur-
ers wrote a letter to the government in which they noted that although the
“physical and moral improvement of the working class” could be improved,
they ­were concerned about the impact that the Guizot Law and the expan-
sion of primary education would have on the supply of ­labor and on their
ability to remain competitive.88
Fi­nally, the role of the Catholic Church deserves special attention given
the prominence of religious conflict in French politics since the 1789 Revo-
lution and the fact that the presence of the Church tended to be stronger
in departments that experienced more vio­lence in the 1830s. Was the expan-
sion of primary schooling during this ­decade the result of the Church’s
efforts? The answer appears to be no: most of the expansion of primary
schooling during the July Monarchy, including the expansion seen in de-
partments with high levels of vio­lence, came from an expansion of public
schools,89 which w ­ ere predominantly secular.90

87. Guizot (1860), t. 3, p. 20.

88. Société pour l’Instruction élémentaire (1833), pp. 150–151.
89. Statistics about the number of public and private schools are available starting in 1834;
­because they ­were not collected ­every year, 1850 is the year with available statistics that is closest to
the end of the July Monarchy. During this period from 1834 to 1850, the number of public schools
increased by about 94 ­percent, whereas the number of private schools increased by 51 ­percent.
90. See the online appendix. I estimate that 74 ­percent of public school enrollment corre-
sponded to public secular schools. This estimate was obtained using official data reported by Grew
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 153

Did the state make a stronger effort to expand public schooling in places
where the Catholic Church was stronger precisely ­because it wanted to re-
duce the power of the Church? Again, the answer appears to be no: depart-
ments where the historical presence of the Church was stronger, as signaled
by a higher share of clergymen who in 1791 confirmed their loyalty to the
Catholic Church instead of swearing allegiance to the Civil Constitution
promoted by the revolutionary government,91 did not see larger increases
in the number of primary schools during the July Monarchy. Indeed, the
Protestant Guizot, a pragmatic, saw the Catholic Church’s contribution to
the expansion of schooling as necessary to accomplish universal provision
of primary education ­because the state simply did not have enough ­political
power or resources to accomplish this goal on its own. Guizot’s interest in
encouraging the church’s cooperation is what led him to give the local priest
a seat within the local councils created to oversee primary schools.
Where the influence of the Church was felt the most was not in the ex-
pansion of primary education but in the content of primary education.
Guizot and most members of parliament w ­ ere of the opinion that moral
education had to include religious teachings b ­ ecause, in 1830s France, the
Catholic Church was still the most legitimate authority on m ­ atters of mo-
rality. ­Because a crucial goal of primary education was to teach the masses
obedience, docility, and re­spect for authority, moral and religious education
was not just a standalone subject; the entire curriculum and school atmo-
sphere was supposed to promote good moral be­hav­ior. In a manual for pri-
mary school teachers written by central authorities in 1836, the chapter on
moral education was by far the longest one; in addition, the manual included
chapters about religious education and about the “Moral o ­ rganization of

and Harrigan (1991) and applying the following procedures and assumptions. ­There ­were four
types of primary schools during the July Monarchy: public secular, public religious, private secu-
lar, and private religious. Disaggregated data on the number of schools and student enrollment in
each type of school ­were not collected during the July Monarchy. However, available statistics on
the number of teachers working in each type of school (collected for 1834 and 1837) show that the
proportion of public school teachers in secular schools remained stable during 1834–1837, the pe-
riod of fastest expansion in the number of primary schools. Based on this stability, I assume that
the distribution of public school students enrolled in secular vs. religious schools also remained
stable during the July Monarchy. Available statistics for students indicate that 74 ­percent of public
school c­ hildren ­were enrolled in secular schools in 1850, and the remaining 26 ­percent of public
school c­ hildren ­were enrolled in religious schools. Based on the assumption I stated previously,
­these figures lead me to estimate that in 1834, around 74 ­percent of public school c­ hildren w ­ ere
enrolled in secular schools.
91. The choice of this proxy for the historical presence of the Catholic Church follows Squic-
ciarini (2020).
154 | Chapter 4

the school: Discipline; moral and religious spirit.”92 Similarly, in Alphabet

des écoles primaires extrait de l’alphabet et premier livre de lecture, authorized
by the Royal Council on Public Instruction for teaching primary school
­children how to read, write, and pronounce French, the section that teaches
vocabulary and pronunciation emphasizes moral values and secular and
religious authorities. For example, the sound for “oi” is exemplified with
the word “roi,” “ieu” with “Dieu,” “ia” with “diable,” “ié” with pitié, “ien” with
“bien.” Similarly, the section of the textbook used to teach reading skills is
filled with religious and moral content. C ­ hildren are taught about the im-
portance of obeying God and one’s parents and teachers. They are told that
­those who behave righ­teously ­will be on God’s good side, while ­those who
misbehave should fear the consequences.93 Even textbooks designed to
teach natu­ral science, like Des merveilles de la nature, ou Lectures physico-­
morales à l’usage des écoles primaires, written by a school inspector, con-
stantly refer to “God” and “morality.”94
Still, the Minister of Public Instruction—­who before assuming his role
requested that the phrase “and Worship” be removed from his title and ec-
clesiastical affairs be transferred to the Ministry of Justice—­believed that
the Church could only go so far in accomplishing the goals of primary ed-
ucation. Most of his contemporaries viewed the Catholic Church with
­great suspicion and hostility and wanted the state to constrain and oversee
priests’ action in primary schools. That was why the Guizot Law delegated
the supervision of schools to municipal councils predominantly made up
of secular municipal authorities. In addition, the Guizot Law gave the state
the final word over teacher certification. It stipulated that the education
commission of each department, ­under the authority of the national Min-
ister of Education, would have the authority to conduct teacher examina-
tions and issue competency certificates to teachers, and that aspiring teachers
must also obtain a certificate of morality issued by the mayor and the local
municipal council, not the local priest—­even if teachers wanted to work
in private religious schools.
The reason for constraining the power of the Church over primary edu-
cation, Guizot and his contemporaries argued, was the belief that primary
education should serve the interests of the state, ­whether or not ­those ­were
aligned with the interests of the Church:

92. Nouveau manuel des écoles primaires (1836).

93. Alphabet des écoles primaires (1841).
94. Des merveilles de la nature (1838).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 155

The g­ reat prob­lem of modern socie­ties is the government of minds. . . . ​

Formerly the Church alone had the government of spirits. She
­p ossessed both moral authority and intellectual supremacy. She was
responsible for nourishing intelligences as well as regulating souls,
and science was her domain almost as exclusively as faith. This is no
longer: intelligence and science have spread and secularized. . . . ​The
government [must] not remain foreign to the moral development of
succeeding generations, and as each new generation appears on the
scene the government must establish intimate links between ­these
new generations and the state within which God created them. Large
scientific establishments and large establishments of public instruc-
tion supported by large public powers, this is the legitimate and nec-
essary role that civil government plays in intellectual affairs.95

In sum, the July Monarchy’s efforts to centralize and expand primary ed-
ucation through the Guizot Law ­were deeply s­ haped by the new regime’s
experience with mass vio­lence and the national guard’s unwillingness to
repress the masses. In an attempt to prevent f­ uture rebellion against the re-
gime, the national government expanded primary education to teach
­children to re­spect the state and its laws, focusing its efforts especially in
­those areas of France where the level of mass vio­lence had been greater. In-
dustrialists ­were not particularly supportive of educational expansion, nor
­were the government’s efforts driven by military threats from other states.
Although the Guizot Law did not entirely supplant the place of municipali-
ties or the Catholic Church in primary education, neither municipal char-
acteristics nor the presence of the Church can explain why the expansion of
schooling was greater in more violent areas. What seems more likely is that
the government prioritized educational expansion in formerly v­ iolent
areas ­because ­those ­were precisely the areas where the prob­lem of morality
was deemed to be greater.

CHILE
Within Latin Amer­ic­ a, Chile was a precursor in creating a centralized pri-
mary education system, ­doing so one year ­after the civil war of 1859, which
has been characterized by historians as “the most acute conflict that the rul-
ing oligarchy faced since the consolidation of its p ­ olitical proj­ect in the

95. Guizot (1860), t.3, p. 14.

156 | Chapter 4

1830s.”96 The proximity of this civil war and the 1860 General Law of Primary
Education was not coincidental. Efforts to centralize primary education
­were driven by a shared fear among conservative and liberal elites in San-
tiago, heightened by the civil war, that neglecting the moral education of
the masses would endanger the power of the central government and the
stability of the oligarchic ­political regime.
When civil war erupted in 1859, it threatened to overhaul the ­political in-
stitutions established in the 1830s. ­After winning a civil war against liberals
in 1830, conservative elites had consolidated their p ­ olitical hegemony aided
by the 1833 Constitution. The Constitution concentrated power in the pres-
ident, established a close Church-State relationship, and established liter-
acy and wealth requirements for voting, yielding an electorate of less than
2 ­percent of the population. A twenty-­five-­year period of ­political stability
­under conservative, oligarchic rule followed. In 1851, a dispute within the
Conservative Party over the succession of incumbent president Manuel
Bulnes escalated into civil war, but the conflict lacked mass participation;
it was purely a fight among ­political conservative elites that never threat-
ened to alter the established p ­ olitical institutions.97
The 1859 civil war differed from previous civil wars.98 Led by radical lib-
eral elites in the northern mining province of Atacama, it involved wide-
spread ­popular participation from peasants, workers, artisans, and other
members of the lower classes who joined the Atacama rebel forces. Rebel
demands threatened to upend a long-­standing balance of ­political and eco-
nomic power that strongly favored the conservative and liberal elites in
Santiago. On the p­ olitical front, rebels demanded a new Constitution which,
if approved, would have substantially reduced the powers for the central
government in Santiago, constrained presidential powers, extended voting
rights gradually, and excluded the Church from state m ­ atters. On the eco-
nomic front, rebels also demanded less central government interference and
lower taxes on copper and silver exports. At the time, Atacama was a lead-
ing mining province, along with its southern neighbor Coquimbo, and the

96. Ortega Martínez and Rubio Apiolaza (2006), p. 13.

97. Collier (2003), pp. 98–102; Ortega Martínez and Rubio Apiolaza (2006).
98. Chile also had civil wars in 1829–1830, 1851, and 1891, but the 1859 civil war was the first to
meet all scope conditions (see chapter 6) and, crucially, the first with adequate subnational data to
assess the second theoretical prediction.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 157

central government’s heavy reliance on copper and silver exports was per-
ceived by Atacama’s mining ­owners and workers as unfair.99
The war lasted four long months, from January 5, when rebels led by
Pedro León Gallo seized Atacama’s capital Copiapó, to May 12, when the
central government fi­nally removed the rebels from power. In between, Ata-
cama rebel forces temporarily occupied Coquimbo, controlling its capital
La Serena from mid-­March to the end of April. As news traveled about the
“revolution” in Atacama, as newspapers described it, the provinces of Acon-
cagua, Colchagua, and Talca briefly joined in rebellion, but unlike Atacama,
­these ­were quickly suppressed by government military forces.
The central government faced multiple difficulties in defeating the Ata-
cama rebels. At the beginning of the civil war, rebel forces w ­ ere four-­to five
thousand strong, while central government troops barely exceeded two
thousand, their presence in Atacama minimal. Atacama rebels ­were also
­incredibly well-­resourced; they controlled the t­ reasury of one of the wealth-
iest provinces. Atacama’s mineral resources and metal industry enabled
rebels to mint large quantities of silver coins and, crucially, produce artil-
lery including cannons, ­rifles, and other weapons. Furthermore, Atacama
was remote and inaccessible. Land travel to the capital Copiapó, located 800
kilo­meters north of Santiago, would have required government troops to
travel through long stretches of deserted territory with few looting oppor-
tunities or food sources. Travel by sea was similarly difficult. The closest port
was Caldera, also controlled by rebels. Indeed, the government attempted
to land t­ here on January 16, but soon retreated a­ fter realizing its armed forces
­were insufficient. Inability to defeat the rebels led conservative president
Manuel Montt to seek extraordinary powers to expand the government’s
troops. At the end of April 1859, a­ fter many failed attempts and lost ­battles,
and owing to a tactical ­mistake by the rebels, the central government
­defeated Atacama’s rebel forces, which by then had also occupied Co­
quimbo. In May, it fi­nally recovered Copiapó.
The war brought together conservative and liberal elites in Santiago,
united by their interest to preserve the centralization of p ­ olitical power,
­oligarchic institutions, and economic policies that benefited them. In par­
tic­u­lar, Santiago liberals supported conservative president Manuel Montt’s
efforts to suppress Atacama’s radical rebels. Even ­after the war ended,
throughout the 1860s liberals and conservatives remained formally allied via

99. Fernández Abara (2016).

158 | Chapter 4

the Liberal-­Conservative Fusion. Their main opponent was the new Radi-
cal Party formed in 1863 by former Atacama rebels.100
In addition to reconfiguring the landscape of ­political parties in Chile,
the 1859 civil war also reshaped primary education provision, which tran-
sitioned from a decentralized system controlled by municipalities to a
centralized one controlled from Santiago. The 1833 Constitution had given
the state a general mandate to promote public education but left the man-
agement and funding of primary education to municipalities, reflecting
national elites’ greater concern about promoting secondary and university
education to ensure a steady supply of bureaucrats.101 Beginning in the 1840s,
ideas about the ­political importance of primary education began to spread
across national elites. Spearheading this dissemination was Domingo F.
Sarmiento, an exiled Argentine politician who, upon arriving in Chile in
1840, became a prolific journalist and writer.102 Sarmiento argued that pri-
mary education would extirpate the violent predispositions of the masses
and thus promote social order in newly i­ ndependent Latin American coun-
tries.103 Other Chilean public intellectuals agreed with his emphasis on the
moralizing and civilizing function of mass education, including the liberal
­brothers Luis and Gregorio Amunátegui. The latter wrote an influential
essay on what primary education should look like, where they argued:

Just attending a school where reading and writing and discipline are
taught, actively promotes the education of students’ hearts. At school,
­children, generally speaking, develop habits of order, of submission, . . . ​
that ­later they cannot forget. . . . ​They ­will display the same virtues any-
where e­ lse as in school. The student accustomed to completing his
homework accurately, . . . ​to suffering a punishment if he does not com-
ply . . . ​­will most likely become an honest individual who ­will never
break his word . . . ​The more educated they are, the more they perceive
the penalties inherent in the violation of divine and ­human laws.104

Despite the circulation since the 1840s of ideas highlighting the state-­
building role of primary education, over the next two ­decades primary
schooling expanded largely through municipal and private initiatives. The

100. Edwards (1932); Edwards Vives and Frei Montalva (1949); Salazar and Pinto (2018).
101. Jáksic and Serrano (1990).
102. Campobassi (1975).
103. Sarmiento (1845).
104. Amunátegui and Amunátegui (1856).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 159

Chilean government gave Sarmiento and the Amunátegui b ­ rothers some

space to implement their ideas. For example, in 1842, it appointed Sarmiento
as director of the first state-­controlled Normal School to train primary
school teachers in Santiago, and in 1845, it sent him on an official mission
to learn about primary education in E ­ urope and the United States, which
resulted in the publication of Educación ­Popular.105 The government also
began subsidizing municipal schools. Still, t­ hese initiatives fell short of es-
tablishing anything close to the centralized education system that Sarmiento
advocated for. In fact, as Chilean historians Sol Serrano, Macarena Ponce
de León, and Francisca Rengifo explain, government subsidies w ­ ere allo-
cated “haphazardly” in response to demands articulated by local elites, lack-
ing any kind of central planning.106
Two separate attempts to create a national framework for primary edu-
cation failed to receive support in Congress before the 1859 civil war. The
first proposal, presented by the liberal politician José Lastarria in 1841, did
not make it to the floor; Lastarria removed it following feedback that it
would never make it through Congress. A second proposal debated by the
Chamber of Deputies in 1849 also failed. Among its most controversial
provisions ­were the creation of a dedicated tax to fund primary education
and of a Primary School General Inspectorate, which according to most
congressmembers gave excessive power to the state in m ­ atters of primary
education. 107

Support for the creation of a national primary education system increased

dramatically ­after the civil war. Buttressing the central government’s postwar
effort to control and promote primary education was national elites’ belief
that indoctrinating the masses would help prevent ­future civil wars. The
1859 civil war greatly strengthened this belief, as President Montt’s speeches
demonstrate. When Montt spoke in 1857 and 1858 during the inauguration
of Congress, he began by noting that the previous year had been a peaceful
one.108 In this context, in his 1857 speech, Montt only mentioned primary
schooling to express satisfaction with its expansion,109 And in 1858, he did
not mention primary education at all.110 By contrast, Montt’s 1859 speech

105. Campobassi (1975).

106. Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012), pp. 156–158.
107. Egaña Baraona (2000).
108. Chile (1859a), pp. 1, 241.
109. Chile (1859a), p. 10.
110. Chile (1859a), pp. 241–252.
160 | Chapter 4

to Congress, delivered less than two months a­ fter the central government
reclaimed Atacama, began highlighting the war, noting that “the order of
the Republic has just suffered a difficult test.”111 Montt linked the “anarchy”
and “disorder” of 1859 to rebel leaders’ ability to mobilize the masses,
whom he argued had “evil passions” and poor moral values:112

The rebels . . . ​looked for support in the evil passions and ignorance of
the masses . . . ​That way they ­were able to introduce anarchy . . . ​a state
of disorder . . . ​The crisis . . . ​deteriorated the moral values of the masses
and weakened their re­spect for authority.113

Whereas before the civil war Montt had not prioritized primary educa-
tion, by 1859 his diagnosis of the war’s moral roots convinced him other­
wise. He told Congress that “It is essential for the central government to
make an extraordinary effort to ensure tranquility and domestic order,”114
and urged it to pass a national primary education law to address the moral
roots of disorder. Departing from prewar speeches in his assessment of the
state of primary education, in 1859 Montt argued that “Primary schooling . . . ​
does not satisfy our needs”:115

A large part of the evils that affect the public order are rooted in igno-
rance. Extirpating it through a system of common schools that enlight-
ens the masses by correcting their bad manners is the most urgent
task you can devote yourselves to.116

In 1860 Congress passed the General Law of Primary Education, the first
comprehensive national law regulating primary education, considered by
Chilean historians “a p
­ olitical and legislative landmark.”117 This law replaced
the decentralized primary education system with a new system in which
the central government became the main provider, funder, regulator, and
supervisor of primary education. The law prohibited public school tuition,
imposed a national curriculum emphasizing moral and religious education,

111. Chile (1859b), p. 5.

112. Chile (1859b), pp. 6–7.
113. Chile (1859b), pp. 6–7.
114. Chile (1859b), p. 7.
115. Chile (1859b), p. 10.
116. Chile (1859b), p. 11.
117. Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012), p. 159.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 161

required prospective teachers to be trained in state-­controlled Normal

Schools, and created a centralized inspectorate.118
While in the 1840s national elites had been reluctant to intervene in
­matters of primary education, conservatives and liberals ­after the 1859 civil
war agreed that creating a national primary education system was an ur-
gent need. They also agreed that the goal of such a system was, in the words
of Chilean historian Loreto Egaña Baraona, to act as “a moralizing ele­ment
and a guardian of order”; and that, ­because it “constituted a social function,
the state should be responsible for its development.”119 Serrano and her col-
leagues also note that a­ fter the 1859 civil war “the p­ olitical elite in general
supported public primary schooling, with the exception of a few isolated”
members of Congress. Although a few members expressed “concern that
the rural masses’ expectations might change” due to their education, “fi­nally
­these voices did not have much p ­ olitical influence. Among the p ­ olitical elite,
what prevailed was a sentiment of the urgency to expand schooling. On this
front, consensus among conservatives and liberals existed.”120
This conservative-­liberal consensus was also pre­sent in the media. In
June 1859, immediately following the civil war, the conservative newspaper
El Mercurio characterized primary education reform as “a moral reform,” and
argued that “reforming mass customs” must be “our main objective.”121 The
more moderate El Ferrocarril concurred. In an article published in Novem-
ber 1859, it argued that “ignorance” is man’s worst adviser; “­there is no crime”
it does not imagine: “The unenlightened classes are the most real, effective,
permanent and difficult danger that can have a nation in constant siege.”122
The 1860 law yielded not only centralization of educational authority, but
also expansion of primary schooling ­under the state’s directive. Implemen-
tation of the law began in 1863 during the presidency of José Pérez Mascay-
ano, who was elected by a co­ali­tion of conservative and liberal politicians
in 1861. Pérez Mascayano appointed ultra-­conservative politician Miguel
María Güemes as Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction.
Güemes issued the 1863 Reglamento General de Instrucción Primaria, which
established the regulatory details needed to begin implementation. Once

118. Egaña Baraona (2000); Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012); http://­www​.­archivo​
­nacional​.­cl​/­616​/­w3​-­article​-­28319​.html.
119. Egaña Baraona (2000), p. 30.
120. Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012), p. 82.
121. Egaña Baraona (2000), p. 32.
122. Egaña Baraona (2000), p. 34.
162 | Chapter 4

the Reglamento was in place, Güemes’s ministry oversaw a major reor­ga­ni­

za­tion of the supply of primary schooling, closing some schools, consoli-
dating ­others, leaving ­others untouched, and creating new ones.
As predicted by the book’s theory, the central government’s decision re-
garding how many schools to maintain varied considerably across provinces
as a function of the threat they posed to the government during the civil
war. The largest expansion of primary schooling occurred in Atacama, the
bastion of the rebellion and the province where the central government had
found it most difficult to restore its power. This is shown in figure 4.3, which
uses statistics on the number of primary schools maintained by the central
government and the number of students enrolled in t­hese schools, avail-
able by province since 1859.123 ­These statistics offer evidence that once the
1863 Reglamento was issued and the Ministry of Public Instruction began
implementing the 1860 law, the number of primary schools maintained by
the central government in Atacama increased markedly. The increased avail-
ability of primary schools in Atacama following the central government’s
intervention ­after 1863 was also accompanied by sharp increases in primary
school enrollment, which climbed from around 8 ­percent of the population
ages 5–14 years before 1863 to over 14 ­percent just by 1865. By contrast, in
provinces where the rebellion was quickly suppressed by the central gov-
ernment (Aconcagua, Colchagua, Coquimbo, and Talca) and in provinces
that had remained loyal to the government throughout the 1859 conflict,
the government did not prioritize the expansion of primary schooling.
In addition to promoting the expansion of primary education, the na-
tional government also selected and distributed the textbooks that could
be used in primary schools. In line with its educational goals, most text-
books emphasized moral lessons. They sought to instill in ­children a sense
of duty, stressed the value of being obedient, submissive, loving, and respectful
of their parents, God, and Chilean laws. One commonly used textbook,
Libro de la infancia (Book of Childhood), described a good student as some-
one who “does not laugh or talk with his peers; does not dare play. When
the teacher is not looking at him he remains as still as when he looks straight

123. The data come from multiple years of the Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile. Statis-
tics for primary education at the provincial level w ­ ere not systematically collected before 1859. The
few data that exist before that year (e.g., for 1853) are of poor quality. For this reason, I do not pre­
sent trends using ­these data. However, the conclusion that, following the 1859 civil war, the central
government prioritized the expansion of primary education in Atacama remains true even if we
­were to incorporate ­these data into the analy­sis.
 a) Primary schools maintained by central government

General Law of Primary

Implementation of

Education begins
Atacama
Schools per 10,000 inhabitants

4 Non-rebel provinces

Easily defeated rebel provinces

3
1860 1865 1870 1875 1880

b) Primary school enrollment rate

16
Atacama
Enrollment (percent of pop. 5–14 years)

General Law of Primary

Implementation of

Education begins

14

12

10
Non-rebel provinces

Easily defeated rebel provinces

6

1860 1865 1870 1875 1880

Figure 4.3. Public primary schools maintained by the Chilean central govern-
ment, and primary school enrollment, in Atacama and the rest of Chile, 1859–
1878. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.
164 | Chapter 4

at him.” Another common textbook, La conciencia de un niño (A Child’s Con-

science), written in the first person so that the child would internalize its
content, taught c­ hildren to be content with what they had, including pas-
sages such as: “I am very happy; I have excellent parents who continually
take care of me. Their goodness provides for every­thing I need.” The same
book had a chapter titled “What a child must know” which told c­ hildren:
“if you are a subject, you must obey and behave well” and “not judge your
superiors based on what you see; they have goals you do not understand.”124
Still, the patterns of school expansion shown in figure 4.3 could also be
driven by other explanations. One question is ­whether the central govern-
ment expanded primary education in Atacama to appease rebels through re­
distribution. The content of primary education offers clues about the plausi-
bility of this argument. Recall that Atacama rebels w ­ ere liberal and opposed
Church intromission in state m ­ atters. Had the government sought to appease
rebels, it would have promoted secular education, not the heavi­ly Catholic
schools it actually promoted. The 1860 General Law of Primary Education es-
tablished a national curriculum that mandated teaching “Christian Doctrine
and Morality,” the opposite of what Atacama rebels would have wanted. More-
over, as we saw ­earlier, the initial implementation of the law was charged to a
fervent defender of the Catholic Church’s power, Miguel María Güemes, ap-
pointed Minister of Public Instruction by Montt’s successor. Throughout the
1860s, the Ministry approved and distributed textbooks on reading and writ-
ing suffused with religious content. La conciencia de un niño, for example,
taught reading skills by having ­children read passages such as the following:

If I am happy with what my parents give me to eat and drink; . . . ​if

I am nice to ­others, I ­will sow the seeds of my good be­hav­ior . . . ​If
I behave well and satisfy God, when I die I w
­ ill go to Heaven.125

The presence of religious content in the national curriculum and school

textbooks should not be confused with the notion that the expansion
of primary education was driven by the Catholic Church. While the type
of moral education prescribed by the 1860 law included considerable reli-
gious content, the same law also made it clear that the central government
was the supreme authority over education issues, retaining the power not
only to alter the curriculum but also a mono­poly over teacher training and

124. Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012), pp. 309–312.

125. Sarmiento (1844), pp. 32–33, 36.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 165

certification, the authority to determine where to construct schools, and

the authority to inspect schools and apply penalties to ­those that deviated
from the central government’s education directives.
Nor ­were the central government’s efforts to expand primary education
a response to parental demands. On this point, t­ here is ample evidence from
primary and secondary historical sources that elites in Santiago generally
believed that parents w ­ ere “indifferent” or “resistant” to primary schooling
due to their “ignorance” and “selfish” reliance on their c­ hildren’s ­labor.126
­These perceptions ­were informed by the reports that the central gov­
ernment received from school inspectors, who wrote that “parents’ gen-
eral indifference ­toward their c­ hildren’s education continues to be the
most power­ful obstacle we face when it comes to disseminating primary
instruction.”127 To be clear, the existing evidence does not imply that elites
­were correct about parents’ reluctance to send their ­children to school. But
if unmet demand for primary schooling existed, most members of Congress
appear to have not known about it.128
Interstate wars also fail to explain the expansion of primary schooling in
Chile ­after the 1859 civil war. The large expansion of schooling observed
in Atacama in 1864 occurred during a period when external military threats
­were not salient.129 Moreover, the national curriculum established by the
1860 law did not include subjects typically associated with preparing f­ uture
soldiers and nationalist citizens, such as physical education, geography, and
history. The mandatory subjects and the textbooks used to teach c­ hildren
reflected the “moralizing” goals of primary schools, which sought to instill
re­spect for authorities, rules, and norms, and to inculcate, to quote the
Amunátegui b ­ rothers, “habits of order, of submission, that ­later they can-
not forget.”
Another possibility is that the central government expanded primary
schooling in Atacama to foster the mining industry. Both Atacama and Co-
quimbo comprised the Norte Chico region, which benefited from copper

126. Chile (1860a); Egaña Baraona (2000); Archivo Nacional de Chile.

127. Egaña Baraona (2000).
128. Ponce de León (2010).
129. Chile fought wars against neighbor states in 1836–1839 and 1879–1884, and against Spain in
1865–1866. While it is pos­si­ble that the expansion of primary education in the late 1860s was partly
a response to the war against Spain, it is not clear why the government would have targeted Atac-
ama specifically. Moreover, the sharpest expansion of Atacama’s primary education took place in
1864, when international peace prevailed.
166 | Chapter 4

General Law of Primary

Implementation of

Education begins
Atacama
Schools per 10,000 inhabitants

Coquimbo

1860 1865 1870 1875 1880

Figure 4.4. Public primary schools maintained by the Chilean central government
in the mining provinces of Atacama and Coquimbo, 1859–1878. See text and foot-
notes for sources and methodology.

and silver booms and accounted for the bulk of Chile’s mineral exports.130
Coquimbo was synonymous with copper, producing one-­third of Chile’s
copper output, while Atacama stood out for silver, accounting for at least
one-­third of Chile’s silver production. ­These commodities w ­ ere im­mensely
and increasingly valuable to the Chilean economy throughout the nine-
teenth ­century, with silver dominating in the 1830s, and copper leading
from the 1840s through the 1880s.131 If the central government’s efforts to
promote primary schooling had sought to support the mining industry, we
should see similar expansion in both provinces. If instead educational ex-
pansion responded to the civil war, we should observe greater expansion in
Atacama, since that province represented the main threat to the central gov-
ernment. We observe the latter, as figure 4.4 shows.
Some readers may also won­der ­whether the patterns shown in figure 4.3
are driven by differences in state capacity. It is impor­tant to note that differ-

130. Collier and Sater (2004), pp. 76–80.

131. San Román (1894); Pederson (1965).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 167

ences in local capacity are unlikely to explain ­these patterns ­because the
graphs show the number of schools controlled by the central government.
Still, perhaps efforts made by the central government to win the 1859 civil
war led to stronger central state capacity, in turn enabling it to implement
long-­standing educational goals that could not materialize before the war.
To investigate this possibility, I examined ­whether war induced an improve-
ment in central state capacity, m ­ easured by national fiscal revenues. The
answer is no. In fact, Atacama saw significant growth in primary schools in
1864 despite declining national fiscal revenues between 1859 and 1864.132
In sum, the 1859 Chilean civil war threatened the state’s authority. In re-
sponse, the central government took over primary education and expanded
its provision in former rebel areas. Crucial to the central government’s post-
war educational efforts was the belief that indoctrinating the masses would
help prevent ­future civil wars and crises of internal order.

ARGENTINA
At the start of the twentieth c­ entury, Argentina was viewed as Latin Amer­
i­ca’s leader in primary education provision. Yet four d­ ecades ­earlier, when
Chile was rolling out a national primary education system, Argentina’s
primary schooling levels remained unremarkable. The turning point oc-
curred with the passage of the 1884 Law of Common Education, a national
law that would shape primary education for more than a c­ entury. This law
declared that primary education would be ­free, universal, compulsory, and
secular, established a common national curriculum, a national inspectorate,
and state mono­poly over teacher training, and granted extensive regulatory
and oversight powers to the central government through the new National
Education Council.133 It also initiated a period of rapid growth in primary
school coverage, shown in figure 4.5: while enrollment rates had remained

132. See the online appendix. In addition, the fact that population growth between 1854 and
1865 was greater in Atacama than the rest of Chile does not explain the patterns shown in fig-
ure 4.3 ­because the number of schools and students are adjusted by total provincial population.
133. The historical lit­er­a­ture on the significance of the 1884 law is too extensive to cite. Some
examples include: Tedesco (1966); Puiggrós and Carli (1991); Alliaud (2007). For a shorter but au-
thoritative example, see the Biblioteca Nacional del Maestro’s proj­ect Memoria e Historia de la
Educación Argentina, which describes the 1884 law as the “piedra basal” (foundation stone) of the
Argentine national education system (Biblioteca Nacional del Maestro, n.d., “Ley de Educación
Común 1420”). Similary, Alliaud (2007) writes: “The creation of the National Education Council and
the sanctioning of the Law of Common Education, in 1881 and 1884, respectively, are two events that
mark the emergence and consolidation of a national education system . . . ​The Congreso Pedagógico
168 | Chapter 4

80

universal male suffrage

Oligarchic regime begins
Common Education Law

Introduction of
Argentina
Percent of population 5-14 years

60

40
Latin America

20

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960

Figure 4.5. Primary school enrollment rates in Argentina and in Latin Amer­i­ca, as a
percentage of the population ages 5–14 years, 1860–1960. See text and footnotes for
sources and methodology.

relatively flat at around 20 ­percent in the two d ­ ecades preceding the 1884
law, in the two d ­ ecades a­ fter its passage enrollment more than doubled,
placing Argentina on a path that set it apart from the rest of the region. Why
did the state make such a considerable effort to control and promote primary
schooling during the 1880s?
The creation of a national primary education system was intimately con-
nected to the long history of civil wars that afflicted Argentina since its
­independence from Spain in 1816 u ­ ntil 1880. This assertion stems from my
own investigation and from dozens of studies conducted by Argentine
historians. One of the classic books on the origins of Argentina’s primary
education system, Juan Carlos Tedesco’s Educación y Sociedad en la Argentina
(1880–1945), notes that education “fulfilled, more than an economic func-
tion, a ­political function”—­namely, the “socialization of new generations”
into “notions about the legitimacy of the distribution of power.” Interest in
the “moralizing role of teaching,” says Tedesco, stemmed from the failure

of 1882, an immediate antecedent of the 1884 law, captured and established the basic ­organizing
princi­ples of education” (Alliaud 2007, pp. 56–57; emphasis in the original).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 169

of the central government in Buenos Aires to assert its authority in the rest of
the provinces, known as the Interior:

First and foremost, the diffusion of education was linked to the achieve-
ment of internal ­political stability. . . . ​It was thought that education,
to the extent that it massively disseminated certain princi­ples, would
effectively contribute to the task of eliminating the pockets of ­resistance
to the central government that remained, especially, in the interior of
the country.134

The “pockets of r­ esistance” that Tedesco refers to are the rural paramilitary
groups who for six ­decades, from 1820 to 1880, fought against the centraliza-
tion of authority in Buenos Aires. T ­ hese armed groups made up primarily
of civilians and known as montoneras w ­ ere led by warlords or caudillos from
the Interior. They demanded a federation of autonomous provinces, equal
provincial repre­sen­ta­tion in Congress, restrictions on imports to protect
local economies, and shared access to rents from the port and customs
­located in Buenos Aires City—­the main source of revenue in Argentina’s
export-­based economy. T ­ hese demands clashed with the interests of Bue-
nos Aires elites, who wanted to have direct administrative control of the
entire national territory, congressional repre­sen­ta­tion based on population
size, mono­poly control of the armed forces, an open economy, and crucially,
mono­poly access to rents from the Buenos Aires port and customs.
­Because neither side had sufficient military capacity to clearly impose its
­will on the other, the violent conflict over the distribution of ­political and
economic power between Buenos Aires and the Interior spanned six ­decades.
In that time, the balance of power tilted in ­favor of federalists from the 1830s
to the 1850s—­whose sanctioning of a federal Constitution in 1853 resulted in
Buenos Aires’s secession for the next ten years—­and then gradually shifted
in ­favor of Buenos Aires from 1861 onward, when its military victory led to
reunification ­under a new federal Constitution that gave Buenos Aires
greater privileges compared to the other provinces. Throughout the 1860s
and 1870s, as three dif­fer­ent presidents—­Bartolomé Mitre, Domingo F.
Sarmiento, and Nicolás Avellaneda—­embarked on reforms to consolidate
a central authority, including attempts to form a national army and tax col-
lection authority, rural montoneras again broke out in rebellion.135 During

134. Tedesco (1986), p. 64.

135. Rock (1985).
170 | Chapter 4

Mitre’s presidency alone (1862–1868), ­there w ­ ere 107 rebellions and 90 ­battles
which resulted in a death toll of 4,728. The conflict fi­nally ended with
136

the 1880 Revolution, in which centralizing elites emerged triumphant, lead-

ing to the designation of Buenos Aires City as the country’s capital.
When Roca assumed the presidency in October 1880, consolidating in-
ternal peace and the state’s authority w ­ ere his top priorities, encapsulated
in his motto,“peace and governance.”137 In one of his first speeches as p ­ resident,
he remarked that “nations preserve their i­ndependence and integrity” not
by relying on the enthusiasm of the moment, “but with internal peace, the
civic virtues of the citizen, and re­spect for the princi­ple of authority and
compliance with the Constitution and the laws.”138 Speaking to congress-
men, he repeatedly urged them to “end the revolution and begin the pe-
riod of order,” telling them: “Let this be our public aspiration: peace and
order; let’s realize this agenda and the light that begins to shine on the Re-
public w­ ill become a bright spotlight.”139
To consolidate internal order, Roca put forth an ambitious state-­building
agenda that sought to increase the state’s presence in p ­ eople’s lives.140 Invest-
ments in infrastructure contributed to increase this presence and unify the
country eco­nom­ically and po­liti­cally. Aided by foreign loans and rapidly
growing tax revenues from grain exports, Roca’s administration constructed
new public buildings to ­house the state’s expanding bureaucratic apparatus,
expanded the number of ports, and promoted the extension of the railroads
network. In addition to unifying distant markets, ports and especially rail-
roads ­were designed to facilitate the national government’s ability to access
and exert control over the Interior provinces, a crucial need given Argenti-
na’s large territory.141 In 1869, when the first national census was conducted,
the railroad network was less than 700 kilo­meters long and reached less
than 20 ­percent of the population, a proportion that remained similar ­until
Roca assumed the presidency in 1880. Just ten years ­later, all provincial capi-

136. Oszlak (2012), p. 107.

137. Roca’s motto in Spanish was “paz y administración.”
138. Botana (1971), p. 198.
139. Botana (1971), p. 199.
140. Oszlak (2012).
141. The importance of railroads’ p­ olitical function has been highlighted by Argentine histori-
ans and helps explain not only why the entire network converged t­oward Buenos Aires City,
where the national government resided, but also why the government supported the construction
of railways reaching some of the most remote and poorest provinces, such as the northern Salta
province, which had ­little to contribute to the national economy.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 171

tals had been connected to a railroad network that reached 50 ­percent of the
population and extended over more than 14,000 ­kilo­meters—­the longest in
Latin Amer­ic­ a and the ninth longest in the world at that time.142
In addition to extending the geographic reach of the state, Roca was also
keen to displace the Catholic Church from p ­ eople’s daily lives and replace it
with the state. A law passed in 1884 established a civil registry of births, mar-
riages, and deaths in any territory controlled by the national government,
ending the Church’s prerogatives in ­these crucial moments of a person’s
life.
Primary education was another major pillar of Roca’s state-­building
agenda to promote social order by increasing the state’s presence in p ­ eople’s
lives. In January 1881, less than three months ­after assuming power, Roca
signed a decree establishing the National Education Council (Consejo
­Nacional de Educación or CNE). The decree charged the CNE with primary
education provision in Buenos Aires City, and the 1884 Law of Common
Education gave it the power to regulate and oversee primary schools in the
entire national territory.143 As head of the CNE, Roca appointed former
president and mass education reform advocate Domingo F. Sarmiento, who
drafted the 1884 Law of Common Education.144 Sarmiento’s enormous in-
fluence on the formation of a national primary education system has earned
him the nickname “­father of Argentina’s education,” and a national holi-
day, Teachers’ Day, coincides with the anniversary of his death. To under-
stand what Roca’s appointment of Sarmiento tells us about how national
elites conceptualized primary education, we first need to make a detour
and delve into Sarmiento’s trajectory and ideas about the role of mass
education.
Sarmiento belonged to the group of politicians who had fought to cen-
tralize power in Buenos Aires. He began his fight against Federalist forces in
1829, when at the age of 18 he joined the Unitary Army supporting Buenos
Aires. When his native province of San Juan was taken over by federalist
caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga, Sarmiento fled to Chile, returning only
­after Quiroga’s death in 1835. Back in Argentina, Sarmiento became deeply
embedded in national politics, using his writings to denounce federalist
leaders. His most notable target was Juan Manuel de Rosas, the power­ful

142. Pérez (2018).

143. Campobassi (1956).
144. Pigna (2009), p. 286.
172 | Chapter 4

caudillo who between 1835 and 1852 controlled the province of Buenos Aires,
forming alliances with other provincial warlords and establishing a highly
repressive and dictatorial ­political regime. Persecuted by the Rosas regime,
in 1840 Sarmiento was again forced to exile to Chile. ­There, he published
his most impor­tant book, Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, named
­after his former e­ nemy Facundo Quiroga. In it, he describes with dramatic
prose and in vivid detail his traumatic experience fighting against federal-
ist ­caudillos and montoneras, and outlines a provocative and deeply influential
explanation of the c­ auses ­behind the Argentine civil wars.
Sarmiento was convinced that the cause of Argentina’s civil wars, of its
“anarchy,” was the “barbarian,” “savage,” and “violent” character of the rural
masses and caudillos of the Interior, whose instinct to kill and destroy clashed
with and was a threat to the civilized and well-­behaved population of Bue-
nos Aires. “Since childhood,” wrote Sarmiento, the ­people of the Interior
“are used to killing ­cattle, and this necessarily cruel act familiarizes them
with bloodshed, and hardens their hearts against their victims’ groans.”145
­Children grow up riding h ­ orses, taming savage animals,146 carry­ing knives
and playing with them “as if they w ­ ere playing with dice,”147 and develop-
ing a “butcher’s instinct.”148 For Sarmiento, this upbringing also explained
the ease with which caudillos like Facundo Quiroga or Juan Manuel de Rosas
recruited the rural “bloodthirsty hordes” into montoneras to fight against the
civilized population of Buenos Aires, whom they regarded with “implaca-
ble hatred” and “invincible disdain.”149
Locating the root of civil war in the upbringing of the rural population
led Sarmiento to advocate for a national system of primary schools
­controlled by Buenos Aires elites. T ­ hese schools, he claimed, would “extir-
pate” the rural masses’ violent predispositions by inculcating in ­children
the values, moral norms, and civilized be­hav­iors prevailing in the capital. In
time, this would end the cycle of civil wars afflicting the country and con-
solidate the state’s authority. As an indication of the probable efficacy of a
national policy, Sarmiento pointed out that in the isolated places where
primary schools existed and “moral precepts are inculcated in students
with special attention,” internal peace prevails. “I do not attribute to any

145. Sarmiento (1845), p. 34.

146. Sarmiento (1845), p. 33.
147. Sarmiento (1845), p. 58.
148. Sarmiento (1845), p. 67.
149. Sarmiento (1845), p. 68.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 173

other cause,” said Sarmiento, “the fact that so few crimes have been com-
mitted” and a “moderate be­hav­ior” prevails in ­these places.150
The idea that the Argentine civil wars ­were caused by a clash of moral
and cultural values between the barbarian Interior and civilized Buenos
Aires was appealing to centralizing elites but was predictably rejected by
federalist ones. The publication of Facundo while Sarmiento was exiled in
Chile caused a diplomatic rift between the Chilean government and the
federalist government of Juan Manuel de Rosas, which Chile de-­escalated
by sending Sarmiento on a two-­year trip abroad to visit primary schools in
France, Prus­sia, and other ­European countries. The result of that trip was
Educación ­Popular, published upon Sarmiento’s return to Chile in 1849, in
which he further developed his ideas about the need for a national primary
education system, writing that “Primary instruction must be exclusively de-
voted to moral development and to the maintenance of social order,”151
and citing French statistics to argue that primary education, by moralizing
the masses, would lead to a reduction of crime.152 The following excerpts
from this book help illustrate his main ideas about the moralizing role of
primary education, the direct benefits to elites of providing mass education,
and the superiority of educating new generations compared to relying on
repression as a strategy to preserve social order:

Society at large has a vital interest in ensuring that all the individuals
who ­will eventually come to form the nation have, through the educa-
tion received in their childhood, been sufficiently prepared to carry
out the social functions to which they w ­ ill be called . . . ​The dignity of
the State, the glory of a nation, . . . ​can only be obtained by elevating
the moral character, developing the intelligence, and predisposing it
to orderly and legitimate action.153
­There is also an object of foresight to bear in mind when dealing
with public education, and that is that the masses are less disposed to
re­spect life and property as their reasoning capabilities and moral
­sentiments are less cultivated. Out of selfishness, then, from t­hose
who ­today enjoy greater advantages we must try as soon as pos­si­ble to
blunt that instinct ­toward destruction.154

150. Sarmiento (1845), p. 73.

151. Sarmiento (1849), p. 23.
152. Sarmiento (1849), p. 36.
153. Sarmiento (1849), p. 48.
154. Sarmiento (1849), p. 48.
174 | Chapter 4

The existence of armies for p

­ eoples accustomed to not feeling other
stimuli of order than coercion is certainly a ­great need . . . ​but public
education satisfies another more compelling, less expendable need. It
is not entirely proven that without permanent armies, or with less nu-
merous ones, order would not have been preserved in each State, or
that ­there would have been more or fewer revolts . . . ​But it is very
certain that by not educating the new generations, all the defects that
our current ­organization suffers from w ­ ill continue to exist and take
on more colossal proportions . . . ​without the improvement of the
moral and rational situation of spirits.155

Although Sarmiento’s ideas ­were well-­received by centralizing Buenos

Aires elites, primary education took a back seat while the civil wars raged, as
elites focused on the more urgent prob­lem of quashing montoneras led by
federalist caudillos. During the 1860s and 1870s, when the balance of power
began to shift gradually in ­favor of Buenos Aires, the central government
­under the presidencies of Mitre (1862–1868), Sarmiento (1868–1874), and Avel-
laneda (1874–1880) prioritized forming a national army as the main strat-
egy to quash montoneras. About 43 ­percent of the national b­ udget between
1863 and 1880 was devoted to strengthening the army and waging war against
internal enemies. In addition to repressing rebels, the government used ma-
terial concessions to appease caudillos, including generous subsidies to the
provinces and sponsoring a railroad connecting the provinces of Córdoba
and Santa Fé. However, the government soon realized that this approach
to maintaining social order had only been made pos­si­ble by the unpre­ce­
dented economic growth of the 1860s. When a trade depression hit the coun-
try in the 1870s and revenues waned, rural rebellions against the federal
government surged, underscoring the frailty of relying on concessions to
forge order and unity. In an attempt to prevent f­ uture rebellions, Sarmien-
to’s presidency undertook some initial efforts to promote primary school-
ing, building primary schools and establishing Normal Schools to train
­primary school teachers. But the pressing need to quash montoneras meant
that ­these efforts ­stopped short of creating a national primary education
system and ­were thus accompanied by only a mild expansion of primary
schooling.156

155. Sarmiento (1849), p. 51.

156. Rock (1985), pp. 118–131.
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 175

The end of the cycle of civil wars in 1880 created a more fertile environ-
ment for Sarmiento’s ideas to be put into action. When Roca assumed power
in 1880, in addition to creating the CNE and appointing Sarmiento to it, he
charged Sarmiento with drafting a national primary education bill. To in-
form this bill, Sarmiento ­organized the 1882 Pedagogical Congress, where
top national politicians w­ ere joined by national school inspectors, univer-
sity professors and secondary school teachers, directors of Normal Schools,
and delegates from other Latin American countries, to debate the ­organizing
princi­ples of primary education—­whether attendance should be compul-
sory or voluntary, what should be taught in schools, ­etc. The national gov-
ernment’s position on the role of primary education was clearly articulated
by José María Torres, appointed a few years e­ arlier to direct the main state
institution in charge of training primary school teachers. In his speech to
the Pedagogical Congress, this fervent advocate of the disciplining role of
education said:

The Argentine Republic needs to repel the desert’s barbarism and has
managed, through the intelligent and strenuous effort of its army, to
reduce it to relatively narrow regions; but it urgently needs to also re-
duce to the narrowest limits the barbaric ele­ments of society—­which
are apathy and ignorance, and their sequel of crimes—­through the in-
telligent and persevering effort of an army of teachers who know how
to teach, educating the moral nature of the c­ hildren, so that schools
serve effectively to prevent crime [and] consolidate domestic peace.157

The emphasis on primary education as a means to reform the masses’

­barbaric nature and thus promote social order—­clearly ­shaped by Sarmien-
to’s ideas—­was a common theme in the education debates of the early 1880s.
The president of the 1882 Pedagogical Congress, Onésimo Leguizamón,
spoke of the inferior moral values of the lower classes, lamented the disor-
der that their vices engendered, denounced the masses’ passive loyalty to
local bosses and caudillos, called on the “socially superior” to take charge
of addressing t­hese issues, and described teachers as an “unarmed army
to whom we trust the civic and moral preparation of the new generations”:158

­ ree and compulsory instruction is simply a ­matter of national defense.

F
It is necessary to extinguish ignorance, the source of disorder that

157. Puiggrós and Carli (1991), p. 106. Emphasis is mine.

158. Puiggrós and Carli (1991), p. 106.
176 | Chapter 4

threatens our ­future. If you do not want to force all parents to instruct
their ­children, prepare to widen our prisons . . . ​The absence of educa-
tion . . . ​engenders social dangers, ­because a mass of inadequate beings
poses natu­ral ­resistance to public law, to the improvement of customs,
to mutual re­spect; . . . ​socie­ties have institutions, and a deficient apti-
tude in the p ­ eople to practice them engenders g­ reat despotisms,159
or at a minimum, local loyalties, always so fatal for public life . . . ​The
ignorance of the p ­ eople is the greatest of the national dangers.160

During the debate of the 1884 Law of Common Education in Congress,

the ­presentation of the bill sponsored by Roca’s government was in charge
of the Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Eduardo Wilde.
In his speech, Wilde emphasized the importance of maintaining order in
schools, underscoring that “of course the quarrels and disagreements begin
at school, to continue on the street, . . . ​fi­nally sowing indelible divisions
in the ­people.” Wilde, himself a medical doctor, viewed the lack of morality
of the masses as an illness, social divisions as its symptom, and primary
education as a cure.161 He told Congress:

The State, which has some rights over adult citizens, also has them over
young ­children. It imposes certain duties on citizens . . . ​It has the ob-
ligation to form citizens . . . ​The State, which regulates the transmission
of property, which protects the life and honor of citizens, cannot ne-
glect education; and with the same right with which it turns f­amily

159. By “despotisms,” Leguizamón refers to federalist governments like that of Juan Manuel de
Rosas. In a similar vein, when Sarmiento criticized the federalist Rosas in Facundo, he wrote, “an
ignorant p ­ eople w
­ ill always vote for Rosas.”
160. Puiggrós and Carli (1991), p. 157.
161. Beginning in the 1880s, medical doctors became heavi­ly involved in the administration and
design of primary schooling. In addition to Wilde’s appointment to the Ministry of Justice, Wor-
ship, and Public Instruction, doctors ­were regularly consulted on the role of primary education to
eradicate alcoholism, prostitution, poor personal hygiene, and other habits and be­hav­iors which
at the time w ­ ere considered “examples of immorality and of the sickness of the masses.” For ex-
ample, in a se­lection of articles published by the Ministry’s official publication, Monitor de la
Educación Común, doctors argued that ­these habits and be­hav­iors w ­ ere caused by a lack of self-­
repression, and that physical illnesses w ­ ere a punishment for t­hese poor be­hav­iors. Medical doc-
tors continued exercising considerable influence on primary education in the early twentieth
­century. Their most vis­i­ble and influential figure was José María Ramos Mejía, who presided over
the National Education Council starting in 1908. Ramos Mejía wrote extensively on the role of
early childhood experiences in shaping the structure of the brain. He published a crucial report in
1909 arguing that immigrants posed a social danger due to their biological inferiority, and that
primary schools needed to be reformed in order to imprint in immigrant ­children’s minds deep
nationalist sentiments. See Puiggrós and Carli (1991), pp. 119–122; Ramos Mejía (1899).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 177

c­ hildren into soldiers, it can and should impose the obligation to edu-
cate them, ­because this m ­ atters for the good of the Nation.162

At no point during the congressional debates of the Law of Common

Education did ­either liberal or conservative elites in Congress question
the idea that the main goal of primary education was to moralize the
masses. They did not agree, however, about what that entailed and, in par­
tic­u­lar, ­whether the moral education of the masses ­ought to be secular or
­religious—­a debate we w ­ ill return to in chapter 5. The salience of concerns
about morality is indicated by a ­simple word count: across all congressio-
nal sessions where the law was debated, the word “moral” was mentioned
269 times; by contrast, words beginning with “industr,” “econom,” and “tra-
baj” (work) w ­ ere mentioned a total of 74 times.163
When passed in 1884, the Law of Common Education mandated univer-
sal provision and compulsory attendance to primary schools for all c­ hildren
ages 6–14; established that education o ­ ught to be ­free and secular; set teacher
certification requirements, including the requirement to prove “moral com-
petence” and to gradu­ate from a Normal School regulated by the central
government; established funding mechanisms to expand education; and
gave the CNE the responsibility to monitor regulatory compliance through
a system of inspectors, implement School Censuses, and regularly gather
education statistics. We ­will look at the content of the national curriculum
for primary schools in chapter 5, but the following excerpt illustrates the
type of content included in the textbooks approved by the CNE for primary
school ­children:

To love the homeland is to love freedom, to love the law, to love

order, to love authority, to re­spect it, uphold it, defend it, and sacrifice
bad passions. To love the homeland is to detest and fight tyranny; to
detest and fight anarchy.164

The Law had a steady impact on school construction and enrollment. In

line with the predictions of the theory developed in chapter 3, and also with
Sarmiento’s recommendations, the expansion of primary education during

162. Wilde, in Argentina, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 13, 1883, p. 581.
163. The word count is based on Argentina, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados) of June 23, July 4,
July 6, July 11, July 12, July 13, July 14, July 18, July 20, and July 23 of 1883, and Argentina, Diario de
Sesiones (Senado) of August 18, September 30, and October 8 of 1881, August 28 of 1883, and July 26
of 1884.
164. Tedesco (1965), p. 62.
178 | Chapter 4

Roca’s presidency was most pronounced in rural areas of the Interior prov-
inces, which for six d ­ ecades had challenged the authority of Buenos Aires.
This is illustrated in figure 4.6, which shows the evolution of primary school
enrollment rates and the number of primary schools in Buenos Aires and
the rest of the country from Roca’s assumption in 1880 to the introduction
of universal male suffrage in 1912. Two main patterns emerge from this fig-
ure. First, consistent with Sarmiento’s claim that Buenos Aires was more
“civilized” than the rest of the country, at the beginning of Roca’s presidency
the level of school enrollment in the Interior was considerably lower than
in Buenos Aires: around 20 ­percent of school-­age c­ hildren ­were enrolled
in primary schools in the Interior, compared to more than 35 ­percent in
Buenos Aires. Second, starting with Roca’s presidency, the oligarchic regime
established in 1880 prioritized the expansion of schooling in the Interior of
the country, which by the end of the oligarchic regime had reached primary
education levels similar to ­those of Buenos Aires.165 Between 1885—­when
education statistics at the provincial level first became available—­and 1912,
primary school enrollment rates increased by 27 percentage points in
­Buenos Aires (from 36 to 63 ­percent) and by 37 percentage points in the
Interior (from 22 to 59 ­percent). The more pronounced expansion of pri-
mary schooling in the Interior was not driven by a few isolated provinces:
between 1885 and the end of the oligarchic regime, eleven of the thirteen
provinces of the Interior saw greater expansion of primary schooling than
Buenos Aires Province and Buenos Aires City.
Taking into consideration the goals of primary schooling articulated by
national policymakers, one alternative explanation for what led the national
government to expand primary education is the influx of immigrants and,
with that, the government’s potential interest in assimilating them into an
Argentine nationality. While plausible in theory, the nation-­building expla-
nation is not consistent with the historical rec­ord. Sarmiento, Roca, and
other elites promoted policies in the 1880s which they hoped would attract
highly educated ­people from France, the U.K., the Netherlands, and other
prosperous parts of E ­ urope. In their view, t­hese immigrants would bring

165. Although we cannot be entirely sure of what caused the temporary decline in primary
school coverage between 1889 and 1892, especially in the Interior, this decline coincided with the
financial and economic crisis that began at the end of 1888. The crisis reached its most critical
phase in 1890, resulting in the resignation of incumbent president Miguel Ángel Juárez Celman.
The crisis affected primary schooling in the Interior provinces the most, as educational expansion
in ­these provinces was more dependent than in wealthy Buenos Aires on the federal government’s
support (Elis 2011).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 179

a) Primary school enrollment rate

Enrollment (% of school-age pop.) 60

Buenos Aires

Oligarchic regime begins

Common Education Law

Universal male suffrage

50

40
Interior
provinces
30

20
1880 1890 1900 1910
b) Number of primary schools
7
Schools per 1,000 school-age children

Oligarchic regime begins

Common Education Law

Universal male suffrage

Interior
provinces

4
Buenos Aires

3
1880 1890 1900 1910

Figure 4.6. Number of primary schools and primary school en-

rollment rates in Buenos Aires compared to the Interior prov-
inces of Argentina during the oligarchic regime, 1885–1912.
“Buenos Aires” encompasses the City of Buenos Aires and the
Province of Buenos Aires. See text and footnotes for sources
and methodology.

with them civilized manners and an industrious spirit which would in turn
contribute to transform Argentina into a peaceful and prosperous country.
Crucially, national elites in the 1880s did not want to assimilate ­European
immigrants; on the contrary, influenced again by Sarmiento’s Facundo and
other writings, they believed that the French, E
­ nglish, and Dutch belonged
to a superior race compared to the Spanish and the “savage” indigenous
180 | Chapter 4

­ opulations who w
p ­ ere the ancestors of the Argentine population. T
­ hese im-
migrants would not need to be civilized. In fact, instead of creating schools
to assimilate them, the 1884 Law of Common Education gave ­European im-
migrants considerable flexibility to set up their own schools. It was only in
the 1910s—­after a report published by the National Education Council con-
cluded that the ­European immigrants who had come to Argentina came
mostly from Spain and Italy and not from the “superior races” that Sarmiento
and Roca had expected—­that primary education was reformed to promote
a strong and common national identity.166
Fi­nally, interstate wars and industrialization, two common explanations
of what drove the expansion of primary schooling, also deserve consider-
ation as potential ­drivers of educational expansion in Argentina. In the
case of interstate wars, Argentina fought wars with Uruguay, Brazil, and Par-
aguay between i­ndependence and 1870, thereafter entering a long period
of relative international peace. Although its neighbors often received
­military support from France and the United Kingdom, in most cases Ar-
gentina emerged victorious from t­ hese conflicts. It is therefore not obvious
why, when Roca assumed power in 1880, he would have had an interest in
making costly investments in primary education with the goal of strength-
ening military capacity vis-­à-­vis its neighbors. Moreover, as mentioned
­earlier, primary schools did not begin to emphasize the inculcation of a
national identity ­until the 1910s, suggesting that inoculating the population
from foreign threats was not a priority during the period of rapid educa-
tion expansion that began with Roca. One possibility is that Roca’s govern-
ment wanted to instill nationalist sentiments specifically in territories that
Argentina had acquired in previous interstate wars and in provinces that
­were bordering its former enemies. If that had been the case, we should see
greater expansion of primary schooling in the provinces of Corrientes,
Entre Ríos, and Buenos Aires compared to the rest of the country. However,
this is not what we see in the data. Educational expansion in Entre Ríos dur-
ing the late nineteenth c­ entury was sharp, but Entre Ríos was a bastion of
federalist caudillos, so it is difficult to infer from statistics alone ­whether
the expansion of primary education in that province was driven by exter-
nal conflict or by internal rebellions. More telling are the numbers for
Corrientes, the only province that bordered all three external enemies. If

166. Bertoni (2001); Ceva (2018); Rock (2002); Biblioteca Nacional del Maestro (n.d.), “La es-
cuela al servicio de la nación: El programa de Ramos Mejia”; Argentina (1898).
 Threats and Education in Europe and Latin America | 181

Roca had wanted to inoculate the population from external threats, we

should see greater expansion of primary schooling in that province. How-
ever, educational expansion in Corrientes from the 1880s ­until the end of
the oligarchic regime was unremarkable compared to the rest of the Inte-
rior. Together, ­these facts suggest that interstate wars ­were not a leading
driver b ­ ehind the development of a national primary education system.
With re­spect to the possibility that the national primary education sys-
tem sought to promote industrialization, it is true that some of the habits
that national elites sought to inculcate for the sake of promoting social order
also happened to be good for forming docile workers. However, while some
national elites pointed this out during the congressional debate of the 1884
Law of Common Education, arguments about the economic benefits of
mass education w ­ ere dwarfed by arguments about the value of moral edu-
cation for social order and state-­building.167 Moreover, teaching the masses
technical and scientific skills to bolster industrialization was not among the
state’s top reasons for providing primary education. In 1884, as the debate
of the Law of Common Education advanced in Congress, the Minister of
Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Eduardo Wilde, received numerous
letters from educators in the Interior provinces who proposed orienting
the curriculum ­toward practical content relevant to economic productiv-
ity. One such letter came from Eusebio Gómez, a school director from
Santa Fé province, who wrote, “the country demands imperiously the
­formation of merchants, industrialists, farmers, engineers, and workers in
general.” He proposed subjects like industrial applied chemistry and agri-
cultural practices, and the removal of theoretical subjects with no immedi-
ate economic benefit. The government ignored t­hese proposals, leaving
the teaching of productive skills to separate technical-­vocational institu-
tions known as Escuelas de Artes y Oficios, which as the legislation indicated
­were “intended for the formation of good workers” with “sufficient manual
skills” and “technical knowledge.”168 This is not to say that primary school-
ing did not result in the acquisition of practical knowledge and skills that
could enhance individual productivity. But as we w ­ ill see in the next chap-
ter, if it did, this was likely an unintended consequence of a curriculum
­adopted by national elites to promote the moral education of the masses.

167. Argentina, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados) of June 23, July 4, July 6, July 11, July 12, July 13,
July 14, July 18, July 20, and July 23 of 1883, and Argentina, Diario de Sesiones (Senado) of August 18,
September 30, and October 8 of 1881; August 28 of 1883; and July 26 of 1884.
168. Argentina (1938).
182 | Chapter 4

CONCLUSION
The idea that shaping c­ hildren’s moral character was impor­tant for ­political
stability circulated in Western socie­ties since the Enlightenment. However,
­political rulers’ a­ ctual exposure to episodes of mass vio­lence against the sta-
tus quo increased the popularity of ­these ideas among national elites and
drove central governments to take greater charge of and expand mass school-
ing. The cases of Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Argentina show that this logic of
conflict-­driven education reform with indoctrination goals in mind played
out in very dif­fer­ent types of non-­democratic regimes across the long nine-
teenth ­century. In chapter 6 we ­will examine the limits and generalizability
of the argument, a discussion that w ­ ill help elucidate why the central gov-
ernments of ­England and Mexico lagged ­behind other E ­ uropean and Latin
American countries, respectively, in promoting primary education. Chap-
ter 7 further probes the generalizability of the theory, examining ­whether a
similar conflict-­driven logic helps explain education reforms u ­ nder democ-
racies. Before we turn to t­hese questions, however, let us look at how pri-
mary education systems in nineteenth-­century ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca
­were designed in order to accomplish the state’s goal of social control.
 CHAPTER FIVE

TEACHERS, INSPECTORS,
AND CURRICULUMS AS
INSTRUMENTS OF SOCIAL ORDER

How w ­ ere primary education systems designed to shape the moral charac-
ter of ­children and promote social order? When states in ­Europe and Latin
Amer­i­ca began to take an interest in the education of the ­popular classes,
they did not just expand access but also increased the centralization of
education. ­Because they wanted primary schools to produce well-­behaved
citizens who respected existing rules and authorities, state efforts to ex-
pand primary education w ­ ere accompanied by new national laws and
regulations designed to encourage student attendance and control what
happened inside the classroom. By 1900, twenty-­five ­European and Latin
American countries had a comprehensive national primary education law
that regulated many aspects of schooling. T ­ hese laws are the focus of this
chapter. In it, we w
­ ill examine the content of the first comprehensive pri-
mary education law a­ dopted during the nineteenth c­ entury in each of ­these
countries.1

1. The twenty-­five laws correspond to the first national primary education law passed in
­ uropean and Latin American countries that passed such laws before 1900. The list includes: Prus­
E
sia (1763 General Rural Schools Regulations); Austria (1774 General School Ordinance); Nether-
lands (1806 Education Act); Denmark (1814 School Acts); Norway (1827 Law Concerning the Peas-
ant School System in the Country); France (1833 Law); Greece (1834 Law); Belgium (1842 Organic
Law of Primary Instruction); Sweden (1842 Elementary School Statute); Cuba (1844 Plan General de
Instrucción Pública para las Islas de Cuba y Puerto Rico); Peru (1850 Primera Ley de Instrucción Pública);
Spain (1857 Ley de Instrucción Pública); Italy (1859 Casati Law); Chile (1860 Lei de Instrucción Primaria);
184 | Chapter 5

What kind of curriculum did t­ hese laws envision?2 We w

­ ill see that most
of the laws established a mandatory curriculum determining the content
and messages that the state wanted all primary school ­children to learn.
Moral education occupied a central place in ­these curriculums, but two
­dif­fer­ent models emerged for how to teach morality. In one model, the cur-
riculum was circumscribed to teaching a narrow set of subjects, of which
moral education rooted in religious doctrine was the dominant one. In the
other model, moral princi­ples ­were to be acquired through reasoning and
abstract thinking, not religion, and the curriculum therefore included a
broader set of subjects—­such as algebra and science—­that sought to de-
velop students’ reasoning skills for the purpose of enabling them to access
universal moral princi­ples.
To successfully expand primary education in accordance with the state’s
goals, states also needed a large number of teachers who had both the will-
ingness and ability to implement the state’s educational agenda—an “army
of teachers.” What was done to ensure that teachers would be loyal agents of
the state inside the classroom? H ­ ere, central governments became directly
involved in training aspiring teachers through state-­controlled institutions
often called Normal Schools, a name that alluded to their goal of normal-
izing or standardizing ­every aspect of teaching. In addition, most national
laws of the nineteenth ­century established teacher certification require-
ments, including the requirement for aspiring teachers to show proof of
their moral uprightness.
Most national laws also established provisions for the centralized in-
spection of schools. Inspectors served the dual purpose of disseminating
information about the content of national education regulations among
teachers and monitoring teachers’ on-­the-­ground compliance with ­these

Costa Rica (1869 Reglamento de Instrucción Primaria); Colombia (1870 Decreto Orgánico de Instruc-
ción Pública); Venezuela (1870 Decreto de Instrucción Pública); E
­ ngland (1870 Elementary Education
Act); ­Ecuador (1871 Ley Reforma de la Educación); El Salvador (1873 Reglamento de Instrucción
Pública); Guatemala (1875 Ley Orgánica de Instrucción Pública Primaria); Uruguay (1877 Ley 1.350);
Brazil (1879 Decreto 7.247); Argentina (1884 Ley 1.420 de Educación Común); Jamaica (1892 Elemen-
tary Education Law). A copy of each law can be found in the online appendix.
2. Somewhat surprisingly, t­hese questions have not received much attention in the social sci-
ences, but one common argument that sociologists have made is that curriculum policies, and
education policies more generally, looked, and still look, more or less the same, modeled a­ fter a
common international r­ ecipe that is voluntarily a­ dopted or imposed on countries as a condition
for receiving international aid. In contrast to this view, I argue that the content of national pri-
mary school curriculums varied considerably as a result of domestic ­factors—­specifically the rela-
tive balance of power between conservatives, who believed that the basis of morality was religious
doctrine, and liberals, who believed that morality stemmed from science and reason.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 185

regulations. Fi­nally, to address inspectors’ and national politicians’ concern

that parents would not be interested in sending their ­children to school,
most laws included a compulsory schooling provision and stipulated pen-
alties for parents who failed to comply.

AN ARMY OF TEACHERS
For states to even pursue the goal of moralization through mass education,
they first needed to recruit large numbers of teachers. In the nineteenth
­century, this presented a major challenge. First, most of the population was
illiterate and therefore unqualified to teach without adequate prior train-
ing. Second, men who ­were literate typically w ­ ere of good social and eco-
nomic standing and would demand high salaries. Given the vast quantity
of teachers needed, most states could ill afford this strategy. Solutions to
­these prob­lems varied. In some parts of ­Europe, such as Prus­sia ­under Fred-
erick the ­Great, the state tried to recruit teachers among unemployed men
such as soldiers returning from war. A far more ­popular and successful ap-
proach to large-­scale, low-­cost recruitment, prominent in the Amer­i­cas,
was to target educated ­women who, unlike educated men, typically lacked
other job options. In fact, by 1900, more than two-­thirds of teachers in Ar-
gentina, Chile, Uruguay, the United States, and Canada ­were ­women.3 In
several ­European countries including Spain, Italy, France, Finland, and the
United Kingdom, the feminization of the teaching profession was also a de-
liberate policy choice that facilitated a more rapid expansion of primary
schooling.4
Recruiting a sufficiently large corps of teachers was the first challenge;
states then faced the challenge of establishing and retaining control over
how ­these teachers behaved inside the classroom. Reformers like Guizot and
Sarmiento ­were keenly aware that the success of their education plans de-
pended on both the willingness and the ability of teachers to implement
the state’s educational agenda. To align the w ­ ill and competency of teach-
ers with the interests of the state, virtually all central governments turned
to four main policy tools: teacher training, teacher certification, school in-
spections, and standardized curriculums.

3. Lindert (2004).
4. Lindert (2004); Cappelli and Quiroga Valle (2021).
186 | Chapter 5

TEACHER TRAINING
By 1900, almost all central governments in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca had
become directly involved in training aspiring primary school teachers
through state-­controlled institutions often called Normal Schools, which
focused exclusively on training teachers.5 Normal Schools w ­ ere regulated
and often directly managed by the state and sought to shape a teacher’s
moral character as well as their capacity to implement the national curric-
ulum. Sometimes, the state took advantage of existing institutions that
trained teachers, such as teaching seminars set up by the Church, provid-
ing them with public funding in exchange for the implementation of the
state’s new teacher training curriculum. This was the case for the Berlin Nor-
mal School, to which Frederick II allocated an annual grant starting in 1753
while concurrently imposing a new curriculum. More frequently, however,
states chose to create new Normal Schools from scratch. In France, for
­example, the Guizot Law of 1833 mandated e­ very department to set up a
Normal School to train teachers in accordance with national regulations. In
Argentina, the central government during Sarmiento’s presidency founded
the country’s first Normal School in 1870 in the province of Entre Ríos.
When Roca assumed power in 1880, a total of eleven Normal Schools had
already been established by the central government across eight provinces,
and during Roca’s presidency, another twenty-­three ­were founded such that
by 1888 e­ very province had at least one state-­run Normal School.6 In Chile,
the vast majority of public primary school teachers w ­ ere trained in Santi-
ago in Normal Schools established by the central government in 1842 and
1854, and then deployed to teach in other provinces, including the remote
province of Atacama, which did not have its own Normal School ­until 1905.
­Every aspect of the functioning of Normal Schools was carefully consid-
ered by national policymakers who wanted to ensure that a trained teacher
would be able, but especially willing, to act as a loyal agent of the state. This
included not only their curriculum, which was usually modeled a­ fter the
national curriculum for primary schools, but also: admissions criteria, which
often included mechanisms to screen applicants for their moral conduct;
the architecture of schools, including such issues as how to design outdoor

5. The data come from Paglayan (2021). The exception is Bolivia, where the state began to pro-
vide teacher training to aspiring primary school teachers in 1909.
6. Alliaud (2007).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 187

patios in order to facilitate the monitoring of students; and the day-­to-­day

management of Normal Schools, which was subject to detailed regulations.
By design, the number of Normal Schools tended to be l­imited, which
facilitated their control by the central government and implied that the vast
majority of aspiring teachers lived in ­these institutions throughout the
length of their training, typically lasting from two to four years. Guizot,
Sarmiento, and other education reformers viewed the boarding school na-
ture of Normal Schools as a crucial tool that allowed the state to carefully
monitor and mold f­ uture teachers’ be­hav­ior. Their belief was that by living
in an environment controlled by the state, ­future teachers would acquire
the very same values and habits of deference and obedience which ­later on
they would be tasked with teaching c­ hildren. In the regulations of the Nor-
mal School of Versailles, which served as inspiration to draft regulations
for Normal Schools in other countries, this pivot was explicit: “It is neces-
sary to learn to obey if one day one intends to command.”7 Normal School
regulations tended to be very detailed and applied to ­every aspect of an as-
piring teacher’s life inside the school, from the moment they woke up to
the time they went to sleep. This is exemplified by the following articles
extracted from the regulations of the Normal School of Versailles, which
touch on t­ hings as varied as wake-up routines, permissible and prohibited
be­hav­iors during class time, meals, recreation, bathroom breaks, physical
appearance, and the need to obey and be ­silent u ­ nder all circumstances:

Art. 1: Discipline is in all re­spects entrusted to the director . . . ​All

movements are announced by a first ringing of the bell. If the
student-­teachers are in class or in the study area, they must
prepare to leave work quietly . . . ​If they are in recreation, they
must approach the place where the lines are formed.
Art. 6: Studying. The most absolute silence must reign during their
studies. Leaning against ­tables or keeping desks open is prohib-
ited. All student-­teachers must be bareheaded ­unless the doctor
has provided a special permission in writing to keep their
hats on.
Art. 7: Leaving one’s place to consult with other student-­teachers or
passing notes is expressly forbidden. Borrowing classmates’
notebooks to receive help with one’s work is expressly prohibited.

7. Sarmiento (1849), pp. 172–173.

188 | Chapter 5

Art. 8: No student-­teacher ­will be able to leave their studies ­unless

they are feeling sick. Since study and class time are preceded and
followed by recreation time, students must develop the habit to
never interrupt their work. A ­ fter the morning session, at 10am,
students have ten minutes to satisfy their needs, forming lines in
the courtyard before entering singing lessons.
Art. 12: The most absolute silence and tranquility must be observed
when forming lines and moving from one place to another.
Separating from ­these lines without permission is expressly
prohibited.
Art. 15: During meals, one student-­teacher w ­ ill do an instructional
reading designated by the director.
Art. 16: The most absolute silence must be observed during meals.
Art. 18: Bedrooms. The same silence must reign in the bedrooms. The
least word is reprehensible ­there, more than anywhere.
Art. 22: Wake-up time is indicated by ringing bells at 5am in winter
and 4am in summer. At the second ringing of the bell students
descend forming a line and in silence . . . ​At the last ringing all
student-­teachers must be in their place, on their knees, and do the
morning prayer.
Art. 27: ­Running in the backyard is expressly prohibited.8

Again, the argument for directing the work of Normal Schools ­toward
the development of the moral character of f­ uture teachers was straightfor-
ward: since the main goal of primary education was to shape c­ hildren’s
moral character, and ­because ­children learn above all by example, national
elites reasoned that good moral qualities must first be ingrained in teach-
ers. This line of reasoning is captured in numerous essays and official re-
ports across E ­ urope and the Amer­i­cas, including a study about Normal
Schools in E­ urope and the United States commissioned by the Chilean gov-
ernment to José Abelardo Núñez in 1878. In his final report, based on three
and a half years abroad observing Normal Schools in Germany, France,
Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, Núñez concludes:

Moral education, the basis for the formation of the character of the
child, is the first foundation of any good education system . . . ​Religious

8. Sarmiento (1849), pp. 170–172.

 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 189

sentiment, love of ­family and country, re­spect and obedience to the law,
as well as a strict notion of duty and self-­responsibility, constitute the
fundamental princi­ples that should be the subject of constant atten-
tion on the part of the teacher, and naturally they w ­ ill have a very
impor­tant part in the formation of students in Normal Schools . . . ​For
this reason, the Normal School [must] be an establishment . . . ​of the
strictest moral discipline . . . ​Since the main goal of education must
be . . . ​directed ­towards raising the moral level of a p
­ eople, the realiza-
tion of such an ideal ­will naturally depend on the moral conditions in
which ­children’s instructors find themselves. The example of the
teacher is the most eloquent of the lessons; and his word, ­whether
through teaching or through counsel, w ­ ill have double force if it is
backed by the reputation of a moral and pure life.9

TEACHER CERTIFICATION
Concern for the moral character of teachers translated into increased state
intervention not only in teacher training but also in the certification or
licensing of new teachers. Certification refers to the ­process by which aspir-
ing teachers are screened and granted permission to become teachers. Its
aim was to ensure that only ­those teachers who would be loyal and com-
petent carriers of the state’s message and curriculum could enter the
classroom. As such, it was a fundamental aspect of the state’s education
strategy.
When countries in E ­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca first ­adopted a compre-
hensive national primary education law regulating vari­ous aspects of pri-
mary education, the large majority of ­these foundational laws stipulated
that in order to be hired as a primary school teacher, individuals must first
demonstrate suitable moral qualifications. This conclusion comes from
assembling and examining the content of the first national primary edu-
cation law ­adopted by twenty-­five E ­ uropean and Latin American coun-
tries before 1900. The first column of figure 5.1 summarizes the results of
this examination, indicating in black ­those cases where the law required
aspiring teachers to show proof of their moral competency. Combing
through ­these foundational laws, I found that twenty of the twenty-­five

9. Núñez (1883), pp. 96–97.

190 | Chapter 5

Prussia 1763 ! !
Austria 1774 ! !
Netherlands 1806 !
Denmark 1814 ! !
Norway 1827 !
France 1833 ! !
Greece 1834 ! !
Belgium 1842 ! !
Sweden 1842 ! !
Cuba 1844 ! !
Peru 1850 !
Spain 1857 ! !
Italy 1859 ! !
Chile 1860 ! !
Costa Rica 1869 !
England 1870
Colombia 1870 ! !
Venezuela 1870
Ecuador 1871 !
El Salvador 1873 ! !
Guatemala 1875 ! !
Uruguay 1877
Brazil 1879
Argentina 1884 ! !
Jamaica 1892
Normal School degree
Proof of morality

Figure 5.1. Certification requirements for primary school

teachers according to the first national primary education
laws of ­European and Latin American countries. See text
and footnotes for sources and methodology.

laws ­contained provisions requiring aspiring teachers to provide a certifi-

cate of good moral standing.10
Despite this commonality, ­there was considerable variation across coun-
tries both in the criteria used to screen applicants for moral competence
and in the authorities deemed qualified to provide certificates of good

10. The laws that did not include such provisions are: Venezuela (1870 Decreto de Instrucción
Pública); ­England (1870 Elementary Education Act); Uruguay (1877 Ley 1.350); Brazil (1879 Decreto
7.247); Jamaica (1892 Elementary Education Law).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 191

­ orality to aspiring teachers. In 1760s Prus­sia, for example, teachers w

m ­ ere
required to obtain a letter from the local priest vouching for their moral
character; in addition, Frederick II’s regulations prohibited anyone who
owned or worked at a tavern from being employed as a primary school
teacher. In Austria, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, too, priests ­were in
charge of vouching for a job candidate’s morality. In France, by contrast,
the certification of teacher morality was left to secular authorities. The
Guizot Law of 1833 required aspiring teachers to pre­sent “a certificate stat-
ing that the applicant is worthy, by his morality, to devote himself to teach-
ing.” This certificate had to be signed by the mayor of the municipality (or
municipalities) where the applicant had resided during the previous three
years, and was required of all teachers regardless of ­whether they sought to
work in a public or a private primary school. The same law prohibited any-
one “convicted of theft, swindling, bankruptcy, breach of trust or assault on
morals” from becoming a teacher. In Italy too, the primary education law
of 1859 required aspiring teachers to pre­sent a certificate of morality signed
by the mayor. In Colombia and Guatemala, per decrees introduced in 1870
and 1875, respectively, the morality of aspiring teachers had to be certified by
an examination committee. In Cuba, an 1844 education law established
that in order to teach in a primary school, individuals had to pre­sent a cer-
tificate of “good be­hav­ior and pure bloodline” issued by the local education
council. In Argentina, the 1884 Law of Common Education specified that
no one could be employed as a public school teacher, teaching assistant,
school director, or deputy director, without previously demonstrating their
technical, moral, and physical capacity to fulfill t­ hese jobs. While the latter
required a doctor’s note, the usual (but not mandatory) way to prove tech-
nical and moral competency was to pre­sent a certificate of graduation from
a Normal School accompanied by a letter from the Normal School’s direc-
tor speaking to the candidate’s moral qualities.
Yet another policy tool used to ensure that new teachers had the moral
qualifications for the job was to mandate graduation from a state-­regulated
Normal School as a condition to obtain a certificate or license to teach. This
kind of regulation accorded the state mono­poly control over teacher train-
ing, so that f­ uture teachers would be molded in accordance with the state’s
education goals and only with t­hose goals. The precursor h ­ ere was, again,
Prus­sia. When in 1753 Frederick II allocated an annual grant to the Berlin
Normal School, he si­mul­ta­neously signed an order requiring all ­future
school vacancies throughout Prus­sia to be filled with teachers trained in that
192 | Chapter 5

school. By 1900, this norm had spread widely across E ­ urope and Latin Amer­
i­ca. Of the twenty-­five countries that first a­ dopted a comprehensive na-
tional primary education law before 1900, fifteen included a provision within
the law requiring aspiring teachers to hold a Normal School degree. This
is shown in the second column of figure 5.1. Initially, this requirement was
lightly enforced since Normal Schools had not yet produced sufficient
gradu­ates to staff the growing number of primary schools. But over time,
as the number of Normal Schools and their alumni increased, it became the
only pos­si­ble pathway to enter the teaching profession—an arrangement
that persists in many countries ­today.

SCHOOL INSPECTION
In addition to trying to mold teacher be­hav­ior before they entered the class-
room by regulating both teacher training programs and teacher certification
requirements, most states in the Western world also made efforts to control
teacher be­hav­ior inside the classroom. To this end, not only did they pass
detailed education regulations specifying how school time was to be used, but
also created centralized school inspection systems to monitor and induce
teacher compliance with the national curriculum and other regulations. In
addition, inspectors played a key role in monitoring student attendance to
enforce parental compliance with compulsory schooling laws.
To obtain a good picture of the policies and structures that central gov-
ernments put in place to inspect schools, I again analyzed the content of
the first comprehensive national primary education law a­dopted by
­European and Latin American countries before 1900, this time focusing on
the provisions of the law that related to inspection. Three main questions
guided the examination of ­these laws. First, did the law establish that a secu-
lar authority must inspect schools, or did it leave the inspection of schools
to religious actors? Second, if a secular authority was involved in inspections,
who did inspectors report to—­local governments or the central govern-
ment? Third, what was the function of school inspections? The answers to
­these questions are summarized in figure 5.2.
The analy­sis of landmark laws uncovers three patterns. First, virtually
­everywhere across ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, the first comprehensive
­primary education law ­adopted at the national level established that the
­inspection of primary schools must be conducted directly by inspectors
appointed by a secular authority (indicated by a black box in the first col-
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 193

Prussia 1763 !"#$ % % % % %

Austria 1774 % % % %
Netherlands 1806 &'()*+ % % % % % % %
Denmark 1814 !"#$ % % % %
Norway 1827 !"#$ %
France 1833 !"#$ % % % % % % % % % % %
Greece 1834 !"#$ % % % % % % % % %
Belgium 1842 &'()*+ % % %
Sweden 1842 !"#$ %
Cuba 1844 !"#$ % % % % %
Peru 1850 !"#$ % % % % %
Spain 1857 !"#$ % % % % %
Italy 1859 &'()*+ % % % %
Chile 1860 &'()*+ % % % % %
Costa Rica 1869 ,"#- %
Colombia 1870 &'()*+ % % % % % % % % % %
England 1870 &'()*+ % % % % %
Venezuela 1870 &'()*+ % % % %
Ecuador 1871 &'()*+ %./0
El Salvador 1873 &'()*+ % % % % % % % % % %
Guatemala 1875 &'()*+ % % % % % % %
Uruguay 1877 &'()*+ % % % % % %
Brazil 1879 &'()*+ % % % % % % % %
Argentina 1884 &'()*+ % % % % % % % % % %
Jamaica 1892 &'()*+ %

For student absenteeism

Budget and use of funds
Local inspection under

Morality and discipline

Instructional methods
Independent national

Student attendance
Independent local
Secular inspectors

national authority

Compliance with

For poor school

Write a report

Infrastructure

performance
& textbooks

regulations
inspection

inspection

Hygiene

Level of government
in charge of Monitor teachers and schools Apply
inspections penalties

Inspectors’ tasks

Figure 5.2. School inspection policies according to the first national primary education
laws of ­European and Latin American countries. See text and footnotes for sources and
methodology.

umn) or, if conducted by a priest or religious actor, must nonetheless be

done on behalf of the government (indicated by a grey box). The notable
exceptions ­were Austria’s 1774 General School Ordinance, where inspection
of primary schools was left entirely to religious actors, and Costa Rica’s 1869
Reglamento de Instrucción Primaria, which did not specify ­whether a religious
or secular actor must be in charge of inspections.
194 | Chapter 5

Second, in the vast majority of countries, the ultimate authority over

school inspections rested with the central government. Beginning with the
Netherlands in 1801, all ­European countries eventually established a central-
ized inspection system during the nineteenth c­ entury. The only E ­ uropean
countries whose first landmark education law did not establish a central-
ized framework for inspection w ­ ere Norway and Sweden, but even in ­these
two cases, a centralized inspection system was created ­later during the nine-
teenth ­century. In some countries, the central government deployed its
own inspectors across the country. In ­others, it relied on local inspection
committees who appointed their own inspectors but reported to the cen-
tral government. In several countries, the central government relied on a
combination of its own inspectors and locally appointed inspectors who
ultimately reported to the central government. In Latin Amer­i­ca, too, vir-
tually all states made efforts to create centralized school inspection systems
to enforce teacher compliance with national education policies. However,
school inspectorates in Latin Amer­i­ca tended to be less resilient than t­ hose
in ­Europe; over time, they developed a poor reputation, not least for the
common practice of accepting bribes from schools in exchange for ignor-
ing violations of education regulations.
Third, inspectors reporting to the central government visited schools
around the country, observed and evaluated teachers, examined student
notebooks, verified student attendance, and then produced detailed writ-
ten reports on the quality of education, understood as the degree to which
schools complied with education laws and regulations. Sometimes, as in
France since the 1830s, school inspectors addressed ­these reports to the na-
tional Minister of Public Instruction; other times, as in ­England and Scot-
land, inspectors remained i­ ndependent from the Ministry, reporting directly
to the queen or king. Regardless of who they ­were written for, inspectors’
reports ­were the primary source of information that central governments
used to monitor the status of primary education and identify common
­issues that could require new regulations or policy reform. In addition to
­these monitoring and reporting functions, school inspectors also played a
key role in maintaining schools and teachers informed about policy changes,
serving as messengers of the central government around the country. Last,
inspections could lead to sanctions for schools and teachers found to be in
violation of existing regulations.
The penalties for teachers who failed to comply with existing education
laws and regulations varied. The most common ones established by the law
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 195

included withholding teacher salaries or school funding, suspension from

the job, and eventually, dismissal. Indeed, this was the beginning of account-
ability systems designed to incentivize teachers and schools to comply
with education laws and regulations, a practice still prevalent in education
systems ­today.

COMPULSORY SCHOOLING
The kind of primary education system that most central governments en-
visioned in the nineteenth c­ entury posed a challenge: If its goal was not to
improve the material well-­being of the lower classes but to instill obedi-
ence and a­ cceptance of the status quo, how could the state incentivize par-
ents to send their c­ hildren to school? Indeed, as we saw in chapter 4, the
perception that parents would be reluctant to enroll their ­children in pri-
mary school—­whether accurate or not—­was a common concern voiced by
school inspectors and politicians during the nineteenth c­ entury.
The main way by which central governments sought to address this
concern was to make enrollment in primary education compulsory. Twenty-­
one of the twenty-­five national primary education laws analyzed in this
chapter contained a compulsory schooling provision. This is shown in
figure 5.3. Moreover, two-­thirds of the laws established specific penalties
for failing to comply with this provision. In Prus­sia, the 1763 law prohib-
ited c­ hildren who did not attend primary school from receiving the reli-
gious confirmation. By far the most common type of penalty, however, was
a monetary fine for parents whose ­children ­were not in school. In Swe-
den (1842), Spain (1857), and Uruguay (1877), parents first received a warn-
ing if their child was not in school; if the child continued to be absent,
the law empowered the government to fine parents. In Denmark (1814),
Norway (1827), Greece (1834), Colombia (1870), ­Ecuador (1871), Guatemala
(1875), Brazil (1879), Argentina (1884), and Jamaica (1892), the fine could be
issued at the first instance of recorded absenteeism, without a prior warn-
ing. In some cases, the law also stipulated more severe penalties for parents
who failed to pay the corresponding fine: in Denmark (1814), this could
lead to imprisonment or forced ­labor, while in Sweden (1842) it could re-
sult in the child’s removal from their home and their placement ­under the
state’s supervision.
A small minority of countries sought to incentivize school attendance
by relying on rewards instead of penalties. In Mexico, as we w ­ ill see in
196 | Chapter 5

Prussia 1763 X ?? children banned from religious confirmation

Austria 1774 X
Netherlands 1806
Denmark 1814 X fin fine on parents, followed by imprisonment or forced labor
Norway 1827 X fin fine on parents
France 1833
Greece 1834 X fin fine on parents
Belgium 1842
Sweden 1842 X wa parents warned, followed by removal of children fom home
Cuba 1844 X
Peru 1850 X
Spain 1857 X wa parents warned, then fined
Italy 1859 X wa parents warned, then ̏punished under criminal law of the state’’
Chile 1860
Costa Rica 1869 X
Colombia 1870 X fin fine on parents
England 1870 X var varying penalties up to the discretion of school board
Venezuela 1870 X
Ecuador 1871 X fin fine on parents
El Salvador 1873 X wa parents warned
Guatemala 1875 X fin fine on parents
Uruguay 1877 X wa parents warned, then fined
Brazil 1879 X fin fine on parents
Argentina 1884 X fin fine on parents
Jamaica 1892 X fin fine on parents
Compulsory

Penalties

Figure 5.3. Compulsory schooling provisions included in the first national primary
education laws of ­European and Latin American countries. See text and footnotes
for sources and methodology.

chapter 6, the national government during the 1920s incentivized school

attendance by providing f­ree school meals. In the Netherlands, an educa-
tion law passed in 1889 tied parental access to vari­ous public s­ervices to
­children’s school attendance. In Chile, the central government relied on
teachers to persuade parents to send their c­ hildren to school, and the 1860
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 197

law stipulated an annual monetary prize to be awarded to the male and

female teacher who had excelled at their job in each municipality.11
Education laws often charged inspectors with the duty to enforce com-
pulsory schooling provisions by checking attendance and applying penal-
ties to parents whose ­children w
­ ere out of school. We do not know much
about the extent to which ­these penalties ­were perceived as a real threat by
parents, but their inclusion in landmark education laws is a sign that cen-
tral governments ­were worried that, if left to parental demand alone, school
attendance would be low.

NATIONAL CURRICULUMS FOR MORAL EDUCATION

One of the fundamental tools available to states seeking to shape c­ hildren’s
education is the curriculum. A national curriculum determines the content
of education by establishing the list of subjects that must be taught in
schools, how much time should be allocated to each, and implicitly, what
subjects should not be taught. By 1900, most countries in Western E ­ urope
and Latin Amer­i­ca had a national curriculum for primary schools. The
remainder of this chapter w ­ ill take an in-­depth look at ­these curriculums.
When public primary education systems emerged, regulating the curric-
ulum was a means to address some national elites’ fear that educating the
less privileged could backfire by raising their aspirations and empowering
them to demand deep change. In 1760s Prus­sia, as we saw in chapter 4, the
king himself expressed concern that if peasants learned too much, they
might reject their place in society and migrate to the cities in search of bet-
ter economic opportunities. The solution, according to his policy advisers,
was to establish separate mandatory curriculums for rural and urban schools
so that what ­children learned in rural schools would prove worthless in
­getting a city job—an approach that was also a­ dopted by other countries.
Similar concerns surfaced in other countries. In Chile, while the vast ma-
jority of members of congress expressed support for the goals of the 1860
General Law of Primary Education, Máximo Arguelles, a conservative mem-
ber and author of the book P ­ opular Education in Chile, argued that teaching

11. By the turn of the ­century, Chilean congressmen began to voice concern that persuasion had
been “entirely useless” in compelling the lower classes to send their ­children to school. Compul-
sory schooling, they argued, was needed to prevent t­hese c­ hildren from being raised “in a social
context full of vices, bad examples and perverse customs, in a context well prepared for the germi-
nation of ­future criminals.” Chile ­adopted compulsory schooling in 1925. See Egaña (1996), p. 17.
198 | Chapter 5

reading skills would “excite the p ­ eople’s passions,” especially by enabling

them to read the press, as had happened in Chile in the 1850s and in France
in 1848.12 In Argentina, too, a few congressmen expressed concern that trans-
mitting “abundant knowledge can inadvertently produce generations who
are physically and spiritually sick.”13
Despite t­ hese concerns, most elites thought that the risk of empowering
the masses could be successfully mitigated by carefully curating the con-
tent of education ­children received. To shape that content, states imposed
a national curriculum and selected and distributed mandatory textbooks.
This approach has lasted: In 2020, more than 95 ­percent of countries had a
national curriculum and 75 ­percent had centrally approved school text-
books.14 Even ­today, when national elites perceive that education systems
have failed to attain their goals—­for example, when new protests against
the status quo emerge—­a common response is not to roll back education
provision but to reform the curriculum in hopes that a new curriculum ­will
better accomplish the state’s goals.
Precisely ­because national curriculums are at the core of what education
systems do and of what goals they seek to accomplish, they have been the
subject of some of the most heated policy debates in history. In some cases,
curriculum debates hinge on w ­ hether education systems should primarily
teach values or skills, and on w ­ hether they should primarily discipline
­children or empower them. But even when t­ here is ample agreement about
the general goals of education, ­there can be considerable disagreement
about how to attain ­those goals and how to design the curriculum to that
effect. The nineteenth-­century curriculum debates in ­Europe and Latin
Amer­i­ca are illustrative of this. Even when national elites agreed that the
main goal of primary education systems was a moralizing one, and that
teaching values of discipline, obedience, and re­spect for authority was
paramount, they often disagreed about what moral education entailed
and, especially, w ­ hether it should contain religious teachings or be en-
tirely secular.
The secular-­religious divide was not the only point of contention in
nineteenth-­century debates about the curriculum; ­there was also disagree-
ment on ­whether science education belonged in primary schools at all. This

12. Serrano, Ponce de León, and Rengifo (2012), p. 82.

13. Diario de Sesiones 1899, quoted in Alliaud (2007), p. 79.
14. Data from the Va­ri­et­ies of ­Political Indoctrination in Education and the Media (V-­Indoc)
Dataset (Neundorf et al. 2023).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 199

was true even among elites who shared the view that the main goal of mass
education was to teach moral princi­ples. Some national curriculums pre-
scribed a narrow set of subjects, of which moral education was the dominant
one, followed by reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. In ­others, science
education was also incorporated, not in addition to but as part of the state’s
moral education goals. ­These divergent approaches to mass education re-
flected dif­fer­ent understandings of the roots of morality. Put simply, states
­adopted a narrow curriculum when elites w ­ ere of the opinion that reli-
gion was the basis of morality, and a broader curriculum including consid-
erable science and math when reasoning capabilities w ­ ere thought to be
crucial for learning moral princi­ples. But before we get to the question of
why the content of curriculums varied, let us look at what curriculums
looked like.

DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN NATIONAL CURRICULUMS

Of the twenty-­five ­European and Latin American countries that ­adopted a
comprehensive national primary education law before 1900, twenty-­two
countries imposed an official curriculum in their first comprehensive law.15
I focus on the content of ­these initial curriculums both b ­ ecause of the
book’s interest in the foundational stages of primary education systems and
­b ecause initial curriculums had a long-­lasting influence. In Prus­sia, for
­example, the curriculum introduced by the 1763 General Rural School
Regulations continued to apply ­until 1854—­nearly a ­century! In France
and Argentina, the curriculums imposed by the Guizot Law of 1833 and
1884 Law of Common Education, respectively, remained virtually unchanged
for more than fifty years. Of the countries discussed in chapter 4, Chile was
the one where the first national curriculum, introduced in 1860, lasted the
least, but even in that case, it remained in place for twenty-­five years.
What subjects ­were typically prescribed by the first national primary
school curriculums of the nineteenth ­century? Figure 5.4 depicts the answer.
In nine countries, including Greece, Brazil, and Uruguay, the law prescribed
a single curriculum for all primary schools. In thirteen countries, includ-
ing Prus­sia, France, and Costa Rica, the law prescribed a dif­fer­ent curricu-
lum for lower primary schools, which had to be established everywhere and
­were the only type of school available in rural areas, and upper primary

15. The exceptions ­were the laws of ­England (1870), ­Ecuador (1871), and Jamaica (1892), which
did not stipulate the curriculum.
200 | Chapter 5

Prussia 1763 2 3 3
Austria 1774 2 3 4 3
Netherlands 1806 6
Denmark 1814 4 2 3 5 6 6
Norway 1827 1 3 4 6
France 1833 2 3 4 6 6
Greece 1834 2 3 4 5 6 6
Belgium 1842 2 3 4
Sweden 1842 1 3 4 6
Cuba 1844 2 3 4 6 6
Peru 1850 1 2 3
Spain 1857 2 3 4 6 6
Italy 1859 2 3 4 6
Chile 1860 1 2 4 6 6
Costa Rica 1869 2 3 4 6 5 7 6 6
Colombia 1870 1 2 3 4 6 6
England 1870
Venezuela 1870 2 3 4
Ecuador 1871
El Salvador 1873 1 2 3 4 6 6
Guatemala 1875 6
Uruguay 1877 1 2 3 7 6 4 8 6
Brazil 1879 2 3 4 6 5 7
Argentina 1884 1 2 3 6 5 4 7
Jamaica 1892
Physical education
Geometry / algebra

Unique language
Moral education

Basic arithmetic
Natural science

Rural vs. urban

Social studies
Reading
Writing

Figure 5.4. Mandatory subjects in the curriculum for lower primary schools according
to the first national primary education laws of E
­ uropean and Latin American countries.
The comprehensive primary education laws of E ­ ngland (1870), E
­ cuador (1871), and
­Jamaica (1892) did not contain a mandatory national curriculum. See text and footnotes
for sources and methodology.

schools, which ­were circumscribed to urban areas. When such a distinc-

tion existed, figure 5.4 focuses on the curriculum for lower primary schools,
as ­these ­were the most common and available type of school.16

16. The thirteen countries whose first national curriculum established a dif­f er­ent set of ­mandatory
subjects for rural versus urban schools are: Prus­sia (1763), Austria (1774), Denmark (1814), Norway
(1827), France (1833), Cuba (1844), Spain (1857), Italy (1859), Chile (1860), Costa Rica (1869), Colombia
(1870), El Salvador (1873), and Guatemala (1875).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 201

An obvious pattern that emerges from comparing national primary

school curriculums is the ubiquity of moral education. Not only did the
teaching of moral princi­ples have a standalone subject in almost e­ very ­country,
but also, it was often the first subject that appeared in national c­ urriculums,
followed by reading, then writing, and fi­nally, arithmetic. Moreover, the
teaching of morality was not restricted to the time spent in a moral educa-
tion class. Typically, instruction in reading and writing aided the inculca-
tion of moral princi­ples and values drawn from religious doctrine or from
secular sources. In Prus­sia, for example, reading instruction focused on read-
ing the catechism. In France and Chile, too, the texts used to teach reading
and writing contained numerous references to God’s rewards and punish-
ments for good and bad be­hav­ior. Denmark’s 1814 Law dictated that “when
reading, such books should presumably be used which could give rise to
the formation of the c­ hildren’s mindset” as well as “impart to them knowl-
edge which could serve to eradicate prejudice.”17 Similarly, Bolivia’s 1827 cur-
riculum specified that the teaching of reading and writing had to be done
through moral and religious instruction and the use of “very compendious
catechisms.”18 The pervasiveness and importance of moral education in
­national curriculums is consistent with the findings of previous chapters,
where I highlighted its role in the development of national primary educa-
tion systems.
Another impor­tant observation that stems from ­these laws is the absence
of a systemic effort to teach a common language. Eleven of the twenty-­two
curriculums depicted in figure 5.4 specified that instruction must take place
in a common language, such as French in the case of the Guizot Law of
1833, Castilian Spanish in the case of Spain’s 1857 education law, or the “pa-
triotic language” in the case of Chile’s 1860 law. However, another eleven
curriculums did not impose a common language: seven curriculums did
not specify in any way what language should be taught in schools, and four
curriculums encouraged or required instruction in multiple languages
­according to the characteristics of the local community.19 To the extent

17. Denmark (1814a), Anordning for Almue-­Skolevæsenet paa Landet i Danmark, Art. 23.
18. Bolivia (1827), Ley de 9 de enero, Art. 1.
19. The laws of the Netherlands (1806), France (1833), Greece (1834), Sweden (1842), Cuba (1844),
Spain (1857), Chile (1860), Costa Rica (1869), Colombia (1870), El Salvador (1873), and Uruguay
(1877) required instruction in a unique and specific common language. The laws of Austria (1774),
Denmark (1814), Norway (1827), Peru (1850), Venezuela (1870), Guatemala (1875), and Brazil (1879)
did not specify a language of instruction. The laws of Prus­sia (1763), Belgium (1842), Italy (1859),
and Argentina (1884) encouraged or required instruction in multiple languages.
202 | Chapter 5

that inculcating a common language is a marker of nation-­building efforts,

­these patterns suggest that nation-­building was less impor­tant in explaining
the emergence of state-­regulated primary education systems than what has
been argued in the past. Moral education was a more prevalent component
of the first national curriculums than instruction in a common language.
Some readers may rightly note that the design of many national curricu-
lum plans, with their focus on moral education and reading, could in princi­
ple reflect not the central government’s indoctrination goals but the goals
of the Church. This is a reasonable conjecture if we take curriculums in iso-
lation. However, as we saw ­earlier in this chapter, the introduction of na-
tional curriculums was usually accompanied by additional policies that gave
central governments the authority to train and certify teachers as well as
the authority to inspect schools and apply sanctions to t­ hose who failed to
comply with government directives. In other words, even in t­hose cases
where moral education included religious teachings, the teachers who im-
parted this education and the inspectors who oversaw them responded to
the central government, not the Church. In fact, countries with an estab-
lished official Church did not introduce a national curriculum any e­ arlier—
or any l­ater—­than ­those where religious actors lacked the same level of
unity and ­political influence.
Although writing and arithmetic w ­ ere also part of the official curricu-
lum, it is impor­tant not to overstate their role. In many countries during
the early nineteenth c­ entury, ­children often did not receive any instruction
in writing and arithmetic despite their place in the official curriculum. In
Prus­sia, for example, the law allowed c­ hildren to stop attending primary
school once they had received the Protestant or Catholic confirmation. In
response to this type of provision and to pressure from parents who wanted
their ­children to return to work, teachers often devoted the majority of
school time to moral and religious education and to reading the catechism.
By the time instruction in writing began, many ­children had already re-
ceived the confirmation and their parents had removed them from school.20
In Chile, the common practice among teachers was to begin by teaching
moral education and reading, which ­were considered easier to learn. By
the time they moved on to more complex subjects, such as writing and
arithmetic, many ­children had already left school.21

20. Melton (2002).

21. Egaña Baraona (2000).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 203

While the presence of moral education was one of the main similarities
across national primary curriculums in the nineteenth c­ entury, the charac-
ter of moral education and, in par­tic­u­lar, ­whether it was religious or secu-
lar, did vary considerably across countries and over time. During roughly
the first two-­thirds of the nineteenth ­century, the large majority of initial
primary education laws included religious teaching as part of moral educa-
tion. During the last third of the nineteenth ­century, however, an increas-
ing number of countries made moral education a secular subject. In ­these
countries, religious instruction was ­either prohibited or made optional.
The shift from religious to secular moral education during the late nine-
teenth ­century was accompanied by another impor­tant change: the increas-
ing prevalence in primary school curriculums of math subjects that went
beyond basic arithmetic, such as geometry or algebra, and of natu­ral sci-
ence subjects such as chemistry or physics. Before 1870, only Costa Rica in-
cluded geometry in its national curriculum, and no country’s curriculum
included natu­ral science subjects. A ­ fter 1870, geometry and / or algebra and
natu­ral science began to be gradually added into national curriculums. To
be clear, no one event occurred in 1870 that accounts for ­these changes; 1870
is simply an arbitrary year chosen to facilitate the comparison between cur-
riculums ­adopted ­earlier and ­later in the nineteenth ­century.
Another vis­i­ble change ­toward the end of the nineteenth ­century was the
increasing inclusion of physical education and of social studies subjects such
as history and geography in national curriculums for primary schools. ­These
subjects ­were typically used to foster patriotic sentiments and to prepare
­children, through physical exercises, to serve as f­ uture soldiers in wars with
other states. What is in­ter­est­ing is that in ­Europe, which created state-­
regulated primary education systems, the first national education laws of
only Denmark and Greece—­passed in 1814 and 1834, respectively—­included
physical education and social studies as part of the curriculum. The gen-
eral absence of ­these subjects in national curriculums prior to the 1870s pro-
vides additional evidence that inculcating nationalism and preparing for
war ­were not among the main goals driving the emergence of mass educa-
tion systems.
­These changes in curriculum content over time emerge from comparing
not just countries that a­ dopted a national curriculum early versus late in
the nineteenth c­ entury but also from comparing how national curriculums
changed within countries. The cases of Prus­sia and France illustrate t­hese
trends. In Prus­sia, the 1763 curriculum for rural schools focused first on
204 | Chapter 5

r­ eligious moral instruction, which included teaching the catechism, as well

as prayer and religious chanting. ­After that, students began to be ­exposed
to reading, typically taught using religious texts, and ­later on, if they ­were
still in school, to writing instruction. Arithmetic was not mandatory. If nu-
meracy skills ­were taught at all, they ­were very rudimentary and instruc-
tion took place at the very end of primary school and in extraordinary Win-
ter sessions, not the regular school year. This model for primary education
was more or less followed by France’s Guizot Law of 1833 and by other coun-
tries that introduced national curriculums roughly before the 1870s. ­Later
on, however, Prus­sia’s curriculum underwent substantial reform, first in 1854
with the introduction of national history as a new mandatory subject, and
then in 1872 with the addition of geometry, social studies, and gymnastics.
In the case of France, ­after more than fifty years of very basic elementary
instruction focused on moral and religious education, reading, writing,
French, and the metric system—­taught in that order of importance—­a new
curriculum was ­adopted in the 1880s as part of a set of education reforms
known as the Ferry Laws. The new curriculum replaced moral and religious
instruction with the secular subject moral and civic education, and added
new mandatory subjects in natu­ral sciences, mathe­matics, history, geogra-
phy, gymnastics, and military exercises.
It may be tempting to interpret the foregoing discussion as proof of dif-
fusion theory, which holds that countries w ­ ill adopt the curriculum that is
considered desirable by international standards, resulting in considerable
similarity across curriculums.22 From this perspective, the introduction of
natu­ral science in many curriculums t­oward the end of the nineteenth
­century would be explained by the emergence of a new international model
of what a good curriculum looked like—­one that included natu­ral science—­
and the diffusion and influence of that model curriculum across countries.
While t­here is no doubt that countries often looked to o ­ thers to inform
­education policy back home, and still do so t­ oday, the limitation of diffu-
sion theory is that it d
­ oesn’t acknowledge that t­ here is often more than one
education model that countries can choose to emulate or draw inspiration

22. One of the most influential studies ­behind the argument that national curriculums tend to
look alike actually finds more variation across curriculums than it admits. Based on an analy­sis of
national curriculums from 1920 to 1986, the study reveals that the average proportion of time al-
located to teaching natu­ral science across countries was 5.2 ­percent of the total teaching time in
1920–1944, with a standard deviation of 4; and the average proportion allocated in 1945–1969 was
7.1 ­percent with a standard deviation of 4.6 (Benavot et al. 1991). See also Benavot (1992, 2004);
McEneaney (2003); and Meyer, Kamens, and Benavot (2017).
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 205

from. T­ oday, for example, ­there are two distinct approaches to promote high-­
quality teaching. The Finland model uses a highly selective p ­ rocess for
­admitting individuals into teacher education programs but gives teachers
considerable autonomy in the classroom. The U.S. model makes it easier to
become a teacher but gives teachers relatively l­ ittle leeway to deviate from
local and state education policies.
In the nineteenth ­century, too, two main models circulated. Both of them
focused on how to promote discipline and obedience, but while one model
emphasized the role of religious doctrine in teaching moral princi­ples, the
other emphasized the role of science and reasoning capabilities as a crucial
component of a person’s moral education. ­Because of the centrality of this
conflict in nineteenth-­century educational and moral debates, ­these two cur-
ricular approaches are the focus of the remainder of this chapter. I begin
by summarizing t­ hese moral education models. I then compare the national
curriculums of Argentina and Chile, two countries that, despite their many
similarities, pursued dif­fer­ent models. Drawing on transcripts from l­ egislative
debates to illustrate conservatives’ and liberals’ differing views about how to
promote moral education, I argue that the balance of power between
them had critical implications for which model of moralization was a­ dopted
in national curriculums.

THE ROOTS OF MORALITY: RELIGION VERSUS SCIENCE

The main source of moral teachings in premodern ­Europe was, without a
doubt, the Church. Initially, the Catholic Church enjoyed an undisputed
position in the moral education of the population. The Protestant Refor-
mation eliminated this mono­poly, but even within Protestantism, the Bible
remained the source of moral teachings. Chris­tian­ity advanced the view that
we are born with a tendency to sin, but that we can save ourselves from an
afterlife of eternal punishment by living in accordance with the moral l­ essons
of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments—­“thou s­ hall not murder,”
“thou ­shall not steal,” “thou s­ hall not covet thy neighbor’s h
­ ouse,” e­ tc. Start-
ing in the fifteenth ­century, religious missionaries and other emigrants
brought Chris­tian­ity and its moral lessons to the Amer­i­cas, replacing—or
extinguishing—­the religion of native populations. In both ­Europe and the
Amer­i­cas, separation between the Church and the State eventually became
the norm, but the Church’s legitimacy as a moral authority outlived the
decline of its formal p ­ olitical power. Against this backdrop, when states
developed national primary education systems to promote social order, a
206 | Chapter 5

natu­ral approach to teach ­future citizens how to behave was to take advan-
tage of the moral authority of the Church by incorporating religious doc-
trine into the moral education curriculum. This is what Prus­sia, Chile, and
many other countries did.
During the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries, however, power­ful new
ideas emerged about the roots of morality that did not rely on religious
­doctrine as the only or primary source of good moral be­hav­ior. Enlighten-
ment ­philosophers argued that religion was not necessary for accessing
moral princi­ples, and that ­these could be accessed through reason. The Ger-
man ­philosopher Immanuel Kant was perhaps the most influential voice
­behind this idea. Kant claimed that the grounding of moral princi­ples lay
in reason alone, and not the commands of religious authorities or even God.
He argued that the supreme moral princi­ple—­that we should always act
according to maxims that we would be willing to accept as a universal law—­
was discoverable by reason alone, unaided by religious teachings or em-
pirical observation. With re­spect to the moral education of ­children, Kant
argued in Über Pädagogik that the role of schools is to teach ­children their
duties, both to themselves and to ­others, and to encourage them to abide
by ­these duties; this, he wrote, is the way to build ­children’s character. He
suggested that ­children could gain much from reading a textbook con-
taining “everyday questions of right and wrong” which would form the
basis for careful thinking and consideration.23 To be clear, Kant did not
oppose the teaching of religion; he believed ­children are bound to en-
counter it in their lives and therefore should learn about it,24 but did not
think religion was the foundation of morality, writing: “But is man by na-
ture morally good or bad? He is neither, for he is not by nature a moral
being. He only ­becomes a moral being when his reason has developed
ideas of duty and law.”25
While Kant highlighted the role of deductive reasoning in accessing moral
princi­ples, another hugely influential philosophy in education debates was
positivism, founded by French p ­ hilosopher Auguste Comte, which stressed
the relationship between morality and science. Writing during the first half
of the nineteenth ­century, Comte was concerned that the French Revolution
of 1789 had reduced the legitimacy of the Catholic Church but had failed

23. Kant (1900), p. 104.

24. Kant (1900), p. 110.
25. Kant (1900), p. 108.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 207

to replace it with an alternative moral authority accepted by all. “The g­ reat

­political and moral crisis of existing socie­ties,” he wrote, stemmed from “the
profound divergence that now exists among all minds, with regard to all
the fundamental maxims whose fixity is the first condition of a true social
order.”26 Comte argued that, in modern socie­ties, science should and would
occupy the void left by the decline of religion:

As the sciences have become positive, and as—in consequence—­they

have made ever-­increasing pro­gress, a larger and larger mass of scien-
tific ideas has entered our common education, at the same time as
­religious doctrines gradually lost their influence . . . ​The only influ-
ence religious doctrines have on our minds is that which stems from
the fact that morality has remained attached to them. This influence
­will necessarily remain ­until the time when morality has under­gone
the revolution that has already occurred in all our par­tic­u­lar branches
of knowledge as they became positive.27

Comte was especially interested in the ability of science to o ­ rganize

and make sense of the physical and social worlds, to help individuals pre-
dict the consequences of their actions, and to discover universal laws or
truths that, unlike religious doctrine, would become acceptable to all. He
believed that the ­human mind, if properly cultivated, could “discover, by
a well-­combined use of reasoning and observation, the a­ctual laws of
phenomena,”28 including not only natu­ral but also social phenomena. He
predicted that, in the ­future, science would be “the permanent spiritual basis
of the social order, as long as our species remains active in the world.”29 At
a practical level, Comte argued for instruction in mathe­matics, astron-
omy, physics, chemistry, and biology to provide “the scientific training which
prepares the way for social studies,” followed by instruction in sociology—­a
term he in­ven­ted—­and history, which, he claimed, would serve “as a basis
for the systematization of moral truth.”30
While Enlightenment theories and positivism ­were influential among lib-
eral ­political elites during the nineteenth c­ entury, religion remained the
preferred source of moral education among conservative politicians. As we

26. Comte (1988), p. 28.

27. Comte (1998a), pp. 32–33.
28. Comte (1988), p. 2.
29. Comte (1998b), p. 171.
30. Comte (1865), p. 267.
208 | Chapter 5

­ ill see through the cases of Argentina and Chile, the balance of power be-
w
tween ­these two groups played a role in shaping ­whether, in pursuit of the
common moralizing goals of primary education, the national curriculum
would focus on a narrow set of subjects dominated by moral and religious
education, or ­whether it would also include training in natu­ral and social
sciences.

TWO APPROACHES TO MORAL EDUCATION: CHILE VERSUS ARGENTINA

In previous chapters, we saw that mass vio­lence gave way to the centraliza-
tion and expansion of primary education in E ­ uropean and Latin American
countries, and that in the Western world, internal conflict was a more impor­
tant driver of educational expansion than democ­ratization, industrializa-
tion, military threats, or the spread of ideas about the nation-­building role
of education. Through an in-­depth look at Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Ar-
gentina, I also showed that the reason why central governments responded
to concerns about mass vio­lence by expanding primary education was not
­because they wanted to appease ordinary ­people by improving their eco-
nomic well-­being, but b ­ ecause national elites believed they could prevent
­future social disorder by teaching c­ hildren to re­spect authority and be con-
tent with the status quo.
Despite the common goal ­behind Prus­sia’s 1763 General Rural School
Regulations, France’s 1833 Guizot Law, Chile’s 1860 General Law of Primary
Education, and Argentina’s 1884 Law of Common Education, t­hese coun-
tries ­adopted dif­fer­ent national curriculums for primary schools. Most
­notable w­ ere the differences between Chile and Argentina, two countries
that, despite their many similarities, nonetheless ­adopted starkly dif­fer­ent
curriculums. Chile and Argentina had similar histories of Spanish colonial
rule, gained ­independence at the beginning of the nineteenth ­century, and
established oligarchic regimes that maintained the hierarchical structures
of the colonial period. Both had a predominantly Catholic, rural, and il-
literate population. Their resources and economies ­were also similar, based
on heavi­ly taxed commodities exports and reliance on foreign investment
and loans to finance large public infrastructure proj­ects. In both, extend-
ing the reach of the state and maintaining order in the periphery presented
similar geographic challenges given their large north to south territories.
Both ­were exposed to similar education ideas, among other reasons b ­ ecause
of the influence of mass education advocate Domingo F. Sarmiento, a
­native of Argentina who also lived and worked in Chile for many years.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 209

Fi­nally, as I showed in chapter 4, both countries expanded primary educa-

tion to shape the moral character of the masses and prevent the recurrence
of mass vio­lence. And yet, Chile and Argentina ­adopted very dif­fer­ent na-
tional curriculums for primary schools. What did their curriculums look
like, and why did they differ?
The comparison of the Chilean and Argentine curriculums echoes the
review of national curriculums presented above. While both countries pro-
vided moral education in line with the main goal of primary education,
moral education was religious in Chile but secular in Argentina. Moreover,
while the Chilean curriculum included only basic arithmetic and no s­ cience
education, the Argentine curriculum included more advanced math edu-
cation as well as considerable training in the natu­ral and social sciences.
­Table 5.1 provides a list of the mandatory subjects for primary schools and
for Normal Schools in each country according to their first national edu-
cation laws. As we can see, the national curriculum established by Chile’s
1860 General Law of Primary Education included only four subjects: Chris-
tian doctrine and morality; reading and writing in Spanish; arithmetic;
and the official ­measurement system. By contrast, Argentina’s 1884 Law of
Common Education established secular moral education, taught through
three subjects: moral education, civic instruction, and urban studies, which
was devoted to teaching ­children how to behave like the civilized popula-
tions of the cities that Sarmiento had praised in Facundo. Like the Chilean
curriculum, Argentina’s curriculum also included reading and writing in
Spanish and arithmetic. However, the Argentine curriculum also included
French; geometry; drawing; natu­ral sciences; physics and chemistry; history;
and geography. The curriculums for Normal Schools to train primary school
teachers followed the same pattern, with the Argentine curriculum teach-
ing moral education as a secular subject and covering more subjects and
more science and math than the Chilean one.
The curriculum patterns introduced in 1860s Chile and 1880s Argentina
lasted for more than half a ­century, creating differences between them that
extended well into the twentieth ­century. T­ hese differences are inconsistent
with the view that countries choose education policies following a com-
mon international model. Argentina and Chile made very dif­fer­ent initial
policy choices with re­spect to the content of education despite having the
same exposure to ­European ideas about education and even a common ad-
vocate for mass education in Sarmiento. To explain the differences in cur-
riculum policy between t­hese two countries we need to look beyond the
­ able 5.1. List of Mandatory Subjects in Primary Schools and Normal Schools in
T
Argentina and Chile, circa 1880

Argentina Chile
Primary Schools Reading and writing Reading and writing in the
National language patriotic language
French Practical ele­ments of
Arithmetic arithmetic
Drawing ­Legal ­measurement system
Geometry Christian doctrine and
Map drawing morality
Natu­ral sciences
Physics and chemistry
Moral education
Civic instruction
Urban studies
History
Geography
Singing and gymnastics
Home economics
House­work
Normal Schools Spanish language Reading and writing
Grammar Practical ele­ments of
Notions of lit­er­a­ture arithmetic
Composition exercises ­Legal ­measurement system
Reading and Ele­ments of cosmography and
writing / composition physics
Arithmetic Christian doctrine and
Geometry morality
Cosmography Sacred history
Physics Religious and moral dogma
Chemistry History of the Amer­i­cas and
Natu­ral history Chile
Philosophy ­Music
Morals and manners Horticulture
Civic instruction Drawing
Geography Pedagogical theory and
History practice
Home economics and crafts
Anatomy, physiology, and
hygiene
Drawing exercises
Physical exercise
Singing exercises
Pedagogy
Observation at the School of
Application
Practice at the School of
Application
Note: For Argentina, the ­table shows the primary school curriculum as stipulated in the 1884
Law of Common Education and the curriculum for Normal Schools as stipulated in the
National Decree of January 24, 1880. For Chile, both curriculums are from the 1860 General
Law of Primary Education.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 211

role of global ideas about education and into how domestic forces ­shaped
curriculum policy decisions. In par­tic­ul­ar, we need to consider what
­conservative politicians, who ­were dominant in 1860s Chile, and secular
liberals, who dominated in 1880s Argentina, argued was the appropriate
curriculum to advance their shared goals of shaping the moral character of
the masses and forging social order.

THE CONSERVATIVE APPROACH TO MORAL EDUCATION

The primary school curriculum established by the Chilean 1860 General
Law of Primary Education was emblematic of the conservative approach
to moral education. Conservatives argued that b ­ ecause religion was the basis
of morality, the curriculum o ­ ught to rely heavi­ly on religious doctrine. In
the Chilean case, conservatives with strong ties to the Catholic Church con-
trolled the presidency and a majority of seats in Congress between 1831 and
1861, a period known as the Conservative Republic or Authoritarian Repub-
lic. The 1860 education law, passed during this period of hegemonic rule by
the Conservative Party, stipulated that moral education o ­ ught to be religious.
The mandatory curriculum established Christian doctrine and morality as
one of the few mandatory subjects. The official school textbooks that the
Ministry of Public Instruction distributed during the 1860s to teach read-
ing and writing heavi­ly emphasized religious messages, making direct as-
sociations between submissive and obedient be­hav­ior on one hand and the
precepts of Catholicism on the other. The widely used textbook La concien-
cia de un niño, for example, began by highlighting the importance of being
obedient, and then taught that God’s approval was the highest reward for
good be­hav­ior, promised Heaven to ­children who accepted their lot on
Earth, and alluded to Jesus’s words to threaten c­ hildren with punishment
if they misbehaved:31

Every­thing I have I owe to my parents. How can I express my gratitude?

This is what I intend to do: I w ­ ill behave in a way that always makes
them feel satisfied. My parents only make commands that are use-
ful to me. If I obey them, every­one admires me and says “what an ex-
cellent child.” This way, I not only satisfy my parents but also every­one
who ­doesn’t know me. My parents send me to school, where I can learn

31. Sarmiento (1844).

212 | Chapter 5

useful and good t­ hings. T ­ here, an instructor teaches us how to behave

so we ­will gain the love of our parents and every­one e­ lse.
I satisfy my parents by being good, kind, and very obedient. By
behaving this way, I also satisfy God. Always invisible, always pre­sent,
he sees and knows what I do and what I think in ­every instant. If
I am good, he loves me. God ­will be the one who ­will reward me the
most; it is for him that I must take advantage of what my teacher has
to teach me.
If I am happy with what my parents give me to eat and drink; . . . ​if
I am nice to ­others, I w ­ ill sow the seeds of my good be­hav­ior . . . ​If I
behave well and satisfy God, when I die I w ­ ill go to Heaven.
Jesus said it: ­those who do not obey the Church are ungodly pagans
and public sinners.

The religious approach to moral education also found support among

conservatives in Argentina. Conservatives in Congress argued that the way
to secure order was to emphasize religion and the Catholic idea that, if we
behave well in this world, we w­ ill be rewarded in an afterlife. During the
debate over the 1884 Law of Common Education that took place on July 6,
1883, in the Argentine ­House of Representatives, Pedro Goyena, a congress-
man who fervently opposed the secularization of the state and co-­founded
the Catholic ­Union, argued that the basis of all individual and social safety,
of order and harmony, is religion, b
­ ecause religion dictates what constitutes
moral be­hav­ior; therefore, public schools must teach religion to ­children
­because “to leave them without religious instruction would lead them to
become dangerous citizens”:
Even when the state accomplishes its functions, especially t­ hose func-
tions to guarantee that the activity of each individual does not disturb
­others, and society, instead of becoming anarchic, maintains order and
harmony, the state ­won’t accomplish t­ hose functions in a convincing
way if it forgets the guarantee of all guarantees, the basis of all indi-
vidual and social safety, the supreme law, that is, religion. . . . ​­There has
been no society, anywhere, anytime, without religion or without God.
When religious sentiment languishes, man reaches his lowest in-
stincts. . . . ​When we legislate on school issues, we legislate on the
transformation of society, on the forces that ­will act on it; it is evident,
then, that the law must promote ­those forces that are not blind, that
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 213

are conscious and driven by a superior princi­ple of morality, and

therefore must promote religion in public schools. . . . ​To leave a ­great
number of ­children without religious education, c­ hildren whom we
have a special interest to educate and civilize, c­ hildren who do not
have the f­ amily means to become more civilized, to leave them with-
out religious instruction would lead to them becoming dangerous
citizens.32

Congressman Centeno was more succinct: “­Children should be taught . . . ​

‘one must not kill’ ‘one must not steal’ b ­ ecause God has prohibited it.”33
Another conservative congressman, Tristán Achával Rodríguez, not only ar-
gued in ­favor of teaching religion as the basis of moral education and so-
cial order, but also specifically argued that science and ­human reasoning
would not teach individuals not to kill or not to steal:

Education without religion ­will form . . . ​a generation of men without

solid princi­ples, without character, without conscience, weak, capable
of the fall of the country. . . . ​It ­will be necessary for the child to know
that he cannot kill, and why; that he cannot steal, and why; that he must
re­spect private property, and why. And all this cannot be demonstrated
scientifically; it cannot stem from ­human reasoning alone. ­These are
truths that we know b ­ ecause they have been revealed from above and
directly by God. It is not pos­si­ble, then, to suppress religious teaching
from schools.34
­These truths [you ­shall not kill, you ­shall not steal], to be the basis
of a moral order, must be rooted in the individual’s intellect. But rea-
son alone cannot take care of this; and therefore the Church says: it is
not legitimate, even if we cannot prove it scientifically, to incline our-
selves ­toward ­these mistaken be­hav­iors; we must believe and submit
ourselves to ­these revealed truths; we must believe ­there is an afterlife,
­because without it, all moral and social order ­will dis­appear.35

Fi­nally, Argentine congressman Gallo, himself a secularist, aptly sum-

marized Goyena and his co-­partisans’ arguments that, absent religious

32. Goyena, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 6, 1883, pp. 491–492.

33. Centeno, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 14, 1883, p. 634.
34. Achával Rodríguez, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 6, 1883, pp. 507–508.
35. Achával Rodríguez, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 14, 1883, p. 611.
214 | Chapter 5

education, criminal be­hav­ior, and eventually the downfall of society,

would result:

If we proceed [without religious education], we ­will form generations

of criminals . . . ​Study history, and . . . ​what ­will you find? The disappear-
ance, ruin and de­cadence of all ­those socie­ties that did not maintain
their religious sentiment . . . ​Our proj­ect begins by stating: “the teach-
ing of morality ­will be mandatory.” What does the study of morality
entail? . . . ​It is based on God, it is based on the princi­ple of an immor-
tal soul which is the basis of h ­ uman responsibility . . . ​The student w ­ ill
ask the teacher: why m ­ ustn’t I kill? The teacher w ­ ill respond: You
­mustn’t kill ­because it is prohibited by God, . . . ​and if you did, you w ­ ill
be punished by God. This life on Earth is purely transitory; a­ fter it
comes a life of eternal reward or punishment, based on good or bad
be­hav­ior.36

THE LIBERAL APPROACH TO MORAL EDUCATION

While conservatives dominated Chilean politics during the debate of the
1860 law, liberals dominated national politics during the debate of Argen-
tina’s 1884 education law. It is impor­tant to understand that the liberals who
ruled Argentina from 1880 to 1916 ­were liberals in the sense that they en-
dorsed the secularization of state institutions,37 yet they represented the
elite and supported an oligarchic p ­ olitical regime with l­imited ­political
participation.
In stark contrast to conservative arguments, liberal elites in Argentina be-
lieved that teaching Catholicism in public schools would engender social
conflict between ­those who subscribed to this religion and t­ hose who did
not. This, they argued, would defeat the very purpose of public schools to
unite the population and promote peace and order. Influenced heavi­ly by
positivist philosophy, liberals maintained instead that what was needed was
to teach ­children universal truths applicable to every­one, regardless of reli-
gious beliefs. It was by teaching t­ hese universal truths, including princi­ples
of geometry and physics, that schools could help create unity among
­citizens and thus reduce disorderly be­hav­ior in society. ­These ideas are well

36. Gallo, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 12, 1883, p. 538.

37. To advance this agenda, liberals in Congress passed the 1884 Law of Civil Registries, which
established a civil registry of births, marriages, and deaths in an attempt to displace the Catholic
Church from p ­ eople’s daily lives, replacing it with the state.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 215

captured in one of the speeches delivered in Congress by the Minister of

Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, himself a liberal and part of Presi-
dent Roca’s liberal administration:

History tells us that the state has specific ends. The state unites men to one
another so that they w ­ ill pursue common goals. The Church unites
men to God so that they w ­ ill pursue individual goals. . . . ​The state has
the duty to form citizens; not Jews, not Catholics, b ­ ecause that would
go against the ends of the state and the freedom of consciousness.
Schools must teach universal ideas, not dogmas, and much less to t­ hose
who do not desire the teaching of princi­ples that go against their own
beliefs. The ideas that must be taught in schools must be universal, and the
Church is not universal, even if it pretends to be. The teaching of arithme-
tic, for example, is the same teaching for every­one; the teaching of geometry
is the same for every­one, ­because its truths can be grasped by ­human intel-
ligence; but the teaching of religion does not fall in that category . . . ​The
state’s duty to instruct with a social goal is fulfilled by teaching what is true
everywhere and for every­one, by providing universal knowledge.38
The state, which governs inheritances, protects the lives and honor
of its citizens, cannot neglect education; and with the same right that
it can turn a child into a soldier, it can and must impose on ­children
the duty to instruct themselves, b ­ ecause it m ­ atters for the wellbeing of
the Nation. . . . ​We ­mustn’t create divisions inside schools; we ­mustn’t sepa-
rate the protestant child from the catholic . . . ​­because then we w­ ill engender
­ ill continue in the street, and
fights and discord inside the school, and t­ hose w
enter the ­family, and then go back again from the families to the street,
taken ­there not by the ­children but by their parents or adults, helping
sow irreparable seeds of division among the ­people.39

In addition to opposing the teaching of Catholic doctrine, or of any other

religious dogma, liberals in Congress held that knowledge of what consti-
tutes good and bad be­hav­ior precedes the emergence of Chris­tian­ity; that
morality is inherent to man, and that in order to enable men to access uni-
versal moral princi­ples, the key was to develop their capacity for abstraction,
logic and reasoning. This would form the basis of good be­hav­ior. The liberal

38. Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 13,
1883, pp. 557, 581. Emphasis is mine.
39. Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 13,
1883, p. 583. Emphasis is mine.
216 | Chapter 5

congressman Civit, for example, argued that morality is ­independent of

religion:

Philosophy demonstrates that morality is i­ ndependent of religion, that

the distinction between what is right and wrong, the distinction
­between rightful and wrongful d ­ oing, is a law inherent to man’s na-
ture. The teacher, for example, w ­ ill tell its disciples: you s­ hall not lie
in the name of your own dignity, b ­ ecause if you lie o­ thers w­ ill think
less of you, and so ­will you. 40

As articulated by the Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction

during the congressional debates of the 1884 Law of Common Education,
liberals believed that “moral princi­ples are abstract”; while religious doctrine
could be a shortcut for individuals whose intelligence was not sufficiently
developed to access moral princi­ples, teaching science would be superior
since learning science would help grasp abstract princi­ples:

We must teach morality. Moral princi­ples are innate to men; ­things

have been known to be moral since before the existence of Chris­tian­
ity. Some of ­those moral princi­ples have been ­adopted by Chris­tian­ity,
but they are universal, and therefore civilizing, princi­ples . . . ​Morality
can be taught without teaching religion b ­ ecause moral princi­ples are
abstract, they are pre­sent in all ­human minds, whereas religious princi­
ples refer to concrete t­ hings. Religious worship has external manifes-
tations. ­There is no doubt that for certain levels of intelligence, it would
be almost impossible to penetrate the mind with abstract princi­ples.
From that standpoint, the teaching of morality in schools w ­ ill be defi-
cient, but this difficulty is also pre­sent in all the sciences, and for that
reason the teaching of science is so impor­tant.41

At best, liberals thought that teaching religion as the original source of

morality was a useful, if suboptimal, shortcut. At worst, they thought that
teaching religion would divide society and undermine order, while teach-
ing science would unite the population and provide a more solid ground-
ing for morality.

40. Civit, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 11, 1883, p. 515.

41. Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, Diario de Sesiones (Diputados), July 13,
1883, pp. 566, 581–582, 586.
 Teachers, Inspectors, and Curriculums | 217

In sum, Chile in the 1860s and Argentina in the 1880s both erected cen-
trally controlled primary school systems in response to national elites’
heightened concern for social order a­ fter episodes of civil war. Both systems
sought chiefly to shape the moral character of the poor to promote long-­
term social order and ­political stability. National elites in both countries
­were exposed to the same global ideas about mass education. Why, then,
did their national curriculums for primary and for Normal Schools differ
so much? Two main models for teaching moral princi­ples existed, each re-
flecting a dif­fer­ent view about the roots of morality: one viewed religion as
the basis of morality; the other viewed reason and scientific laws as the ul-
timate source of moral princi­ples. Domestic politics, and in par­tic­ul­ar the
greater power of conservatives in Chile and of liberals in Argentina, s­ haped
which of ­these competing views of the roots of morality was more influen-
tial when each country ­adopted its first national curriculum for primary
schools.

CONCLUSION
Focusing on E ­ uropean and Latin American countries, in the last two chap-
ters we examined the role that mass vio­lence against the status quo played
in bringing about education reform. ­These reforms sought to expand pri-
mary education and increase the state’s regulatory role. The training, certi-
fication, and monitoring of teachers as well as the school curriculum ­were
crucial areas of state intervention. In the nineteenth c­ entury, most states es-
tablished national curriculums and regulated the teaching profession to
ensure that what happened inside the classroom aligned with the state’s goal
of teaching discipline, obedience, and ­acceptance of the status quo. ­These
policies are impor­tant to consider ­because, as I explain in the book’s con-
clusion, they continue to shape present-­day education systems. But before
we turn to the long-­term legacy of nineteenth-­century education policies,
in the next two chapters I consider the limits of the argument I have ad-
vanced so far and its ability to explain education reform more broadly.
 CHAPTER SIX

LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES

OF THE ARGUMENT

I have argued that governments are more likely to turn to mass education
as an indoctrination tool to inculcate obedience when they are deeply con-
cerned about the prob­lem of internal disorder. This chapter discusses the
generalizability of this argument, or how applicable the argument is in dif­
fer­ent contexts. In other words, what are the kinds of contexts where we
should expect governments to invest in education as an indoctrination tool
to forge internal order, and when might a government not invest in educa-
tion for indoctrination purposes?
Politicians are likely to invest in mass education systems to teach obedi-
ence when four preconditions are in place. One, politicians believe that
the masses’ participation in violent events poses a serious risk to their ability
to maintain power. Two, politicians believe that schools can indeed serve
as an indoctrination tool that teaches ­people to stay put. Three, notwith-
standing their concerns about their ability to remain in power, politicians
expect to remain in power long enough to be able to reap the benefits of
educating f­ uture citizens. Four, a minimum level of fiscal and administra-
tive capacity is in place—­enough to allow investments in education.
­These four preconditions constitute what ­political scientists would refer
to as the scope conditions of the book’s argument. They are impor­tant to
consider if we are to understand the generalizability and limits of the ar-
gument. They help explain why the pivotal moments in the history of edu-
cation in Prus­sia, France, Chile, and Argentina occurred when they did and
not ­earlier. They can also help us understand why E ­ ngland and Mexico
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 219

lagged b
­ ehind other E
­ uropean and Latin American countries, respectively,
in promoting primary education. Fi­nally, ­these scope conditions can help
us predict the types of f­ uture contexts in which we are likely to see invest-
ments in education for indoctrination purposes. Let’s unpack what each
precondition means.

CONDITION 1: POLITICIANS BELIEVE THAT MASS

VIO­LENCE POSES A SERIOUS THREAT
Educating the masses is a costly investment with primarily long-­term ben-
efits when the goal is to maintain social order. For politicians to invest in
educating ­future citizens to teach them to accept the status quo, they must
want to maintain the status quo in the first place, and crucially, they must
believe that the masses, in the absence of this education, ­will behave in vio-
lent ways that threaten the status quo. This statement has two corollaries.
First, vio­lence that threatens the status quo but does not involve mass par-
ticipation is unlikely to lead politicians to invest in mass education. Episodes
of intra-­elite conflict in which the masses are not mobilized by any of the
elites fighting each other, for example, may lead to a redoubling of re-
pression such as jailing or killing opponents, but are unlikely to lead to
investments in mass education. ­After all, why make the costly effort to edu-
cate the masses if they do not pose a threat? Second, mass vio­lence that is
not perceived to pose a threat to the status quo that politicians benefit from
is also unlikely to lead elites to invest in educating the masses. Communal
vio­lence, conflict between dif­fer­ent religious or ethnic groups, or any other
internal conflicts that do not involve the central government and therefore
do not pose a risk to it, even if they do involve mass participation, are un-
likely to lead the government to invest in mass education. To be sure, the
groups fighting one another might make their own efforts to provide edu-
cation with the goal of cultivating the loyalty of ­children in their commu-
nities. However, the government is unlikely to expend the costly effort to
educate the masses if ­these do not pose a threat to its power.
Notice that, according to this argument, what m ­ atters most is not ­whether
the masses actually pose a real threat to the status quo, but ­whether politi-
cians believe this to be the case. In the four cases we considered in chapter 4,
central governments invested in primary education in response to wide-
spread mass vio­lence in the form of peasant revolts, food riots, and mass in-
volvement in civil wars. However, a government that anticipates an escalation
220 | Chapter 6

of mass vio­lence could turn to education before vio­lence unfolds or be-

comes widespread. Moreover, education efforts could be based on an exag-
gerated sense of the real threat posed by the masses. Some of the inaccu-
racy in politicians’ perception might stem from the lack of reliable crime
statistics and other statistics, but exaggerated perceptions about the level of
crime also exist in countries with accurate statistics. In the United States,
for example, most ­people believe that crime is increasing despite d ­ ecades
of dramatic improvement. Politicians may be affected by the same biases
1

that lead ordinary p ­ eople to overestimate the level of crime and vio­lence.
Further, even in ­those cases where a politician knows what the facts are, they
can still take advantage of o­ thers’ exaggerated perceptions and fears to build
support for education reform by presenting education as a solution to the
perceived prob­lem of law and order.
Of course, one could argue that all politicians at all times are concerned
about the possibility of mass vio­lence, and to some extent this is true. What
­matters from the perspective of the book’s argument is w ­ hether this con-
cern is salient in politicians’ minds, and crucially, w ­ hether politicians be-
lieve that existing policy tools such as repression are sufficient to avoid or
contain prospective mass vio­lence, and ­whether they believe that making
costly investments in education would improve their ability to curtail mass
vio­lence enough to outweigh t­ hese costs.
A wide range of events can heighten politicians’ concern about mass
vio­lence and social disorder. The most obvious examples are large-­scale
violent events of the kind that drove education reform in 1760s Prus­sia,
1830s France, 1860s Chile, and 1880s Argentina, all of which involved mass
vio­lence against the status quo. However, smaller-­scale episodes of vio­lence
may also motivate elites to educate the population as long as ­these epi-
sodes engender the perception—­justified or not—­that the prob­lem of
mass vio­lence is imminent and that existing policy tools are insufficient to
deal with it.
Sweden’s School Act of 1842 provides an example of the creation of a
­national primary education system triggered by concerns about mass vio­
lence that existed not b­ ecause of large-­scale vio­lence but b
­ ecause politicians
interpreted small-­scale vio­lence as a sign of ­things to come if the moral
character of the lower classes was not improved. The background for this
reform was the major social and demographic change that occurred in

1. Esberg and Mummolo (2018).

 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 221

Sweden as a result of the radical transformation of the agrarian economy

and rapid population growth that took place starting in the mid-­eighteenth
­century and, especially, during the first ­decades of the nineteenth c­ entury.
Historically, land in Sweden had been cultivated in the open-­field system;
although each peasant owned and cultivated their own strip of land, deci-
sions concerning what crops to grow or what technologies to use ­were made
collectively at the village level. The enclosure reforms of 1803, 1807, and 1827
gradually eliminated this system first in some regions and, eventually, every-
where. While some peasants ­were able to profit from the reforms, which
coincided with a period of high international grain prices, and overall agrar-
ian productivity increased significantly, in the 1830s signs emerged that the
enclosure reforms had brought about greater social division.2 The main
reasons ­were the dissolution of villages and the decline in living standards
for a large and growing class of former peasants—­and their ­children—­who
became landless and turned to salaried work to make ends meet.3
Although only twenty riots w ­ ere registered in Sweden between 1825 and
1844—­a minuscule number compared to the number in France at the be-
ginning of the July Monarchy—­a weak harvest in 1837 caused episodes of
violent unrest that, while isolated and small in scale, nonetheless sparked
fear among Swedish elites about the possibility of a revolutionary threat.
In the 1830s and 1840s, we see an intensification of debates in both newspa-
pers and parliament about “the social question,” a term used by national
elites to encapsulate their fear that the “dangerous lower classes” in the coun-
tryside would revolt and take power from the ruling classes. In parliament,
national elites described the lower classes as “a lower and bad sort of person,”
“morally degenerate,” “a criminal rabble, the dregs of mankind, a dangerous
mob,” “bestial,” “too readily violent”—­a class, in sum, that “must be con-
trolled and disciplined” in order to prevent immorality, crime, disorderli-
ness, drunkenness, vices, disobedience, begging, ignorance, social unrest,
and p ­ olitical revolt.4 Against this background, writes Swedish historian
­Johannes Westberg, ­popular education became part of the debate on the
social question. Along with other policies, such as the introduction of
solitary-­confinement penitentiaries, poor relief, and Bible socie­ties, “pri-
mary schools ­were perceived as a social strategy to prevent crime, and curb

2. Rojas (1991); Bergenfeldt (2008); Westberg (2019).

3. While Sweden’s population doubled between 1750 and 1850, the landless class qua­dru­pled
during this period (Westberg 2019, p. 199).
4. Petersson (1983), pp. 4, 270.
222 | Chapter 6

immorality and potential rebellion, and instead foster a subservient and

disciplined population.” Swedish elites who advocated for the establish-
ment of a primary school system quoted elites from other countries who
argued that schooling was “a safeguard against the raw masses.” One con­
temporary, for example, described the School Act of 1842 as “a response to
a moral panic and a fear of the dreaded underclass.”5
While this example from Sweden’s history illustrates that elites’ fear of the
masses may intensify even in the absence of large-­scale violent conflict, even
when such conflict does occur it ­will not always produce fear of the masses.
For episodes of violent conflict to create the perception that the masses
pose a risk to ­political stability and elites’ power, the masses must be some-
how involved in the conflict.
Some readers may raise the objection that, while ­Europe experienced
­considerable social unrest in the nineteenth c­ entury, most of the internal
conflict that occurred in Latin Amer­i­ca took the form of intra-­elite wars
between liberals and conservatives, the Church and the state, or the central
and local governments. ­There is truth to this claim, but what the intra-­elite
characterization of Latin Amer­i­ca’s civil wars misses is the fact that many
of ­these wars, although initiated by elites who wanted to fight other elites,
also relied heavi­ly on the mobilization of the lower classes. In Argentina
during the first six d
­ ecades ­after ­independence, for example, caudillos or war-
lords outside Buenos Aires mobilized the rural population to fight against
Buenos Aires elites. In Chile, the Atacama rebels of 1859 ­were led by some
of the province’s wealthiest mine o ­ wners and leaders of the Radical Party,
but ­these elites recruited and armed thousands of peasants, mine workers,
and artisans to fight against the conservative government in Santiago.
Chilean history illustrates the importance of distinguishing between
intra-­elite conflicts with and without p ­ opular involvement to predict the
consequences of conflict for mass education. While the 1859 civil war cre-
ated consensus among conservative and liberal elites in Santiago about the
need to educate the lower classes through a system of primary schools con-
trolled by the central government, the 1851 civil war did not spark a conver-
sation among national elites about mass education. The reason is that the
1851 civil war was a true intra-­elite conflict. What triggered it was a fight
within the upper ranks of the Conservative Party over who should succeed
conservative president Manuel Bulnes. When Bulnes pointed to Manuel

5. Westberg (2019), pp. 199–201.

 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 223

Montt as his preferred candidate, another conservative with presidential as-

pirations, General José María de la Cruz, mounted a coup to take over the
central government. De la Cruz found support from some army officials
and members of the National Guard as well as members of the opponent
Liberal Party, but he did not mobilize the ­popular classes.6 Although de
la Cruz’s attempted coup represented a threat to Montt’s individual power,
the civil war of 1851 never threatened to overhaul ­political institutions or
reduce the power of the central government.7 Moreover, the government
quickly suppressed the foci of rebellion against Montt’s ascension to the
presidency. For all ­these reasons, the 1851 civil war, unlike the 1859 civil war,
did not increase national elites’ fear of the masses and, therefore, did not
turn elites’ attention to policies designed to pacify them.

CONDITION 2: POLITICIANS BELIEVE THAT SCHOOLS

CAN INDOCTRINATE ­PEOPLE
In order for politicians who are afraid of the masses to invest in education
as an indoctrination tool, they must believe that schools do in fact have the
ability to teach f­ uture citizens to obey the state and its laws. This precondi-
tion bounds the argument temporally ­because, as we saw in chapter 3, the
idea that education could serve as a tool to create loyal and obedient citi-
zens only began to circulate widely among ­European ­political rulers in the
late eigh­teenth ­century, and from ­there spread to other parts of the world.
This implies that most instances of intense ­political instability occurred too
early in history to trigger the emergence and expansion of a state-­regulated
primary education system. Some examples include the p ­ opular revolts of
late-­medieval ­Europe, the ­English civil war of 1642–1651, and the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, all of which occurred before Enlightenment ­philosophers
and Pietist reformers began to spread the view that mass education could
serve the interests of p­ olitical rulers to prevent f­ uture disorder and p
­ olitical
instability.
Although the idea that primary education could help indoctrinate ­future
citizens to re­spect the status quo began to circulate in the late eigh­teenth
­century, dif­fer­ent countries ­were exposed to this idea at dif­fer­ent times. In
Chile, for example, this idea only made its ways into elite circles in the 1840s,

6. Collier (2003), pp. 98–102; Wood (2002), pp. 465–467.

7. Ortega Martínez and Rubio Apiolaza (2006).
224 | Chapter 6

owing to the publication of influential books and essays such as Domingo F.

Sarmiento’s Educación ­Popular (1849) or the Amunátegui b ­ rothers’ On
­Primary Instruction in Chile: What It Is and What It O­ ught to Be (1853). From
this perspective, the Chilean civil war of 1829–1830 occurred too early, so to
speak, to trigger mass education. In the years surrounding this civil war,
Andrés Bello was one of the most influential education thinkers and poli-
cymakers in Chile, but his educational ideas and efforts focused on second-
ary and university education for elites, not primary education for the
masses. Like other Chilean politicians in the 1830s, Bello believed that pro-
viding secondary and university education opportunities for elites was cru-
cial to train qualified bureaucrats and politicians and promote the country’s
economic development. By contrast, his ideas about the role of primary
education ­were significantly less developed.8

EDUCATION IS FREEDOM: EXPLAINING ­ENGLAND’S

EDUCATIONAL BACKWARDNESS BEFORE 1870
The absence of ideas about the social control power of mass education can
also help explain E
­ ngland’s educational backwardness. In the history of pri-
mary education systems, ­ England stands out for lagging considerably
­behind other countries in ­Europe. As we saw ­earlier, in 1850 it was the only
­European country whose primary school enrollment rate was in the single
digits. It was only in 1870—­a full ­century ­after the Industrial Revolution
and the introduction of compulsory schooling in Prussia—­that the ­English
government began to make a considerable effort to regulate and expand pri-
mary schooling.
By most common accounts of the ­factors that lead governments to in-
vest in mass education, ­England should have been a global leader in the
expansion of primary schooling, and the fact that it was not is an enigma.
Its leadership in the Industrial Revolution presumably should have created
incentives for the state to educate the population in order to ensure the
­existence of a large, skilled, and docile workforce. The many wars it fought in
the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries against Prus­sia, France, the United
States, and other ­European countries and British colonies presumably
should have encouraged the British government to invest in mass school-
ing in order to instill a strong national identity and to train skilled and loyal
soldiers. Electoral reform in 1832 should have created greater incentives for

8. Kilgore (1961).
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 225

elected politicians to expand primary education. Yet, despite having suffi-

cient fiscal capacity, neither industrialization nor interstate wars nor com-
petitive elections provided sufficient incentives for the government to pro-
mote primary schooling.
­England’s educational backwardness during most of the nineteenth
­century ceases to be an enigma once we adopt the theoretical perspective
proposed in this book. The argument I have advanced suggests that the
­explanation for E ­ ngland’s educational backwardness lies both in its rela-
tive ­political stability compared to other E­ uropean countries throughout
most of the nineteenth ­century and in the late diffusion—­compared to con-
tinental ­Europe—of the idea that education could be used to indoctrinate
the masses and promote social order.
­England’s most intense period of social and ­political instability took place
in the seventeenth ­century during the ­English Civil War of 1642–1651 and
the Glorious Revolution of 1688. ­These events, as noted ­earlier, occurred too
early in history to trigger the expansion of primary schooling b ­ ecause the
idea that education could help pacify the masses was only beginning to be
articulated at that time. ­Toward the end of the eigh­teenth and beginning
of the nineteenth centuries, the enclosure reforms brought about social un-
rest in the countryside, and industrialization and urbanization created a
new working class that began to o ­ rganize and express its discontent through
strikes, the destruction of machines, and other forms of protest. The next
major period of instability and upsurge in mass vio­lence took place in the
1820s and early 1830s, when demands for electoral reform intensified. Con-
cerned about a revolutionary upheaval, the government responded by di-
rectly addressing ­these demands through the Reform Act of 1832.9 In the
realm of education, in 1833 the national government began to provide some
funding to the Church to subsidize the provision of elementary education,
but did not create a national primary education system. The Church re-
tained authority over the choice of the curriculum and the se­lection of
teachers, and parents retained authority over the decision ­whether to en-
roll their ­children in school.
An impor­tant explanation for why the government, despite the mass vio­
lence of the early 1830s (or e­ arlier waves of social unrest), did not set up a

9. Davis and Feeney (2017); Aidt and Franck (2015). The reform redistributed parliamentary
seats from boroughs that ­were controlled by a tiny elite to counties that had contested elections
and where a large fraction of the population could vote (Ertman 2010, p. 1008).
226 | Chapter 6

centralized system of public schools to educate the poor, lies in the ideas
about education that circulated among E ­ nglish politicians at the time. Al-
though some education reformers called for the expansion of elementary
schooling “in order to protect against the dangers of radicalism, and to
prevent social unrest, particularly in poor, overcrowded urban areas,”10
many members of the elite did not share the belief that education was an
effective tool to control the ­popular classes. Within the aristocracy, educat-
ing the working class and the poor was viewed as a dangerous endeavor that
would likely lead ­people to “despise their lot in life,” “render them factious
and refractory,” “enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and
publications against Chris­tian­ity,” “render them insolent to their superiors,”
and force parliament “to direct the strong arm of power against them.”
­Industrialists, for their part, opposed mass schooling ­because they feared
it would lead to a decline in child l­abor and a consequent increase in
wages. In addition, ­English politicians took pride in being dif­fer­ent from
continental E ­ urope; the fact that Prus­sia and France had centralized mass
education u ­ nder the state’s authority was all the more reason to oppose
this course of action.11
The distinct educational ideas that circulated in ­England appeared not
only in ­political debates but also in influential fiction books that formed
part of ­English lit­er­a­ture and mass culture. While during the early 1700s
works of fiction rarely mentioned education or schooling, t­ oward the end
of the eigh­teenth ­century Romantic writers began to include more refer-
ences to education in their work—­characterizing it as a tool for individual
self-­discovery and self-­development more than a tool that could have ben-
efits for the state or society.12 The belief in the ability of education to em-
power the individual led fiction writers—­many of whom belonged to the
same social circles as members of parliament and other politicians—to sup-
port mass education for the m ­ iddle and upper classes and, si­mul­ta­neously,
to caution about the dangers of providing mass education to poor and
working-­class individuals.13 For example, the E ­ nglish poet William Words­
worth, one of the ­founders of the Romantic literary movement, wrote that
promoting literacy among the working class was “dangerous to the peace

10. Wright (2012), p. 23.

11. Green (2013), pp. 254–255, 204–296.
12. Brantlinger (1998); Martin (2023).
13. Martin (2023).
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 227

of society,”14 while the writer and philanthropist Hannah More, in her novel
The Sunday School, represents mass literacy “as a threat to national security.”15
According to intellectual and ­political elites, the dangers mass education
posed for social and ­political stability stemmed from two main sources.
First, elites ­were concerned that education would lead poor and working-­
class individuals to develop aspirations for social mobility instead of teaching
them to accept their place in the social hierarchy. Second, elites worried
that common ­people would use the literacy skills taught in school to read
“poisonous” books, newspapers, and pamphlets that would do “moral dam-
age” to them.16 They feared, for example, that the common inclusion of
crime stories in novels would encourage working-­class individuals to en-
gage in criminal be­hav­ior, even when novels w ­ ere trying to discourage
crime.17 They feared, too, that Radical politicians and ­labor ­unions would
take advantage of mass literacy to spread subversive messages that would
incentivize collective action against the status quo.18
As we w ­ ill see in the next chapter, E
­ ngland would have to wait u­ ntil the
mid-­nineteenth ­century for the idea of mass education as a destabilizing
force to be replaced by the view that educating the poor and the working
classes could help promote order and stability.

EDUCATIONAL IDEAS OVER TIME

Is the notion of education as an indoctrination tool still prevalent ­today?
To assess the extent to which the book’s argument is temporally bounded,
we need to consider not only when p ­ olitical rulers in a given country first
became aware of ideas about the indoctrination role of education but also,
crucially, for how long ­these ideas continued to shape politicians’ views
about the benefits of education. I discuss next how ideas and discourse about
education have changed over time, what w ­ ere the main f­actors leading to
the growing discourse around the economic benefits of education, and why
in modern socie­ties it is difficult to know what truly motivates politicians
to invest in education.
Existing ideas and public discourse about the benefits of education have
changed over time, increasingly embracing the view that education provi-

14. Martin (2023), p. 96.

15. Brantlinger (1998), p. 6.
16. Brantlinger (1998), pp. 1, 5–6.
17. Brantlinger (1998), pp. 5, 8.
18. Martin (2023).
228 | Chapter 6

sion has impor­tant economic benefits. In the agrarian economies of the

eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, parents in rural areas ­were often
reluctant to send their c­ hildren to school b ­ ecause they perceived the eco-
nomic costs to outweigh the benefits. This reluctance was the reason why
several countries introduced compulsory schooling laws; politicians in ­these
countries simply did not trust parents to willingly educate their c­ hildren
the way the state wanted them to. ­Today, by contrast, many parents view
schools as a useful investment to give their c­ hildren the necessary skills
to obtain a good job, climb the social ladder, and live prosperous lives.
Moreover, “education” ­today not only evokes ideas about individual oppor-
tunity, social mobility, and fairness; when ­people talk about “educated
countries,” we immediately think about eco­nom­ically developed ones.
This is ­because, in addition to thinking of education as an impor­tant tool
to improve individual well-­being, we also think of it as a tool to promote
the wealth of nations. The very same skills that enable someone to get a
good job can also help boost technological innovation and economic pro-
ductivity. Indeed, basic education is often thought of as one of the few pol-
icy tools that can help advance both economic equality and efficiency.
Thus, ­today, both families and governments may value education b ­ ecause
of its potential to produce economic benefits.
The view that education systems could produce social mobility and eco-
nomic growth gained strength during the second half of the twentieth
­century. At least three ­factors helped solidify this economic conceptualiza-
tion of the benefits of education: the Cold War, new economic theories of
the 1960s, and the increasing educational role of international ­organizations.
Competition for economic, technological, and military supremacy during
the Cold War contributed to new perceptions about the potential economic
benefits of education. As politicians in the United States observed what their
main rival was d ­ oing in the realm of education policymaking, they w ­ ere
struck by how much emphasis Soviet schools placed on teaching every­one
technical and scientific skills to contribute to industrialization.19 Domestic
policy in general increasingly came to be debated in the United States
through the lens of economics,20 and policymakers in Washington came
to view—or at least frame—­the country’s educational prob­lems as a threat

19. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Office of Education (1959, 1960).
20. Popp Berman (2022).
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 229

to sustaining “the once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry,

science, and technological innovation.”21
New economic theories in the 1960s gave further impetus to the idea that
schooling, by increasing individual skills and productivity, was one of the
main determinants of individual earnings and economic growth. Two econ-
omists at the University of Chicago, Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker, ­were
especially influential in making the connection between education and
­individual productivity and earnings.22 In the 1980s, Paul Romer proposed
that economic growth depends on the stock of ­human capital, a theory
that earned him the Nobel Laureate in economics.23 ­These theories ce-
mented the view that schooling and the acquisition of literacy and nu-
meracy skills go hand in hand, a view that ­today we know does not always
match the facts.24
The World Bank, created at the end of World War II and heavi­ly domi-
nated by economists, played a role in spreading the view that education has
economic benefits for individuals and socie­ties. Economists’ ascendancy
began in the early 1960s, when then World Bank President George Woods
appointed Chicago economist Milton Friedman as his economic ad-
viser. By the early 1980s, the World Bank employed fewer than twenty non-­
economist social scientists on its staff.25 Much of the language that has been
used in recent d
­ ecades to justify education interventions highlights the eco-
nomic benefits of ­those interventions.26 An example of this comes from the
World Bank’s agenda for promoting education in developing countries be-
tween 2010 and 2020, which underscores the increased “desire of many na-
tions to increase their competitiveness by building more highly skilled work-
forces,” argues that education systems ­ought to “prepare young ­people with
the right skills for the job market,” and claims not only that “educated indi-
viduals are more employable, able to earn higher wages, cope better with
economic shocks,” but also that “education is fundamental to develop-
ment and growth.”27 This type of description and justification of the ben-
efits of education interventions, with its focus on economic benefits, has

21. The National Commission on Excellence in Education (April 1983).

22. Becker (1964); Mincer (1958).
23. Romer (1990, 1987).
24. World Bank (2018).
25. Moloney (2022), pp. 38, 53.
26. For an analy­sis of World Bank documents showing the prevalence of economics jargon
from 1950 to 2010, see Moretti and Pestre (2015).
27. World Bank (2010), pp. v, 1.
230 | Chapter 6

characterized the World Bank’s discourse on education since the early

1960s and was institutionalized in 1963 by an internal policy that required
both an education expert and an economist to appraise ­every potential
education loan.28
In addition to economic arguments for the provision of education, the
last several ­decades have seen an intensification of the argument that edu-
cation is a basic h ­ uman right. From this perspective, education is not a
means of social control but a precondition for individual freedom and self-­
realization. Accordingly, education must be compulsory, not to safeguard
the government’s social control agenda but to protect ­children’s right to
an education. Two United Nations agencies, the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific and Cultural ­Organization (UNESCO) and the United
Nations ­Children’s Fund (UNICEF), have been especially active in embrac-
ing and spreading the view of education as a basic right,29 a view that is
enshrined in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by
196 countries.30
Given the changing discourse about education during the postwar pe-
riod and the emphasis that international o ­ rganizations have placed on the
economic benefits of education, it has become increasingly difficult to tell
what are the true motivations b ­ ehind governments’ provision of education.
For ­decades, governments from developing countries seeking foreign aid
or loans to fund education proj­ects have stressed the benefits for economic
development, poverty reduction, and individual well-­being. Yet, precisely
­because this is what international ­organizations and donors want to hear,
it is difficult to know ­whether governments genuinely believe that promot-
ing skills and economic opportunities is a crucial goal of education, or
­whether this is simply a rhetorical device they use ­because they know their
audience (and lenders).
The growth of ­political openness in the last several ­decades is another
­factor that hinders our ability to determine w ­ hether governments that frame
education as a strategy to promote social mobility and economic growth
­really believe that ­these are the main goals of education, or w ­ hether this,
again, is a communication strategy they use ­because they understand that
this is what citizens want to hear. During the nineteenth ­century, absolutist
kings in continental ­Europe and oligarchic presidents in Latin Amer­ic­ a ex-

28. Jones (2007), pp. 33, 39.

29. Jones and Coleman (2005).
30. All eligible states except for the United States ratified the Convention.
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 231

pressed their views about the goals of education without much concern
that their choice of words might trigger public backlash. Newspapers re-
porting on what they had said, if they existed, reached elites alone, and the
radio did not exist. By contrast, in most democracies ­today it would be
­political suicide to talk openly about the indoctrination goals of public ed-
ucation, or to refer to uneducated individuals as “bloodthirsty hordes,”
“savages,” or “barbarians.”
Still, even in demo­cratic countries ­today, politicians often allude to the
impor­tant role that schools play in teaching values, forming good citizens,
and promoting social cohesion and peace. Indeed, the most heated educa-
tion debates of the twenty-­first ­century have been t­ hose that center on what
moral and ­political values should be taught in school. That politicians con-
tinue to fight fervently over ­these values is a strong indication that teach-
ing skills is not the only goal ascribed to schools, and that most politicians
continue to believe in schools’ ability to mold the moral character and
­political be­hav­ior of ­future citizens. To be sure, schools can teach values that
are in contradiction with, or at least not supportive of, indoctrination goals.
But we should not just assume that demo­cratically elected governments do
not indoctrinate. ­Whether or not they do is an impor­tant empirical ques-
tion that we ­will examine in chapter 7.
For now, the bottom line is that in recent ­decades it has become po­liti­
cally incorrect to tout the indoctrination role of schools, and therefore, it
has become incredibly challenging to assess w ­ hether efforts to expand or
reform mass education have been at least partly motivated by governments’
indoctrination goals. The challenge is that, if we ­were to ask politicians, “Do
you believe that schools should indoctrinate ­children?,” the answer would
prob­ably be “no,” even if politicians believe that schools should teach c­ hildren
to blindly accept a set of princi­ples, simply b ­ ecause politicians understand
the likely negative repercussions of revealing their true beliefs in such terms.
Assessing to what extent indoctrination continues to be an impor­tant goal
of mass education t­ oday w ­ ill require creative research approaches that can
tap into politicians’ genuine motivations for providing mass education.

CONDITION 3: POLITICIANS EXPECT TO BE IN POWER LONG ENOUGH

TO BENEFIT FROM EDUCATING ­FUTURE CITIZENS
Not all governments that are afraid of mass vio­lence and believe that pri-
mary education can help pacify the masses ­will invest in education. One
of the reasons is that, as a means of promoting compliant and nonviolent
232 | Chapter 6

be­hav­ior, education is primarily a long-­term strategy. While repression

and concessions typically target adults who participate in violent events in
order to compel or encourage them to stop fighting, primary schools tar-
get ­children. To the extent that ­children also participate in violent events,
primary schools can help reduce social disorder in the short term by keep-
ing ­children off the streets. But most of the benefits of educating ­children
­accrue over time, once they enter adolescence and young adulthood and
become well-­behaved citizens who re­spect the state and the status quo.
Given this par­tic­u­lar feature of education, for a government to be willing
to make investments in education for the sake of social order, it must have
a sufficiently long time horizon to reap the expected ­political benefits of
educating ­children.
The relationship between a government’s expected probability of remain-
ing in power and its willingness to invest in education to promote social
order is most likely nonlinear. At one extreme, governments that are well-­
entrenched in power to the point that they do not fear being overthrown
by the masses w ­ ill have few incentives to invest in education; from their
perspective, ­doing so would entail a cost and no benefit—in other words,
an unnecessary waste of resources. At the other extreme, governments in
an extremely insecure position who fear for their immediate survival, such
as ­those in the midst of a civil war or revolution, are also likely to have few
immediate incentives to invest in education if they believe ­there is a high
probability that they w ­ ill not be around long enough to benefit from t­ hose
investments. The greatest incentives to invest in mass education are likely
to emerge in settings where the government is afraid of the masses—­perhaps
­because of the traumatic experience of a recent period of social upheaval
or b­ ecause of an exaggerated perception of the level of crime—­but also has
some confidence in its ability to remain in power long enough to secure
the benefits of educating the lower classes.
Contexts where this condition is likely to hold include, for example, post-­
conflict settings in which the government is focused on reconstruction
strategies to consolidate the fragile peace recently achieved, such as Chile
­after 1859 and Argentina a­ fter 1880; ongoing civil wars where the govern-
ment expects to be victorious; and contexts where t­ here is increased concern
about a potential ­future revolution—­perhaps ­because of a spike in crime
or social unrest—­but the government is still, for the time being, securely
in power, such as Prus­sia in the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury or Sweden in the
1830s and 1840s.
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 233

Governments facing chronic vio­lence, on the other hand, are less likely
to make heavy investments in education or other forms of state-­building.
In ­these contexts, the government ­will likely prioritize strategies that in-
crease the probability of short-­term survival, such as increasing public
spending on the military and police, jailing dissidents, or distributing boxes
of food or other subsidies in an attempt to buy off loyalty, at least in the
short term. Once ­there is an end to the period of vio­lence and the govern-
ment can start thinking beyond its immediate survival, mass education is
likely to become an attractive investment as a means to prevent f­ uture con-
flict from re-­emerging. An example of ­these dynamics comes from Argen-
tine history. From i­ ndependence in 1816 to 1880, the country was immersed
in a prolonged period of recurrent civil wars, not unlike the experience of
some African countries since their own ­independence. Ideas about the abil-
ity of primary education to deter the masses from participating in the civil
wars circulated among Argentine elites since at least the 1840s, as we saw in
chapter 4, but investments in education remained l­imited while the civil
wars ­were ongoing. It was only in 1880 that a clear resolution to the six-­
decade conflict was achieved and the central government, no longer worried
about its immediate survival, began to invest heavi­ly in primary education
as part of a broader set of state-­building strategies designed to consolidate
its power.
The condition that politicians must expect to be in power long enough
to reap the benefits of educating f­ uture citizens does not limit the book’s
argument to a par­tic­ul­ar type of ­political regime. In chapter 4 we saw
­examples from a wide range of non-­democratic regimes, including an ab-
solutist regime, a constitutional monarchy, an oligarchic regime led by
conservatives, and an oligarchic regime led by secular liberals. What about
other types of non-­democratic regimes, such as hegemonic-­party regimes
or military regimes? Barbara Geddes and Beatriz Magaloni have shown
that hegemonic-­or one-­party regimes tend to last longer than personal-
ist dictatorships, which in turn are more durable than military regimes.31
­Taking this fact into consideration, the book’s theory would predict that
hegemonic-­party regimes facing threats from below w ­ ill be more likely
than personalist dictatorships, and ­these more likely than military regimes,
to turn to education to indoctrinate the population. This expectation finds
support in new data on education indoctrination presented in figure 6.1.

31. Geddes (2003); Magaloni (2008).

234 | Chapter 6

Education indoctrination index (0-1) 1

Party
.75 regime

Personalist
regime

.5

Military
regime
.25

1950 1970 1990 2010

Figure 6.1. Average education indoctrination index around the world across dif­fer­
ent types of non-­democratic regimes, 1946–2010. See text and footnotes for sources
and methodology.

To explore how indoctrination varies across dif­fer­ent types of non-­

democratic regimes, in figure 6.1 I combine Geddes’s data on types of re-
gimes32 with a new cross-­national dataset on education indoctrination that
I collected with a team of social scientists led by Anja Neundorf.33 The Va­
ri­e­ties of ­Political Indoctrination in Education and the Media Dataset, or
V-­Indoc for short, covers more than 160 countries from 1945 to 2021 and in-
cludes an index of education indoctrination that ranges from 0 (low) to 1
(high). The index aggregates several variables contained in the V-­Indoc da-
taset that capture three characteristics of education systems discussed in
chapter 5 that are key for enabling governments to engage in indoctrina-
tion: first, ­whether the central government controls the curriculum and text-

32. Geddes, Wright, and Frantz (2014).

33. Neundorf et al. (2023). The construction of V-­Indoc was conducted in partnership with the
Va­ri­e­ties of Democracy Institute by surveying education experts in each country. On average, we
surveyed 4.75 experts per country. V-­Indoc was validated by comparing the responses of experts
with the responses stemming from datasets that collected similar information but relied instead
on education laws or content analy­sis of textbooks. See Neundorf et al. (2024) for additional infor-
mation about ­these validation exercises.
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 235

books; second, the degree to which the curriculum seeks to mold p ­ olitical
values as ­measured, for example, by w ­ hether primary schools are required
to have a subject focused on inculcating moral and ­political values; and
third, the extent to which the government exercises ­political control over
teachers as m ­ easured, for example, by w ­ hether teacher hiring decisions take
into consideration an applicant’s moral aptitude and ­political be­hav­ior.34
Figure 6.1 shows the average value of this index across three types of non-­
democracies: party, personalist, and military regimes. The pattern is clear:
party regimes tend to have higher education indoctrination scores than
personalist regimes, which in turn have higher indoctrination scores than
military regimes. In additional analyses presented in the online appendix,
I find complementary evidence that transitioning to a hegemonic-­or single-­
party regime leads to an increase in education indoctrination, whereas
transitioning to a military regime does not. T ­ hese findings are consistent
with the expectation that longer-­lived regimes are more likely to engage in
indoctrination than regimes with shorter time horizons.
To be clear, the type of ­political regime is just a proxy for its expected
length; the latter is what r­ eally m ­ atters from the perspective of predicting
­whether a regime is likely to invest in education as an indoctrination tool.
For example, while military regimes tend to be short-­lived compared
to other types of non-­democratic regimes, a military regime that expects
to be in power for a long time may have incentives to invest in education.
An example of long-­lasting military rule comes from Thailand. Since
­independence in 1932, ­there has been a military coup on average once ­every
seven years, and the military has been in power two-­thirds of the time. This
history has made military coups and military rule a normal part of life. The
military’s most recent formal ascension to power took place in May 2014,
when ­after months of p ­ olitical instability and mass demonstrations, the mili-
tary mounted a coup, instituted a military junta, and established a new
Constitution which gave the military the power to appoint all members of
the Senate, in turn giving it an easy permanent route to choose the prime
minister.35 The regime’s assessment of the mass vio­lence of 2013–2014 was
that educational deficiencies w ­ ere partly to blame. While newspapers and
education experts argued that the low quality of education in the ­countryside

34. For additional details about the construction of the Indoctrination Potential in Education
index, see Neundorf et al. (2024).
35. Mérieau (2019); Freedom ­House (2022).
236 | Chapter 6

had contributed to per­sis­tent poverty which in turn fueled social unrest,

the military junta had a dif­fer­ent explanation. In a speech delivered soon
­after assuming power, Prayuth Chan-­ocha, Thailand’s prime minister and
the leader of the military junta, complained that schools ­were ­doing a
poor job of inculcating loyalty to the state and noted that “few Thai ­children
could cite achievements of long-­dead kings.”36 To address this prob­lem, he
drew up twelve values—­including discipline; re­spect for laws, authorities,
and elders; loyalty to the monarch; morality, integrity, and well-­wishes
­toward o­ thers; moderation and self-­restraint in consumption; shame for sins
and for giving in to the dark force of desires; and public interest before per-
sonal interest—­and ordered schools to teach them “to build the good char-
acter of the ­future generation.”37
In some democracies, too, elected politicians may expect to be in power
long enough to reap the benefits of investing in education to form well-­
behaved citizens—­something I w ­ ill return to in chapter 7.

CONDITION 4: SUFFICIENT FISCAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY

Even if a government wants to invest in education to promote long-­term
social order, it may be unable to do so if it lacks sufficient resources or ad-
ministrative capacity. Constructing schools, printing and distributing text-
books, hiring teachers and school inspectors—­all of ­these ­things require
money. Moreover, while some of ­these are one-­time investments, paying
teachers and inspectors requires a permanent stream of public funding.
Countries that lack a bureaucratic apparatus capable of raising sufficient tax
revenues may be unable to provide education despite their intentions.
Other forms of administrative capacity, such as the existence of a census
or railroads, can also m
­ atter for implementing some education reforms. In
France, for example, the Guizot Law of 1833 required all municipalities with
at least 500 inhabitants to maintain a school for boys. The central govern-
ment could enforce this law b ­ ecause France at the time already had a na-
tional census. Several countries in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca had similar
education laws which required the establishment of schools in areas with
a population size above a certain threshold, and the existence of censuses

36. The Economist (2017).

37. Sangnapaboworn (2018).
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 237

typically preceded the passage of ­these laws.38 The ability to deploy teach-
ers and school inspectors hired and trained by the central government also
often required the existence of a transportation network. In the nineteenth
­century, railroads facilitated the ability of inspectors to visit schools in
­disparate parts of the country. In Sweden, when parliament introduced a
centralized school inspection system in 1861, student enrollment in pri-
mary schools—­whose enforcement was charged to school inspectors—­
increased more in ­those localities that had a train station near them and
could therefore be more easily accessed by inspectors.39
The availability of foreign loans has helped attenuate the extent to which
a country’s l­ imited fiscal capacity precludes its ability to expand education.
In 2018, a combined US$16 billion of international funding was devoted to
education, including both loans from the World Bank and other develop-
ment banks and direct aid. While this represents less than 1 ­percent of the
total amount that governments around the world devoted to education in
the same year, when we focus on low-­income countries alone, foreign aid
is responsible for close to one-­fifth of total education spending.40
One of the central challenges in assessing a country’s level of fiscal and
administrative capacity is determining w ­ hether the absence of an education
policy—­such as education provision—is driven by a real lack of capacity or
by insufficient ­will. Arguments pointing to a government’s ­limited resources
as a reason not to invest in education have been a constant throughout
­history. We saw an example of this in chapter 4 when we discussed the Chil-
ean case: before the 1859 civil war, one common argument against the cre-
ation of a national primary education system was lack of funding; ­after the
1859 civil war, although the government’s fiscal capacity had not increased,
elites debated not ­whether the government could fund primary education
but how it could do so. This example suggests that, when elites’ fear of mass
vio­lence increases, so does their p ­ olitical willingness to invest existing re-
sources on education even in the absence of an overall increase in the level
of resources.
Solutions to the state’s fiscal needs have been varied. In some cases, such as
in France during the 1830s, the central government imposed on municipali-
ties the need to raise taxes from the local population to maintain primary

38. Lopez (2020).

39. Cermeño, Enflo, and Lindvall (2022).
40. World Bank (2021).
238 | Chapter 6

schools. In ­others, such as France and Argentina during the 1880s, the cen-
tral government assumed most or all of the costs of education provision.
Many governments also thought of ways to cut the costs of education pro-
vision. In the United States, Southern ­Europe, and Latin Amer­i­ca, govern-
ments hired female teachers as a means to save money b ­ ecause they under-
stood that educated ­women, lacking other job opportunities, could be
hired at a lower salary than educated men. Governments with the ­will to
invest in education have often found ways to fund it despite having ­limited
resources.
Of course, the very episodes of vio­lence that might increase a g­ overnment’s
interest in educating the masses may also destroy its fiscal capacity. France
­after the Revolution of 1789 provides a clear example of the adoption of
education reforms with indoctrination goals followed by the failure to
implement reform largely ­because of the dismal state of public finances. It
is well known that the French Crown was already unable to pay its debts
before the Revolution, but the revolutionary government’s abolition of
consumption taxes, their replacement with new direct taxes whose collec-
tion required a fiscal apparatus that the state lacked, the difficulty of ob-
taining new loans given the fear that the Revolution had inspired in
­owners of capital, and the need to wage foreign wars, further exacerbated
France’s fiscal deficit prob­lems during the 1790s.41 Fiscal trou­bles did not
prevent the revolutionary government of the 1790s from debating educa-
tion reform and passing laws that at the very least reflected the new ruling
elite’s educational goals. The most comprehensive of ­these was the Bouquier
Law passed in December 1793 during Robes­pierre’s Reign of Terror. The Ja-
cobins ­were of the view that education had to indoctrinate ­future citizens
in republican princi­ples, and the punitive provisions of the Bouquier Law
highlighted their insistence on education as a duty, not just a right. Although
the original law stipulated that primary education should be f­ ree and uni-
versal, an amendment introduced a few months ­later also made it compul-
sory ­because, according to Robes­pierre and other power­ful advocates of
­republican indoctrination, this was the only way to realize the moral and
civic indoctrination goals of the state. Teaching all ­children to be good citi-
zens and to obey the laws, members of the Reign of Terror’s Committee
on Public Safety argued, was a m ­ easure of revolutionary safety to crush

41. Levasseur (1894); Sargent and Velde (1995); White (1995).

 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 239

counterrevolutionary tendencies.42 In the end, despite ­these intentions, the

Jacobins had more pressing issues to prioritize and lacked the funds to im-
plement the Bouquier Law.43 As we saw in chapter 4, primary education
would have to wait ­until the next revolution in the 1830s before receiving a
strong push from the state.

THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN ­POLITICAL WILLINGNESS AND CAPACITY:

EXPLAINING MEXICO’S EDUCATIONAL BACKWARDNESS
The expansion of primary education in Mexico lagged considerably b ­ ehind
other countries in Latin Amer­i­ca during the nineteenth ­century, and picked
up pace only in the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike in E ­ ngland, whose educational
backwardness compared to continental ­Europe can be explained by the na-
tional government’s disinterest in educating the lower classes, the central
government in Mexico passed several laws that signaled its interest in regu-
lating and promoting primary education. However, l­imited state capacity
prevented the implementation of ­these laws and delayed Mexico’s expan-
sion of primary schooling.
During the first ­century ­after its ­independence from Spain in 1822, Mex-
ico was shaken by recurrent internal p ­ olitical conflicts and social turmoil
that prevented the consolidation of a strong state, undermined economic
development, and left an internally fragmented country more vulnerable
to foreign invasion. Most of ­these internal conflicts pitted dif­fer­ent groups
of elites against one another—­liberals against conservatives during the nine-
teenth ­century; urban businessmen, bureaucrats, and professionals against
large landowners during the Mexican Revolution. But elites did not fight
alone; they mobilized the large peasant and working classes to fight with
them. The danger that any winning side in ­these successive internal con-
flicts faced was the possibility that the lower classes might o ­ rganize on their
own against the new regime or be mobilized, once again, by elites who op-
posed the regime.
As the central government sought to consolidate its control over Mexi-
co’s large territory during this century-­long period, ­there was no shortage
of education laws that signaled the government’s interest in centralizing—­
within the limits of a federalist constitution—­and promoting primary ed-
ucation. As in Argentina, and unlike the case of Chile, the main push ­toward

42. Vignery (1966).

43. Dwyer and McPhee (2002), pp. 88–89.
240 | Chapter 6

education centralization and expansion in nineteenth-­century Mexico came

from liberals and positivists who believed that religious doctrine, similar
to superstition and ancient traditions, did not provide a solid moral foun-
dation and w ­ ere in fact signs of an inferior population in need of being
civilized. Yet, despite the creation in 1833 of a centralized government
agency devoted to regulating, promoting, and monitoring public school-
ing, and the subsequent passage of twelve education laws between 1843 and
1917,44 Mexico’s educational ­performance throughout that period remained
lackluster relative to the rest of Latin Amer­i­ca, owing largely to the federal
government’s ­ limited administrative and fiscal capacity to implement
­these laws.45
Before the Mexican Revolution, the first signs of pro­gress in expanding
primary education ­were seen during the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Díaz,
who assumed power in 1876 and was overthrown in 1911. The Porfiriato, as this
period in Mexican history is known, ruled ­under the banner of “Order and
Pro­gress.” This motto reflected the influence of positivist intellectuals’ view
that restoring and maintaining social order was a necessary precondition

44. The twelve laws are: the 1843 Bases Orgánicas, which establishes a common curriculum,
stipulates how schools should be ­organized and what pedagogical methods should be used, and
makes explicit the Mexican government’s interest in controlling education; the 1856 Estatuto
Orgánico, which establishes that the government has the authority to supervise that the education
provided in private schools does not constitute a threat to the country’s level of morality; the 1857
Constitution, which specifies that although private schools may exist, the state has the sole author-
ity to determine the qualifications that individuals must have in order to teach in public or private
schools; the education law of 1861, which proposes a unified curriculum for primary schools and
the creation of new primary schools ­under the central government’s authority; the 1865 Ley de In-
strucción Pública, which establishes that primary education is compulsory, f­ree for the poor, and
­will be supervised by the Ministry of Public Instruction; the 1867 and 1869 Leyes Orgánicas de In-
strucción Pública para el Distrito Federal y Territorios, which affirms the need to form the ­future
generation of Mexicans, reaffirms the princi­ples of compulsory and secular schooling, and stipu-
lates the creation of primary schools, and which was copied or closely imitated by many states; the
1879 Reglamento de Escuelas Primarias Nacionales y Reglamento de Instrucción Pública, which affirms
the princi­ple of secular education and introduces m ­ easures to ensure that schools teach values
and be­hav­iors that promote public hygiene; the education law of 1888, which gives the national
state the authority to regulate education throughout the country, and reaffirms the princi­ples of
compulsory, ­free, and secular primary education; the 1891 Ley Reglamentaria de la Instrucción Ob-
ligatoria en el Distrito Federal y territorios de Tepic y Baja California, which affirms the same princi­
ples and calls for the creation of supervisory boards that monitor parental compliance with the
compulsory schooling mandate, stipulates the creation of a primary school for boys and another
one for girls for ­every 4,000 inhabitants, and creates the Consejo Superior de Instrucción Primaria to
supervise, nominate teachers, and select textbooks; the 1908 Ley de Educación Primaria para el Dis-
trito y los Territorios Federales; and the 1917 Constitution. See Solana, Cardiel Reyes, and Bolaños
Martínez (1981).
45. Vaughan (1982), pp. 39–126.
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 241

to attract foreign capital and promote economic development.46 In addition

to relying on heavy-­handed repression to restore and maintain order, the
regime made considerable efforts to improve the morality and public be­
hav­ior of the lower classes. Just like Sarmiento during the long period of
Argentine civil wars, Mexican elites ­were concerned that the upbringing of
the lower classes normalized the use of vio­lence. They interpreted the per­
sis­tence of crime as evidence that the lower classes ­were “immoral and so-
cially undesirable.”47 They viewed ­popular customs as an excuse to binge
on “tons of alcoholic beverages, spiced up with countless quarrels, fisti-
cuffs, and a corpse ­here and ­there.” They described the lower classes as gente
de trueno—­“rowdy folks”—­whose be­hav­ior was characterized by “drunk-
enness, lack of discipline, roughness, and impudence.”48 Blaming workers’
drinking habits for the rise of crime, they established anti-­alcohol leagues to
keep ­people out of taverns.49 In Mexico City, the regime reor­ga­nized the
police force to create a team of undercover agents who infiltrated taverns
and social gatherings. It also banned bullfights ­because they “lowered the
‘moral’ level of the ­people” and “awakened their savage instincts.”50
It was in this context of heightened concern about the morality and pub-
lic be­hav­ior of the lower classes that primary education gained increasing
interest among government officials and intellectuals with ties to Porfirio
Díaz. In schools, morality was defined as “the formation of character through
obedience and discipline” and entailed the eradication of “vices” such as ig-
norance, laziness, lack of punctuality, and the consumption of alcohol. The
consequences of poverty, such as poor housing and malnutrition, ­were in-
terpreted by the school program as moral sins for which the poor had to
take personal responsibility. Two positivists, first Joaquín Baranda as head
of the Secretary of Justice and Public Instruction (1882–1901), and then Justo
Sierra as head of the Secretary of Public Education (1905–1911), played a key
role in crafting a vision of primary education that highlighted its disciplinary
goal. Disciplining the population, they argued, would help prevent crime and
the recurrence of civil wars as well as promote economic growth by teach-
ing the poor to work dutifully and accept their place in society. ­Under their
leadership, the Mexican government defended the adoption of a unified

46. Schmitt (1966).

47. Beezley (2018); Vaughan (1982), pp. 26–28.
48. Beezley (2018).
49. Vaughan (1982), p. 27.
50. Beezley (2018).
242 | Chapter 6

curriculum for all schools and made the first efforts to train teachers who
could teach this curriculum. Baranda equated primary schools to “civiliz-
ing propaganda” that prepares a large number of “good citizens,”51 and
warned that for Mexico to overcome internal threats and be able “to exist,”
the state and federal governments needed to invest in primary education
to “regenerate society” and inculcate “love of the fatherland” and “love of
peace.” “Opening a school ­today,” claimed Baranda, “means closing a prison
for twenty years.”52 For Justo Sierra, too, “discipline was key to Mexico’s sur-
vival.” Having lived through the period of civil war and foreign invasion,
Sierra viewed education primarily as a mechanism for forging social unity.
Like most of his peers, “Sierra was anxious that ­political order replace the
anarchy of Mexico’s first half-­century of ­independence” and viewed public
schooling as “an alternative to socialism and worker agitation” b ­ ecause of
its ability to develop habits of obedience, self-­restraint, and altruism.53
Despite national elites’ interest in expanding primary schooling to address
long-­standing prob­lems of social order, the fraction of c­ hildren enrolled in
primary schools during the Porfiriato merely increased from 28 ­percent in
1880 to 33 ­percent in 1910.54 The regime’s ability to expand schooling in rural
areas was especially restricted not only b ­ ecause of the ­resistance of local
elites and parents to state intervention, but also ­because of the constraints
imposed by ­limited fiscal and administrative capacity, poor roads infrastruc-
ture, and the absence of data about population size, enrollment, and the
number of existing schools in remote areas.55 During the Mexican Revolu-
tion, which lasted from 1910 to 1920, fiscal resources ­were put in the ­service
of fighting the insurgency and became even less available for education,
leading to a sharp reduction in public education spending, from 7 ­percent
of total public expenditures in 1910 to less than 1 p ­ ercent by 1919.56
When Alvaro Obregón took power in 1920, he began a ­process of state-­
building that entailed setting up centralized bureaucracies to regulate ­labor,
commerce and industry, health, agriculture, social welfare, and education, as
well as improving the state’s fiscal apparatus.57 New sources of fiscal revenue

51. Solana, Cardiel Reyes, and Bolaños Martínez (1981), p. 57.

52. Solana, Cardiel Reyes, and Bolaños Martínez (1981), pp. 59–60.
53. Vaughan (1982), pp. 23–27.
54. The data are from Lee and Lee (2016).
55. Solana, Cardiel Reyes, and Bolaños Martínez (1981), p. 65; Llinás Alvarez (1979), pp. 91–114,
120, 126–127.
56. Solana, Cardiel Reyes, and Bolaños Martínez (1981), p. 591.
57. Vaughan (1975).
 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 243

­ ere created in the early 1920s, and in 1924 the federal government intro-
w
duced a new income tax.58 Central government revenue during this ­decade
almost tripled the level of revenue collected during the last ­decade of the
Porfiriato.59
While the Revolution brought to power a new elite composed of small
businessmen, ­lawyers, doctors, educators, and commercial farmers, the new
elite faced the prob­lem of containing o ­ rganized peasants and workers, who
during the Revolution fought for goals that ­were at odds with t­ hose of the
elite. Peasants, not just workers, needed to be disciplined. Mass education
became a key policy tool that the government used to restrain and coopt
the p
­ opular classes.60 José Vasconcelos was the person that Obregón chose to
lead an unpre­ce­dented ­process of centralization and expansion of primary
education. Vasconcelos drafted plans for the creation of a new Secretary of
Public Education, or SEP, for its name in Spanish (Secretaría de Educación
Pública), which became the first centralized agency with authority to regu-
late education everywhere in Mexico.61 During the 1920s, the federal gov-
ernment established more than 3,300 federal primary schools, a sixfold in-
crease relative to the number of federal schools t­oward the end of the
Porfiriato.62 Primary school enrollment increased from 30 ­percent in 1920
to 62 ­percent in 1925.63 In contrast to the Porfiriato’s emphasis on expand-
ing education in urban areas, Vasconcelos emphasized the expansion of
schooling in rural areas, where the vast majority of the population lived,
and which accounted for more than 80 ­percent of the new schools built by
the federal government in the 1920s.64 The new SEP also expanded its ef-
forts to recruit “missionary” teachers who could spread the state’s message
to the ­popular classes, monitored more closely the work of teachers, dis-
tributed textbooks throughout the territory, and introduced a school
breakfast program to encourage parents in rural areas to send their ­children
to school.65

58. Aboites Aguilar (2003).

59. Historical data on fiscal revenues from 1825 to 2010 come from International Historical Sta-
tistics (2013).
60. Vaughan (1975).
61. Llinás Alvarez (1979).
62. Vaughan (1982), p. 153.
63. The data are from Lee and Lee (2016).
64. Vaughan (1982), p. 152.
65. Llinás Alvarez (1979); Vaughan (1982), pp. 125–164.
244 | Chapter 6

While it is reasonable to speculate that the federal government ­after the

Mexican Revolution perhaps invested in mass education as a form of pro-
gressive re­distribution to improve the material well-­being of peasants and
the working class, one of the strongest pieces of evidence against this hy-
pothesis comes from the content of the curriculum. Just like during the
Porfiriato, official textbooks continued to teach ­children to behave in orderly
ways, be obedient, treat o ­ thers with kindness, and resist the temptation to
improve their material well-­being. During the 1920s, the only history text-
book published and used in schools was the one written by Justo Sierra for
Porfirian schools. Further, Vasconcelos hired former members of the Por-
firian school bureaucracy to write textbooks for other subjects. The new
textbooks, despite being written ­after the Revolution, praised the govern-
ment of Porfirio Díaz for its ability to maintain order, promote material
­pro­gress, and bring about “civilization.” Among the main values they pro-
moted, the textbooks used in the 1920s emphasized the importance of
“order,” “obedience,” “patience,” “compliance” in the workplace, “re­spect,”
“silence,” “solidarity,” “benevolence,” “tolerance,” and “forgiveness,” and con-
demned “disobedience,” “maltreatment of ­others,” “envy,” “avarice,” “vanity,”
and “cruelty.”66
The continuity in the content and goals of education is an enduring leg-
acy of the Porfirian regime that speaks to the ubiquitous concern among
elites—be they traditional landowners or the petite-­bourgeoisie—to con-
trol the masses’ be­hav­ior. This interest was already pre­sent ­under the Por-
firiato, but it was only in the 1920s that the government’s fiscal and admin-
istrative capacity improved sufficiently to enable Mexico’s primary
education system to catch up with other Latin American countries ­after
­decades of lagging ­behind them.

CONCLUSION
Although previous chapters presented evidence that nineteenth-­century
non-­democracies in ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca often created national
­primary education systems and promoted the expansion of primary schooling
in an attempt to indoctrinate the masses, this phenomenon is not unique
to the nineteenth ­century, to Western socie­ties, to a par­tic­u­lar type of
non-­democratic regimes, or even—as we w ­ ill see in the next chapter—to

66. Vaughan (1982), pp. 215–238, 280–281.

 Limits and Possibilities of the Argument | 245

non-­democracies alone. Yet the ability of the book’s argument to explain

educational expansion across a wide range of contexts does not imply that
fear of the masses and indoctrination goals w ­ ere at the heart of efforts to
expand primary education in all countries at all times. The discussion in
this chapter should help readers understand and predict the types of con-
texts in which we are likely to see education reform with indoctrination
goals in mind, the contexts in which education investments for indoctrina-
tion reasons are likely to be absent, and the contexts in which politicians
may invest in education to pursue goals dif­fer­ent than ­those pursued by
absolutist Prus­sia or oligarchic Argentina. Four conditions w ­ ill increase the
likelihood that politicians ­will invest in education as an indoctrination
tool to teach obedience: first, politicians must fear the masses; second, they
must believe that education can help promote social order by instilling
obedience; third, they must be sufficiently well-­entrenched in power; and
fi­nally, they must have sufficient fiscal and administrative capacity at their
disposal. The absence of any one of ­these conditions w ­ ill likely prevent the
expansion of mass education qua indoctrination—­and can explain, as we
have seen, ­England’s and Mexico’s delay in expanding access to primary
education compared to other countries in their respective regions.
We can use this framework to consider, for example, the applicability of
the book’s argument in recent civil wars. Three conditions discussed in this
chapter have been less frequently found among recent wars than among
the civil wars that took place in the nineteenth or early twentieth ­century.
First, while all civil wars in E
­ urope and Latin Amer­i­ca before 1945 involved
the state, the same is not true of recent civil wars in Africa or Asia, where
twelve civil wars since 1945 have been intercommunal wars between ethnic
groups but without state involvement.67 Moreover, owing to changes in the
technologies of war, a new class of civil wars has emerged in the twenty-­
first ­century that does not require a large paramilitary force.68 When mass
vio­lence against the state is absent, it is less likely that civil war ­will trigger
investments in education. Second, the civil wars of the post–­World War II
period have lasted longer and been more recurrent than the wars of the

67. I computed this figure using data from the Correlates of War Proj­ect, which provides infor-
mation about the occurrence of intrastate wars from 1816 to 2014 and classifies each war into four
categories: civil wars for central control (with state involvement), civil wars over local issues (with
state involvement), regional internal wars (without state involvement), and intercommunal wars
(without state involvement).
68. Walter (2022).
246 | Chapter 6

prewar period.69 Governments that face extreme uncertainty about their

ability to hold on to power, e­ ither ­because they are in the midst of fighting
a civil war or b
­ ecause they face chronic civil wars, are unlikely to make long-­
term investments in education. Third, given the evolution of ideas about
the benefits of education since World War II, even if we do observe that a
recent civil war incentivized the government to invest in mass schooling,
probing w ­ hether this was driven by a motivation to indoctrinate or to
­address economic grievances becomes especially impor­tant. Still, recent
studies of 1950s Turkey and 1980s Zimbabwe find evidence that central gov-
ernments responded to internal conflict precisely in the ways that my the-
ory predicts.70 ­Future research in the social sciences can help assess the gen-
eralizability of the theory I have outlined by testing ­whether it explains
education reform elsewhere.

69. According to data from the Correlates of War Proj­ect, before 1945 the majority of civil wars
lasted one or two years, less than 20 ­percent of wars lasted more than five years, only 8 ­percent
lasted ten or more years, and except for a few notable cases including, as we saw, Argentina, most
countries did not experience recurrent civil wars. By contrast, in the post-1945 period, less than
one-­fifth of civil wars have lasted one or two years, more than 40 ­percent have lasted more than
five years, 25 ­percent have lasted ten or more years, and chronic civil wars have been a feature of
politics in many African countries.
70. Bozçağa and Cansunar (2022); Liu (2024). For Zimbabwe, see also Foley (1982); Shizha and
Kariwo (2011); Matereke (2012); Ndebele and Tshuma (2014).
 CHAPTER SEVEN

INDOCTRINATION IN DEMOCRACIES

So far, I have illustrated the book’s argument by discussing the emergence,

expansion, and characteristics of primary education systems in vari­ous types
of non-­democracies. In this chapter I shift the focus to democracies and ad-
dress two questions. First, are ­there examples of democracies where height-
ened fears of mass vio­lence led the government to invest in education for
indoctrination purposes? ­After spending most of the chapter answering this
question in the affirmative, I then devote a section to understanding how
common indoctrination is in demo­cratic regimes, and how it compares to
indoctrination in non-­democracies.
An implication of chapter 6 is that nothing precludes the book’s argu-
ment from explaining educational reform in demo­cratic settings. By this I
do not mean that all democracies w ­ ill use education to indoctrinate. What
I mean is that w ­ hether a government chooses to indoctrinate should not
depend on w ­ hether it was elected demo­cratically. As long as p ­ olitical elites
fear the masses, believe that education can mold c­ hildren into f­ uture obe-
dient citizens, expect to be around long enough to secure the benefits of
education, and have sufficient administrative and fiscal capacity, then they
are likely to turn to mass education—­conceived as indoctrination—as a
means of promoting social order and ­political stability.
The idea that demo­cratically elected politicians may expect to benefit
from the long-­term stability brought about by their education investments
is perhaps not obvious. ­After all, ­these politicians could be ousted in the
next election. Still, the real­ity is that in many democracies, even though in
princi­ple anyone can run for office, elected politicians come from a rela-
248 | Chapter 7

tively small elite. Once in office they appoint bureaucrats who attended the
same elite universities they did and enact policies that protect the p ­ olitical
and economic power of elites.1 When democracies have this bias in ­favor
of elites, even though the specific individuals who hold office may change
with a new election, elites as a group can expect to hold power for a long
time. In ­those contexts, when violent protests demanding institutional
change threaten to upend this balance of power between elites and the
masses, the former may turn to education to strengthen the status quo by
teaching the latter that good citizens re­spect the law and do not behave in
violent ways.
I discuss examples of this dynamic in three democracies or partial democ-
racies. The first example comes from the United States during the Early
Republic, a period that ­today would not qualify as a democracy given the
inability of ­women and non-­white adults to vote, but that at the time was
considerably more demo­cratic than any country in E ­ urope or Latin Amer­
i­ca. The second example comes from ­England during the late 1860s, a pe-
2

riod when mass vio­lence led both to the expansion of voting rights for the
working class and to the creation of a national primary education system.
The third example comes from Peru during the first d ­ ecade of the twenty-­
first ­century, a period marked by the return of democracy and the end of a
twenty-­year period of armed internal conflict between left-­wing guerrilla
groups and the Peruvian state. The choice of ­these three cases, separated by
two centuries, is deliberate; it seeks to provide examples of the book’s ar-
gument in demo­cratic contexts across a wide time span.
­After fleshing out how the book’s argument maps onto ­these three cases,
I take a step back to consider the broader question of ­whether, in general,
democracies tend to indoctrinate less than autocracies. I answer this
­question with new data on the prevalence and characteristics of indoctri-
nation efforts across education systems in more than 160 countries from
1945 to 2021. An examination of ­these data suggests that democracies and
autocracies put similar amounts of effort into inculcating a specific set of
­political values through education systems. The main difference between

1. Carnes and Lupu (2023).

2. For example, while less than 2 ­percent of the population could vote in Chile during the
1860s, historians estimate that between 60 and 90 ­percent of adult white males w ­ ere eligible to
vote in the thirteen U.S. states by the end of the 1780s, with most states falling in the upper end of
that range. See Ratcliffe (2013).
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 249

them lies in which specific values they emphasize and what is the notion
of “good citizen” that they promote. As we saw in previous chapters, autoc-
racies often seek to teach contentment with the status quo. Democracies,
on the other hand, allow citizens to express discontent but within the bounds
of what is considered appropriate be­hav­ior in a democracy. Their educa-
tion systems focus on instilling re­spect for demo­cratic norms and institu-
tions, including the norm that discontent should be expressed not through
vio­lence but by voting in elections.
Moreover, while schools in democracies place more emphasis on devel-
oping critical thinking skills than t­ hose in autocracies, critical engagement
with the core moral and p ­ olitical princi­ples that are taught in school is rare
even in democracies. From the United States during the Early Republic to
Peru during the first ­decade of the twenty-­first c­ entury, education systems
in demo­cratic contexts have often discouraged students from questioning
the basic norms and institutions that schools teach them to re­spect.

REVISITING THE DEFINITION OF “INDOCTRINATION”

Before we examine ­whether democracies use education systems to indoc-
trinate ­children, it is worth reminding readers that throughout this book I
define “indoctrination” the way the Oxford American Dictionary defines it,
as “the p­ rocess of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs un-
critically.” The key word in this definition is “uncritically.” ­Philosophers of
education tend to agree that what defines indoctrination is not w ­ hether the
beliefs that are taught are true or false. What defines it is that ­those beliefs
are taught through a ­process that discourages or precludes critical thinking
or open-­mindedness—­the willingness and ability to entertain the possibility
that, ­under some circumstances, t­ hose beliefs could be false. For example,
when schools teach students that democracy is the best form of govern-
ment without si­mul­ta­neously encouraging students to consider and assess
the facts that critics of democracy stress, that constitutes indoctrination.
Likewise, when teachers tell students that vio­lence is never an acceptable
way of expressing discontent, and they silence, ridicule, or punish students
who articulate reasons for questioning this norm, that constitutes indoc-
trination. Usually, to discourage questioning, the teacher who indoctri-
nates ­will try to instill fear or a sense of shame for doubting ­these beliefs,
and ­will attempt to create a deep emotional attachment to t­ hese beliefs such
250 | Chapter 7

that questioning them would threaten the student’s own understanding of

who they are and how the world works.3
A common criticism of this definition of indoctrination, which concep-
tualizes the p
­ rocess of promoting critical thinking as its antithesis, is that
promoting critical thinking also constitutes indoctrination—in liberal val-
ues and, especially, in the value of rational autonomy.4 It is true that edu-
cation institutions that promise to provide a liberal education tend to pride
themselves in their efforts to promote critical inquiry. However, t­here are
two prob­lems with the argument that promoting critical thinking skills
constitutes indoctrination. First, if this w ­ ere true, then all forms of educa-
tion would constitute indoctrination, making the term “indoctrination”
meaningless. Second, and importantly, promoting critical thinking skills
does not necessarily imply that individuals ­will in fact adhere to liberal
­values. While it is certainly pos­si­ble for some so-­called liberal education
curricula to indoctrinate students in liberal values, a curriculum that truly
promotes critical thinking is one that encourages students to question the
core princi­ples of liberalism, and makes it pos­si­ble for students, as a result
of this scrutiny, to reject ­these princi­ples. The necessary pairing of liberalism
and critical thinking runs into many counterexamples. Indeed, most p ­ eople
would be hard-­pressed to dismiss Edmund Burke, Karl Marx, or Thomas
Aquinas as lacking in critical thinking skills.
The type of indoctrination that this book focuses on is indoctrination
in moral (secular or religious) and ­political beliefs that form the basis of
an individual’s moral character and p ­ olitical be­hav­ior. To be sure, educa-
tion systems can indoctrinate c­ hildren to believe a wide range of ­things.
For example, a school could indoctrinate ­children in the idea that global
warming is the by-­product of h ­ uman actions such as burning fossil fuels,
or it could indoctrinate ­children in the idea that h ­ uman beings are not re-
sponsible for long-­term shifts in temperature and weather patterns. As
impor­tant as this and many other subjects where indoctrination can occur
are, my concern in this book is with indoctrination in a broader category
of values and beliefs that shape how individuals behave in the public
sphere and how they relate to existing institutions, rules, and authorities.

3. For a lit­er­a­ture review and discussion of the definition of “indoctrination,” see Callan and
Arena (2009).
4. For example, Neundorf et al. (2024) argue that critical thinking constitutes a form of “demo­
cratic indoctrination.”
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 251

Some may argue that a certain amount of indoctrination is needed to se-

cure social order and the stability of states, including demo­cratic ones.
­Whether this is indeed true is an impor­tant open question, and one that I
hope social scientists and education scholars ­will study in the ­future. But
­whether a curriculum that promotes critical thinking skills constitutes a
threat to the stability of states—in democracies or elsewhere—is beside the
point. As in previous chapters, the question that I examine in the follow-
ing pages does not concern the consequences of education or indoctrination,
but rather the motivations for regulating and providing public primary
­education. Are demo­cratically elected politicians interested in the educa-
tion of young c­ hildren at least partly ­because they view it as a useful policy
tool to forge order and stability by molding c­ hildren into law-­abiding
“good citizens”?

THE UNITED STATES DURING THE EARLY REPUBLIC

In his classic book on education in the United States during the Early Re-
public, Carl Kaestle argues that the Founding F ­ athers ­were concerned that
a republican form of government in which the general ­will was represented,
refined, and articulated by the best men would not be sustainable if the
­general population remained uneducated.5 Following the American Revo-
lution (1775–1783) through which the United States gained i­ndependence
from ­Great Britain, the former revolutionaries faced the complex task of
establishing and consolidating a new government. Although they had fought
for individual liberty, p
­ olitical elites soon found themselves debating the
importance of balancing liberty and order. The view that emerged as dom-
inant saw “conformity as the price of liberty”6 and ­popular education as one
of the key policy tools to align the moral character of citizens with the goals
of ensuring social order and the stability of the new republic.
Two rebellions intensified p ­ olitical elites’ concern about social disorder
and increased their interest in education as a long-­term solution to this
prob­lem: Shays’ Rebellion in Mas­sa­chu­setts (1786–1787) and the Whiskey
­Rebellion in Pennsylvania (1791–1794).7 The first of ­these brought together
struggling farmers and disgruntled former soldiers who had received l­ ittle

5. Kaestle (1983).
6. Tyack (1966), p. 31.
7. Kaestle (1983); Koganzon (2012).
252 | Chapter 7

or no compensation for their ­service during the American Revolution

and now faced high taxes and the threat of foreclosure. United by eco-
nomic grievances and led by war veteran Daniel Shay, they protested
against the taxes set by the Mas­sa­chu­setts state legislature and blocked
county courts from ruling in f­avor of debt collectors. When state militia,
instead of complying with the governor’s order to quash the insurrection,
sympathized with the protesters, the governor had to o ­ rganize a private
militia to defeat the rebels. Shays’ Rebellion not only disrupted the state gov-
ernment of Mas­sa­chu­setts but also expanded to other parts of New ­England
and led to a perception among elites that a stronger central government
was needed in order to maintain order in the new nation. As George Wash-
ington wrote in a letter to David Humphrey while the latter tried to quash
the expansion of Shays’ Rebellion to Connecticut, the worry was that
“commotions of this sort, like snow-­balls, gather strength as they roll.”8
Some elites attributed Shays’ Rebellion and other incidents of violent pro-
test against the government to protesters’ selfishness; ­others, to their lack
of reasoning capabilities. ­Whatever the explanation, support for ­popular ed-
ucation as an antidote for t­hese be­hav­iors grew, bolstered by the premise
that education could enlighten the masses about the importance of protect-
ing republican institutions. In the aftermath of Shays’ Rebellion, in 1789 the
Mas­sa­chu­setts legislature passed the first state law on common education.
Other Northeastern states followed suit between the 1790s and 1820s.9 Al-
though t­ here was some variation in the content of ­these state laws, they all
called for the ­organization and public funding of “common schools,”
which ­were to teach a curriculum that was to some extent supervised by
the state government.10
What was the goal of common schools during the Early Republic? Speak-
ing to his classmates at Harvard University about the nature of society and
politics just weeks a­ fter the onset of Shays’ Rebellion in 1786, John Quincy
Adams argued that “Education is one of the most impor­tant subjects that
can engage the attention of mankind; a subject on which the welfare of
States and Empires . . . ​depend.” According to Adams, “Civilization is to
a State what Education is to an Individual,” by which he meant that a state’s
success is determined by its level of civilization, which in turn rests on the

8. Washington (October 22, 1786).

9. Kaestle (1983).
10. Kaestle (1983); Paulsen, Scheve, and Stasavage (2022).
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 253

education of its inhabitants.11 While Adams was firmly against a monar-

chical form of government, he did admire the education systems of ­European
monarchies, whom he viewed as “the most civilized Nations” at that time.12
For him and many of his contemporaries, E ­ uropean education systems
­became an object of admiration ­because of their ability to civilize the pop-
ulation and contribute to the long-­term viability of the state.13
The idea that mass education could promote ­political stability by teach-
ing f­ uture citizens to re­spect existing institutions was shared widely in elite
circles. A year ­after Adams spoke about the benefits of education at Har-
vard, Shays’ Rebellion now a few months b ­ ehind, Thomas Jefferson wrote
to James Madison reflecting on the rebellion and arguing that “the educa-
tion of the common ­people” was a more effective strategy to preserve peace
and order than repression. At the time, Jefferson was living in France and
observed that t­ here and in other E ­ uropean countries, the use of large armies
“to crush insurrections” had not prevented the occurrence of violent
­rebellions—­a sign, to him, of the inefficacy of repression to prevent disor-
der. In his words:

Say fi­nally w
­ hether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the gov-
ernment, or information to the p ­ eople. This last is the most certain
and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform
the ­whole mass of the ­people, enable them to see that it is their inter-
est to preserve peace and order, and they ­will preserve it, and it requires
no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are
the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.14

All the influential educational thinkers of the Early Republic subscribed

to the view that deficiencies of moral character w­ ere at the root of social
disorder, crime, and poverty, and that correcting this character should be
the main goal of public schooling.15 A leader on education issues during
the Early Republic and one of the signatories of the Declaration of
­Independence was Benjamin Rush, who in the midst of Shays’ Rebellion
warned that while the war against Britain was over, this was “far from being

11. Boonshoft (2015), p. 1.

12. Boonshoft (2015), p. 2.
13. Boonshoft (2015).
14. Jefferson (1787a, 1787b).
15. Kornfeld (1989), p. 159.
254 | Chapter 7

the case” for revolutions within the United States. “On the contrary,” he
­argued in reference to internal uprisings, “nothing but the g­ reat drama is
closed” and “it remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of gov-
ernment.” To do so, Rush advocated for a system of common schools to “con-
form” and “prepare the princi­ples, morals, and manners of our citizens for
­these forms of government.”16 In an essay on education written in 1786 and
addressed to the legislature and citizens of Pennsylvania, Rush argued that
schools ­were essential for forming good citizens, by which he meant com-
pliant ones. He believed that establishing schools where the authority of
teachers was “absolute” would help form f­ uture obedient citizens:

I am satisfied that the most useful citizens have been formed from t­ hose
youth who have never known or felt their own w ­ ills till they ­were one
and twenty years of age, and I have often thought that society owes a
­great deal of its order and happiness to the deficiencies of parental gov-
ernment being supplied by ­those habits of obedience and subordina-
tion which are contracted at schools.17

Another key proponent of the power of education to form law-­abiding

citizens was Noah Webster, who believed that “strict discipline” at home and
in schools was “the best foundation of good order in ­political society.”18
Best known ­today for his contributions to the Merriam-­Webster dictionary
first published in 1828, Webster was already well known in the 1780s for the
spelling, grammar, and reading compendium and textbooks he wrote for
use in elementary schools. His textbooks included “moral tales carefully
crafted for ­children,” and his ­popular American Spelling Book “featured a ‘Fed-
eral Catechism’ from which c­ hildren could memorize and recite the ad-
vantages of republican government.”19 Like Locke and other Enlightenment
­philosophers, Webster argued that the most effective way to secure order in
the new republic was to target ­children through an education system de-
signed to shape their moral values:

Our legislators frame laws for the suppression of vice and immoral-
ity . . . ​And do laws and preaching effect a reformation of manners?

16. Kesler (1991), p. 102.

17. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965),
p. 16.
18. Webster (1790), On the Education of Youth in Amer­i­ca, in Rudolph (1965), p. 58.
19. Kornfeld (1989), p. 162.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 255

Experience would not give a very favorable answer to this inquiry. The
reason is obvious: the attempts are directed to the wrong objects. Laws
can only check the public effects of vicious princi­ples but can never
reach the princi­ples themselves, and preaching is not very intelligible
to ­people till they arrive at an age when their princi­ples are rooted or
their habits firmly established. An attempt to eradicate old habits is as
absurd as to lop off the branches of a huge oak in order to root it out
of a rich soil. The most that such clipping w­ ill effect is to prevent a fur-
ther growth. The only practicable method to reform mankind is to
begin with ­children, to banish, if pos­si­ble, from their com­pany ­every
low-­bred, drunken, immoral character.20

Inculcating support for a republican form of government among f­ uture

citizens was a central goal of mass education during the Early Republic.21
Rush argued that schools had to “convert men into republican machines”;22
teach students “that t­here can be no liberty but in a republic”,23 and “pre-
pare our youth for the subordination of laws and thereby qualify them for
becoming good citizens of the republic.”24 Webster’s American Spelling Book
edition of 1798 “told ­children of the advantage of republicanism and the
defects of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.”25 Jefferson defended
the prescription of textbooks to lay down “the princi­ples which are to be
taught” in schools, and to “guard against the dissemination of such princi­
ples among our youth” that could “poison” c­ hildren with ideas contrary to
a republican form of government. He argued that if “­there is one branch in
which we are the best judges,” that is the form of government.26
Concerns about crime and social unrest w ­ ere equally salient in the cre-
ation of a public school system during the Early Republic. Morality was em-
phasized “not as an end in itself but as the basis for civic security.”27 The

20. Webster (1790), On the Education of Youth in Amer­i­ca, in Rudolph (1965), p. 63.
21. Tyack (1966) and Kesler (1991), among other historians, also use the term “indoctrination” to
characterize the type of moral and civic education that Jefferson, Rush, Webster, and other leading
educational thinkers of the Early Republic advocated for.
22. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965), p. 17.
23. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965),
p. 15.
24. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965),
p. 16.
25. Tyack (1966), p. 36.
26. Jefferson, quoted in Tyack (1966), p. 40.
27. Hobson (1918), p. 14.
256 | Chapter 7

threat to the stability of the new republic that came from within was made
“abundantly clear”28 by Shays’ Rebellion in the 1780s, the Whiskey Rebel-
lion in the 1790s, and other episodes of mass vio­lence. The arrival of new
immigrants who w ­ ere perceived to be selfish, more predisposed to crime,
and “hard to govern,” further exacerbated elite concerns about internal or-
der.29 Writing in 1786, for example, Benjamin Rush argued that “of the
many criminals that have been executed within ­these seven years, four out
of five of them have been foreigners.” Instead of spending more on jails or
restricting immigration, Rush preferred investing in public schools to edu-
cate immigrants and thus “prevent our morals, manners, and government
from the infection of E ­ uropean vices.”30 All men who lack an education,
he warned, “become savages or barbarians”:31

Fewer pillories and whipping posts and jails, with their usual expenses
and taxes, w­ ill be necessary when our youth are properly educated . . . ​
I believe it could be proved that the expenses of confining, trying, and
executing criminals amount ­every year, in most of the counties, to more
money than would be sufficient to maintain all the schools that would
be necessary in each county. The confessions of ­these criminals gener-
ally show us that their vices and punishments are the fatal consequences
of the want of a proper education in early life.32

In addition to advocating for moral education to safeguard republican

institutions and to prevent crime and social unrest, many proponents of a
public school system during the Early Republic also supported the teach-
ing of basic practical knowledge such as arithmetic and the princi­ples of
money. The reasons w ­ ere both p
­ olitical and economic. Some, like Rush, held
that stimulating the economy through education was a good ­political in-
vestment not only to grow the tax base and thus enlarge the wealth of the
state, but also b
­ ecause commercial activity was “the best security against
the influence of hereditary monopolies of land, and, therefore, the surest
protection against aristocracy.”33

28. Koganzon (2012), p. 416.

29. Hobson (1918), p. 10.
30. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965), p. 23.
31. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965), p. 4.
32. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965),
pp. 6–7.
33. Rush (1786), Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, in Rudolph (1965), p. 19.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 257

A smaller minority of elites maintained that teaching practical knowl-

edge would foster individual liberty and equal repre­sen­ta­tion. A leading ad-
vocate of this liberal approach to mass education was the anti-­Federalist
Robert Coram. He argued that education should level the playing field be-
tween rural farmers and commercial and mercantile elites, and that schools
should be public “1st. B­ ecause ­every citizen has an equal right to subsistence
and ­ought to have an equal opportunity of acquiring knowledge.”34 Coram
championed the view that public schools should impart knowledge to e­ very
child so “that they may be enabled to support themselves with becoming
inde­pen­dency (sic.) when they s­ hall arrive to years of maturity,”35 and that
schools “should also prevent ­people from falling into abject poverty.”36 He
underscored that “an equal repre­sen­ta­tion is absolutely necessary to the pres-
ervation of liberty. But ­there can never be an equal repre­sen­ta­tion ­until
­there is an equal mode of education of all citizens.”37
In this context of diverse pos­si­ble goals, the vision of mass education that
prevailed according to historians was one that placed order before liberty,
submission and obedience before equal repre­sen­ta­tion, and moral educa-
tion before practical skills.38 Most elites during the Early Republic shared
Noah Webster’s view that “the virtues of men are of more consequence to
society than their abilities, and for this reason the heart should be cultivated
with more assiduity than the head.”39 Indeed, when in 1797 the American
Philosophical Society of Philadelphia o ­ rganized an essay contest on the best
system of public schooling for the United States, the cash award went to
the essays written by Samuel Harrington Smith and Samuel Knox, both of
whom “stressed the need for a homogeneous moral education to promote
public good, rather than the individual development of the scholar.”40 For
example, Smith’s plan for public schooling proposed that c­ hildren ages
5–10 years old should be instructed about “moral duties” and learn basic

34. Coram (1791), A Plan for the General Establishment of Schools throughout the United States, in
Rudolph (1965), p. 138.
35. Coram (1791), A Plan for the General Establishment of Schools throughout the United States, in
Rudolph (1965), p. 113.
36. Coram (1791), A Plan for the General Establishment of Schools throughout the United States, in
Rudolph (1965), p. 120.
37. Coram (1791), A Plan for the General Establishment of Schools throughout the United States, in
Rudolph (1965), pp. 135–136.
38. Rudolph (1965); Tyack (1966); Kornfeld (1989); Koganzon (2012).
39. Webster (1790), On the Education of Youth in Amer­i­ca, in Rudolph (1965), p. 67. Emphasis in
the original.
40. Kornfeld (1989), p. 160.
258 | Chapter 7

writing and arithmetic, leaving to l­ ater stages of education the teaching of

“more correct knowledge of arithmetic” and practical skills for “agriculture
and mechanics.”41
Mass education in the Early Republic, then, took on a dual character.
­Although schools incorporated liberal ele­ments designed to enable indi-
viduals to exercise their liberty and earn a decent living, they also embraced
features modeled ­after the education systems of non-­democratic Prus­sia
and France. Specifically, American schoolchildren ­were ­free to think and
question freely as long as their questioning was not aimed at the moral
values or republican princi­ples that schools sought to inculcate. The his-
torian David Tyack calls this “the ­great paradox” of educational thought
during the Early Republic; although they had fought for individual liberty
during the American Revolution, in its aftermath p ­ olitical elites and intel-
lectuals “argued for an indoctrination of citizens; an educational goal which
clashed with the right to dissent and to make i­ndependent ­political and
moral judgments.”42 This indoctrination in republican government, civic
duties, and moral be­hav­ior was necessary, elites argued, to safeguard social
order and protect the new republican form of government, which they
considered a precondition for durable liberty.
The importance assigned to the goal of molding ­children into well-­
behaved ­future citizens is further evidence by the differential efforts that
white elites made to provide education for ­free versus enslaved Black indi-
viduals. To the extent that white education reformers cared about the edu-
cation of f­ree Black ­children, it was ­because they understood that ­these
­children would eventually become citizens. For this reason, they created
schools to instill in f­ ree Black c­ hildren “values of respectability, order, def-
erence, and industry.” As in Prus­sia, France, or Chile, the “main thrust was
moral education, and literacy was directed more to this purpose than to in-
dividual advancement.” If this education resulted in upward mobility, it
was accidental—­the goal was to “elevate” f­ ree Black c­ hildren morally so that
they would “escape vice, criminal activity, and poverty.” ­These efforts to
school ­free Black ­children contrasted with the prohibitions that white elites
put in place against schooling Black c­ hildren of enslaved families. T ­ hese

41. Smith (1797), Remarks on Education, in Rudolph (1965), p. 211.

42. Tyack (1966), p. 29.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 259

c­ hildren, according to elites, did not need to be taught how to exercise their
­political rights in the new republic ­because they simply had none.43
The tension between education and indoctrination goals that emerged
in the Early Republic was a per­sis­tent one. During the Common School
Movement of the late 1830s and 1840s, Horace Mann, arguably the main
leader of this movement, insisted like Jefferson had done ­after Shays’ Re-
bellion that ­children needed to be taught, above all, that voting, not
­vio­lence, was the legitimate way to express discontent.44 In his role as Sec-
retary of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, which he held from 1837
to 1848, Mann wrote Annual Reports where he reflected on the state of pub-
lic elementary schooling, argued for its expansion, and made concrete pro-
posals on how to accomplish this. It was in one of ­these reports where he
coined the famous phrase that education should serve as “the g­reat
equalizer.”45 What is less known is that this report was in fact devoted to
emphasizing the importance of providing a moral education to all f­uture
citizens as a means of eradicating vio­lence. “Had the obligations of the ­future
citizen been sedulously inculcated upon all the ­children of this Republic,”
Mann reasoned,“would the patriot have had to mourn over so many ­instances,
where the voter, not being able to accomplish his purpose by voting, had
proceeded to accomplish it by vio­lence?”46 Indeed, five d ­ ecades ­after John
Quincy Adams praised E ­ uropean education systems for their ability to civi-
lize the population, Mann would similarly advocate for emulating Prus­
sia’s primary education system, arguing that just as schools in Prus­sia fo-
cused on indoctrinating c­hildren to re­spect the absolute monarch, so
should schools in the United States focus on indoctrinating f­ uture citizens
“for the support and perpetuation of republican institutions.” According to
Mann, the following “should be taught to all the ­children ­until they are fully
understood”:

43. Kaestle (1983), p. 39. Pervasive s­ tereotypes about the inferiority of enslaved Black individuals
also led many white elites to assume that ­these ­children could not be “civilized” through educa-
tion. To some extent, ­these ­stereotypes also affected how ­free Black individuals ­were perceived, but
in this case, Kaestle argues the schooling opportunities that Black communities funded for their
­children “helped to demonstrate to some whites the fallacy of the widespread belief in Negro in-
feriority” (Kaestle 1983, p. 38).
44. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann, National Education Association of the
United States (1848), p. 12; Cubberley (1920).
45. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann, National Education Association of the
United States (1848), p. 59.
46. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann, National Education Association of the
United States (1848), p. 85.
260 | Chapter 7

Especially, the duty of ­every citizen, in a government of laws, to appeal

to the courts for redress, in all cases of alleged wrong, instead of un-
dertaking to vindicate his own rights by his own arm; and . . . ​the duty
of changing laws and rulers by an appeal to the ballot, and not by
rebellion.47

The tension in the character of education became the center of disputes

among education p ­ hilosophers and reformers during the Progressive Era.
On one end of the debate ­were Edward Thorndike, Ellwood Cubberley, and
other education reformers who believed that schools should primarily serve
societal goals such as social order and industrialization, and that ­these goals
could be best accomplished by increasing the centralization,48 standard-
ization, and bureaucratization of education systems.49 On the other end of
the debate was John Dewey, who criticized this approach as authoritarian
and argued that schools could best prepare individuals for demo­cratic
life if the schools themselves ­were demo­cratically ­organized. To Dewey,
this meant that students should be able to influence what they learned—­
thus his emphasis on an individualized student-­led curriculum—­and that
schools should strive to promote critical thinking, discussion, consultation,
persuasion, and debate.50 The resilience of the traditional approach over
Dewey’s progressive educational ideas is captured by Ellen Condliffe Lage-
mann, who began her 1988 Presidential Address to the History of Educa-
tion Society as follows:

I have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one

cannot understand the history of education in the United States dur-
ing the twentieth c­ entury ­unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorn-
dike won and John Dewey lost. The statement is too ­simple, of course,
but nevertheless more true than untrue and useful . . . ​If Dewey has

47. Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, Horace Mann, National Education Association of the
United States (1848), p. 12.
48. While education in the United States has a relatively decentralized governance structure in
which most education policies are made at the school district or state levels, before the Progressive
Era education was even more decentralized than ­today. In the cities, each ward could choose its
own teachers. Citywide school boards charged with teacher recruitment across wards and district-­
level educational bureaucracies and authorities such as the Superintendent of Schools ­were cre-
ated during the Progressive Era, and it was during this time, too, that states began to take a more
active role in regulating the curriculum and teacher certification requirements. See Tyack (1974).
49. Levin (1991).
50. Dewey (1916).
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 261

been revered among some educators and his thought has had influence
across a greater range of scholarly domains . . . ​Thorndike’s thought has
been more influential within education. It helped to shape public
school practice as well as scholarship about education.51

The duality in the goals and characteristics of public schooling remains

vis­i­ble to this day. It is an obvious feature—­obvious at least to anyone who
has completed part of their education in another country—­that schools in
the United States tend to have a relatively participatory classroom environ-
ment. Teachers encourage student participation by asking questions to
check student understanding, having students work in small groups to work
out a joint answer to a question, or setting up student debates. This partici-
patory culture, however, coexists with regular rituals that seek to inculcate
a specific set of ­political values and princi­ples among c­ hildren, such as the
notion that voting is the most impor­tant duty of citizens, or that protest
activities should always be peaceful. An example of a widespread ritual used
to inculcate ­political princi­ples is the daily recitation of the Pledge of Al-
legiance, which is required in forty-­seven states. Hand on their heart, ­children
as young as five years old pledge allegiance to “the flag of the United States
and to the Republic for which it stands” even before they know how to spell
their own name—­and certainly well before they know what a republic is.
The education systems that emerged during the Early Republic began a
long tradition in U.S. history in which public elementary schooling, in ad-
dition to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, assumed the crucial
function of providing a moral and civic education to ­future citizens, teach-
ing them about their ­political duties, stressing the importance of voting,
and delegitimizing the use of vio­lence to make demands. That function
emerged, the historian Carl Kaestle and many o ­ thers have argued, out of
the Founding F ­ athers’ fear for their own life, property, and the survival
of the institutions that protected their elite status.

­ENGLAND’S ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1870

As we saw in previous chapters, E
­ ngland was a latecomer to the transfor-
mation of primary education systems in ­Europe. Chapter 6 traced ­England’s
educational backwardness to its relative ­political stability and to the fact

51. Levin (1991), p. 71.

262 | Chapter 7

that the most disruptive episodes of mass vio­lence—­the ­English civil war,
the Glorious Revolution, and the events leading up to the Reform Act of
1832—­all preceded the diffusion among E ­ nglish elites of the idea that edu-
cating the lower classes could help promote social order and ­political
­stability. U
­ ntil the mid-­nineteenth ­century, ­English elites, unlike elites in
continental ­Europe, tended to view mass education as a potentially destabi-
lizing force. Following the Reform Act of 1832, ­political stability returned
to ­England u ­ ntil the late 1860s. During this time, elementary education
expanded through the action of the Church, and school enrollment re-
mained voluntary. The combination of low parental demand for education
in most parts of the country and the Church’s practice of establishing
schools in places with high parental demand resulted in an education
­system with ­limited reach. In the absence of mass mobilization against exist-
ing ­political institutions, national elites deemed this system good enough.
­England began to catch up with other ­European countries in 1870 with
the passage of the Elementary Education Act, also known as the Forster Act.
This was ­England’s first national primary education law, and as we saw in
chapter 5, it trailed all national education laws in continental ­Europe. For
the first time, the government set out to create a national primary educa-
tion system and to ensure universal access to primary schooling. To accom-
plish this, the Act allowed Church-­run schools to continue operating but
supplemented ­these schools with a new system of public primary schools
built and managed by locally elected school boards. The Forster Act charged
­these local boards with establishing and maintaining enough public schools
to accommodate all ­children between the ages of 5 and 13 who other­wise
lacked access to primary education. It also stipulated that t­ hese schools be
non-­denominational. If a board failed to ensure universal access, the Edu-
cation Department could dissolve it and set up a new board. With this new
system in place, primary school enrollment rates expanded rapidly ­after 1870,
and in less than two d ­ ecades E
­ ngland’s primary education provision fi­nally
caught up with the rest of E ­ urope.52
What led to the passage of the landmark Forster Act of 1870? As the book’s
argument predicts, the central government’s interest in actively regulating
and promoting primary education emerged in the late 1860s, when a new
wave of social unrest led members of parliament to question the efficacy of
delegating the education of c­ hildren to the Church and voluntary associa-

52. See figure 2.2 in chapter 2.

 Indoctrination in Democracies | 263

tions. To be sure, ­English elites had sought for d ­ ecades to frustrate the ac-
tivism of working-­class members and ­unions in industrializing areas, but
strikes and mass demonstrations in 1866 in London’s Hyde Park, Manches-
ter, Leeds, and other parts of ­England created an unusual sense of alarm
­regarding the working class’s “dogged determination that leads to vio­
lence,”53 with The Times and other newspapers warning of revolution, moral
degradation, and social danger.54
Educational ideas in E­ ngland had started to change in the mid-­nineteenth
­century as ­popular writers used their pens and personal connections to pol-
iticians to promote a view of mass schooling as a potential contributor to,
rather than as a deterrent of, social and ­political stability.55 Charles Dick-
ens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Kingsley, and Benjamin Disraeli (a novelist
before he became a politician) ­were among ­those most influential to write
that educating the poor could teach them to make better choices, thus re-
straining l­ abor radicalism and supporting social stability. Disraeli articulated
this view in his famous novel Sybil, published in 1845, where he depicted
the difficult living conditions of the working class: “It is that increased
knowledge of themselves that teaches the educated their social duties.”56
During the 1850s, Dickens campaigned to extend access to education to the
working class using the argument—­novel for ­England at the time—­that
“the existence of a large uneducated class was a physical danger to society.”
He also lectured actively to raise funds for education and wrote articles for
The Examiner, The Daily News, and House­hold Words, where he reminded the
public and his upper-­class friends of the relationship between crime and
ignorance.57 But arguably the most influential intellectual in reshaping ed-
ucational ideas in ­England was Matthew Arnold, whose efforts have earned
him comparisons to Victor Cousin in France, Domingo F. Sarmiento in Ar-
gentina, and Horace Mann in the United States.58 In addition to his work
as a poet and literary critic, Arnold served as a school inspector from 1851

53. Snell-­Feikema (2005), p. 33.

54. Snell-­Feikema (2005).
55. Martin’s (2023) analy­sis of how education was discussed in more than 500 fiction books au-
thored by ­English writers between 1720 and 1920 suggests that between 1840 and 1860, ­there was a
marked increase in the ratio of references associating education with societal and state goals rela-
tive to individualistic goals.
56. Martin (2023), p. 121.
57. Collins (1955), p. 126.
58. Rapple (1989).
264 | Chapter 7

to 1886.59 In 1859, he convinced the government to send him to France, the

Netherlands, and Switzerland to learn about the primary school systems of
continental E ­ uropean countries, ­later extending his study to Germany.60 Ar-
nold’s interest in education stemmed from his belief that the working and
­middle classes ­were dangerously obsessed with their own economic well-­
being and “fortune making.”61 He believed that, to prevent anarchy, it was
imperative for ­people to care about the consequences of their actions for
­others and for society,62 and argued that a state-­regulated primary educa-
tion system was the best way to inculcate this.63
While the diffusion of educational ideas similar to ­those current in con-
tinental ­Europe—­conceptualizing public primary education as a useful tool
to promote social order—­encountered a receptive audience among some
politicians, ­until the late 1860s t­ here was not enough support within parlia-
ment to create a national primary education system regulated by the state.
Many members of parliament considered the existing framework of
­educational provision through the Church good enough. The Newcastle
Report of 1861 offered validation; formed in 1859, the Newcastle Commis-
sion was tasked with investigating and reporting on the current state of
“­popular education” in E ­ ngland. Its final report, published in 1861, pre-
sented statistics—­ accepted at the time but questioned a few years
­later—­that claimed that, of 2,655,767 ­children in ­England and Wales, only
120,305 had no instruction. The Report also highlighted the “rapid pro­
gress of elementary education in this country since the beginning of the
­century,”64 and concluded based on ­these enrollment statistics that “the
proportion of ­children receiving instruction to the ­whole population is, in
our opinion, nearly as high as can be reasonably expected.”65
The mass demonstrations of 1866 produced a dramatic change in the at-
titudes of national politicians ­toward mass education. In early 1866, the pre-
vailing diagnosis within the government—­supported by the Newcastle
Report—­was that the system of government-­subsidized Church schools and
voluntary attendance had reached a large majority of ­children.66 By 1868,

59. Arnold (1908).

60. Rapple (1989).
61. Brunell (1940), p. 4.
62. Arnold (1883).
63. Brunell (1940); Martin (2023).
64. ­Great Britain, Education Commission (1861), p. 294.
65. ­Great Britain, Education Commission (1861), p. 293.
66. Roper (1975), p. 183.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 265

however, the dominant view affirmed that the existing system had resulted
in an inadequate supply of elementary schools and insufficient school at-
tendance, both of which countered the interests of the state.67 An Octo-
ber 1866 report on the state of elementary education in Manchester helped
cement the new view that many ­children, especially ­those of the poorer
classes, did not receive any instruction, and that this was the cause for the
unrest in Manchester and other parts of E ­ ngland ­earlier that year.68
Parliament’s main response to the prob­lem of social disorder that emerged
in 1866 took the form of electoral and educational reform. In the short term,
it sought to pacify the working class by extending voting rights through
the Second Electoral Reform Act. Passed in August 1867 and implemented
gradually over the next two years, the reform increased the franchise from
8.5 ­percent to 20 ­percent of the adult population.69 One of the main archi-
tects of the reform, Benjamin Disraeli, who by then was the Conservative
leader of the ­House of Commons, defended the reform by calling atten-
tion to “the working-­class question,” predicting that, “other­wise,” if the gov-
ernment failed to extend the franchise, he saw “anarchy ahead.”70 At the
same time, other members of parliament argued that extending the fran-
chise without also reserving for government a central role in educating the
poor and the working class would threaten the state’s survival.
While Conservatives in parliament had historically sided with the Church’s
view that the operation of primary schools should be left to religious actors,
by the late 1860s several prominent Conservatives joined Liberal politi-
cians to support greater state intervention in primary education. Liberals
argued that the lack of education among the lower classes was a product of
the low supply of schooling and “the indifference, the selfishness, or
avarice”71 of parents. They worried that the existence of a large group of un-
educated ­children constituted “the ­great social and ­political danger of the
country.”72 Conservatives, too, spoke of “the necessity of education.” They
shared in the view that “­there is a vast amount of educational deficiency in
this country, and that although vast efforts have been made . . . ​by voluntary
associations and religious bodies to meet educational deficiencies, yet ­those

67. Roper (1975), p. 203.

68. Roper (1975), pp. 186–8.
69. I calculated this using the Va­ri­e­ties of Democracy Dataset.
70. Snell-­Feikema (2005), p. 34.
71. Henry Fawcett, U.K. Parliament, HC Deb, 17 February 1870, vol. 199, cc438–98.
72. Earl de Grey and Ripon, U.K. Parliament, HL Deb, 25 July 1870, vol. 203, cc821–65.
266 | Chapter 7

efforts failed to reach a large number of our youthful population.”73 They

argued that expanding mass education, especially moral education, was nec-
essary to convert the “hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.”74
One of the fiercest proponents of education reform was Robert Lowe,
who in 1867 had strongly opposed electoral reform. Immediately ­after the
passage of the Second Reform Act, Lowe called for the urgent creation of
a national education system, whose function would be to teach the newly-­
enfranchised “ignorant barbarians”75 of the working classes to re­ spect
­existing institutions and thus ensure “the peace of the country.”76 The cre-
ation of such a system, he said, was “the first and highest of p ­ olitical
necessities.”77 Speaking before the ­House of Commons soon ­after it ap-
proved the Reform Act of 1867, Lowe told members of parliament: “The
time has arrived when it is our duty to vindicate for the state its real func-
tion” in education m ­ atters, ­because the state, he claimed, has “a vital inter-
est in the education of ­every one of its members.” Lowe argued that the
­existence of a sector of the population that was not reached by education
institutions presented a danger to the state, and that reversing this situa-
tion was “a question of self-­preservation—it is a question of our existence,
even of the existence of our Constitution.”78 “From the moment that you
can entrust the masses with power,” said Lowe, “their education becomes
an absolute necessity.”79
In the aftermath of the 1866 demonstrations, then, both Liberal and Con-
servative politicians warned of the need to quickly build a national educa-
tion system controlled by the state, and introduced education bills to this
effect. The bill that eventually became law in 1870 was drafted in Octo-
ber 1867 by the Liberal William Forster, just two months a­ fter the passage
of the Second Electoral Reform Act. The proposal, as described by Forster,
created “a complete national system of education,” making local educational
authorities accountable to the central government for elementary e­ ducation
provision. It also introduced the princi­ple of compulsory education b ­ ecause

73. Duke of Marlborough, U.K. Parliament, HL Deb, 25 July 1870, vol. 203, cc821–65.
74. The Earl of Shaftesbury, U.K. Parliament, HL Deb, 25 July 1870, vol. 203, cc821–65.
75. Marcham (1973), p. 186.
76. Wright (2012), p. 23. See also Hurt (1979).
77. Marcham (1973), p. 186.
78. Roper (1975), p. 197.
79. Sylvester (1974), p. 16.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 267

“parents,” he claimed, “neglect the education of their ­children.”80 Forster in-

sisted to parliament that it “must not delay” in approving his bill. He ar-
gued that “upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends
our industrial prosperity,” “our national power,” and crucially, since “Parlia-
ment has lately de­cided that E ­ ngland ­shall in f­uture be governed by
­popular government,” “the good, the safe working of our constitutional sys-
tem.” Seeking the support of members of parliament “who are swayed not
so much by ­these general considerations,” Forster emphasized that educa-
tion “is a safeguard against calamity”; that “ignorance is weakness” which
in turn “often leads to vice,” leading “child a­ fter child—­boys or girls—­
growing up to probable crime.” He closed by asking, “Dare we then take on
ourselves the responsibility of allowing this ignorance and this weakness
to continue one year longer than we can help?”81
­After the Forster Act of 1870, the o­ rganization of schools, the pedagogi-
cal methods, and the content of the curriculum and textbooks used in
­England all focused on advancing the shared interest of elites in “develop-
ing controllable subjects who would accept their place, rather than auton-
omous individuals who could think for themselves.”82 The emphasis on
moral education, on “socializing the rising generation, and teaching the val-
ues that would form responsible citizens,” was reflected in schools’ insis-
tence on discipline and good habits.83 The guidelines that the Education
Department distributed among schools “focused on moral training through
the ‘ordinary management of the school,’ ” an impor­tant aspect of which
was a system of rewards and punishments to mold be­hav­ior.84 The drill, a
teaching method characterized by systematic repetition, was touted for its
potential benefits in inculcating “habits of obedience, promptness, self-­
control, and silence.”85 Religious instruction entered the curriculum in large
part to support the goal of shaping the moral character of ­children. The
textbooks used to teach ­children how to read w ­ ere infused with language
that promoted patriotism; by stressing “a shared cultural heritage,” Susan-
nah Wright argues, “pupils ­were encouraged to love king and country, and

80. The 1870 law did not establish compulsory schooling for all ­children, but it enabled local
school boards to establish compulsory schooling for ­children of the district governed by the
board.
81. William E. Forster, U.K. Parliament, HC Deb, 17 February 1870, vol. 199, cc438–98.
82. Wright (2012), p. 23–4.
83. Wright (2012), p. 21.
84. Wright (2012), p. 25.
85. Wright (2012), p. 26.
268 | Chapter 7

to accept their place in the social hierarchy, and class or gender roles.”86
One of the most ­popular textbooks, The Citizen Reader, included a preface
from William Forster that highlighted that “at a time when we have just
added millions to the citizens who have the right of electing representatives,”
it was imperative “to instruct them in the duties of citizenship.”87 The same
textbook, in a chapter titled “Education,” taught c­ hildren that the ultimate
goal of schooling was to instill values of “cheerful obedience to duty, of con-
sideration and re­spect for o
­ thers, and of honor and truthfulness in word and
act.” T
­ hese values, articulated by the Board of Education, w ­ ere displayed in
many schools and classrooms, and ­children w ­ ere taught that learning them
was “indeed more impor­tant than even reading and writing.”88
In sum, throughout much of the nineteenth c­ entury, the combination
of ­England’s ­political stability and unique ideas about education implied
that the national government did not see much reason to invest in educat-
ing the lower classes. As a result, E ­ ngland lagged ­behind other ­European
countries in the provision of primary education. Intellectual elites began
to embrace the view of education as a policy tool to promote social order
around the m ­ iddle of the nineteenth c­ entury, but this was insufficient to
bring about education reform. The disruption to ­England’s ­political stabil-
ity in the late 1860s and national elites’ heightened fear of the masses in the
context of the 1866 demonstrations and the 1867 extension of the franchise
­were fundamental in forging a widespread co­ali­tion of support for propos-
als to create a national primary education system. ­These events led liberal
and conservative politicians to update their beliefs surrounding mass edu-
cation and created a sense of urgency about the need to instruct all working-­
class ­children in moral values that would prevent social revolution. This
shared sense of urgency in a context of fragile relations between elites and
the masses played a key role in explaining the Education Act of 1870 and
how ­England caught up with its E ­ uropean neighbors.

PERU IN THE TWENTY-­FIRST C­ ENTURY

Peru in the early 2000s provides a recent example of a demo­cratic govern-
ment that advanced education reform in the aftermath of a period of vio-
lent internal conflict in order to prevent ­future conflict. Between 1980 and

86. Wright (2012), p. 27. See also Heathorn (1995).

87. Arnold-­Forster (1887), p. i.
88. Arnold-­Forster (1887), p. 180.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 269

2000, Peru was immersed in a prolonged armed conflict between the state
and the communist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path),
­officially known as Communist Party of Peru (PCP-­SL). PCP-­SL was par-
ticularly embedded in rural areas and among peasant and indigenous
communities where the state’s presence ranged from weak to absent. Led by
a former professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzmán, PCP-­SL waged what it
called a “­people’s war” to overthrow the government in Lima and institute
a dictatorship of the proletariat. The government’s primary response dur-
ing the 1980s and 1990s focused on repression: it increased military spend-
ing, enlarged the military, created a unified National Police, and made con-
siderable efforts to bolster its surveillance capacity. The capture of Guzmán
in 1992 and of his successor, Oscar Ramírez, in 1999, led to the end of the
conflict in 2000. That same year, President Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan
facing accusations of electoral fraud, corruption, and h ­ uman rights viola-
tions, and demo­cratic elections ­were reinstated. In 2001, a transitional gov-
ernment established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión
de la Verdad y Reconciliación or CVR) to investigate the ­causes of the armed
conflict and the extent of ­human rights violations from 1980 to 2000, and
to recommend policies to compensate victims and institutional reforms to
prevent ­future conflict. In line with the book’s argument, one of the CVR’s
main recommendations focused on education reform.
The CVR’s final report claimed that the state’s “neglect of public educa-
tion during a conflict that had impor­ tant ideological and symbolic
components” had enabled guerrilla groups to recruit supporters by using
89

schools and universities to spread its subversive ideology, “reach the youth,”
and “form f­uture cadres.”90 The commission argued that the state needed
to regain control over education and use schools to promote values of peace,
re­spect for the state’s authority, and re­spect for ­human rights and the lives
of ­others. The Catholic Church agreed with the CVR on the importance of
strengthening the moral education and disciplining function of schools.91
The government’s main educational efforts during the post-­conflict period,
the CVR argued, ­were to prioritize the rural areas that formed the bastion
of PCP-­SL to “prevent the reappearance of vio­lence.”92

89. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2003), tome VIII, part 3, p. 339.

90. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2003), tome VIII, part 3, p. 561.
91. Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del
Perú (2007).
92. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2003), tome IX, part 4, p. 133.
270 | Chapter 7

The chapter of the CVR’s final report devoted to the links between PCP-
­SL and teachers is particularly telling of how national elites conceived the
role of education in post-­conflict Peru. In it, the CVR argues that mass edu-
cation enables the state to be pre­sent throughout the entire territory. It fur-
ther argues that, as paid employees of the state, teachers have the duty to
“promote the interests of the state and hegemonic sectors” of society,93 leaving
no room for a discussion of ­whether the existing balance of power between
elites and the ­popular classes should be reconsidered.
Following on the recommendations of the CVR report, soon ­after the
end of the conflict the new demo­cratic government quickly began to im-
plement two core education reforms: first, it expanded the reach of the pub-
lic education system, and second, it reformed the school curriculum. The
expansion of schooling was facilitated by a 2003 Executive decree which
­declared an Educational Emergency, giving the National Ministry of Edu-
cation the power to bypass municipal and regional authorities in order to
expand schooling. Moreover, similar to the geographic patterns observed
in France during the 1830s or Chile during the 1860s, an analy­sis of Peru-
vian education statistics conducted by Hillel Soifer and Everett Vieira shows
that school enrollment rates in post-­conflict Peru increased most in prov-
inces that had posed the greatest threat to the central government between
1980 and 2000.94 The increase in enrollment resulted both from the central
government’s effort to construct new schools and improve existing ones,
and from its efforts to encourage school enrollment and attendance: In
2005, with the help of a World Bank loan, the government introduced a
conditional cash transfer program that gave low-­ income families a
monthly cash subsidy as long as their c­ hildren attended school. Reveal-
ingly, the criteria used to distribute cash subsidies prioritized poor fami-
lies in municipalities that had experienced the highest levels of vio­lence
during the years of armed conflict.95
The second component of the government’s educational intervention
was a reform of the national curriculum to enhance moral and civic educa-
tion. In a document published in 2001 outlining the Ministry of Education’s
vision for the next five years, the Ministry “assumed the responsibility to
educate for democracy and citizenship,” and defined good citizenship as the

93. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (2003), tome III, Chapter 3, p. 560. Emphasis
mine.
94. Soifer and Vieira (2019), pp. 109–131.
95. Perova and Vakis (2009).
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 271

ability to harmonize one’s personal life with the broader well-­being of the
country.96 Subsequently, the declaration of an Educational Emergency in
2003 led Congress to pass a new General Law of Education which explic­
itly declared the goals of education to “forge a culture of peace” and to form
­future citizens. A crucial article of this law, article 6, introduced mandatory
“Ethics and Civics Education” in all education institutions—­public and pri-
vate—to teach students to fulfill their duties, know the Constitution, know
their rights, and exercise their responsibilities and rights as citizens.97 While
the law also listed other educational goals such as equity, inclusion, democ-
racy, creativity, and the promotion of an environmental conscience, the cul-
tivation of ethical values and be­hav­iors retained the top spot on the list of
educational goals, reflecting the government’s determination to “strengthen
individuals’ moral conscience” and make it feasible to have a society char-
acterized by “the permanent exercise of citizen responsibilities.”98
Following the CVR report’s recommendations and the curriculum re-
quirements of the 2003 General Law of Education, in 2005 the Ministry of
Education established a new mandatory curriculum for all pre-­primary, pri-
mary, and secondary schools.99 The curriculum included two new subjects
explic­itly focused on forming good citizens: Social Person, covering history,
geography, and citizenship education; and Tutoring and Educational Guid-
ance, conceived as a weekly space for the teacher to lead conversations with
students about individual choices, social development, community s­ ervice,
cultural values, school discipline, e­ tc., with the ultimate goal of teaching
students “the importance of basic norms of coexistence.”100
A look at the textbooks distributed by the Ministry of Education for the
new Social Person course provides insight into the Ministry’s notion of
“good citizen.” The textbook is split into three parts corresponding to his-
tory, geography, and citizenship, with the part on citizenship further divided
into three themes: peace-­building, the State, and local government. In a nut-
shell, a good citizen is one who behaves peacefully and re­spects existing
laws. The section on peace-­building promotes a vision of society in which
conflicts are resolved not through vio­lence but through dialogue and the

96. Frisancho (2009), p. 13.

97. Perú (July 28, 2003), Ley General de Educación (Ley Nro. 28044), Art. 6.
98. Perú (July 28, 2003), Ley General de Educación (Ley Nro. 28044), Art. 8. See also Perú, Ministe-
rio de Educación (2005a, 2005b).
99. Perú, Ministerio de Educación (2005a).
100. Perú, Ministerio de Educación (2005a), p. 21.
272 | Chapter 7

search for common ground and consensus. War is characterized as an en-

tirely negative phenomenon caused by “greed or the excessive desire to pos-
sess more than one has” and by the opportunism of ­those who stand to gain
eco­nom­ically from war at the expense of the most vulnerable members of
society—­poor and marginalized communities, ­women, and ­children.101
The section on the State urges students to help construct “a culture of re­
spect for the law and for other p­ eople’s rights, a culture grounded in values,
social peace,” and encourages them to “comply with norms of coexistence
to acquire habits of punctuality, honesty, and courtesy”—­all with the over-
arching goal of developing “re­spect for the law and for authority.”102
In addition to reforming the curriculum and introducing a standalone
subject to form nonviolent and obedient ­future citizens, in 2005 the Minis-
try published a set of curriculum guidelines on how to teach ethics in
schools. The guidelines stress that promoting ethical be­hav­ior should be a
goal that cuts across all subjects and educational practices. In the introduc-
tion to the guidelines, a brief message from the Minister of Education
­Javier Sota Nadal tells readers that, given the “situation of vio­lence” that
affected the country in recent years, ethics education and the teaching of
moral values is an “urgent priority.” This education, continues the Minister,
“cannot be delayed” and “constitutes the only effective defense against im-
morality and Vio­lence.”103 The guidelines also state that while the urgency
to teach moral values and form responsible f­ uture citizens stems from the
need to prevent ­future vio­lence, ­these teachings also provide an opportu-
nity to build a more demo­cratic society.104 While the guidelines list numer-
ous values that schools o ­ ught to teach, they can be summarized into three
groups: re­spect for other ­people’s life and rights, sense of duty and respon-
sibility, and concern for the well-­being of o
­ thers and of society as a w
­ hole. If
individuals develop t­ hese values, the guidelines argue, peace and democracy
­will prevail.
Many of the methods proposed in the Ministry’s guidelines for how to
teach ethics and moral education resemble methods proposed by education
reformers since the nineteenth c­ entury. According to t­hese guidelines, all
educational practices, in par­tic­u­lar disciplining practices, must “consider

101. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), p. 26.

102. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), p. 27.
103. Perú, Ministerio de Educación (2005b), p. 5.
104. Perú, Ministerio de Educación (2005b), p. 13.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 273

that the goal is to shape citizens.”105 The guidelines state that using rewards
and punishments is an effective way of inducing primary school c­ hildren
to accept and obey existing rules and norms. They also indicate—­rightly, as
we saw in previous chapters—­that inducing moral feelings of shame, guilt,
remorse, and kindness is a centuries-­old method of molding the values and
be­hav­ior of ­children.
A notable point of departure in the educational approach of the Peru-
vian government following the internal armed conflict is that it officially
promoted a more participatory classroom environment than the traditional
approach to moral and civic education inherited from the nineteenth
­century. According to the curriculum introduced in 2005, immersing stu-
dents in a demo­cratic educational culture was crucial to prepare them to
be active citizens in a demo­cratic society. Learning to deliberate, articulate
one’s point of view, and find common ground with ­others, the government
argued, ­were impor­tant citizenship skills.
This participatory educational approach did not have a chance to thrive
in the Peruvian context of the 2000s. A reflection on the evolution of the
education system conducted by Susana Frisancho, a moral education expert
who contributed to shape curriculum policy during the post-­conflict pe-
riod, and Félix Reátegui, who coordinated the CVR’s final report, concludes
that despite the inclusion of more participatory ele­ments in the 2005 cur-
riculum, the “traditional approach to education (based on rote learning, rou-
tine and obedience)” remained “pervasive” in Peru following the internal
armed conflict.106 Their study highlights three reasons ­behind the per­sis­
tence of traditional methods. The first is the existence of a deeply engrained
authoritarian school culture and notion of social order within schools, char-
acterized by “the inculcation of obedience to rules and norms.”107 In this
context, teachers tended “to give ­orders that students have to obey without
questioning and mostly stick to school rules without analyzing them
critically.”108 The second reason for the lack of change in pedagogical prac-
tices points to the Ministry of Education. While the Ministry established a
new curriculum, it never trained teachers on how to implement it or how
to use the new textbooks and other resources it distributed. Predictably,
teachers resorted to teaching moral and civics education and other subjects

105. Perú, Ministerio de Educación (2005b), p. 33.

106. Frisancho and Reátegui (2009), p. 430.
107. Frisancho and Reátegui (2009), p. 434.
108. Frisancho and Reátegui (2009), p. 434.
274 | Chapter 7

using the traditional authoritarian approach they knew best. Fi­nally, the
­Peruvian government further disincentivized deliberation and critical think-
ing by passing legislation that criminalized justifications of former rebels’
activities. Teachers feared being accused of this crime, punishable with life
in prison, and understandably refrained from encouraging critical think-
ing or classroom debate on controversial topics.
The per­sis­tence of an authoritarian school ethos in post-­conflict Peru was
especially salient in the impoverished departments of Ayacucho and Apurí-
mac, which had served as the PCP-­SL’s regional strongholds. Interviews
with primary school teachers conducted by a team of education experts in
both departments reveal that the notion of citizenship that prevailed among
them was one that emphasized the role of citizens in preserving order.109
For example, teachers placed much more importance on instilling compli-
ance with duties than on building students’ capabilities to exercise their
rights. A good student, according to teachers, is one who re­spects ­others,
complies with duties, coexists with ­others in harmony and peace, and is
committed to the community. What’s more, discipline was considered an
“overarching value” in the quest to guarantee compliance with duty,110 as
exemplified by the school rules displayed in a school in Ayacucho:

We ­will arrive early to school

We ­will properly wear our school uniform
We ­will raise our hands to speak
We ­will participate in the scheduled activities
We ­will take care of school furniture
We ­will maintain order and discipline at all times
We ­will be prepared for the evaluations
We ­will put our values into practice
We ­will justify our absence
We ­will accept sanctions in case of non-­compliance
We ­will fulfill our tasks111

Classroom observations in post-­conflict Ayacucho and Apurímac have

found that, of all the activities that teachers engaged in during class, be­hav­
ior management to maintain order and discipline was the one to which they

109. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), p. 40.

110. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), p. 42.
111. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), p. 74.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 275

devoted the most time. The strategies they used ranged from reminding
­students about school rules to threatening, humiliating, and shouting at
students.112 To maintain order, teachers also relied on a system of student
“police officers” and “brigadiers.” ­These ­were students of exemplary con-
duct who w ­ ere tasked, respectively, with enforcing order in their classroom
and in the entire school. For example, brigadiers could sanction students
who arrived late or ­were not properly dressed, while police officers could
do the same with students who damaged their desk or spoke without the
teacher’s permission.113
That a government in the twenty-­first c­ entury would place so much em-
phasis on the moral and civic education of ­future citizens is to some extent
startling yet also indicative of the resilience of ­these educational goals
over time.

The three cases discussed so far are not meant to suggest that all democra-
cies use education to indoctrinate ­future citizens. What they suggest is that
demo­cratically elected politicians who face heightened concerns about the
prob­lem of mass vio­lence can attempt to prevent ­future vio­lence by using
schools to form citizens who re­spect existing rules and institutions. In other
words, the argument developed ­earlier in the book need not apply only to
non-­democracies.

HOW ARE THE EDUCATION SYSTEMS OF DEMOCRACIES DIF­FER­ENT?

How common is indoctrination in demo­cratic regimes? Is it more or less
prevalent than in autocratic ones? If some indoctrination does occur in
­democracies, are ­there nonetheless impor­tant differences between the con-
tent of education in democracies versus autocracies? To answer ­these ques-
tions we need information about the content of education across a large
number of demo­cratic and autocratic regimes and over time. ­Until recently,
this information had not been collected; cross-­national time-­series datasets
on education focused on student enrollment, number of teachers, total ed-
ucation spending, and other features of education systems that tell us ­little
about their goals or the prevalence of indoctrination in schools. The
­Va­ri­e­ties of P
­ olitical Indoctrination in Education and the Media (V-­Indoc)

112. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), pp. 75–88.

113. Barrantes, Luna, and Peña (2009), pp. 54–56.
276 | Chapter 7

dataset, which I assembled with a larger team led by Anja Neundorf,

­contributes to fill this void. V-­Indoc includes many variables that allow
us to compare the content of education across more than 160 countries
from 1945 to 2021. In this chapter I focus on a small subset of variables that
illustrate the broader patterns that emerge from the dataset.114 To under-
stand how education systems compare across p ­ olitical regimes, I com-
bined V-­Indoc with the Va­ri­e­ties of Democracy dataset, which classifies
regimes into four groups: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral
democracies, and liberal democracies.
Before discussing the patterns that emerge from this descriptive analy­sis,
it is worth saying a l­ ittle more about how we constructed and validated V-­
Indoc. First, we administered a common questionnaire among education
experts in each country. Expert surveys are a common method for gather-
ing cross-­national data, but experts are not always reliable sources. In
­par­tic­u­lar, ­because the term “indoctrination” t­ oday carries a negative con-
notation, we may worry that experts’ assessments regarding its prevalence
­will be clouded by their own judgment of the merits of a par­tic­ul­ar re-
gime. To increase the reliability of V-­Indoc, we identified and contacted
24,000 education scholars using membership lists of history of education
associations, lists of faculty affiliated with Schools of Education, ­etc. Of the
scholars we contacted, 1,400 expressed an interest in contributing to our
data collection effort. We then vetted candidates to assess their country-­
specific education expertise, which narrowed the pool to 760 experts among
whom we administered the questionnaire—an average of five experts per
country. Next, to further validate the reliability of the responses, we con-
trasted experts’ answers to ­those from other datasets that gathered similar
data but relied on objective sources of information such as education
laws and school textbooks. While ­these alternative datasets covered fewer
countries and years, the high degree of convergence in responses between
them and V-­Indoc gives us confidence about the reliability of experts’ re-
sponses.115 Fi­nally, ­whatever responses remained biased by experts’ ­political
opinions would likely be biased in ­favor of democracy, leading experts to
underreport the degree of indoctrination that occurs in this type of re-

114. For a deeper descriptive analy­sis that takes advantage of a larger set of variables, see Pa-
glayan, Neundorf, and Kim (2023). That study also uses generalized synthetic control methods to
estimate the effect of democ­ratization on the characteristics of education systems.
115. See Neundorf et al. (2024) for additional information about ­these validation exercises.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 277

gime, and leading us to overestimate the degree to which democracies and

autocracies differ in their indoctrination efforts.116
Three main patterns emerge from an analysis of the data. First, democra-
cies and autocracies put a similar amount of effort into inculcating a specific
set of moral and ­political values through schools.117 Second, democracies
and autocracies differ markedly on the type of social and ­political order
­these efforts seek to consolidate. While education systems in democracies
make considerable efforts to inculcate adherence to demo­cratic norms and
re­spect for demo­cratic institutions, t­hose in autocracies tend to prioritize
other values and societal models. Third, schools in demo­cratic regimes tend
to encourage more critical thinking than t­ hose in autocracies. Still, in most
democracies, as in most autocracies, efforts to inculcate specific moral and
­political values have tended to exceed efforts to promote critical thinking.
Let’s dive into the first pattern and assess the efforts made by primary
education systems across the globe to teach moral and p ­ olitical values. As
part of V-­Indoc, we asked education experts to indicate w ­ hether the primary
school curriculum includes a mandatory subject that focuses on teaching
­political values. We directed experts to include subjects such as ethics and
civics, or moral and civic education, but not history. The upper left panel of
figure 7.1 shows the percentage of democracies and autocracies where the
answer was “yes.” A separate question asked ­whether the history curriculum
promotes a specific set of beliefs that are used to justify a par­tic­ul­ar social
and p ­ olitical order. We told experts to answer “yes” if the history curricu-
lum frequently refers to a par­tic­u­lar societal model—­such as socialism,
­democracy, fascism, e­ tc.—­and clearly interprets that model as superior to
alternatives. The percentage of democracies and autocracies with answers
of “yes” appears on the upper right panel of figure 7.1.
In addition to caring about ­whether education systems attempt to teach
a specific set of moral and p ­ olitical values and beliefs, our second pattern
addresses which values and beliefs they teach. To get at this question, V-­Indoc
examines the content of the history curriculum. Unlike other subjects where
indoctrination may also take place (e.g., ethics or civic education), history
­today is taught virtually everywhere e­ ither as a standalone subject or as part

116. An additional step we can take to increase our confidence in the conclusions that emerge
from V-­Indoc is to restrict the analy­sis to country-­years with at least three experts. The conclusions
reported in the main text remain the same when we do this.
117. I group electoral and liberal democracies into a single group of “democracies,” and closed
and electoral autocracies into a single group of “autocracies.”
 278 | Chapter 7

a) Is there a mandatory subject in primary schools b) Does the history curriculum promote a specific set of
that focuses on teaching political values? beliefs to justify a particular social and political order?
100
Percent of countries where Yes

100

Percent of countries where Yes

Democracies

Autocracies
75 Autocracies 75

50 50
Democracies

25 25

0 0
1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010

c) Does the history curriculum promote a d) Does the history curriculum

democratic social and political order? promote critical thinking?
Extensively
Percent of countries where Yes

100
Democracies
75
Often

50 Democracies
Sometimes
25 Autocracies

Autocracies
0 Rarely/
never
1950 1970 1990 2010 1950 1970 1990 2010

Figure 7.1. Indoctrination and critical thinking in the education systems of democracies
and autocracies, 1950–2021. See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

of social studies.118 Specifically, in t­ hose cases where the history curriculum

does promote a specific set of beliefs in order to justify a par­tic­u­lar social and
­political order, V-­Indoc also provides information about which social
and ­political order the curriculum seeks to justify. Some education systems
may use history lessons primarily to inculcate demo­cratic norms such
as the duty to vote and the right to express dissent through nonviolent means,
or to teach re­spect for demo­cratic institutions such as elections. Other sys-
tems may seek to inculcate dif­fer­ent ­political norms, such as the notion that
dissent is wrong even when peaceful, or to teach re­spect for non-­democratic
forms of government. The lower left panel of figure 7.1 shows the percent-
age of democracies and autocracies where the history curriculum focuses
on teaching re­spect for demo­cratic norms or institutions.

118. This differs from the first national primary education curricula that emerged in ­European
and Latin American countries, where history was rarely a mandatory subject for primary schools.
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 279

Indoctrination efforts can coexist with efforts to promote critical think-

ing. For example, while a country’s history curriculum may provide no room
for students to challenge the notion that democracy is the best form of gov-
ernment, that same curriculum may allow students to challenge other les-
sons, such as t­ hose on the consequences of colonization or the c­ auses of a
war. To assess the prevalence of critical thinking in history lessons, we asked
experts “To what extent do students have opportunities to discuss what
they are taught in history classes? This question regards the degree to which
students are de facto given the opportunity to engage in debates which ques-
tion the material and content of their history classes, as well as being able
to voice disagreement with each other.” The response options ­were “0: Never
or rarely,” “1: Sometimes,” “2: Often,” and “3: Extensively.” The bottom right
panel of figure 7.1 shows the average response to this question across democ-
racies and autocracies over time.
Now let’s look at all the graphs jointly, paying attention to the size of the
gap between democracies versus autocracies. The first pattern that emerges
from figure 7.1 is that autocracies and democracies put similar effort into
forming good citizens through primary education, as suggested by the rel-
ative proximity of the lines for democracies and autocracies in the upper
left and upper right panels. They do so by including a mandatory subject
focused on teaching ­political value and, further, by reinforcing the message
of what constitutes a good citizen through the history curriculum. Specifi-
cally, between 1945 and 2021, 6 in 10 autocracies and 5 in 10 democracies re-
quired primary schools to have a standalone subject focused on teaching
­political values, and 9 in 10 autocracies as well as 9 in 10 democracies used
history lessons to shape students’ understanding of what are the p ­ olitical
norms and institutions upheld by good citizens. The similarity across
­political regimes also appears when looking at additional ­measures of edu-
cation systems’ efforts to indoctrinate, such as ­whether the secondary school
curriculum includes a standalone subject focused on teaching ­political val-
ues, how intensive are the efforts to teach a specific set of beliefs through
the history curriculum, and w ­ hether schools promote student involvement
in extracurricular civic or ­political activities. ­These ­measures are not shown
in figure 7.1 for ease of exposition, but they provide further evidence that
autocracies and democracies rely to a similar extent on education systems
as a tool to mold ­future citizens’ values and beliefs.
Where democracies and autocracies differ dramatically is in the notion
of “good citizen” they portray, as shown in the lower left panel of figure 7.1.
Eight in ten democracies use schools to promote the idea that good citizens
280 | Chapter 7

are ­those who re­spect demo­cratic norms and institutions. By contrast, only
2 in 10 autocracies teach demo­cratic norms and institutions, this practice
being more common in autocracies where elections exist than in t­hose
where they do not. A helpful example of such an electoral autocracy comes
from Mexico, where the PRI ruled for 71 years uninterruptedly u ­ ntil 2000.
During this period, the PRI held regular multiparty elections. High turn-
out and large victory margins in ­these elections helped boost the PRI’s
­legitimacy and proj­ect an image of invincibility that dissuaded potential
opponents from challenging the regime.119 To encourage high turnout, the
PRI targeted ­children. The national government distributed mandatory pri-
mary school textbooks that emphasized that voting in elections was the
most impor­tant duty of citizens.120 The share of autocracies that seek to
instill re­spect for some subset of demo­cratic norms or institutions has been
on the rise since the 1990s. However, they still comprise a relatively small
minority of autocracies.
Another difference between democracies and autocracies lies in how
much they allow students to question what they are taught. On a scale from
0 to 3, where higher scores indicate more opportunities to discuss and chal-
lenge history lessons, democracies score on average 1.4 across the entire
postwar period, while autocracies score just 0.8. In addition, while oppor-
tunities to engage critically with history topics have become more common
in recent ­decades across both types of regimes, the expansion of opportu-
nities has been greater in democracies. Still, t­here is considerable room
for democracies to further promote critical thinking; when education
experts ­were asked to compare the intensity of efforts to instill uncritical
re­spect for a par­tic­u­lar set of ­political values with the intensity of efforts
to ­promote critical thinking, in most democracies the former outweighed
the latter.
Some readers may won­der ­whether, despite putting similar amounts of
effort into indoctrinating students, the overall quality of education in de-
mocracies is nonetheless better than in autocracies. This is a difficult ques-
tion to answer b ­ ecause it requires first the very difficult task of defining what
constitutes quality. What we do know is that the average reading compre-
hension, math, and science skills of students in demo­cratic countries is sim-
ilar to that of students in autocratic ones. This conclusion stems from a

119. Magaloni (2006); Klesner and Lawson (2001); Ames (1970).

120. Garfias and Paglayan (2020).
 Indoctrination in Democracies | 281

study conducted by Sirianne Dahlum and Carl Henrik Knutsen, who com-
pared the p ­ erformance of democracies and autocracies in international
­student exams such as the Programme for International Student Assess-
ment (PISA).121 PISA comparisons are valuable ­because, unlike many exams
where teaching to the test is relatively easy, PISA is designed to test stu-
dents’ ability to apply concepts in new scenarios and evaluate data, claims,
and arguments.

CONCLUSION
Maintaining social order is an essential function of all states—­autocratic
or demo­cratic. During the eigh­teenth ­century, absolutist Prus­sia led the
world in creating a centrally regulated primary education system in order
to mold c­ hildren into obedient subjects and thus consolidate the state’s au-
thority. It was not long before Prus­sia’s primary education system became
a model for other governments engaged in state-­building. Non-­democracies
like France during the July Monarchy sent public officials to visit and learn
about Prus­sian primary schools. So did more demo­cratic countries like the
United States and ­England. Across the Western world, primary schooling
during the nineteenth ­century became conceived as a key policy tool to con-
vert “savage” c­ hildren into f­ uture citizens who respected rules, institutions,
and authority—­and who refrained from using vio­lence. What varied across
autocracies and democracies was the notion of “good citizen” that primary
schools sought to impart. Moreover, in more demo­cratic contexts, such as
the United States during the Early Republic, the indoctrination role of
schools was sometimes supplemented by additional goals, such as to teach
­children practical skills so that they could earn a decent living. Over time,
democracies also expanded their efforts to promote critical thinking more
so than autocracies. Yet as the case of twenty-­first-­century Peru and the analy­
sis of cross-­national data in this chapter suggest, primary schools in most
democracies ­today continue to provide ­limited opportunities for ­children
to question the basic moral and civic values that governments want to in-
culcate. Critical thinking in democracies is allowed so long as ­children do
not question, for example, the norm that discontent should always be ex-
pressed through peaceful means—­including voting—­and never through
vio­lence.

121. Dahlum and Knutsen (2017).

282 | Chapter 7

John Dewey criticized the indoctrination role of education inherited

from the nineteenth ­century and called it anti-­democratic. To ­little avail,
he proposed that students should participate in designing the rules of be­
hav­ior to be followed in schools as preparation for exercising their ­political
rights l­ ater on. Critics of Dewey’s progressive education proposals argue that
before individuals can exercise their own rights, they must learn their du-
ties. Even if it ­were true that all states need to engage in some amount of
indoctrination to be ­viable, it must be stressed that no moral or civic value
is neutral. Some stand to gain, and o ­ thers stand to lose, from the specific
norms that education systems promote—­and ­these norms are rarely cho-
sen demo­cratically.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

DOES EDUCATION PROMOTE

SOCIAL ORDER?

A central question that stems from this book—­one that I hope ­will inspire a
new wave of social scientific research—is ­whether mass education systems
accomplished their goal of promoting social order and p ­ olitical stability.
As fundamental as this question is, it remains severely understudied. This
is unsurprising considering that the main paradigm of primary or basic ed-
ucation in the social sciences conceptualizes its provision as a policy tool
that seeks to equip students with knowledge and skills that improve eco-
nomic productivity and job opportunities. Accordingly, much research has
gone into assessing ­whether schooling does indeed lead to improved skills,
salaries, and economic growth. By contrast, we know relatively ­little about
­whether schools promote obedience and docility—in large part b ­ ecause
­these outcomes have not been at the top of social scientists’ minds when
thinking about the pos­si­ble consequences of education.
The first two sections of this chapter seek to guide ­future research on how
education shapes social order and ­political stability. The first section sum-
marizes what we know so far about this question. It highlights common
methodological challenges confronting researchers and then examines what
studies that have found creative ways to address ­these challenges tell us
about the impact of education on internal conflict, on crime, and on other
individual values and be­hav­iors like loyalty to the state. The second section
offers a s­imple framework to think about the potential effects of mass
schooling as a function of the features of education systems discussed in
284 | Chapter 8

chapter 5. As the numerous historical examples suggest, social scientists

would do well to move away from an exclusive focus on how years of school-
ing impact ­political outcomes and instead prioritize detailed studies of
how the specific features of curriculum, teacher policies, and other educa-
tion policies can impact ­these outcomes.
Following ­these considerations regarding the potential consequences
of mass schooling, we come to the most impor­tant section of the chap-
ter, where I clarify what role ­these consequences play in the overall argu-
ment of the book. As I anticipated in chapter 3, this is a book about the
­causes, not the consequences, of mass schooling. Some readers may be
tempted to posit that if I am correct about what motivated politicians to
regulate, expand, and reform primary education, then we should observe
that education did in fact help strengthen internal order and p ­ olitical sta-
bility; other­wise, politicians would have learned that education was not
an effective means of accomplishing t­ hese goals and would have ­stopped
expanding mass education. This line of reasoning reflects a misunder-
standing of the book’s argument that deserves deeper attention. What we
should observe if the book’s argument is correct is evidence that politi-
cians believed that mass schooling would produce social order, even if the
evidence did not support such beliefs. Chapter 3 summarized the history
of ideas that s­haped politicians’ beliefs about the consequences of mass
education. In the third section of this chapter I complement that sum-
mary with an overview of the type of information that politicians gath-
ered to track the consequences of education, the kinds of inferences they
made with this information, and how they responded when ­these infer-
ences led them to conclude—­correctly or not—­that education had failed
to promote social order.
The collection of evidence presented in the third section of this chapter
shows that, even when politicians concluded that education had failed to
promote order and stability, they still held tightly to the conviction that
mass education systems, if designed the right way, could be a stabilizing
force. ­Because of this strong conviction, politicians did not move away from
mass education when they observed signs that it had failed to accomplish
their state-­building goals. Instead, they reformed ­these systems hoping that
a new approach for training teachers, a new curriculum, or some other ed-
ucation reform would help realize the supposed promise of mass educa-
tion to form obedient citizens.
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 285

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION

ON SOCIAL ORDER AND ­POLITICAL STABILITY
While strong statements about the state-­building power of education have
abounded in policy circles for more than two centuries, their strength is
not commensurate with the amount or quality of scientific evidence that
exists on this topic. Speaking in September 1999 about the challenge of re-
building conflict-­afflicted socie­ties, the then Secretary-­General of the United
Nations, Kofi Annan, affirmed: “My many years of ­service with the United
Nations have convinced me that the first ingredient of ­political stability is
an informed citizen . . . ​Education is, quite simply, peace-­building by
­another name. Education is the most effective form of defense spending
­there is.” Yet roughly a ­decade ­later, in a report on the relationship between
­education and peace, the United Nations not only continued to insist on
the importance of investing in education to prevent the recurrence of vio­
lence, but also admitted that the role of education in preventing vio­lence
“has received ­little systematic attention” in scientific research.1
Our l­imited knowledge stems not just from the fact that this question
has not been salient in the minds of social scientists, but also from meth-
odological challenges. Three main challenges hinder researchers. The first
is the challenge of determining which consequences to consider, and then
­measuring them. Suppose we wanted to assess the extent to which primary
schooling leads individuals to become more obedient or to internalize
the moral values taught in school. ­These are difficult traits to observe, and
therefore difficult to ­measure and study. One common approach to ­measure
individual values is to ask individuals directly—­for example, to ask them
to what extent they think it is impor­tant to follow rules and re­spect author-
ity, or to what extent they agree with a specific set of moral princi­ples. The
trou­ble with this approach is that respondents may falsely report allegiance
to the “correct” values for fear of being judged or punished should they an-
swer honestly. An alternative is to focus on observable be­hav­iors like crime
and vio­lence against the state. But ­these are not without their own mea-
surement prob­lems. Should we consider all types of crimes—­including, for
instance, jaywalking—or should we restrict our analy­sis to crimes that
threaten the state’s viability, or perhaps to violent crimes alone? Similarly,
what constitutes “vio­lence against the state”? The evidence presented in
previous chapters suggests that while it was often the case that large-­scale

1. United Nations (2011), p. 160.

286 | Chapter 8

episodes of mass vio­lence such as civil wars and social revolutions height-
ened politicians’ fear of the masses, the decision to regulate and provide
primary education sought to prevent any form of vio­lence against the state.
However, while data on the occurrence of large-­scale forms of vio­lence do
exist, studying the effects of education on small-­scale vio­lence—­e.g., paint-
ing graffiti or smashing the win­dows of a public building, ­etc.—­would re-
quire assembling new datasets.
A second major challenge is establishing causality. Numerous studies have
shown that individuals with fewer years of schooling are more likely to com-
mit crimes,2 and that countries with lower school enrollment rates tend
to have more civil wars and other forms of large-­scale vio­lence.3 Yet this
does not necessarily imply that lower levels of schooling are what cause more
crime or vio­lence. The causal relationship could go the other way: incar-
ceration often prevents individuals from getting more education, and civil
wars may lead to the destruction of schools. What’s more, some other ­factor
could be responsible for the negative correlation between schooling and
crime or vio­lence. For example, perhaps having low-­income parents or
having a rebellious personality leads some individuals both to drop out of
school and to engage in crime.
The third challenge, often underappreciated, is the fact that education
­reforms are usually part of a bundle of reforms, making it difficult to iso-
late the effect of any given ­measure. For example, a government pursuing a
state-­building agenda could si­mul­ta­neously expand primary schooling,
increase physical repression, and suspend the Church’s power to register
births and deaths. Even if this bundle of reforms led to a reduction in vio­
lence, it would be hard to identify how much of this reduction was caused
specifically by the expansion of primary schooling.
While the challenges are many, some studies have found creative solutions
that offer inspiration for ­future research. The most common approach is to
identify contexts where the adoption of a new education policy impacted
some cohorts of the population and some parts of the country more than
­others. This enables researchers to assess ­whether ­those impacted by the new
policy experienced larger reductions in crime or violent conflict, or larger
increases in loyalty to the state, than ­those not subjected to the reform. An-

2. For a summary of existing research on the effect of education on crime, see Lochner (2020),
pp. 109–117; Bell, Costa, and Machin (2022); Lochner and Moretti (2004).
3. For a summary of existing research on the effect of education on civil war and other forms of
vio­lence, see Østby, Urdal, and Dupuy (2019).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 287

other pos­si­ble approach is to randomly assign educational opportunities

across students, and then assess ­whether ­those who by pure chance received
more schooling eventually became more likely to re­spect authority and less
likely to engage in crime or participate in violent episodes. Random assign-
ment of education interventions has become a ­popular approach for evalu-
ating the effects of education. However, researchers have usually focused on
how ­these interventions shape students’ knowledge and skills and long-­term
employment and salaries, and only rarely have they taken the opportunity
to assess also the effects of schooling on moral and p ­ olitical values, crime,
and violent be­hav­ior.4

Taking stock of ­these studies, several conclusions emerge. First, we know

exceedingly ­little about w ­ hether or how the creation and expansion of state-­
regulated primary education systems ­shaped patterns of internal social
order. Although considerable evidence exists that countries with higher pri-
mary school enrollment rates tend to have fewer civil wars, for reasons
discussed e­ arlier this pattern cannot be used to conclude that higher access
to schooling leads to a lower probability of civil war.5 In an effort to deter-
mine the true extent to which primary schooling reduces internal conflict,
a team of researchers examined the consequences of a large-­scale primary
school construction program rolled out by the Suharto regime in Indone-
sia during the 1970s, when the government built more than 61,000 primary
schools. To estimate the impact of this program, the researchers took
­advantage of the fact that the government’s construction efforts varied
in intensity both across districts and within districts over time. They also
assembled detailed information on the number of violent episodes and
peaceful protests in each district from 1955 to 1994. They observed that
while the number of violent episodes increased everywhere in Indonesia
­after the 1970s, vio­lence increased less in ­those districts where more pri-
mary schools ­were constructed, suggesting that schooling lowered the
probability of violent conflict. Notably, the researchers also found that the
negative effect of schooling on violent conflict grew in magnitude over
time, consistent with the notion that the impact of education tends to
accrue in the long run. Moreover, the expansion of primary schooling
reduced all types of violent conflict, regardless of ­whether the conflict was

4. A notable exception is Friedman et al.’s (2016) study of the consequences of a scholarship

program in ­Kenya.
5. For a review of cross-­country research on the effect of schooling on violent internal conflict,
see Østby, Urdal, and Dupuy (2019).
288 | Chapter 8

driven by economic, ethno-­religious, or p ­ olitical ­causes, but did not reduce

the probability of peaceful protests. Two main channels appear to explain
6

why primary education led to a reduction of vio­lence in Indonesia. First,

with the explicit goal of promoting social order, the government of Su-
harto accompanied the expansion of primary schooling with the adoption
of a new moral and civic education curriculum based on the state ideology
(Pancasila), which emphasized re­spect for the Constitution, national unity,
and religious tolerance.7 Second, schooling also led to better-­paid jobs, re-
ducing the economic grievances that often fuel social unrest.8 While the
Indonesian case provides impor­tant insights, only the accumulation of evi-
dence from other countries and time periods w ­ ill help us build a better
understanding of ­whether and how primary schooling shapes social order
and violent conflict.
Another frequent goal of education is to reduce crime. As we saw in pre-
vious chapters, the view that schools can mold c­ hildren into law-­abiding
adults and lower the long-­term costs of the criminal justice system has been
common in Western socie­ties. For this outcome, we do have considerable
and compelling evidence that schooling does indeed lead to large reduc-
tions in the prevalence of both property crimes (e.g., arson, theft, ­etc.) and
violent crimes (e.g., murder, assault, ­etc.). In par­tic­u­lar, studies of reforms
that extended the number of years of compulsory schooling in Italy, E ­ ngland
and Wales, Sweden, and the United States have consistently shown that
­these extensions had a sizeable negative impact on a wide range of types of
crime. Furthermore, the crime-­reducing effects of ­these reforms tend to be
more pronounced in the long run than in the short term, and also reduce
the criminal be­hav­ior of the sons of ­fathers who ­were affected by the ex-
tension of compulsory schooling, suggesting that the negative effect of
schooling on crime does not just stem from the fact that attending school
automatically removes p ­ eople from the streets.9 However, it is unclear
­whether schools reduce crime ­because they inculcate values of re­spect for
existing laws, ­because attending school increases ­future earnings, or both.
While the evidence suggests that schooling does tend to reduce crime,
its effect on other p
­ olitical be­hav­iors and values is more varying. The most

6. Rochner and Saia (2020).

7. Nishimura (1995); Roth and Sumarto (2015); Rochner and Saia (2020).
8. Rochner and Saia (2020); Duflo (2001).
9. Buonanno and Leonida (2009); Hjalmarsson, Holmlund, and Lindquist (2015); Lochner and
Moretti (2004); Machin, Marie, and Vujić (2011); Meghir, Palme, and Schnabel (2012).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 289

commonly studied be­hav­ior is voter turnout. As we saw in chapter 7, edu-

cation systems in demo­cratic contexts often teach ­children that voting is
the most impor­tant form of ­political participation and the primary means
by which citizens should express their preferences and grievances. However,
in the United States, where the effect of schooling on the propensity to vote
during adulthood has been studied the most, social scientists disagree on
­whether additional schooling increases voter turnout. Some studies con-
clude that additional schooling boosts voter turnout,10 while ­others find
that it does not.11
When we turn our attention to how schools shape an individual’s loy-
alty to the state, h­ ere again existing research suggests that schooling has
sometimes strengthened, and other times eroded, loyalty. Examples of edu-
cation reforms that ­were effective in promoting greater loyalty come from
France and Prus­sia during the nineteenth ­century. In France, as we saw in
chapter 4, the Guizot Law of 1833 required ­every town with at least 500 in-
habitants to establish and maintain a primary school for boys, imposed a
common curriculum, and increased the centralization of school inspections
and teacher certification. To study the effects of this law, a team of econo-
mists compared long-­run ­political outcomes in towns that in 1833 had just
a few inhabitants short of 500 versus towns whose population was just above
500—­that is, other­wise identical towns that w ­ ere e­ ither exempted or affected
by the law simply b ­ ecause of the arbitrary 500-­inhabitant threshold. The
researchers found that, just as the Guizot Law intended, the expansion of
primary schooling led in the long run to stronger feelings of loyalty to the
French state and increased support among citizens for the centralization of
­political authority.12 In a similar effort to strengthen citizens’ loyalty to the
state, Prus­sia ­under Bismarck introduced a primary education reform that
centralized the responsibility for funding schools and shifted the power to
hire teachers from local to central authorities. The state used this reform to
build new schools and recruit teachers who ­were aligned with its indoctri-
nation agenda. ­Here, too, existing research suggests that the centralization
of primary education contributed to strengthen citizens’ loyalty and re­spect
for the state’s authority.13

10. Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos (2004); Dee (2004); Sondheimer and Green (2010).
11. Tenn (2007); Kam and Palmer (2008); Berinsky and Lenz (2011).
12. Blanc and Kubo (2021).
13. Cinnirella and Schueler (2018).
290 | Chapter 8

Yet ­there are also examples where public schools have failed to accom-
plish the state’s indoctrination goals, and have sometimes produced the op-
posite of what the state intended. In K ­ enya, for example, an experimental
intervention that expanded girls’ access to schooling led girls with more
schooling to question the notion that “we should show more re­spect for
authority” and increased their agreement with the view that vio­lence is
sometimes a legitimate tool to obtain what we want.14 Another well-­studied
case where education failed to promote loyalty to the state comes from the
United States during the 1920s. Before World War I, several states had al-
lowed private schools to teach in both ­English and German. However,
­after the war, new state laws banned instruction in the German language
in all schools, including private ones. While the goal of this education pol-
icy was to strengthen the allegiance of German American c­ hildren to the
United States, the reform backfired. Among other consequences, it reduced
German Americans’ willingness to volunteer for the U.S. Army during
World War II.15

A FRAMEWORK FOR ­FUTURE RESEARCH

ON THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION
­ ecause public school systems sometimes succeed and other times fail to
B
promote nonviolent be­hav­ior, obedience, and re­spect for the state’s author-
ity, a fundamental question for social scientists interested in the conse-
quences of education for state-­building is: ­Under what conditions are ­these
systems effective, and when and why do they fail to accomplish ­these goals?
To inform ­future research on this question, I now turn to provide a f­ ramework
that conceptualizes the potential effects of mass schooling as a function of
three sets of education policies discussed in chapter 5: curriculum policies;
teacher training and recruitment policies; and policies designed to align
parents and students’ be­hav­ior with the goals of the state.

THE ROLE OF THE CURRICULUM

The impact of primary schooling on social order and p­ olitical stability w
­ ill
likely depend on what is taught in schools. In chapter 5 we saw that when
central governments in Western socie­ties first began to regulate primary

14. Friedman et al. (2016).

15. Fouka (2020).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 291

schools, they established a mandatory curriculum stipulating the subjects

that all primary schools should follow. An examination of ­these curriculums
revealed the ubiquity of moral education—­sometimes secular, sometimes re-
ligious. I argued in that chapter that, even though promoting good moral
be­hav­ior was a common overarching goal, the curriculum that national gov-
ernments a­ dopted depended on politicians’ beliefs about the basis of moral-
ity. In countries where a majority of the ruling class believed that the basis of
morality was religious doctrine, governments a­dopted a narrow primary
school curriculum focused on teaching moral and religious education and
the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. By contrast, in countries
where a majority of the ruling class believed that moral princi­ples can be
derived by reason, the curriculum also included subjects like algebra, geom-
etry, and natu­ral science. For liberal elites influenced by positivist ­philosophers
like Auguste Comte, placing ­these subjects in the curriculum was impor­tant
not to promote the skills of the population but to develop ordinary p ­ eople’s
capacity to think abstractly and thus access universal moral princi­ples.
In retrospect, it is not difficult to see how a moral education curriculum
emphasizing math and science could have unintended consequences, em-
boldening instead of pacifying the population. Teaching math and science
skills in primary schools could enable c­ hildren to access higher-­paying oc-
cupations than their parents, so that a peasant’s son could become a fac-
tory worker or even a tailor or storekeeper, and his ­daughter, a seamstress
or primary school teacher. As youn­ger generations climb the social ladder,
they may come to see themselves as members of a new working or ­middle
class, and may develop aspirations for more p ­ olitical repre­sen­ta­tion and
power. Some could even take advantage of their wealth, skills, and social
connections to o ­ rganize ­others into new l­abor ­unions or p ­ olitical parties
to push for institutional reforms that challenge the status quo.
The history of Argentina provides a textbook illustration of this ­dynamic.16
As the national government centralized and expanded primary schooling
­after 1880 in an effort to “moralize” the masses and prevent a recurrence
of civil war, a group of positivist intellectuals and liberal (anti-­Church)

16. Additional examples of the importance of the curriculum in shaping the outcomes of edu-
cation come from China and Egypt. In China during the late nineteenth c­ entury, the traditional
approach to education, focused on the Confucian classics, was reformed to incorporate teaching
in math and science. As a result of this reform, the wage premium of educated individuals in-
creased notably (Yuchtman 2017). For similar evidence from a curriculum reform in 1950s Egypt,
see Saleh (2016).
292 | Chapter 8

politicians crafted a primary school curriculum that, in addition to moral

and civic education, also included algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry,
all with the purpose of developing p ­ eople’s ability to understand through
reason, not religion, what constituted good moral be­hav­ior.17 By the end of
the nineteenth c­ entury, however, Argentina had become a symbol of social
mobility, boasting the largest m ­ iddle class in Latin Amer­i­ca and making it
the second most preferred destination in the world among ­European im-
migrants. In Buenos Aires, three-­fourths of the working class and four-­fifths
of the ­middle class was composed of immigrants. Primary schools provided
foreign-­born individuals and their c­ hildren with skills that w ­ ere useful to
climb the social ladder, moving from day laborer to baker, construction
worker, shoemaker, or carpenter, and from t­here to storekeeper, profes-
sional, or civil servant.18 This unintended consequence of schooling became
a destabilizing p­ olitical force, as members of the new working and m ­ iddle
classes formed professional associations and l­ abor ­unions, joined disruptive
strikes, and found p ­ olitical repre­sen­ta­tion in a new party, the Unión Cívica
Radical (UCR). Born in 1891 out of a student-­led revolution to overthrow
the oligarchic regime, the UCR ­organized additional revolutions in 1893
and 1905 which, though they failed to overthrow the regime, instilled deep
fear among the ruling class.19 In the early 1900s, the head of the National
Education Council, José María Ramos Mejía, wrote a lengthy report in
which he argued that the 1884 curriculum was partly responsible for the
widespread ­labor strikes and social instability. By the time the government
­adopted a new curriculum, impor­tant societal and p ­ olitical changes ­were
already underway. In 1912, Congress passed a universal male suffrage law,
and in 1916, the UCR won the presidency in the country’s first demo­cratic
elections. Exactly how much of this ­political transformation was caused by
the primary education system created in the 1880s is difficult to ascertain,
but to the extent that this system encouraged the formation of a m ­ iddle
class and led the working class to develop aspirations for social mobility, it
inadvertently contained the seeds that contributed to undermine the very
same oligarchic regime that three d ­ ecades e­ arlier had created it.
Of course, not all curriculums backfire. An example of a curriculum
­reform that attained its goals comes from China, where the central govern-

17. See chapters 4 and 5.

18. Pérez (2017); Rock (1985), p. 175.
19. Rock (1985), pp. 183–90.
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 293

ment in 2004 introduced a new politics textbook designed to promote

“moral and ideological education.” The new textbooks sought to legitimize
the authority of the Chinese government and its officials by stressing that,
as long as the country remained ­under the leadership of the Chinese Com-
munist Party, law and order would prevail. A study by Davide Cantoni and
­others took advantage of the sequential rollout of the reform to study its
impact on ­political attitudes by comparing the attitudes of ­those who ­were
exposed to the old and new curriculums. The researchers found that, in line
with the goals of the reform, ­those who w ­ ere exposed to the new curricu-
lum expressed more trust in the central government and w ­ ere more likely
to view government officials as civic-­minded.20
While we still lack a deep understanding of how dif­fer­ent curriculums
shape long-­term values and be­hav­iors, a new generation of studies that ex-
amines the consequences of dif­fer­ent curriculum plans is a promising
trend.21 One possibility suggested by the Argentine experience is that cur-
riculums that teach considerable skills ­will fail to promote social order,
since they equip the population with tools to challenge the status quo. But
this is not an obvious prediction. We could instead expect that a curricu-
lum that teaches not only values but also a good dose of skills is the best
way to prevent revolutions, as enabling individuals to get well-­paid jobs can
lessen or eliminate the economic grievances that could other­wise lead in-
dividuals to rebel against the government. More research in this area could
shed light on the impact of dif­fer­ent types of curriculums.

THE ROLE OF TEACHERS

An education system’s ability to accomplish its goals ­will likely depend not
only on the curriculum but also on the motivation, knowledge, and skills
of teachers to implement it. Since the nineteenth ­century, central govern-
ments have heavi­ly regulated teacher training and certification to ensure
that teachers are loyal and capable agents of the state. As explained in chap-
ter 5, the creation of state-­controlled Normal Schools—­institutions exclu-
sively devoted to training prospective teachers and often with mono­poly
power to issue teaching certificates—­became a pervasive practice starting
in the nineteenth c­ entury. ­These teacher training institutions sought to

20. Cantoni et al. (2017).

21. Garfias and Paglayan (2020); Cantoni et al. (2017); Bai and Li (2020); Clots-­Figueras and
Masella (2013); Voigtländer and Voth (2015).
294 | Chapter 8

imbue teachers with the same moral values that they w ­ ere expected to teach
their students. Many institutions operated as boarding schools in order
to closely mold ­every aspect of ­future teachers’ be­hav­ior, and had detailed
regulations that heavi­ly regimented the school day and prescribed a set of
be­hav­iors.
What policymakers failed to anticipate was that Normal Schools, by
bringing ­future teachers together in a setting where they did not just study
but also lived together, helped forge bonds among teachers that led to the
emergence of a professional identity. This professional identity did not al-
ways coexist peacefully with the state. When teachers w ­ ere not paid on time,
when their meager salaries did not match the responsibilities that the state
placed on them, when they resented school inspectors who constrained
their pedagogical autonomy, they did not suffer in isolation but instead
came together. Ironically, Normal Schools provided the first point of con-
tact between teachers, facilitating the formation of professional associations
and teacher ­unions. This was the case of France during the July Monarchy,
an example of an in­effec­tive attempt to control teachers. Less than three
weeks following the passage of France’s 1833 law of primary education, the
Minister of Public Instruction, François Guizot, sent a copy of the law to
­every teacher along with a personal letter, signed by the minister himself,
in which he described the importance of teachers’ mission and explained
that “universal primary instruction is from now on one of the guarantees
of order and social stability.”22 It did not take long, however, before French
school inspectors started noticing teachers’ complaints about the Guizot
Law. In par­tic­u­lar, teachers ­were hostile ­toward the Church’s ongoing—­
though declining—­influence over primary schools. They joined profes-
sional associations, held pedagogical conferences to discuss challenges with
the law’s implementation, and turned to specialized journals to express their
views. ­These conferences became crucial venues for building solidarity and
a sense of collective identity among teachers. Normal Schools also became
a breeding ground for the development of teachers’ professional networks.
In the words of French education scholar Nicholas Toloudis, “thus did the
regime’s mobilization of teachers, by way of the training institutions, beget
the teachers’ own use of ­those same institutions as a resource for their own
­political mobilization.”23

22. Toloudis (2012), p. 37.

23. Toloudis (2012), pp. 63–64.
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 295

While French teachers’ r­ esistance was expressed through collective action,

in other cases teachers resisted the implementation of the official curricu-
lum through individual pedagogical decisions. The be­hav­ior of teachers
during the first two presidencies of Juan Perón in Argentina is a well-­studied
case of how teachers can creatively undermine the official curriculum. Be-
tween 1946 and 1955, Perón’s government turned to education as a means
to teach a par­tic­u­lar partisan ideology: it declared the Peronist Doctrine a
National Doctrine to be taught in schools; replaced old textbooks with new
ones designed to inculcate love and loyalty ­toward Perón and his wife, Evita;
and mandated teachers to accurately implement the exercises contained in
­these textbooks, many of which encouraged students to reflect on the Per-
onist Doctrine and worship Evita. However, an analy­sis of ­children’s note-
books conducted by Argentine education expert Silvina Gvirtz reveals that
teachers often resisted the state’s mandate through everyday pedagogical
choices that w
­ ere difficult for school inspectors to detect. For example, teach-
ers would have students summarize Evita’s autobiography, but would
grade students’ responses exclusively on spelling and grammar, not on the
ideological substance of what they wrote. Similarly, they would have stu-
dents write “Evita loves me” on their notebooks, but t­hese phrases would
appear accidentally by splitting the sentence into separate letters or words
as part of an exercise designed to teach calligraphy.24
A similar example of unor­ga­nized teacher ­resistance comes from Vene-
zuela ­under the government of Hugo Chávez. In 2007, the Chávez admin-
istration introduced a new “Bolivarian” national curriculum whose stated
goal was to develop a “new citizen” who was socialized into values of lib-
erty, cooperation, social equality, unity, and Latin American integration and
solidarity. Accompanied by the distribution of new official textbooks, the
new curriculum promoted a radically new understanding of Venezuelan
history and identity. A study of the implementation of this reform shows
that, in Caracas, teachers who perceived the new curriculum as a threat to
their middle-­class status and identity refrained from using any portions
of the new textbooks that they found po­liti­cally unpalatable.25
While the previous examples illustrate the challenges governments
­encounter in limiting teacher autonomy, governments sometimes do find
effective ways to exert control. The Mexican experience is a case in point.

24. Gvirtz (1999).

25. Abbott, Soifer, and Vom Hau (2017).
296 | Chapter 8

Throughout most of the PRI regime, public school teachers and the u ­ nion
that ­organized them, the SNTE, operated as brokers of the PRI, mobilizing
electoral support in their local community and monitoring how parents
voted. The SNTE itself was controlled by PRI politicians, and teachers knew
that their job depended on compliance with u ­ nion and party directives. For
example, in the 1990s, when the government introduced impor­tant curric-
ulum and education governance reforms, the vast majority of teachers and
the SNTE did not oppose it. To foment their allegiance, the government
rewarded public school teachers with generous economic benefits. It es-
tablished minimum working conditions across the country; earmarked
states’ education ­budgets to guarantee the uniformity of teachers’ working
conditions; agreed to nationwide teacher pension benefits; and increased
real teacher salaries by 35 ­percent between 1988 and 1994, which resulted in
teachers moving from being the lowest-­paid group to the second-­highest
paid group of public sector employees.26
Motivation—­whether for ideological or economic reasons—is not the
only f­actor shaping teachers’ implementation of the official curriculum;
their skills ­matter, too. In a study of teachers in seven Sub-­Saharan Afri-
can countries which together represent close to 40 ­percent of the region’s
population, Tessa Bold and her coauthors found that only one in ten
teachers have a minimum knowledge of general pedagogy. Part of this
deficit stems from the l­imited pedagogical skills of ­those in charge of
providing teacher training.27 The prob­lem of inadequate teaching skills is
not unique to Sub-­Saharan Africa. In Latin Amer­i­ca, for example, Denise
Vaillant has written extensively about the excessive focus of teacher train-
ing programs on education philosophy and pedagogical theory and, relat-
edly, the absence of practical opportunities to apply ­these theories and
receive feedback from instructors.28
Understanding how education policies shape teachers’ motivation, knowl-
edge, and skills to implement a prescribed curriculum, and how t­hese
­factors in turn affect social order and p
­ olitical stability, should be priorities
in ­future research on the consequences of education.

26. Garfias and Paglayan (2020); Murillo (1999).

27. Bold et al. (2017).
28. Vaillant (2018); Vaillant and Manso (2022).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 297

THE ROLE OF PARENTS AND STUDENTS

Another issue that may prevent education systems from accomplishing
policymakers’ intended goals is the ­resistance of parents, students, and
civil society to the state’s educational agenda. One common approach to
understanding parents’ schooling decisions considers the monetary costs
and benefits of schooling: on one hand, enrolling ­children in school can
result in short-­term economic losses for families who formerly relied on
­children’s work; on the other, schooling may increase a child’s f­uture in-
come. The approach predicts that parents ­will enroll their ­children in
school when the expected monetary benefits exceed the monetary costs of
this decision.
The limitation of this approach is that, historically, primary schooling
often did not seek to improve f­ uture incomes. As documented in previous
chapters, politicians in Western socie­ties often touted the power of primary
schools to indoctrinate ­children, and declared that improving the economic
situation of poor families was not the goal of schooling. To be sure, as il-
lustrated ­earlier in the example of Argentina, t­ here are cases where primary
education may have inadvertently promoted upward social mobility. But
when schooling did not have clear economic benefits, or was not expected
by parents to have such benefits, why did some parents nonetheless choose
to enroll their child in school?
­Here, it is helpful to consider also the non-­monetary costs and benefits of
this decision. One potential non-­monetary cost of enrolling a child in school
includes the psychological distress suffered when submitting one’s w ­ ill to
the ­will of the state. Recall from previous chapters that politicians from
countries as diverse as absolutist Prus­sia and the United States during the
Early Republic often claimed that a key goal of mass schooling was to break
the child’s w ­ ill, molding this w­ ill to the interests of the state. Such efforts
may cause varying levels of psychological distress across individuals. For par-
ents of ­children who w ­ ill grow up with ­little individual freedom regardless
of ­whether they attend school, the indoctrination efforts of the state may be
perceived as less costly. But even when it produces some psychological dis-
tress, schooling—­and indoctrination—­may also be perceived to bring about
psychological benefits. As the sociologist Norbert Elias emphasizes in The
Civilizing ­Process, throughout history, violent be­hav­ior has increasingly been
labeled as improper, bringing about individual feelings of shame and
298 | Chapter 8

r­ emorse.29 To avoid such feelings, individuals have voluntarily and gradually

engaged in self-­restraint and self-­discipline. Parents who perceived primary
schooling as a useful vehicle for teaching c­ hildren the norms of “civilized”
be­hav­ior may have willingly enrolled their ­children in school to save them
from the shame of being labeled “savages.”
Education reformers in the nineteenth ­century usually assumed that
­children would passively learn the set of values and be­hav­iors prescribed
by the state as long as they attended school. Their main concern was that
parents would resist sending their c­ hildren to school. The most common
policy response to this perceived prob­lem was the adoption of compulsory
schooling laws which, as we saw in chapter 5, usually included a provision
establishing penalties against parents who failed to comply. However harsh
on paper, penalties for not enrolling c­ hildren in school are more likely to
encourage parental compliance when parents believe that ­these penalties
­will indeed be enforced. Yet central governments often lack the capacity to
do so. Enforcement requires sufficient funds not just to construct schools
and hire teachers, but also to hire and train school inspectors. Moreover,
inspectors’ ability to monitor parental be­hav­ior w ­ ill depend, among other
­things, on ­whether they can reach remote areas and on the existence of pop-
ulation censuses or other administrative rec­ords that provide information
about which parents have school-­age ­children.
The case of Sweden illustrates the importance of state capacity for moni-
toring and aligning parental be­hav­ior with the interests of the state. Swe-
den ­adopted compulsory schooling in 1842. According to the law, parents
found in violation of the compulsory schooling provision w ­ ere first given
a warning and then fined. If they failed to pay the fine, the law empowered
state officials to remove c­ hildren from their home and place them u ­ nder
state supervision. To encourage c­ hildren to attend permanent public schools,
in 1861 parliament de­cided to hire and deploy national inspectors through-
out the entire territory. By 1868, ­there w
­ ere thirty-­six national school ­inspectors
in charge of overseeing 174 localities. Some of ­these localities ­were more
difficult to reach than o
­ thers b­ ecause, despite parliament’s plans, the na-
tional railroad network had not been completed yet. In a study conducted
by Alexandra Cermeño and ­others, the researchers found that the ability of
inspectors to reach localities by train was a key determinant of their ability
to monitor and enforce compliance with the state’s directives. In ­those

29. Elias (1994).

 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 299

l­ocalities that inspectors could reach by train, enrollment in permanent

public schools increased by 17 ­percent compared to other­wise similar
­localities that did not yet have a train station.30
An in­ter­est­ing question is w­ hether penalties are more or less effective
than rewards in encouraging parental and student compliance with educa-
tion regulations. Research on policies designed to assimilate immigrants—­a
dif­fer­ent but related area of public policy—­suggests that policies that reward
individuals for some types of be­hav­ior are more likely to be effective in
molding values and be­hav­iors than policies that prohibit and penalize cer-
tain types of be­hav­ior.31 The use of explicit rewards for school attendance
was uncommon historically,32 but it has become pervasive in recent d ­ ecades
with the rapid spread of conditional cash transfer programs that offer cash
to low-­income families who enroll their c­ hildren in school.
Failure to enroll a child in school is not the only form of parental r­ esistance
to the state’s educational agenda. Another option is to enroll c­ hildren in
private schools. In many countries, the national government’s l­ imited abil-
ity to attain universal primary schooling on its own has often led policy-
makers to allow private schools to operate, too.33 To avoid an undue loss
of control, governments have regulated the curriculum of private schools,
required teachers in private schools to undergo the same training and cer-
tification procedures as public school teachers, and / or subjected private
schools to similar inspection policies as public ones. In practice, however,
compliance with regulations tends to be harder to enforce in private schools
than in public ones. Private schooling may thus give parents an option to
comply with the compulsory schooling mandate without actually educat-
ing their ­children in the state’s prescribed curriculum.
Parents can also defy the goals of education policies through their actions
at home or in other domains of the private sphere. For example, the adop-
tion of an official curriculum that seeks to inculcate a specific set of unac-
ceptable values may lead affronted parents to intensify their efforts to imbue
their c­ hildren with their preferred values. An example of this type of com-
pensatory be­hav­ior comes from the United States in the 1920s, when sev-
eral states banned the use of German in public and private primary schools

30. Cermeño, Enflo, and Lindvall (2022).

31. Fouka (2024).
32. A notable exception presented in chapter 5 comes from Mexico ­after the Revolution, when
the central government offered ­free meals to ­children who attended school.
33. See chapter 4.
300 | Chapter 8

in an effort to increase German American ­children’s loyalty to the United

States. Vicky Fouka’s investigation found that German parents responded
by enrolling their c­ hildren in Sunday schools operated by the Lutheran
Church. Contrary to the goals of education policymakers, this led their
­children to develop stronger, not weaker, bonds with Germany.34
In sum, parental r­esistance, depending on the specific characteristics
of the education policy, may counterbalance the state’s efforts to shape
­children’s values.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BELIEFS ABOUT

THE CONSEQUENCES OF EDUCATION
The core of this book—­its motivation, its analy­sis, and its conclusions—­
deals with the ­causes of mass schooling. While understanding the conse-
quences of mass schooling is a significant question, it is impor­tant to keep
in mind that it is also a separate question. We do not need to understand
­whether schools succeeded or failed to promote state-­building in order to
understand what motivated politicians to regulate and provide primary
­education in the first place. This can be somewhat counterintuitive. As em-
phasized ­earlier in the chapter, what we should observe if the book’s argu-
ment is correct is evidence that politicians believed that mass schooling
would produce social order, even if the evidence, strictly speaking, should
not have supported such beliefs. I have presented considerable evidence
from a wide range of countries that politicians who advocated for mass
schooling believed—­correctly or not—­that educating the lower classes with
an eye t­ oward promoting good moral be­hav­ior (as defined by elites) would
help pacify the population, prevent f­ uture crime, and reduce the probabil-
ity of anarchy and revolution.
­Were ­these beliefs based on the kind of evidence that social scientists
­today would consider rigorous enough to make a valid claim about how
education impacted morality, crime, or anarchy? Certainly not. Both histori-
cally and ­today, the kinds of evidence that many politicians have relied on

34. Another example comes from Indonesia during the 1970s. When Suharto’s regime expanded
public primary schooling and a­ dopted a secular curriculum, Islamic o
­ rganizations responded by
increasing the provision of religious secondary education. As a result, the government’s school
construction efforts led not only to increased enrollment in secular primary schools but also to
increased enrollment in secondary Islamic schools, dampening the state’s ability to diffuse secular
values. See Bazzi, Hilmy, and Marx (2022).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 301

to make inferences about the effects of specific education policies are often
not adequate to justify ­those inferences. Yet that has not prevented them
from using this evidence to reach their own conclusions, however mis-
guided, about the benefits of a proposed policy.
What’s more, time has proven the resilience of politicians’ belief in the
power of education to promote social order and p ­ olitical stability. Even
when confronted with evidence that could suggest the opposite, politicians
did not move away from education altogether, but instead reformed educa-
tion systems with the conviction that a new curriculum, a new set of poli-
cies for training and recruiting teachers, or some other education reform
would allow ­these systems to realize their promise.
Let’s look at the types of evidence and reasoning that politicians during
the nineteenth c­ entury relied on to assess w
­ hether an education system was
effective in accomplishing its goals, and how they responded when they con-
cluded that primary education had failed to promote the strength and sta-
bility of the state.

HOW GOVERNMENTS ASSESSED THE CONSEQUENCES OF EDUCATION

One of the most common types of evidence that nineteenth-­century poli-
cymakers used to judge the efficacy of primary education systems ­were crime
statistics. Both in Western ­Europe and Latin Amer­i­ca, as national govern-
ments began to collect information about the level and types of crime, they
regularly collected and published information about ­whether incarcerated
individuals had received any kind of formal education. Although politicians
often interpreted t­ hese statistics incorrectly, the mere fact that governments
­were interested in systematically ­measuring the relationship between crime
and education, as well as the conclusions that politicians derived from ­these
statistics—­again, however misguided—­provide strong evidence that politi-
cians viewed primary education as a crucial policy tool to reduce crime.
Consider an example from Chile that is representative of the kinds of
evidence and arguments about crime and education seen in many other
countries. Starting in 1860, the same year Congress passed the General Law
of Public Instruction, the Chilean government began to publish yearly the
Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile, an official compendium of na-
tional statistics covering a wide range of topics including demography, ag-
riculture, commerce, education, crime, public sector employment, and other
topics of interest to the government. The section of the report devoted to
crime regularly featured information about the total number of p ­ eople who
302 | Chapter 8

had been imprisoned in the previous year, as well as how many of ­these
new prisoners had any formal instruction. A typical report included a com-
parison of the proportion of new prisoners with formal instruction relative
to the previous year, an example of which is shown at the top of figure 8.1.
What is telling about t­ hese reports is how the government interpreted t­ hese
data. Examples of ­these interpretations are shown at the bottom of the
figure. In years when t­ here was a decline in the proportion of new prison-
ers who had any instruction, such as between 1869 and 1870, the govern-
ment saw evidence of the ability of education to reduce crime. Similarly, in
years when ­there was an increase in the proportion of new prisoners who
had any instruction, such as between 1868 and 1869, the government inter-
preted this as a “distressing result” that suggested that education was not
“contributing to moralize” the population. In this as in other cases, how-
ever, the government did not conclude that education systems w ­ ere an in-
herently in­effec­tive policy tool to moralize the population. What it argued
instead was that the education system was contributing to “malice” b ­ ecause
it had become “distorted” and needed to be realigned with its mission.
An institutional feature that facilitated the collection of ­these statistics
is that, in many countries, the responsibility to regulate and monitor schools
and prisons originally fell ­under the same bureaucratic agency.35 Sometimes
called Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, other times Ministry of
Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction, ­these agencies reported to Con-
gress on the state of law and order and education. They gathered statistics
on the number and outcome of court ­trials, the number of incarcerations
per year by type of crime and by demographic characteristics of the offender,
the level of enrollment in primary and secondary schools and universities,
and the number of public libraries. In Chile, for example, oversight over
crime and education issues fell u ­ nder the Ministry of Justice, Worship, and
Public Instruction from 1837 to 1887, and then u ­ nder the Ministry of Justice
and Public Instruction u ­ ntil 1927, at which point the Ministry of Public Ed-
ucation was formed as a standalone agency. Even then, the Chilean govern-
ment continued issuing an annual statistical compendium titled Educación
y Justicia, containing both education and crime statistics, ­until 1969.
It was the French Ministry of Justice in 1828 that pioneered the practice
of collecting detailed annual statistics about the level of instruction among

35. In Latin Amer­i­ca alone, this includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Mexico,
Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Figure 8.1. Chilean statistics of convicted criminals by literacy status. Source: Anuario
Estadístico de la República de Chile 1869 and 1870.
304 | Chapter 8

criminals. France, too, was a pioneer in looking at the correlation between

overall literacy and crime rates to make assessments about the effects of ed-
ucation. André-­Michel Guerry, a former employee of the French Ministry
of Justice who had become fascinated with crime statistics, published a re-
port in 1833 titled Essay on Morality Statistics in France. This report, consid-
ered one of the very first exercises in quantitative social science, featured
choropleth maps displaying the level of illiteracy and crime in the vari­ous
French departments, and showed that the South had both higher illiteracy
levels and higher rates of crime against persons. While Guerry himself was
cautious not to claim that a causal link existed between ­these variables, the
visual evidence was so power­ful that it helped cement the view among
French elites that education was an impor­tant policy tool to improve mo-
rality and reduce crime.36
Invalid or, at the very least, questionable inferences in the way politicians
interpreted data on education and crime abounded. In Argentina, for ex-
ample, Sarmiento interpreted the fact that illiteracy rates among criminals
in ­England and France w ­ ere greater than illiteracy rates in the general pop-
ulation of ­those countries as “proof that instruction moralizes the masses.”37
It was only in exceptional cases that politicians relied on more sophisticated
analy­sis to make inferences about the consequences of education. One such
example comes from France, where one politician made inferences about
the effects of education by comparing how literacy rates evolved between
1828 and 1842 among convicted criminals compared to the general popula-
tion. Observing that literacy improved less among criminals than the rest
of society, he concluded that this provided strong proof that education has
the power to reduce crime by improving the moral character of the popu-
lation.38 This conclusion would be questioned by any social scientist ­today,
among other reasons ­because it does not acknowledge the possibility that
incarceration may reduce schooling instead of the other way around.
But ­whether politicians’ inferences w ­ ere valid or not is beside the point.
What ­matters for the sake of the book’s argument is that politicians believed
in the benefits of education for crime reduction, gathered evidence to as-
sess the consequences of education, and interpreted this evidence in ways

36. Friendly (2007).

37. Sarmiento (1849), p. 55.
38. Sarmiento (1849), p. 55.
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 305

that reflected their conviction about the potential of education to reduce

crime.

WHAT DID GOVERNMENTS DO WHEN EDUCATION “FAILED”?

When politicians concluded that the education system had failed to reduce
crime or social disorder, they reformed ­those systems. They did not stop in-
vesting in mass schooling, but instead ­adopted a new curriculum, changed
the procedures for training and recruiting teachers, or introduced changes
in their inspection system, all with the hope that this time they would choose
the right set of education policies to pacify the population.
A historical example of governments’ tendency to reform a failing edu-
cation system rather than foregoing mass schooling altogether comes from
Germany ­after the 1848 Revolution. As in other parts of Western ­Europe,
1848 was a year of widespread ­popular discontent that escalated into full-­
blown social revolution against the established order. In the German case,
the revolution failed. Although liberals w­ ere able to take control of the gov-
ernment for a few short months, as early as October 1848 their power was
showing vis­i­ble signs of erosion. By November 1850, conservatives ­were back
in control and the old order had been fully restored. Conservatives blamed
primary school teachers for the 1848 Revolution. In 1851, the conservative
journalist and social critic Wilhelm Riehl described teachers as a “perverse”
and “evil demon” and argued that they had inspired the peasantry to rise up.
Although historians still debate the accuracy of this claim, in the 1850s,
Riehl’s diagnosis that teachers ­were key instigators of the revolution quickly
acquired the status of an established truth.39 For the conservative govern-
ment, however, the prob­lem was not education as such but rather the c­ ontent
and ­organization of education, both of which needed to be reformed in
order for schools to effectively produce “loyalty of the citizen for the state”
and “true obedience to the law.”40
Following the restoration of the old order in 1850, the Prus­sian g­ overnment
introduced a series of ultra-­conservative education reforms that further in-
creased the state’s control over p­ opular education (Volksschule) vis-­à-­vis the

39. Welch (2001), pp. 25–26. For opposing views about the accuracy of Riehl’s diagnosis see, on
one hand, Nipperdey (1976) as an example of a historian who argues that “mass education was a
vehicle of social unrest” (p. 172) in large part ­because “­there was a revolutionary disposition among
teachers” (p. 169) and, on the other hand, Skopp (1982) as an example of a historian who argues
that the idea of the revolutionary teacher was just a myth, and “prob­ably only around 1 ­percent of
teachers ­were actively involved in the ­actual revolutionary movement” (p. 400).
40. Nipperdey (1976), pp. 162–166.
306 | Chapter 8

churches.41 The historian Kenneth Barkin writes that “Prus­sia’s leaders

had come to see what a Trojan ­horse compulsory schooling could become
if it w
­ ere not tightly controlled.”42 The set of reforms introduced to tighten
control over primary education included reforms of teacher training, the
primary school curriculum, and the administration of schools. First, the
Prus­sian government centralized the administration of teacher training
seminars and imposed on ­these a rigid curriculum that emphasized that
“teachers’ main duty was to produce God-­ fearing patriotic subjects for
the king.”43 Second, a new curriculum for primary schools was a­ dopted in
1854. Unlike the preceding curriculums of 1763 / 5, the new curriculum pro-
vided more precise instructions regarding how many hours should be de-
voted to each mandatory subject, and imposed a unified curriculum for all
primary schools regardless of ­whether they w ­ ere located in rural versus
urban or in Protestant versus Catholic regions. Third, in 1854 the adminis-
tration of the Volksschule became increasingly centralized ­under the Minis-
try of Education as part of “a counterrevolutionary tactic in Prus­sia.” In other
parts of Germany, too, governments who “feared that the revolution had
been nourished in the schools” responded by enhancing their control over
primary education, thus reducing the educational authority of churches and
local governments. Through ­these reforms, writes Douglas Skopp, “the
Volksschule was re-­dedicated as an institution designed to teach ­political loy-
alty and religious piety.”44
The reforms in Prus­sia are illustrative of a general pattern whereby poli-
ticians who conclude that an education system is failing to accomplish its
goals respond by reforming the system. Another illustration of this pattern
comes from how politicians in Argentina responded to the prob­lem of mass
vio­lence against the oligarchic regime that emerged at the turn of the cen-
tury. Education policymakers blamed the vio­lence on the national curricu-
lum ­adopted in 1884. In their view, the curriculum had failed to promote
social order ­because, while it placed a heavy emphasis on moral education,
it did not do enough to assimilate the immigrant population. To fix the
prob­lem of vio­lence they observed among immigrants and the working class,
in 1910 the central government introduced a new national curriculum for
primary schools which, it argued, would undo “the nation’s moral decline”

41. Barkin (1983), p. 51.

42. Barkin (1983), p. 52.
43. Barkin (1983), p. 51.
44. Skopp (1982), p. 356.
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 307

and restore social order by forging national unity. Contrary to the previous
curriculum, which respected the diverse identities of the immigrant popu-
lation, the new curriculum was heavi­ly focused on inculcating a shared
national identity. It placed a greater emphasis on teaching Spanish, history,
and geography; prescribed the teaching of patriotism in ­every single sub-
ject, from moral education and gymnastics to arithmetic and geometry; and
eliminated many of the more complex subjects included in the previous
curriculum, such as physics and chemistry.45 Around this time, new rituals
­were also incorporated into the school day and calendar to celebrate na-
tional heroes and symbols.46
While in some cases the diagnosis that politicians made was that an ill-­
conceived curriculum was to blame for the failure of primary schools to
promote social order, in other cases they concluded that the prob­lem lay
with teachers’ failure to implement the prescribed curriculum. Pointing the
fin­ger at teachers usually went hand in hand with characterizations of teach-
ers as disloyal or, in more extreme cases, subversive. The responses to this
type of conclusion usually entailed reforms that affected the teaching ­career
in vari­ous ways. Sometimes, policymakers sought to increase teachers’
­loyalty by targeting existing teachers through centralized school inspections
or, in more extreme cases, teacher purges. Other times, they focused on en-
hancing ­future teachers’ loyalty by reforming teacher training and certifica-
tion policies. This was the approach not only in Prus­sia, as we saw ­earlier,
but also in France a­ fter the 1848 Revolution. The French government con-
cluded that teachers w ­ ere partly responsible for the revolution and that
existing policies ­were not d­ oing an adequate job of training and recruiting
teachers who would act as loyal agents of the state. To address this, the
government reformed the curriculum of Normal Schools and narrowed
down the requirements for earning a basic teaching certification to three
­things: moral righ­teousness, religious knowledge, and ­political docility.47
Teacher training reforms and government-­led purges of the teaching
corps have been common tools to reign in “subversive” teachers well be-
yond the nineteenth c­ entury. Countries as diverse as demo­cratic Finland and
dictatorial Chile during the 1970s opted to move the responsibility to train
teachers to universities, abolishing teacher training seminars and Normal

45. Ramos Mejía (1910), t.I.

46. Bertoni (2001).
47. Toloudis (2012), p. 52.
308 | Chapter 8

Schools in part ­because politicians feared that ­these institutions ­were

­enabling the o ­ rganization of radical left-­wing students.48 In Argentina dur-
ing the first two presidencies of Juan Perón (1946–1955), the government
increased the accessibility of teacher education programs in an effort to
recruit into teaching more members of the working class that formed
Perón’s core constituency, and fired existing teachers who refused to swear
allegiance to the Peronist Doctrine.49 In Spain, Franco first fired t­ hose teach-
ers who, b ­ ecause of their left-­wing orientation, w
­ ere perceived as a national
security threat, and then, ­those teachers who, ­because of their traditional
Catalan or Basque ­family names, ­were perceived as a threat to the strict type
of nationalism that Franco’s regime sought to inculcate.50 Other recent ex-
amples include the mass purge of teachers in China during the Cultural
Revolution as part of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign of 1957–58;51 the purge
of Black teachers and school principals in the United States during the Civil
Rights Movement;52 and the teacher purges in Turkey in 2016 when, months
­after a failed attempt to overthrow Recep Erdoğan, the government fired
15,000 education workers accused of threatening the rule of law.53

History is replete with evidence showing that when governments believe

their education systems are failing, they tend not to move away from in-
vesting in education, but instead tend to reform ­those systems with the hope
that a new set of education policies ­will fi­nally help attain the state’s edu-
cational goals. Instead of giving up on the idea that mass education can
strengthen existing ­political institutions, governments have reformed the
curriculum, adding a renewed emphasis or a new twist in the way they go
about teaching moral and civic values. Instead of accepting that some de-
gree of teacher autonomy may be unavoidable, governments have frequently
turned to more or new education reforms which, they hope, w ­ ill better align
teachers’ be­hav­ior with the state’s educational agenda.
At a general level, this response is no dif­fer­ent from the response we see
­today among governments that hope their education systems w ­ ill promote
economic development but observe that schools are failing to promote basic

48. Furuhagen and Holmén (2017).

49. Bernetti and Puiggrós (1993).
50. Balcells and Villamil (2020).
51. Zeng and Eisenman (2018).
52. Fenwick (2022); Fultz (2004).
53. Kingsley (2016).
 Does Education Promote Social Order? | 309

skills. The typical response of governments in this situation is not to stop

investing in education, but rather to innovate in the sphere of education
policy in hopes that more funding or a new curriculum or set of policies
for recruiting, monitoring, or compensating teachers ­will promote more
skills acquisition. We can view the tendency to reform a failing education
system in a positive or negative light, depending on ­whether we think it
reflects an entrepreneurial and steadfast spirit or an arrogant and stubborn
attitude. However we judge it, this is as common a response t­ oday as it was
a ­century ago.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I summarized what we know t­oday about how education
shapes social order and ­political stability and offered a framework for con-
sidering the potential consequences of mass schooling. I closed by discuss-
ing how the consequences of education policy for social order relate to the
­causes b
­ ehind the rise and spread of mass education. Policymakers gathered
information to track the consequences of education and interpreted this
information in a way that is consistent with the book’s argument. In the
face of inadequate, scarce, and often misinterpreted information, they none-
theless remained convinced of the power of education systems to promote
social order.
 CHAPTER NINE

THE F­ UTURE OF EDUCATION

­There is a coercive ele­ment pre­sent in mass education systems. This coer-

cive ele­ment was built into ­these systems and has persisted over time. We
often overlook its presence when thinking about the goals of education, in
part ­because we confuse what ­ought to be the goals of education in a ­liberal
society versus what goals education systems actually set out to accomplish.
This book sheds light on the importance that governments throughout
history have given to discipline, obedience, and ­acceptance of the status
quo as key goals of mass education. It reconceptualizes the provision of mass
education as a state-­building policy tool designed to promote values, atti-
tudes, and be­hav­iors conducive to internal order and p­ olitical stability, more
so than as a progressive or economic policy tool designed to promote skills
for social mobility and economic growth. The coercive roots of mass educa-
tion continue to shape education systems and help explain why t­ hese ­systems
do a poor job of promoting skills. Being aware of ­these roots is valuable for
educators and education reformers, international o ­ rganizations, and t­hose
committed to strengthening democracy and reducing i­ nequality.

ENDURING LEGACIES AND MODERN CHALLENGES

Education systems ­today face a prob­lem of low skills: While almost all coun-
tries have universal access to primary education, many c­ hildren who have
been in school for years lack basic reading, math, and science skills. The
phenomenon is global. Roughly 40 ­percent of ­women in South Asia, North
Africa, and the M
­ iddle East with exactly five years of primary schooling, and
50 ­percent in Sub-­Saharan Africa, cannot read a single sentence. Again,
 The ­Future of Education | 311

­despite five years of schooling.1 While among Latin American countries this
extreme form of illiteracy, though pre­sent, is less common, more than
40 ­percent of 15-­year-­olds who are in school still lack basic reading compre-
hension, math, and science skills.2 Wealthy countries are not exempt; in
the United States and other OECD countries, about 13 ­percent of 15-­year-­old
students lack basic skills.3 In most countries, the acquisition of skills is par-
ticularly troublesome among ­children of low-­income families.
The prob­lem of low education quality constitutes one of the most seri-
ous obstacles to economic development t­ oday. It also threatens the stabil-
ity of democracies. Foreign aid agencies and international ­organizations
have coalesced around an agenda focused on addressing the issue, which
UNESCO and the World Bank have labeled a “learning crisis.”4 While a
skilled workforce was unnecessary during the First Industrial Revolution,
over time technological pro­gress has become increasingly dependent on
skills.5 Considerable evidence suggests that, ­today, the average level of lit-
eracy and numeracy skills is a much more significant determinant of eco-
nomic development than the level of access to schooling.6 When schools
fail to teach the kinds of knowledge and skills that enhance productivity
and innovation, education systems also fail to realize their potential to bol-
ster demo­cratic stability7—it is well-­documented that economic develop-
ment prevents democracies from collapsing.8 In addition, schools have
been blamed for failing to equip citizens with the ability to evaluate argu-
ments and evidence, detect false claims, and identify politicians with au-
thoritarian inclinations.

1. Le Nestour, Moscoviz, and Sandefur (2021).

2. The figure is based on the PISA 2018 results from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay (OECD 2019). PISA stands for
Programme for International Student Assessment, an international standardized test adminis-
tered by the OECD ­every three years among a nationally representative sample of 15-­year-­old stu-
dents who are in school in participating countries.
3. Based on PISA 2018 results (OECD 2019).
4. In 2018, the World Bank devoted its flagship World Development Report to the learning crisis
(World Bank 2018). See also UNESCO (2014).
5. Galor and Moav (2000); Goldin and Katz (2008).
6. See Barro (2001); Hanushek and Woessmann (2008); World Bank (2018). For example, among
countries with similar years of schooling, GDP per capita is considerably greater among t­hose
countries where students have better reading, math, and science skills. By contrast, among coun-
tries with similar student skills, more years of schooling are not associated with higher levels of
GDP per capita.
7. For example, see Khalenberg and Janey (2016); Berner and Ross (2022); Van Sloun (2022).
8. Przeworski (2005).
312 | Chapter 9

In international development circles, the leading explanation for the

prob­lem of low education quality is that policymakers do not know what
education policies work best to promote skills. Accordingly, the primary
­solution proposed to tackle the learning crisis is to address policymakers’
ignorance by “evaluating what works and using that evidence to inform
policy change.”9 In the words of economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Ba-
nerjee, key proponents of this approach, policymakers choose policies that
do not promote skills “not out of bad intentions . . . ​but simply ­because the
policy makers had the wrong model”10 of how to promote skills in mind.
As Andrés Velasco, former Minister of Finance for Chile, has aptly noted,
the idea that producing and disseminating evidence on “what works” is the
key to solving the so-­called learning crisis is premised on a ­simple “implicit
model of policymaking: if you build it, they ­will come. Politicians, if con-
fronted with strong evidence, ­will do the right t­ hing.”11
Departing from the common focus on the limitations of current educa-
tion policies, this book offers a broader perspective that highlights the deep
roots of modern education systems’ dismal p ­ erformance at teaching skills.
It suggests that a fundamental reason b ­ ehind this p
­ erformance is that the
very creation, initial design, and expansion of public primary education sys-
tems was not guided by a concern to improve the basic skills of the popu-
lation, much less their critical thinking skills. Instead, the key reason why
central governments set up and invested in ­these systems was to teach
­ordinary ­people to be obedient and well-­behaved. Again, mass education
was conceived not as a poverty reduction tool or as a tool to empower the
masses, but as an essential component of the repertoire of state-­building
policies used to promote social order and ­political stability.
The reasons why politicians care about mass education have changed less
than we may think since the nineteenth c­ entury. True, the explicit goals of
education—as stated in laws and other official documents—­have expanded
over time, and many education systems ­today do have the goal of promot-
ing skills, at least on paper. Even so, when in 2017 researchers at the Brook-
ings Institution examined mission and vision statements and other official
policy documents from Ministries of Education in 152 countries, they found
that promoting “values” was a more common, explicit goal of education

9. World Bank (2010).

10. Banerjee and Duflo (2011), p. 16. Emphasis mine.
11. Velasco (2019).
 The ­Future of Education | 313

than promoting “skills” or “knowledge.”12 In at least some countries, offi-

cial documents and ­political speeches that mention “skills” as a key goal of
education may simply be paying lip s­ ervice to citizens, foreign aid agencies,
and other actors who have come to expect this as a stated goal of schools;
when the Center for Global Development surveyed 900 ­senior educa-
tion officials from 35 low-­income and lower-­middle income countries in
2020, officials ranked “dutiful citizens” as the number one priority outcome
of education, followed by secondary school completion, with basic literacy
and numeracy skills last in their list of priorities.13
It is therefore unsurprising that the emphasis on “evaluating what works
and using that evidence to inform policy change” has not lived up to its
promise to address the so-­called learning crisis. Hundreds of millions of dol-
lars, dozens of experimental studies, and two ­decades ­later, we have amassed
significant evidence on education interventions that have improved stu-
dents’ skills when implemented by NGOs. Yet this knowledge has failed to
translate into government-­endorsed systemwide education reforms. Why?
In part, b­ ecause policymakers value experimental studies less than develop-
ment economists and international ­organizations had hoped.14 But, more
fundamentally, ­because governments often care more about teaching disci-
pline and obedience than basic skills and critical thinking. A good example
comes from ­Kenya. In 2010, a team of researchers partnered with the na-
tional government to study w ­ hether hiring public school teachers on
fixed-­term contracts instead of offering permanent civil s­ ervice jobs could
lead to improvements in students’ ­English and math skills. The assumption,
informed by previous experimental studies, was that hiring teachers on re-
newable as opposed to permanent contracts would induce teachers to put
more effort into teaching knowledge and skills. The team found that this
was indeed what occurred when implementation was in the hands of an
international NGO, but that the program failed to promote skills when im-
plementation was turned over to the government ­because the government
put less effort than the NGO into monitoring ­whether teachers ­were in-
deed focusing on improving student skills.15 The government’s be­hav­ior
was predictable: Con­temporary observers note that “the ­Kenyan school

12. I am grateful to Brookings Institution for sharing the original data. See Care et al. (2018).
13. Crawfurd et al. (2021).
14. Crawfurd et al. (2021).
15. Bold et al. (2018). See also Muralidharan and Niehaus (2017); Bellés-­Obrero and Lombardi
(2022).
314 | Chapter 9

s­ystem is quite authoritarian”; it focuses on disciplining students and

maintaining order in the classroom, and “challenges to teacher authority
are not tolerated.” Moreover, “learning is by rote, and creativity and critical
thinking in the classroom are not highly prized.”16 Absent strong monitor-
ing by an external actor concerned about promoting skills (such as an
NGO), teachers continued behaving as usual inside the classroom.
What this book shows is that governments’ per­sis­tent reliance on schools
to mold ­children into well-­behaved citizens has deep roots. Their relative
disinterest in improving the skills of the population is not a crisis of con­
temporary times, nor is it unique to current developing countries. It is an
enduring phenomenon born of the goals that drove the creation and ex-
pansion of mass education systems in the Western socie­ties of ­Europe and
the Amer­i­cas.
In addition, the book explains that ­political elites are especially likely to
become invested in the indoctrination role of schools if they believe that
the masses pose a threat to social order and ­political stability. A wide range
of ­factors of varying scale and severity can exacerbate elite fear of the
­“unruly” and “morally flawed” masses, from an influx of immigrants to the
outbreak of food riots, peasant revolts, or civil wars.17 ­Here again, while
the book demonstrates that increased concern among elites about the pos-
sibility of anarchy and the breakdown of social order played a key role in
prompting governments to invest in primary schooling during the long
nineteenth ­century, it also discusses recent efforts to reform education driven
by similar concerns.
One recent illustration of the book’s argument is the wave of curricu-
lum reforms proposed, and in many cases enacted, by Republican politi-
cians following the Black Lives M ­ atter (BLM) protests of summer 2020. I
witnessed ­these protests with deep concern that—­like in France or Chile
during the nineteenth ­century, or Peru in the twenty-­first ­century—­they
might prompt ­those politicians who felt most threatened by protester de-
mands to turn to education reform as a mechanism of social control. ­These
concerns began to materialize when at the end of summer 2020 the Trump
administration created the 1776 Commission, charged with making educa-

16. Friedman et al. (2016).

17. For con­temporary evidence that immigration exacerbates concerns about crime, even when
it does not actually lead to an increase in crime, see Ajzenman, Dominguez, and Undurraga (2023).
See also Tyack (1974) on the role of immigration in the late-­nineteenth-­century United States in
exacerbating traditional elites’ fear of crime and anarchy.
 The ­Future of Education | 315

tion policy recommendations to promote “patriotic education,” “better en-

able a rising generation to understand the history and princi­ples of the
founding of the United States,” and “correct the distorted perspective” and
“radicalized view” that racial inequalities are the product of laws and public
policies.18 ­After Trump left the presidency in January 2021, the efforts to
reform and “de-­radicalize” school curricula turned to the state level, where
Republicans, who felt most threatened by the BLM movement’s demand
to reform existing institutions, enacted laws that ban public schools from
teaching “divisive concepts” such as institutionalized racism.19
While we may be tempted to underscore the differences between this and
the other cases in the book (indeed, t­here are differences across all cases),
Republican elites’ anxiety following the BLM protests and their subsequent
effort to prohibit schools from teaching about institutionalized racism fits
well with the ubiquitous phenomenon identified in this book: Elites threat-
ened by mass protest turn to education to teach ­children to accept the sta-
tus quo. Nineteenth-­century autocrats in ­Europe ­were among the first to
respond to social unrest in this way, but politicians in modern socie­ties—­
democratic and not—­have turned to similar tactics, too.
The historical origins of primary education systems also ­matter for our
understanding of the pre­sent ­because the manner in which education sys-
tems are o ­ rganized ­today owes much to the past. The emphasis on rote
memorization and repetition instead of critical thinking is one example of
the practices that emerged as central to the goals of education in the nine-
teenth ­century, and that have proved incredibly resilient over time. Relat-
edly, the contents that students have to memorize and internalize typically
serve the interests of dominant groups in society, for instance an interpre-
tation of history that glorifies “national heroes” and minimizes or altogether
avoids mentioning the vio­lence inflicted by elites against other members
of society. Consider the map of the world shown in figure 9.1. It depicts
country experts’ answers to the question, “When historical events are taught
in school, to what extent are students exposed to diverse views and / or in-
terpretations of ­these events?” The data come from the Va­ri­e­ties of ­Political
Indoctrination in Education and Media dataset discussed in more detail in
chapter 7. The answers depicted in figure 9.1 correspond to experts’ assess-
ments for the year 2021 and draw on an average of five experts per country.

18. Gaudiano (2020).

19. Stout and Wilburn (2021).
316 | Chapter 9

Rarely or Never
Sometimes
Often
Extensively
No data

Figure 9.1. Frequency of student exposure to diverse viewpoints, by country, 2021. The
map shows country experts’ responses to the question: “When historical events are taught
in school, to what extent are students exposed to diverse views and / or interpretations
of ­these events?” See text and footnotes for sources and methodology.

What the data suggest is that schools expose students to dif­fer­ent inter-
pretations of history e­ ither often or extensively in less than one-­third of
countries. In seventy-­one countries (43 ­percent), students are exposed to
diverse viewpoints only sometimes, and in another forty-­seven countries
(28 ­percent) they are rarely or never exposed to a variety of viewpoints.
Another enduring feature of education systems is the presence of regi-
mented curriculums and ­limited teacher autonomy. During the 1980s and
1990s, many countries ­adopted reforms that decentralized the responsibil-
ity for funding and / or managing schools from the central to subnational
governments. However, rarely have centralized governments given up their
power to determine the content of education. Also as part of the V-­Indoc
dataset, we asked country experts who determines the school curriculum—­
that is, the list of subjects taught and the amount of time devoted to each
subject—as well as what proportion of school textbooks used to teach core
subjects are approved by a national authority. We found that in 159 of the
166 countries for which we obtained responses, the curriculum as of 2021
 The ­Future of Education | 317

was established e­ ither entirely or mostly by a national authority, and that

in 121 countries (73 ­percent) all school textbooks are approved at the na-
tional level.
The per­sis­tence of education practices and institutions implies that, even
when politicians are well-­intentioned in the sense of wanting to promote
skills, their efforts are constrained by the educational structures inherited
from the past. Suppose, for example, that a government decides to adopt a
new curriculum that places considerable emphasis on promoting literacy,
numeracy, and critical thinking skills. Suppose also that the government
prints and distributes new textbooks aligned with the new curriculum.
Should we expect this curriculum and textbook reform to lead to an im-
provement in student skills? Prob­ably not nearly as much as the government
would want. One key constraint that most well-­intentioned governments
face is that the teachers responsible for implementing the new curriculum
(or most other education reforms) have been poorly trained to promote
skills.20 From Latin Amer­i­ca to Africa to the United States, education policy
experts have noted that teacher training programs place considerable
­emphasis on training new teachers in classroom management strategies,
history of education, and philosophy of education, yet fail to ensure that
teachers have the subject ­matter knowledge they need to effectively teach
language, math, or science. Even t­oday, at a time when most members of
society expect schools to successfully teach t­ hese subjects, teacher training
programs have not adequately adapted to ­these expectations. It is no won­der
that teachers in many countries spend a good portion of their classroom
time on disciplining and managing student be­hav­ior. This is what they are
best trained to do.
Another legacy that constrains well-­intentioned education reforms is the
architecture and design of classrooms. Most classrooms ­today are set up so
that the teacher stands in front of the class and the students sit in rows fac-
ing the teacher. This design ele­ment deliberately sought to establish a clear
hierarchy between teachers and students and to encourage re­spect for the
teacher’s authority. But when a teacher wants to promote debate and criti-
cal thinking, the traditional ­organization of classrooms gets in the way. Some
of the favorite features championed by architecture firms that focus on
­designing student-­centered classrooms are movable furniture that can ac-
commodate a variety of activities, movable walls or a small meeting room

20. Bruns and Luque (2014); Bold et al. (2017).

318 | Chapter 9

within the classroom to support small group discussions, comfortable seat-

ing, proj­ect labs, and indoor-­outdoor connection. The vast majority of class-
rooms around the world look very dif­fer­ent.
All of this—­rote memorization, regimented curriculum plans imposed
by the central government, history lessons that teach the narrative of dom-
inant groups, teacher-­centered classrooms, and teacher education programs
that do not adequately prepare teachers to teach skills—is accompanied by
another enduring feature of education systems: the emphasis on disciplin-
ing students. According to the Oxford dictionary, to discipline is to “train
someone to obey rules or a code of be­hav­ior.” Historically as well as ­today,
schools have relied on a combination of punishments and rewards to en-
courage obedience and good be­hav­ior. The list of punishments can range
from public scolding and humiliation all the way to corporal punishment
and school suspension. The rewards include public praise such as when a
teacher recognizes a student’s good be­hav­ior in front of the entire class, pri-
vate praise in the form of stickers in a student’s notebook or a note to their
parents, and special privileges for well-­behaved students.
To be sure, some schools have moved away from this traditional approach
to education, especially schools that cater to students from wealthy back-
grounds. However, t­ hese ­were never the students whom elites w ­ ere con-
cerned about. The students whom elites wanted to discipline w ­ ere ­those
from non-­elite backgrounds—­these ­were the students who, according to
elites, had to be taught to re­spect the status quo. That this concern remains
relevant to this day is made clear by how privileged versus non-­privileged
students are disciplined. ­There is extensive evidence that, for equivalent
forms of misbehavior, schools apply harsher sanctions to students from non-­
privileged backgrounds, including low-­income students and students from
historically marginalized ethnic minorities.21 In the United States, ­there are
also entire chains of charter schools—­such as Kipp Acad­emy, Success Acad­
emy, and Achievement First—­that are targeted at underprivileged students
and operate ­under a “zero tolerance” and “no excuses” policy, with strict
­enforcement of rules and codes of conduct. The assumption of ­these schools,

21. For a review, see Welsh and L

­ ittle (2018). The U.S. Department of Education u
­ nder the presi-
dency of Barack Obama issued guiding princi­ples for school disciplining that sought to reduce
the disparities in suspension and expulsion rates by ethnicity and disability status (U.S. Depart-
ment of Education 2014). The focus on equity in disciplining methods was removed in a new set
of guidelines for enhanced school safety issued during the Trump administration (Federal Com-
mission on School Safety 2021).
 The ­Future of Education | 319

just like the assumption of Prus­sian education reformers in the late eigh­
teenth ­century, is that “in neighborhoods where vio­lence and disorder are
widespread,”22 parents are not ­doing a good enough job of promoting good
be­hav­ior, and the school must therefore step in to mold ­children into well-­
behaved and rule-­abiding individuals.23
­These examples illustrate that coercion—­the practice of using threats or
­actual punishments to induce someone to behave in a specific way—­remains
part of the fabric of education systems to this day. The reason is not just
inertia. As the previous discussion suggests, governments old and new have
found the idea of using schools to mold c­ hildren into obedient ­future citi-
zens quite attractive. The preeminence of this over other pos­si­ble goals of
education both historically and ­today, and not the lack of knowledge about
what policies work, is the most impor­tant challenge facing ­those who want
education systems to better promote skills.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE OR SOCIAL CONTROL?

At times throughout the book, I have used the term “social control” to de-
scribe the goal pursued by governments interested in regulating and pro-
moting mass education. In liberal socie­ties t­ oday, this term has a negative
connotation ­because it clashes with the value of individual autonomy that
liberalism prizes. Some readers may question the choice of this term and
suggest instead that we talk about education systems’ goal of promoting
“peace.” Indeed, it could be argued that internal peace and order are neces-
sary conditions for the exercise of the individual rights that are at the heart
of liberal socie­ties, including the right to govern one’s own life. Put differ-
ently, in a society mired in social unrest, anarchy, or civil war, it is difficult
for individuals to pursue their dreams. From this perspective, ­there is a place
for education systems to promote peace and order without undermining,
and in fact contributing to upholding, personal autonomy.
What distinguishes a benign peace education agenda from a social con-
trol agenda is that, in the latter, the specific values, attitudes, and be­hav­iors
that schools advance have been chosen by elites to preserve the existing
­balance of power within society. Elites throughout history have used mass

22. Boyd, Maranto, and ­Rose (2014).

23. For a critique of zero-­tolerance, zero-­excuses schools, see Skiba and Knesting (2002). For a
defense of ­these schools, see Boyd, Maranto, and ­Rose (2014).
320 | Chapter 9

schooling to impose not only their preferred narrative about the country’s
history but also their preferred understanding of what constitutes good
moral be­hav­ior and legitimate p ­ olitical action. This is true not just of
­autocratic rulers; even in democracies, elites often benefit from teaching
ordinary citizens that voting, not rebelling or protesting, is the legitimate
mechanism for expressing discontent with the status quo. Whenever
schools disseminate values and attitudes to help ­those in power stay in
power, education systems serve a social control purpose. This social control
purpose is antithetical to the goal of promoting individual autonomy, as
autonomy requires fostering critical thinking skills and, in par­tic­ul­ar, en-
abling students to question received truths.
Interest in the role of education as a tool to promote peace has intensi-
fied over the last ­decade among international ­organizations working in
post-­conflict settings. In 2011, UNESCO’s annual flagship publication pro-
posed “strengthening the role of education systems in preventing conflicts
and building peaceful socie­ties.”24 A year l­ater, the United Nations launched
the Global Education First Initiative, which proposed that the promotion of
global citizenship become a key priority of education systems alongside pro-
viding education for all and improving the quality of education. According
to this initiative, “While increasing access to education is still a major chal-
lenge in many countries,” the “relevance of education is now receiving
more attention than ever . . . ​Beyond cognitive knowledge and skills, the
international community is urging an education that w ­ ill help resolve the
existing and emerging global challenges menacing our planet,” “with due
emphasis on the importance of values, attitudes and skills that promote
­mutual re­spect and peaceful coexistence.”25 More recently, the United Na-
tion’s Sustainable Development Goals propose that schools should
“promote a culture of peace and non-­violence.” Interest in post-­conflict
education has also grown quickly within universities, manifested in the cre-
ation of new courses, gradu­ate programs, and conferences on the topic.
While ­there are clear echoes from the past in the peace-­building agenda
proposed by international o ­ rganizations, with its emphasis on promoting
social cohesion to prevent vio­lence, we should hasten to highlight signifi-
cant deviations from historical practice. Unlike traditional approaches, the
type of citizenship education that international o ­ rganizations advocate for

24. UNESCO (2011).

25. UNESCO (2014), p. 5.
 The ­Future of Education | 321

also includes instruction in ­human rights, cosmopolitanism, and multicul-

turalism. Further, and in contrast to an approach that seeks to convince
­people to accept their place in society, both UNESCO and the World Bank
view schools as a place to promote social mobility and address the economic
inequalities that often lead to the onset of civil war.26
This book gives us reasons to be cautious about the success of this inter-
national agenda. It shows that the type of mass education that most states
have supported in post-­conflict settings is not the type of h ­ uman rights–­
centered or multicultural education that the international development
community has in mind. ­Whether we look at 1760s Prus­sia, 1880s Argentina,
or even at more recent post-­conflict settings such as Peru a­ fter 2000 or Thai-
land ­after 2014, the formation of students in conflict-­afflicted countries has
emphasized moral and ­political duties more than rights, and the legitimacy
of the state as a supreme authority more than a cosmopolitan worldview,
leaving ­little or no space to acknowledge or discuss the grievances of his-
torically underprivileged groups.
Indeed, t­here is evidence that history is repeating itself. Several studies
analyzing the content of national textbooks used to teach social studies,
­history, and civics in eighty countries since World War II have found that
textbooks published in post-­conflict settings are more likely to emphasize
narratives of national unity and citizens’ ­political duties, and less likely to
discuss citizens’ ­political rights or the rights of minorities, which are viewed
as destabilizing or threatening to state legitimacy.27 Education expert Gar-
nett Russel has argued that this emphasis on citizens’ p ­ olitical duties and
national unity, and si­mul­ta­neously, the rare mention of rights, diverse cul-
tures, or the ­causes of past internal conflicts, reflect an irreconcilable ten-
sion between the national and global versions of citizenship education.28
The tendency of central governments in post-­conflict settings to invest
in mass education in order to strengthen the state’s authority creates a major
challenge for foreign aid agencies and international ­organizations, which
fund education systems in developing countries but do not get involved in
curriculum reform, much less the part of the curriculum that deals with
social studies, history, or civics. The World Bank’s financial support for ed-
ucation in 1990s Rwanda is a good case in point. Immediately ­after the

26. UNESCO (2011). See also https://­www​.­worldbank​.­org​/­en​/­topic​/­education​/­brief​/­education​-­in​

-­fragile​- ­conflict​-­violence​- contexts.
27. Russell and Tiplic (2014); Lerch (2016); Lerch, Russell, and Ramirez (2017).
28. Russell (2018).
322 | Chapter 9

Rwandan civil war of 1990–1994 and the genocide lasting from April to July
of 1994, the government of Rwanda focused on reopening primary and sec-
ondary schools and initiated a program to rapidly expand primary educa-
tion access by building new schools and repairing ­those damaged by the
war. The new government also heavi­ly revised the content of education in
order to promote state-­and nation-­building. Civic education acquired a
prominent role in an effort to create model citizens who would help sus-
tain internal peace and re­spect the state.29 In addition, a­ fter temporarily
suspending the teaching of history in 1994, the Ministry of Education set
out to teach f­uture populations “the true history of Rwanda,” blaming the
civil war and genocide on past colonial policies, minimizing the existence
of ethnic i­nequality and interethnic conflict, and giving scant attention
to the violation of h ­ uman rights.30 Even as many teachers and education
experts have denounced the role of schools in helping legitimize an au-
thoritarian ­political regime, noting that the Rwandan curriculum acts as “a
reflector of dominant government narratives from which deviation is not
permitted,”31 the World Bank continued to finance the government’s educa-
tion reforms. For example, a World Bank loan approved during the war and
disbursed mainly between 1996 and 1998 contributed US$23.3 million
­toward the government’s intervention in primary education following the
civil war. Since 2000, the World Bank has committed close to US$1 billion
­toward Rwandan education.
To be sure, international ­organizations never explic­itly offer loans or
grants to design and implement indoctrination reforms. However, once ed-
ucation loans are disbursed, t­hese o ­ rganizations do not actively monitor
precisely how the funds are used by the recipient government. Portions of
a loan that are supposed to contribute to capacity-­building within the Min-
istry of Education, for example, can easily be used by the government to
commission, print, and distribute new textbooks. Portions that are supposed
to contribute to teacher training can be repurposed to train new teachers
in the government’s new curriculum. World Bank staff generally choose to
overlook ­these possibilities, in part b­ ecause they lack the capacity, incen-
tives, or contextual knowledge needed to evaluate the content of civic edu-
cation, social studies, and history curriculums in each country, and in part

29. King (2013); Sundberg (2016).

30. King (2013); Russell (2018).
31. King (2013), p. 137.
 The ­Future of Education | 323

­ ecause ­doing so would raise serious concerns about foreign interference

b
with state sovereignty.
As complex as ­these issues are, the pattern of post-­conflict education in-
vestments discussed in this book underscores the need for international
­organizations to engage deeply and consciously with uncomfortable ques-
tions: Should they fund education interventions in post-­conflict contexts
knowing that governments in t­ hese contexts are likely to use schools at least
partly as an indoctrination tool? Should they revisit their practice of avoid-
ing conversations about sensitive curriculum issues? Should they put in
place stronger mechanisms to monitor that funds are being used in align-
ment with the original intent of the loan? ­These are crucial questions for
international ­organizations, whose work moving forward is expected to
focus increasingly on conflict-­afflicted countries.32

THE PATH FORWARD

When I have presented portions of this book to p ­ eople who have devoted
their entire ­careers to improving education systems, a frequent response is
that they found my work “depressing” and “demoralizing.” Indeed, I often
felt the same way while conducting my research. Yet over time, as the ini-
tial disillusionment subsided, I have come to see the book’s findings as both
crucial and empowering to t­hose of us who care deeply about transform-
ing education.
We cannot address the dismal ­performance of education systems at
­promoting skills without first understanding the root cause of this prob­
lem. Over the last two d ­ ecades, the dominant explanation, coming from eco-
nomics and pervading the work of international ­organizations, has focused
on the ignorance of well-­intended policymakers. To overcome the prob­lem
of low skills, goes the argument, we need to invest heavi­ly in identifying
education policies that do in fact promote skills, and in disseminating
this knowledge among policymakers. Despite initial enthusiasm for this
approach, its failure to stimulate systemwide education reforms suggests
that the diagnosis was amiss. This book suggests that the key reason ­behind
the prob­lem of low skills is not the ignorance of governments but their

32. According to the World Bank, conflicts drive 80 ­percent of all humanitarian needs, and by
2030, up to two-­thirds of the world’s extreme poor ­will likely live in conflict-­afflicted settings. See
https://­www​.­worldbank​.­org​/­en​/­topic​/­fragilityconflictviolence​/overview.
324 | Chapter 9

disinterest in placing skills at the forefront of their education policy strategy.

The long history of public primary education systems demonstrates that
­these systems emerged, ­were designed, and expanded first and foremost to
mold ­children into obedient f­ uture citizens. This legacy has been sustained
over time by policymakers who agree with its major tenets.
Why is this knowledge empowering? ­Because it enables us to focus our
attention on what r­ eally ­matters—­and what ­really ­matters is understand-
ing the motivations of politicians to reform education systems. History is
not destiny. Despite the prevalence of coercive ele­ments across education
systems t­ oday, ­there are countries whose education systems have under­gone
considerable transformation over time. Finland is perhaps the most famous
case—­a country that introduced compulsory schooling legislation to fos-
ter obedience and social order following the Finnish civil war, but whose
education system ­after the Second World War underwent a gradual but deep
transformation ­toward a more child-­centered approach. Another example
comes from Chile, where the initial approach t­oward primary education,
with its narrow focus on indoctrinating ­future citizens to re­spect the state’s
authority, was reformed in the 1960s to give greater emphasis to math and
science skills for economic development. Chile again underwent deep ed-
ucation reforms in the 2010s to better support social mobility.
The practical implication of this book’s argument is that we need to un-
derstand what motivates a government, such as the governments of Fin-
land and Chile, to deemphasize indoctrination and embrace an education
policy agenda that teaches basic skills and critical thinking. International
­organizations tackling low education quality should redirect resources that
­today are invested in identifying education policies that work t­oward de-
veloping knowledge about what makes politicians tick. We have learned
that evidence about “what works” does not. We have also learned that gov-
ernments care deeply about the ability of education systems to promote in-
ternal order and ­political stability. The challenge ahead is to figure out the
conditions u ­ nder which governments that care about maintaining and con-
solidating their power are likely to invest in the kind of education that
could empower individuals to challenge it.
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 INDEX

Note: Page numbers in bold indicate figures and ­tables.

Achával Rodríguez, Tristán, 213 Amunátegui, Luis, 158–59, 165

Adams, John Quincy, 252–253, 259 Andersson, Jens, 57n22
administrative capacity. See state capacity Annan, Kofi, 285
Africa: civil wars in, 233, 245, 246n69; data for, Ansell, Ben, 23n24, 26n36
42; democ­ratization and primary educa- Anuario Estadístico de la República de Chile,
tion in North, 52; democ­ratization and 162n123, 301–302, 303
primary education in Sub-­Saharan, 28, Aquinas, Thomas, 250
52, 53, 55n17; expansion of primary educa- Argentina: as case study, 124–25, 167–81; Chile
tion lagging ­b ehind Latin Amer­i­ca, and, comparison of expansion of pri-
43; inadequate teaching skills in Sub-­ mary education in, 60; civil war, 168–70;
Saharan, 296; lack of reading skills in, civil war and primary education, 80,
310; rise of postcolonial states in, 12 82n70, 167–179; curriculum for primary
Aghion, Philippe, 73–74n55 education in, 69; diplomatic rift with
Alexander, Thomas, 102n45, 125–126 Chile, 173; first primary education law,
Algeria, 49, 64n35 timing of, 49, 66, 183n1; economic re­
Alliaud, Andrea, 167–168n133 distribution, 174; 1884 Law of Common
American Philosophical Society of Philadel- Education, 45, 50, 124, 167–168, 171, 175–77,
phia, 257 180–181, 183n1, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199,
American Spelling Book (Webster), 254 200, 201n19, 208–212, 214, 216; fluctuation
Amer­i­cas, the: access to primary education in, in the rate of expansion of primary
historical expansion of, 11–14, 38–86; com- schooling, 61, 166–167, 179; geographic
pulsory schooling in, 195–197; democ­ pattern of primary education expansion,
ratization and state intervention in pri- 178, 179; immigration and expansion of
mary education in, 26, 49; ideas about primary education, 178–180; industrial-
education in, 100–101, 106; industrializa- ization and expansion of primary educa-
tion and access to primary education in, tion, 177, 180–181; interstate wars and
66–68; interstate wars and access to pri- expansion of primary education, 71,
mary education in, 74; religious educa- 74n55, 75n56, 180–181; Ley 1420 (see 1884
tion in, 205; school inspection policies in, Law of Common Education ­under this
192–195; state intervention in primary heading); medical doctors, primary
education in, timing of, 8–11; teacher schooling and, 176n156; National Educa-
certification in, 189–192; teacher recruit- tion Council (CNE), 167, 171, 175–177, 180,
ment in, 185; teacher training in, 186–188. 292; Normal Schools for teacher train-
See also specific countries; Latin Amer­i­ca ing, 60, 161, 174–175, 177, 186, 190, 191, 209,
Amunátegui, Gregorio, 158–159, 165 210; number of primary schools, 179;
346 | Index

Argentina (continued) Barrantes, Rafael, 272nn101–102, 274nn109–111,

Pedagogical Congress of 1882, 175; pri- 275nn112–113
mary education statistics, earliest avail- Barthe, Félix, 142–143
ability of, 49; primary school enrollment Becker, Gary, 229
rates, 44–45, 46, 168, 166–167, 179; repres- Belgium, 22, 49, 62, 66, 75n56, 186, 190, 193, 196,
sion in, 173–174; right-­wing support for 200, 201n19
educational expansion in, 56–57; state-­ Bello, Andrés, 224
building goal of primary education in, Benavot, Aaron, 41
170–177; timing of industrialization and Berger, Thor, 57n22
adoption of landmark education legisla- Biblioteca Nacional del Maestro, 167n133
tion in, 66. See also Catholic Church; Black Lives ­Matter (BLM), 314–315
Sarmiento, Domingo F. Blanchette, John, 68n39
Arguelles, Máximo, 197 Boix, Carles, 48n11, 51n13, 107n60
Arnold, Matthew, 263–264 Bold, Tessa, 296
Asia: civil wars in, 245; data for, 42; democ­ Boli, John, 75
ratization and primary education in, 52; Bolivarian national curriculum, 295
expansion of primary education lagging Bolivia, 49, 75n57, 82n70, 186n5, 201, 302n35
­behind Latin Amer­ic­ a, 43; lack of read- Bonaparte, Louis-­Napoleon, 80
ing skills in, 310; rise of postcolonial Bourdieu, Pierre, 6n6, 7n9
states in, 12 Bowles, Samuel, 25n31, 62n26
Australia, 49, 64n35 Brazil: Argentina, war with, 180; certification
Austria: access to primary schooling in au- requirements for teachers in, 190, 190n10;
thoritarian, 54; adoption of primary civil war and primary education in,
school policies prior to industrialization, 82n69; compulsory primary education
65; certification requirements for teach- in, 195, 196; curriculum for primary
ers in, 190, 191; compulsory school provi- schools, 199, 200, 201n19; data for, 12,
sions in, 196; curriculum for primary 64n35, 78; data on literacy, 311n2; democ­
schools in, 200, 200n16, 201n19; data for, ratization and primary education in, 49;
11, 49, 64n35; first primary education law, 1879 Decreto 7.247, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 196,
timing of, 49, 66, 183n1; enrollment rates 201n19; enrollment rates, 82n69; first
in, 62, 82n69; Felbiger in, 106; reform in primary education law, timing of, 49, 66,
authoritarian, 115; school inspection 184n1; interstate war and primary educa-
policies in, 193; 1774 General School Or- tion in, 75n56; primary education in
dinance, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200n16, authoritarian, 55n18, 56; school inspec-
201n19 tion policies in, 193
autocracies: comparison of school curricu- Britain. See ­England
lum with democracies, 275–281; expan- Brownson, Orestes, 102
sion of primary education ­under, 26, 31, Bulgaria, 49, 64n35
34, 35, 47–55, 58n23, 116; indoctrination by Bulnes, Manuel, 156, 122
type of, 234; left-­wing and right-­wing, Burke, Edmund, 250
55–57; state-­building through primary
education in, 123–182; time horizon of, Canada, 9, 13, 38, 43, 44, 49, 64n35, 75n56, 185
233–236 Cantoni, Davide, 293
Avellaneda, Nicolás, 169, 174 Catholic Church: in Argentina, 60, 125, 171,
208, 212–216; in Chile, 60, 125, 164, 171, 208,
Baconnière de Salverte, Eusèbe, 144 211–212; in France, 72, 125, 137–138, 149,
Baker, Richard, 68n38 152–154; legitimacy of ­political rulers and,
Banerjee, Abhijit, 312 94; mass education by, 22, 205; in Peru,
banking crises, 86 269; in Prus­sia, 48, 101, 107, 126, 134–135.
Baranda, Joaquín, 241–242 See also religion
Baraona, Loreto Egaña, 161 Centeno, Dámaso, 213
Barkin, Kenneth, 102, 306 Center for Global Development, 313
Barnard, Henry, 59n24 Cermeño, Alexandra, 298
 Index | 347

Chan-­ocha, Prayruth, 236 in Rwanda, 322; in Spain, 78; state capac-

Chávez, Hugo, 295 ity and, 119–120; as type of internal con-
Chile: Argentina and, comparison of expan- flict, 14–15, 77–78, 286, 314; in Uruguay, 45.
sion of primary education in, 60; as See also internal conflict
case study, 124–125, 155–167; civil war of Civit, Emilio, 216
1829–1830, 156, 224; civil war of 1851, 156, Cold War, 84, 228
222–223; civil war of 1859 and primary Colombia: certification requirements for
education in, 80, 82n69, 85, 155–167, 222, teachers in, 190, 191; civil war and pri-
237; curriculum for primary education mary education in, 80–83; compulsory
in, 69, 162–164, 199–202, 205, 208–212; primary education in, 195, 196; curricu-
diplomatic rift with Argentina, 173; 1860 lum for primary schools in, 200, 201n19;
General Law of Primary Education (Lei data on literacy in, 211n2; 1870 Decreto
de Instrucción Primaria), 69, 73, 124, 156, Orgánico de Instrucción Pública, 183n1, 190,
160–165, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200, 200n16; 193, 195, 196, 200n16, 201n19; first primary
first primary education law, timing of, education law, timing of, 49, 66, 183n1;
49, 66, 183n1; geographic pattern of pri- fluctuation in the rate of expansion of
mary education expansion in, 162–163; primary schooling in, 61; interstate wars
industrialization and adoption of land- and primary school enrollment rates in,
mark education legislation in, 66; inter- 75n56; La Violencia, period of, 78; pri-
state wars and primary education in, 71, mary education statistics, earliest avail-
75n56, 165; mining industry and expan- ability of, 49; primary school enrollment
sion of primary education in, 165–166; rates in, 44–45, 46; school inspection
Normal Schools for teacher training, 159, policies, 193
161, 186, 188–189, 190, 209–210, 217; number Comín, Diego, 64
of primary schools in, 162–163, 165–166; Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Truth
primary education statistics, earliest and Reconciliation Commission; CVR),
availability of, 49; primary school enroll- 269–270
ment rates in, 45,162–163; repression in, Communist Party of Peru / Sendero Lumi-
157, 162–163; state-­building goal of pri- noso (Shining Path; PCP-­SL), 269–270,
mary education in, 157–62; state capacity 274
in, 166–167, 237. See also Catholic Church; compulsory primary education: across coun-
Montt, Manuel tries, 10, 185, 192, 195–197; collection of
China, ­People’s Republic of, 49, 50, 64n35, data on, 40; effect on crime of, 288; in
291n15, 292–293, 308 Finland, 81, 85, 324; introduction of, 59;
Citizen Reader, The, 268 laws requiring (see laws regulating pri-
Civil Rights Movement, 308 mary education); in Mexico, 240n44;
civil wars: in Argentina, 20, 168–170, 172–175, parental ­resistance and, 57, 120, 228, 298;
217, 222, 233; in Brazil, 78; in Chile, 155– in Prus­sia, 48, 59, 68, 72, 102, 126, 128, 136,
160, 162, 165, 167, 217, 222, 237; in Colom- 306; in Soviet Rus­sia, 69–70; in Sweden,
bia, 78, 81–82; concessions to the Church 298; in the United States, 29, 59
following a, 23n25; education during, 77, Comte, August, 206–207, 291
232, 286; in El Salvador, 81; in ­England, Condliffe Lagemann, Ellen, 260
94, 223, 225, 262; enrollment rates and, Confucian, 291n16
14–15, 15, 61, 78–80, 78–86, 286–287; in Connecticut, 252
­Europe, 78–80 (see also country names Conservative Party (Chile), 156, 158, 211–213,
­under this heading); failed states and, 222–223; fusion with Liberal Party,
109; in Finland, 81, 324; in Latin Amer­i­ca, 158–159
73, 78–80, 222 (see also country names construction of schools: collection of data on,
­under this heading); long-­term conse- 39; in Argentina, 179; in Chile, 163; in
quences of, 119; in Mexico (Mexican Rev- France, 147, 150
olution), 239–240, 242, 244; post-­World Convention on the Rights of the Child
War II, characteristics of, 245–246; pre-­ (1989), 230
World War II, characteristics of, 246n69; Coram, Robert, 257
348 | Index

Correlates of War Proj­ect, 77–78, 245n67, 115, 231, 249–282, 320; time horizon of
246n69 elites u
­ nder, 116, 236, 247–248; as theory of
Costa Rica, 12, 45, 49, 82n69, 184n1, 190, 193, education, 2, 24–26, 47. See also autocra-
196, 199, 200, 201n19, 203, 311n2 cies; E
­ ngland; Peru; United States
Counts, George S., 5n5 Denmark, 49, 54, 59; 1814 School Acts, 66,
Cousin, Victor, 141, 263 183n1, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 200–201, 203
Cuba, 49, 55–56, 75n56, 82n69, 183n1, 190, 191, Dewey, John, 99–100, 260–261, 282
193, 196, 200, 200n16, 201n19 Dickens, Charles, 263
Cubberley, Ellwood, 260 diffusion theory: crises of internal order ac-
Cultural Revolution, 308 cording to, 29; evidence for, 29, 58–60,
curriculum for primary education: across 106; as an explanation for the expansion
countries, 197–205; catechism in, 107, of primary education, 24–25; limitations
126n4, 127, 201–2, 204; in Chile, 69, 162–164, of, 25, 29–30, 34, 60–61, 204–205, 204n22;
199–202, 205, 208–12; Christian doctrine in, state-­building theory of education dis-
96, 164, 209, 210, 211; Churches and timing tinct from, 30
of, 202; collection of data on, 40, 197, 200; Disraeli, Benjamin, 263, 265
comparison in autocracies and democra- Dominican Republic, 49, 82n69, 84, 302n34,
cies, 275–81; conservative model of teach- 311n2
ing moral princi­ples, 35, 211–214; diffusion Duflo, Esther, 312
theory and, 204–205; in France, 72–73, Durkheim, Émile, 6n6
144n70, 145, 152–154, 199–201, 203–204; in-
dustrialization and content of, 68–69; Earl de Grey and Ripon (George Frederick
liberal model of teaching moral princi­ Samuel Robinson, 1st Marquess of
ples, 35, 214–217; math and science skills in, Ripon), 265
3, 27, 199, 200, 203–204; moral education in, economic re­distribution, 24, 33, 57; primary
3, 21, 201–203; nation-­building and, 3, 27, education in Chile and, 164; primary
201–204; in Prus­sia, 68, 126–127, 197, 199–204, education in France and, 140–141, 152. See
306; religious versus secular moral educa- also social mobility
tion, 23, 35, 198, 205–217; rural versus urban, ­Ecuador, 49, 65, 66, 75n56, 82n69, 183n1, 190,
28, 68, 152, 197, 200, 200n16, 306. See also 193, 195, 196, 199n15, 200
moral education; skills education: expansion of primary (see expan-
Czech Republic, 49, 64n35 sion of primary education); reform of
moral character and (see moral character;
data: availability of official statistics on pri- moral education)
mary schooling, beginning of, 40–41, education theories, 24–32. See also diffusion
49; expansion of primary education, theory; ­human capital; indoctrination;
­measures of, 39–43; focus on civil wars industrialization; nation-­building; inter-
as one type of internal conflict, 77–78; state wars; democracy / democ­ratization;
internal conflict and, 31–32; onset of social control; state-­building
industrialization, prob­lems presented Egypt, 49, 50, 64n35, 291n15
by, 63–65; primary school enrollment 1848 Revolution, 48, 80, 83, 305, 307
rates, 41–43, 73–74n54; timing of state Elias, Norbert, 7n9, 297–298
intervention in primary education, sta- Elías Calles, Plutarco, 57
tistics on, 40–41 elites / upper classes
Dahlum, Sirianne, 281 in Argentina: agreement about goals of
De la Cruz, José María, 223 mass education among, 177, 179, 181; civil
democracy / democ­ratization: comparison wars and, 169–170; concern about mass
of school curriculum with autocracies, vio­lence among, 174; conflict among, 222;
275–281; definitions of, 48, 51n13; and eco- Sarmiento’s ideas about the cause of civil
nomic development, 311; and economic war well received by, 171–174
re­distribution, 24; expansion of primary in democracies: 248, 320
education and, 38–39, 47–55, 58n23; indoc- in Chile: civil war of 1859 and, 156–158;
trination through primary education in, conflict among, 222–223; moral educa-
 Index | 349

tion of the masses, concern about, 156; in, 44–45, 46; Prus­sia and, comparison of
perception of parental demand for edu- rates of industrialization and primary
cation, 165; support for schooling of the schooling expansion in, 62–63; Reform
masses among, 158–159, 161, 237 Act of 1832, 225, 262; Second Reform Act
in ­England: dangers of mass education (1867), 265–266; timing of industrializa-
according to, 226–227, 262; fear of tion and adoption of landmark educa-
working-­class activism among, 263, 268; tion legislation in, 66
support for mass education among, 267, enrollment rates: across countries and re-
268 gions, 43–47; in Argentina, 167–68, 168;
in France: support for schooling of the child l­ abor in agriculture and, 68n38; in
masses among, 140, 144, 238, 304 Chile, 162, 163; civil war and, 78–86 (see
in Mexico: concern about moral character also internal conflict and mass education;
of the lower classes among, 242, 244; specific countries); collection of data on,
conflict among, 239, 242; ­resistance to 39, 41–43; distinguishing between West-
education intervention, 242 ern and Non-­Western, 73–74n54; in
in Peru: role of education according to, 270; France, 73n52, 137, 146, 147, 149, 150, 153n87;
in Prus­sia: concern about moral character industrialization in Western countries
of the lower classes among, 130; erosion and, 67n37; interstate wars and, 73–75; in
of power among 129–130, 132; failure to Latin Amer­i­ca, 168; non-­democratic
contain disobedient peasants, 131–132; regimes and, 50–54; prior to democ­
reforms targeting nobility, 130n21; sup- ratization, 51, 51–53; in Prus­sia, 73n52
port for schooling of the masses, 136 Erdoğan, Recep, 308
in Sweden: fear of the lower classes among, Ericksson, Katherine, 68n38
220–222; goals of mass education accord- ­Europe: access to primary education in, his-
ing to, 222 torical expansion of, 11–14, 38–86, 44; civil
in the United States: concern about mass war and primary school enrollment rates
vio­lence among, 251–252, 256, 314n17, 315; in, 78–86 (see also internal conflict and
goals of mass education according to, mass education); compulsory schooling
253, 257–258, 261; efforts to provide educa- in, 195–197; democ­ratization and state
tion to Black ­children among, 258–259; intervention in primary education in, 26,
support for schooling of the masses 49; diffusion of ideas about education
among, 251, 258 from, 59–60, 105–106, 159, 173, 188, 253, 259,
El Salvador, 49, 75n56, 80–81, 82n69, 83, 85, 264; expansion of primary education
184n1, 190, 193, 196, 200, 201n19 systems, as the world leader in, 58–59;
­England: Church provision of primary educa- industrialization and access to primary
tion in, 225, 262, 264; civil war of 1642–1651, education in, 66–68; industrialization
94, 223, 225, 262; as an educational lag- and adoption of landmark education
gard, 62–63, 224–227; 1870 Forster Educa- legislation in, 65–66; interstate wars and
tion Act, 45, 50, 63, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 196, access to primary education in, 74; pri-
200, 266–268; first primary education law, mary education laws, timing of first, 49;
timing of, 49, 66, 183n1; Glorious Revolu- primary education statistics, timing of
tion of 1688, 223, 225, 262; ideas about earliest availability of, 49; primary school
mass education in, 225–27, 261–267; indus- enrollment rates in, 43–47; primary
trialization and adoption of landmark school enrollment rates prior to democ­
education legislation in, 66; industrial- ratization in, 53; right-­wing support for
ization and expansion of primary educa- educational expansion in, 56; teacher
tion in, 62–63; internal conflict and ex- certification in, 189–192; teacher training,
pansion of primary education in, 225–227, as the world leader in, 59; teacher train-
262–266; interstate wars and primary ing in, 186–188; teacher recruitment in,
education in, 75n56; ­political consensus 185; school inspection policies in, 192–195;
on mass education in, 265–266; primary state intervention in primary education
education statistics, earliest availability in, timing of, 8–11, 49. See also specific
of, 49; primary school enrollment rates countries
350 | Index

expansion of primary education: across coun- 149, 152–155; compulsory schooling in,
tries and regions, 43–47; Argentina as adoption of, 59; curriculum for primary
case study, 167–181 (see also Argentina); education in, 152–154, 199–201, 203–204;
Chile as case study, 155–167 (see also diffusion of ideas about education in,
Chile); democ­ratization as an explana- 59–60; enrollment data for, 42n6, 73n52;
tion for, 47–55, 58n23 (see also democracy expenditure on primary education in,
/ democ­ratization); the diffusion argu- 145–148, 151; Falloux Law, 45, 80; fiscal
ment as an explanation for, 58–61 (see also capacity and expansion of primary educa-
diffusion theory); economic motivations tion in, 149, 151; first primary education
for (see economic re­distribution); eco- law, timing of, 28, 49, 50, 66, 183n1; fluctua-
nomic re­distribution / social mobility as tion in the rate of expansion of primary
an explanation for, 141 (see also social schooling in, 61; geographic pattern of
mobility); ­England as case study, 224–227, primary education expansion in, 148–150;
261–268 (see also ­England); explanations Guizot Law, 45, 50, 137–138, 142–146, 148–
for, 24–32, 38–39; France as case study, 149, 151–152, 154–155, 154–55, 183n1, 190, 193,
137–155 (see also France); industrialization 196, 200n16; industrialization and expan-
as an explanation for (see industrializa- sion of primary education in, 152; inter-
tion); internal conflict as an explanation state wars and primary school enrollment
for (see internal conflict); interstate wars rates in, 73, 75n56; Jules Ferry Laws, 28,
as an explanation for, 24–25, 28, 71–75 (see 72–73, 73n52, 204; Loi sur l’instruction pri-
also interstate wars); left-­wing / right-­ maire (see Guizot Law ­under this head-
wing autocracies and, 55–58; ­measures of, ing); Normal Schools for teacher training
39–43; Prus­sia as case study, 124–137 (see in,186–188, 190, 294, 307; number of pri-
also Prus­sia); unpop­u­lar among the mary schools in, 149, 150; parental de-
masses, 57–58, 165; variation in the rate of, mand for education in, 58n22, 149, 151;
45, 47. See also enrollment rates primary education statistics, earliest avail-
expenditures on / funding of education: in ability of, 49; primary school enrollment
Chile, 159; collection of data on, 40; in rates in, 44–45, 46, 50–51, 149, 150; primary
France, 145–146, 147, 148, 151 schooling and democracy in, 50–51, 54;
repression in, 138–140; Revolution of 1848,
Fawcett, Henry, 265 education reform a­ fter, 80, 83, 307; Revo-
Felbiger, Johann, 103–107, 114, 128, 135 lution of 1789, education reform ­after, 137,
Finland: civil war and primary school enroll- 238–239; social mobility not a goal of
ment rates in, 80–82, 82n69, 83, 85; data Guizot Law, 140–142; timing of industrial-
for, 49; democ­ratization and primary ization and adoption of landmark educa-
education, 49; education reform ­after tion legislation in, 65–66, 66; universal
World War II, 324; enrollment rates in, male suffrage in, 50
44–45, 46; feminization of the teaching Francke, August Hermann, 103, 133–135
profession in, 185; industrialization and Franco-­Prussian War, 28, 72–73
primary education in, 64n35, 66; inter- Frederick II “the ­Great” (king of Prus­sia), 33,
state wars and primary school enroll- 48, 59, 72, 81, 100–101, 103, 105–106, 115, 125,
ment rates in, 75n56; as primary educa- 127–128, 130–134, 137, 185–186, 191
tion laggard, 44–45; religion and primary Frederick William I (king of Prus­sia), 47
education in, 22; teacher recruitment in, Frederick William III (king of Prus­sia), 105
205; teacher training in, 307 ­free primary schooling for the poor, 40
fiscal capacity. See state capacity Friedman, Milton, 229
Flora, Peter, 42 Friedman, Willa, 287n4, 290n14
Ford, Guy, 131 Frisancho, Susana, 273
Foucault, Michel, 6n6, 7n9, 91–92 Fujimori, Alberto, 269
Fouka, Vasiliki, 300 Fürstenberg, Carl Egon von, 136
France: as case study, 124–125, 137–155; Bouquier
Law, 238–239; Catholic Church and pri- Gallo, Delfin, 213–214
mary education during July Monarchy, Gallo, Pedro León, 157
 Index | 351

Gaskell, Elizabeth, 263 immigration: as a trigger of nation-­building,

Geddes, Barbara, 233–234 25, 29; as an explanation for the expan-
Gellner, Ernest, 27, 61, 63, 68 sion of primary education, 28–29; and
Germany: data for, 11, 49; democ­ratization education reform in Argentina, 29,
and primary education in, 49, 54; educa- 176n161, 178–180, 306–307; and education
tion reform a­ fter the 1848 Revolution, reform in the United States, 29, 256, 292;
305–306; enrollment rates, 44, 75n56; effect of education on assimilation of,
parental influence, education policy and, 299; internal conflict and, 31–32, 314
300; studies of educational system in, 60, India, 49, 64n35
188, 264. See also Prus­sia indoctrination: conditions conducive to, 36, 121,
Ghana, 49, 55–56 218–219, 223, 231, 236, 239, 245, 314; deem-
girls’ education, 143n64 phasizing, 324; definition of, 5, 249–251,
Gintis, Herbert, 25n31, 62n26 255n21; in democracies, 36, 231, 247–249,
Global Education First Initiative (United 258–259, 275, 282; education as, 3, 31–32, 118,
Nations), 320 227, 231, 282; goals, 122, 182, 202, 231, 238, 245;
Gómez, Eusebio, 181 international ­organizations and, 322–324;
Gontard, Maurice, 144 mechanisms of, 89–91; in non-­democratic
Goyena, Pedro, 212–213 regimes, 116, 233–236; as a policy tool,
Gramsci, Antonio, 25n31 109–110, 112, 218, 223; prevalence of, global
­Great Britain. See ­England dataset indicating, 36, 275–281, 315; psycho-
Greece, 49, 59, 65, 66, 75n56, 82n69, 83–84, logical consequences of, 297–298; as a
183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199, 200, 201n19, strategy to maintain social / ­political
203 order, 3–4, 20, 89–91, 251, 282, 289–290
Grew, Raymond, 73n52 Indonesia, 49, 64n35, 287–288, 300n33
Grzymala-­Busse, Anna, 23n25, 24n29 industrialization: content of the curriculum
Guatemala, 49, 82n69, 184n1, 190, 191, 193, 195, in non-­Western countries and, 69–71;
196, 200n16, 201n19 content of the curriculum in Western
Güemes, Miguel María, 161–162, 164 countries and, 68–69; data identifying
Guerry, André-­Michel, 140, 304 the onset of, prob­lems presented by,
Guizot, François, 137, 139–144, 146, 151–155 63–65; enrollment rates in Western coun-
Guizot Inquiry (L’enquête Guizot), 146 tries and, 67n37; expansion of primary
Guizot Law. See France, Guizot Law education and, 38, 61–63, 66–68, 71; ex-
Guzmán, Abimael, 269 pansion of primary education in Argen-
Gvirtz, Silvina, 295 tina and, 180–181; expansion of primary
education in Chile and, 165–166; expan-
Harrigan, Patrick, 73n52 sion of primary education in ­England
Hecker, Johann, 103, 107, 128, 133–135 and, 25–26, 224–226, 263, 267; expansion
Hobbes, Thomas, 87, 94–97, 100 of primary education in France and, 152,
Hobijn, Bart, 64 155; expansion of primary education
Honduras, 49, 82n69 prior to, 38–39; expansion of primary
­human capital, 24, 26, 32–33, 229 education in the Soviet ­Union and, 69–70,
Humphrey, David, 252 228; as an explanation for the expansion
Hungary, 49, 64n35, 74n56, 106 of primary education, 2, 24–28, 61–62;
internal conflict and, 31–32; timing of
ideas about mass education: changes during adoption of landmark education legisla-
the second half of the twentieth c­ entury, tion and, 65–66, 66
228–231; during the Enlightenment, 94– inspection of schools: in France, 143, 145–146,
99; global diffusion of, 105–107; as indoc- 153–154, 289; local versus centralized, 194,
trination, 89–91; in Latin Amer­ic­ a, 91; 307; to monitor enrollment, 10, 40; in the
Pietism and, 102–103, 133–135; positivist Netherlands, 194; policies for, 3, 35, 50, 92,
(see positivism / positivist); in Prus­sia, 118, 120, 184, 192–195, 299; priests’ involve-
100–105, 132–137; as state-­building, 100; in ment in, 113, 143, 145, 153, 193; in Prus­sia,
social contract theories, 93–100 126; in Sweden, 194, 237
352 | Index

internal conflict: armed conflict in Peru, 268– Kaestle, Carl, 251, 259n43, 261
269; banking crises, distinct from, 86; Kant, Immanuel, 96, 98, 206
Black Lives ­Matter (BLM), 314–315; chal- ­Kenya, 49, 287n4, 290, 313–314
lenge posed by studying, 76–77; Civil Kingsley, Charles, 263
Rights Movement, 308; civil war in Ar- Kleist, Conrad, 131–132
gentina, 168–170, 172–174; civil war in Knox, Samuel, 257
Chile, 155–160 (see also Chile), 162; civil Knutsen, Carl Henrik, 281
wars, focus on, 77–78; common belief ­Korea, Republic of (South), 49, 64n35
that t­ here is no connection between Kosack, Stephen, 55n18
expansion of primary education and,
75–76; expansion of primary education La conciencia de un niño (A Child’s Con-
and, 39, 58, 61, 78–86; mass vio­lence in science), 164, 211
France, 138–43, 148–149, 150, 151, 155; peas- Lastarria, José, 159
ant rebellions in Prus­sia, 128–132, 136; Latin Amer­i­ca: civil war and primary school
rebellions in the United States during enrollment rates in, 78–86; ­European
the Early Republic, 251–253, 256, 259; in influence on ideas about education, 60;
Sweden, perception of, 221 interstate wars and expansion of primary
internal conflict and mass education: theory education in, 71; primary education laws,
linking, 2–3, 19–20, 30–32, 108–123; Ar- timing of first, 49; primary school enroll-
gentina as case study, 167–181 (see also ment rates in, 43–47, 168; primary school
Argentina); cases providing evidence for enrollment rates prior to democ­ratization
the theory of, 124–125, 248; Chile as case in, 53; right-­wing support for educational
study, 155–167 (see also Chile); ­England as expansion in, 56–57; timing of industrial-
case study, 261–68 (see also ­England); ization and adoption of landmark educa-
evidence of expansion of primary educa- tion legislation in, 65–66, 66. See also spe-
tion and, 14–15, 58, 61, 75–86; France as cific countries
case study, 137–155 (see also France); Peru laws regulating primary education
as case study, 268–275 (see also Peru); Argentina: 1884 Law of Common Educa-
predictors of, 123; Prus­sia as case study, tion, 45, 50, 167–168, 171, 175–177, 180–181,
125–137 (see also Prus­sia); United States as 183n1, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199, 200,
case study, 251–261 (see also United 201n19, 208–210, 212, 214, 216; Ley 1420 (see
States) 1884 Law of Common Education ­under
interstate wars: in Argentina, 180–181; in this heading)
Chile, 165; curriculum to train soldiers Austria: 1774 General School Ordinance,
for, 203–204; in E ­ ngland, 225; as an expla- 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200n16, 201n19
nation for the expansion of primary Belgium: 1842 Organic Law of Primary
education, 24–26, 28, 31–32, 71; and pri- Instruction, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 201n19
mary school enrollment rates, 2, 28, 38, Brazil: 1879 Decreto 7.247, 183n1, 190n10, 193,
71–75; in Prus­sia, 126–128 196, 201n19
investment in education. See expenditures on Chile: 1860 General Law of Primary Educa-
/ funding of education tion (Lei de Instrucción Primaria), 156,
Iran, 49, 64n35 160–162, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200, 200n16;
Ireland, 49, 59, 62, 64n35, 65 collection of data on, 40; compulsory
Israel, Jonathan, 98–99n35 schooling laws, 59 (see also compulsory
Italy, 22, 49, 64n35, 66, 75n56, 82n69, 180, 183n1, primary education)
185, 190, 191, 193, 196, 200, 200n16, 201n19, Colombia: 1870 Decreto Orgánico de Instruc-
288 ción Pública, 183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196,
200n16, 201n19
Jamaica, 49, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 195, 196, 199n15, Costa Rica: 1869 Reglamento de Instrucción
200 Primaria, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200n16,
Japan, 49, 54, 64n35, 70–71, 269 201n19
Jefferson, Thomas, 253, 255, 259 Cuba: 1844 Plan General de Instrucción
Juárez Celman, Miguel Angel, 178n160 Pública para las Islas de Cuba y Puerto
 Index | 353

Rico, 183n1, 190, 191, 193, 196, 200n16, timing of earliest, 49, 50, 60
201n19 timing of landmark and industrialization,
Denmark: 1814 School Acts, 66, 183n1, 190, lack of a clear pattern linking, 65–66, 66
193, 196, 200n16, 201, 201n19, 203 “learning crisis,” 7, 32, 311–13
­Ecuador: 1871 Ley Reforma de la Educación, Lee, Hanol, 11–12, 40, 42–43, 64, 74n55
183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199n15, 200 Lee, Jong-­Wha, 11–12, 40, 42–43, 64, 74n55
El Salvador: 1873 Reglamento de Instrucción Leguizamón, Onésimo, 175, 176n154
Pública, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 200n16, Levi, Margaret, 3n1
201n19 Levitsky, Steven, 116
­England: 1870 Forster Education Act, 45, Lieberman, Evan S., 124n1
50, 63, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 196, 200, Lindert, Peter H., 73n52, 75
266–268 Lindvall, Johannes, 23n24
France: 1848 Falloux Law, 80; 1833 Guizot Lipset, Seymour Martin, 32n44
Law, 45, 50, 137–138, 142–146, 148–149, Lleras Camargo, Alberto, 82
151–152, 154–155, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, Locke, John, 96–98, 103, 254
200n16; 1881/82 Jules Ferry Laws, 28, 72–73, López Mateos, Adolfo, 57
73n52, 204; 1833 Loi sur l’instruction pri- Lowe, Robert, 266
maire (see 1833 Guizot Law u ­ nder this Luna, Diego, 272nn101–2, 274nn109–11,
heading) 275nn112–13
opposition to: in Chile, 165; in France, 152,
155; in Prus­sia, 127 Madison, James, 253
Greece: 1834 Law, 183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196, Magaloni, Beatriz, 233
199, 201n19, 203 Mann, Horace, 17, 60, 106, 107n60, 259,
Guatemala: 1875 Ley Orgánica de Instrucción 263
Pública Primaria, 183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196, Mann, Michael, 33n48
200n16, 201n19 Manzano, Dulce, 55n18
Italy: 1859 Casati Law, 183n1, 190, 191, 193, Maria Theresa (queen of Austria), 106, 115
196, 200n16, 201n19 Marlborough, George Charles Spencer-­
Jamaica: 1892 Elementary Education Law, Churchill, 8th Duke of, 266
183n1, 190n10, 193, 195, 196, 199n15, 200 Marshall, Alfred, 25n31
Mexico: 240n44 Martin, Cathie Jo, 66
Netherlands: 1806 Education Act, 183n1, Martínez, Maximiliano Hernández, 81
190, 193, 196, 201n19 Marx, Karl, 25n31, 250
Norway: 1827 Law Concerning the Peasant Mas­sa­chu­setts, 59, 251–252
School System in the Country, 183n1, 190, Mas­sa­chu­setts Board of Education, 259
193, 195, 196, 200n16, 201n19 masses, the: breakdown of social order / crisis
Peru: 1850 Primera Ley de Instrucción Pública, in rural authority among the, 128–132,
183n1, 190, 193, 196, 201n19; 2003 General 136–137; lower classes in France, 138–140,
Law of Education (Ley General de Edu- 151; lower classes in Sweden, 221–222;
cación), 271 moral degradation among, perception of,
Prus­sia: 1763 General Rural School Regula- 130 (see also moral character); peasants
tions, 50, 72, 125–128, 134–135, 183n1, 190, and factory workers in Finland, 81; peas-
193, 195, 196, 199, 200n16, 201n19, 203, 208, ants and indigenous communities in
306 El Salvador, 81; peasant and working
Spain: 1857 Ley de Instrucción Pública, 183n1, classes in Mexico, 239; peasants in Prus­
190, 193, 195, 196, 200n16, 201 sia, 128–132, 136–137, 305; peasants, work-
Sweden: 1842 Elementary School Statute / ers, and artisans in Chile, 156; rural and
School Act, 69, 183n1, 190, 195, 193, 196, indigenous groups in Peru, 269; rural
201n19, 220, 222, 298 masses in Argentina, 172–176; in the
Uruguay: 1877 Ley 1.350, 45, 183n1, 190n10, United States, 252; working class in
193, 195, 196, 201n19 ­England, 225–227, 263–266. See also elites /
Venezuela: 1870 Decreto de Instrucción upper classes
Pública, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 196, 201n19 Melton, James, 72, 128, 131–132
354 | Index

Mexico: as case study, 239–244; civil war and 112, 153, 202, 205–206; competing models
primary school enrollment rates in, of, 23, 88, 120, 184, 203–217, 291; conse-
82n69; curriculum for primary education quences for social order, 291, 306; as a
in, 69, 244; data for, 302n34; data on lit- goal of primary education systems, 6, 21,
eracy for, 311n2; democracy and primary 22, 27, 30, 35, 117–118, 120, 202; emphasized
schooling in, 54; electoral autocracy in, in national curriculums for primary
280; first primary education law, timing education, 3, 21, 120, 184, 197–208; in
of, 49, 66, 183n1, 240n44; expansion of ­England, 266–268; in France, 22, 144, 153,
primary education ­after the Mexican 200, 201; in Peru, 269, 272–273; in Prus­sia,
Revolution, 242–243; expansion of pri- 68, 101, 104–106, 136, 200, 201, 206, 306–307;
mary education ­under the Porfiriato, in the United States, 60, 256–259. See also
240–242; incentives for school atten- moral character
dance in, 195–196, 299n31; indoctrination modernization, 32, 121, 151
of the masses in, 116, 242, 244; industrial- More, Hannah, 227
ization and primary education, 64n35,
66; internal conflict in, 239; as primary Napoleon III (emperor of France), 50
education laggard, 20, 36, 47, 122, 182, National Commission on Excellence in Edu-
218–219, 239–245; primary education sta- cation, 229
tistics, earliest availability of, 49; primary nation-­building: diffusion theory and, 25, 30,
school enrollment rates, 44–45, 46; right-­ 58–61; education as, 20, 58, 71, 90; expan-
wing support for educational expansion sion of Argentine schooling and, 178–180,
in, 57; state capacity in, 240, 242–244 306–307; expansion of Prus­sian school-
Meyer, John, 75 ing and, 126–128; immigration waves as a
­Middle East, 52, 310 trigger of, 25, 29; language of instruction
military rivalry / military interpretations of and, 22, 100, 200, 201–202; military rivalry
primary school expansion. See interstate and, 71, 127–128; relative low priority as a
wars reason for mass education, 20, 22, 89–90,
Miller, Michael, 48n11, 51n13 100, 201–202, 208; in Rwanda, 322; theo-
Mincer, Jacob, 229 ries of education based on, 24–26, 30. See
Mitchell, Brian, 41–42, 73–74n54 also state-­building
Mitre, Bartolomé, 169, 174 Netherlands, the, 49, 60, 62, 64n35, 65, 66,
Mokyr, Joel, 25n31, 27n38, 62nn26–27, 64n33 75n56, 178, 183n1, 190, 193, 194, 196, 200,
Montalivet, Marthe Camille Bachasson 201n19, 264
Comte de, 142–143 Neundorf, Anja, 234, 276
Montt, Manuel, 157, 159–160 Newcastle Report of 1861, 264
moral character: certification of required for Nicaragua, 49, 75n56, 82n69
aspiring teachers, 190, 191; conservative Nipperdey, Thomas, 305n39
model of teaching moral princi­ples, 35, Nkrumah, Kwame, 56
211–214; liberal model of teaching moral Normal School of Berlin, 48, 134, 186, 191
princi­ples, 35, 214–217; mass education Normal School of Versailles, 187
and, 123; mass education in Argentina to Normal Schools: 184, 186, 293–294; in Argen-
shape, 168–169, 172–176; mass education tina, 60, 174, 175, 177, 186, 209, 210; in Chile,
in Chile to shape, 158, 160–162, 165; mass 60, 159, 161, 186, 209, 210; degree from
education in France to shape, 144–146, required to obtain a certificate or license
152, 153–154; mass education in Prus­sia to to teach, 190, 191–192; in ­Europe, 59; first
shape, 136–137; of the masses in Argen- state-­sponsored, 134; formation of
tina, 172–175; of the masses in France, teacher ­organizations from within, 294;
140–142, 148; Ten Commandments as in France, 143n67, 186, 307 (see also Nor-
guide for, 205; in the training of teachers, mal School of Versailles); mono­poly
3, 188–189. See also moral education over teacher training by, 21, 59; in Prus­sia,
moral education: in Argentina, 177, 181, 59 (see also Normal School of Berlin);
208–211; in Chile, 156, 164, 200, 201–202, state regulation of, 186–88; in the United
206, 208–211; by the Church, 18–19, 23, 94, States, 59, 60
 Index | 355

Norway, 11, 22, 49, 59, 62, 64n35, 65, 66, 75n56, Pledge of Allegiance, 261
183n1, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194–95, 196, 200, Polity Proj­ect, 48n11, 51n13
200n16, 201n19 Ponce de León, Macarena, 159
Porfirio Díaz (José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz
Obama, Barack, 318n21 Mori), 240–241, 244
Obregón, Alvaro, 242–243 Portugal, 49, 59, 64n35, 66, 75n56
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-­ positivism / positivist, 206–207, 214, 240–241,
operation and Development), 7, 38, 311n2 291–292
PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), 57,
Panama, 49, 311n2 280, 296
Pancasila (Indonesia), 288 primary education, expansion of. See expan-
Paraguay, 49, 75n56, 82n69, 180, 302n34 sion of primary education
peasant rebellions, 128–132, 136–137. See also Programme for International Student Assess-
internal conflict ment (PISA), 281
Peña, Jesús, 272nn101–102, 274nn109–111, Prost, Antoine, 144
275nn112–113 Prus­sia: as case study, 124–137; Church-­State
Pennsylvania, 251, 254 relations in, 23, 125; civil war and primary
Pérez Mascayano, José, 161 school enrollment rates in, 80; compul-
Périer, Casimir, 139 sory primary education in, 48, 59, 68, 72,
Perón, Eva “Evita,” 295 102, 126, 128, 136, 306; curriculum for
Perón, Juan Domingo, 56, 295, 308 primary education in, 68, 126–127, 197,
Peronist Doctrine, 295, 308 199–204, 306; ­England and, comparison
Peru: as case study, 268–275; Catholic Church of rates of industrialization and primary
in, 269; certification requirements for schooling expansion in, 62–63; first pri-
teachers in, 190; civil war and primary mary education law, timing of, 28, 49, 59,
school enrollment rates in, 82n69, 270; 72, 128, 66, 183n1; French study of the
compulsory schooling provisions, 196; education system in, 141; ideas about
Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación education, diffusion of, 17, 59–60, 105–107;
(Truth and Reconciliation Commission; industrialization and adoption of land-
CVR), 269–270; Communist Party of mark education legislation in, 66; inter-
Peru / Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path; state wars and expansion of primary
PCP-­SL), 269–270, 274; curriculum for education in, 72, 126–128; mass education
primary schools in, 200, 201n19, 270–273; to shape moral character, 136–137; as
data on literacy, 311n2; Educational Emer- model for state-­building, 93, 281; moral
gency of 2003, 270; 1850 Primera Ley de education in, 68, 101, 104–106, 136, 200,
Instrucción Pública, 183n1, 190, 193, 196, 201, 206, 306–307; nation-­building and
201n19; first primary education law, tim- primary schooling expansion in, 126–128;
ing of, 49, 66, 183n1; indoctrination in non-­democratic roots of primary educa-
demo­cratic, 248–249, 268–274, 281, 314, tion in, 47–48; Normal Schools for
321; industrialization and primary educa- teacher training in, 48, 59, 134, 186, 191;
tion in, 64n35, 66; internal conflict and peasant rebellions in, 128–132, 136–137,
curriculum reform in, 270–273; internal 148n77; Pietism and education in, 93,
conflict and expansion of primary educa- 102–103, 125, 133–136, 223; primary school
tion in, 270; interstate wars and primary enrollment rates in, 43–44, 44, 46, 73n52;
education in, 75n56; moral education in, reform of education in, 132–137, 305–306;
269, 272–273; primary education statistics, religion and education reform in, 134–
earliest availability of, 49; school inspec- 135; Revolution of 1848, education reform
tion policies in, 193; teachers in, 270, ­after, 80, 305–306; 1763 General Rural
273–275; 2003 General Law of Education School Regulations, 50, 72, 125–128, 134–135,
(Ley General de Educación), 271 183n1, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199, 200n16, 201n19,
Pietism, 93, 102–103, 125, 133–136, 223 203, 208, 306; teachers in, 48, 134. See also
Pilbeam, Pamela, 138 Felbiger, Johann; Frederick II “the ­Great”;
Plato, 93–94, 97–98 Hecker, Johann
356 | Index

Quiroga, Juan Facundo, 171–172 place in, 198, 291; demand for, 62; eco-
nomic concerns / job market, 229–230,
Radical Party (Chile), 158, 222, 227 311; failure to teach / prioritize, 1, 3, 7, 22,
railroads: in Argentina, 170, 174; implementa- 27–28, 32, 37, 66, 68–69, 71, 181, 231, 257–258,
tion of education reforms and, 236–237, 308–314, 323–24; math / science, 22, 181,
298; in Sweden, 237, 298 184, 204, 228, 280, 291, 310–311, 324; for the
Ramirez, Francisco, 75 military, 71; potential for teaching, 16, 20,
Ramos Mejía, José María, 176n156, 292 24–25, 34, 283, 287, 317–319; reading, 154,
Reátegui, Félix, 273 164, 198, 227, 311; reasoning, cultivation of,
religion 107, 184; social mobility and, 36, 228–229,
Catholic Church (see Catholic Church) 291–292 (see also social mobility); social
Church-­State relations: 23, 107, 112–113; in order and the teaching of, 293; of teach-
Argentina, 23, 125, 171; in Chile, 23, 125, ers, 293, 296, 317–318
156; in France, 23, 125, 138, 143–145, 153–155; Skopp, Douglas, 305n39, 306
in Prus­sia, 23, 125 Smith, Samuel Harrington, 257–258
educational reform and: in Chile, 162, 164; SNTE (Mexico), 296
in Prus­sia, 134–135 social control: education as a policy tool for,
Pietist, 93, 102–103, 125, 133–136, 223 6–7, 17, 32, 125, 230, 314, 319–320; failure of,
Renan, Ernest, 72n51 75 (see also internal conflict); in Prus­sia,
Rengifo, Francisca, 159 102
revolutions of 1848, 48, 80, 83, 305, 307 social mobility: in Argentina, 292, 297; in
Riddle, Phyllis, 41 Chile, 324; democ­ratization and de-
Riehl, Wilhelm, 305 mands for, 24; education as contributor
Roca, Julio A., 61, 170–171, 175–176, 178, 180–181 to, 121, 140–41, 228, 230, 310, 321; primary
Rochner, Dominic, 288nn6–8 schools and, 57, 141; refraining from pro-
Romania, 49, 64n35 moting, 6, 16, 35, 57, 105, 141, 227. See also
Romer, Paul, 229 economic re­distribution
Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 171–173, 176n154 Soifer, Hillel, 270
Rosato, Sebastian, 48n11, 51n13 Soininen, Mikael, 81
Rostow, Walt Whitman, 62n29, 64–65 Sota Nadal, Javier, 272
Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 17, 94, 96–100 South Africa, 49, 64n35
Rush, Benjamin, 253–256 Soviet ­Union (­Union of Soviet Socialist Re-
Rus­sia, 49, 50, 54–56, 64n35, 69. See also Soviet publics, USSR), 70, 228. See also Rus­sia
­Union (­Union of Soviet Socialist Repub- Spain: certification requirements for teachers
lics, USSR) in, 190; Chile, war with, 165n125; compul-
Rwanda, 321–322 sory primary education in, 195, 196; cur-
riculum for primary education in, 200,
Saia, Alessandro, 288nn6–8 201; data for, 12, 42n6; democ­ratization
Sarmiento, Domingo F., 60, 91, 106, 114, 158–159, and primary education in, 49; 1857 Ley de
169, 171–180, 185–187, 208–209, 224, 241, 263, Instrucción Pública, 183n1, 190, 193, 195,
304 196, 200n16, 201; enrollment rate in, 62–63,
Schlabrendorff, Ernst Wilhelm von, 136 82n69; feminization of the teaching pro-
Schleunes, Karl, 130, 135–136 fession in, 185; immigration to Argentina
Secretary of Public Education (SEP; Mexico), from, 180; i­ ndependence of colonies
241, 243 from, 60, 168, 239; industrialization and
Serrano, Sol, 159, 161 primary education in, 66; interstate war
Seven Years’ War, 28, 72, 126–28 and primary education in, 75n56; Nor-
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-­Cooper, 7th Earl mal Schools, 59; primary education in
of, 266 pre-­industrial, 65; religion and primary
Shays’ Rebellion, 251–253, 256, 259 education in, 22; Sarmiento’s travel to,
Sierra, Justo, 241–242, 244 60; school inspection policies in, 193;
skills: citizenship, 273; critical thinking, teachers purged by Franco, 308
249–251, 281, 291, 317, 320, 324; curriculum, Spener, Phillip Jacob, 103
 Index | 357

Spinoza, Baruch de, 98n35 tion law, timing of, 49, 66, 183n1; Normal
Squicciarini, Mara, 151 Schools in, 188; primary education statis-
Stalin, Joseph, 69–70n42 tics, earliest availability of, 49; primary
state, the / central government. See state-­ schooling and democracy in, 54; railroads
building; state capacity and school inspection / enrollment rates
state-­building: in Argentina, 170–171, 233; in in, 237, 298–299; school inspection poli-
Chile, 158; chronic vio­lence as an inhibi- cies in, 193, 194–195; small-­scale vio­lence
tor of, 233; definition of, 3, 88n1; educa- and primary education in, 220–222, 232;
tion as a tool for, 2–3, 16, 20, 30, 34, 87–89, timing of industrialization and adoption
107, 158, 171, 284, 300, 310, 312; efficacy of of landmark education legislation in,
education as a tool for, 285–290, 300; 65–66, 66
ideas about mass education as, 89–100; in Switzerland, 49, 60, 64n35, 66, 264
France, 22; internal threats as a motiva-
tion for, 39, 108–122 (see also internal con- Taiwan, 49, 54, 55n18, 64n35, 70–71
flict and mass education); interstate wars teachers
as a motivation for, 2–3, 33; in Mexico, certification of: across countries, 50, 190; in
242–243; need for, 116; policy tools for, Argentina, 177; in Chile, 164–165; collec-
3–4, 310, 312; p­ rocess of, 2–3; Prus­sia as a tion of data on, 8, 40; in France, 143n67,
model for, 93, 281; relative high priority 145, 154, 191; policies for, 3, 4, 9–10, 21,
as a reason for mass education, 20, 22, 184–185, 189–192
89–90, 100, 181, 201–202; as a theory of moral requirements for: across countries,
education reform, 2–3, 16–23, 29–30, 33, 190; in Argentina, 177; in Austria, 191; in
87–89, 93, 108–122, 218–220, 223, 231–233, Colombia, 191; in Cuba, 191; in Denmark,
236, 244–246; Tilly’s theory of, 2–3, 3n1, 191; in France, 154, 191; in Guatemala, 191;
33. See also expansion of primary educa- laws establishing, 189–192; in Norway, 191;
tion; indoctrination; laws regulating in Prus­sia, 126n4; in Sweden, 191
primary education; moral education; purges of: 307–308
nation-­building; social control recruitment of: 185, 237–238
state capacity: administrative capacity, 36, 121, training of (see also Normal Schools): in
218, 236–237, 245, 247, 298; collaboration Argentina, 167, 177; in Chile, 159, 164–165;
with the Church due to ­limited, 23; fiscal collection of data on, 8, 40; first teacher
capacity, 19, 36, 121, 218, 236–237, 245, 247; training institution in Central E ­ urope,
military / repressive capacity, 3, 94; mini- 133n29; in France, 145; Normal Schools for,
mum level of as precondition for the 59–60, 184, 186, 191–192, 293–294; policies
expansion of primary education, 36, 121, for, 3, 9–10, 21, 184–189, 191; in Prus­sia, 48,
218, 236–247; railroads and (see railroads); 134; state mono­poly over, 48, 164, 167, 191,
relationship with civil war, 119–120; in 293; in Western countries, 50, 184–189, 190
Chile, 166–167; in ­England, 225; in Tedesco, Juan Carlos, 168–169
France, 149, 151, 238; in Mexico, 240, 242, Thailand, 49, 64n35, 235–236, 321
244; in Sweden, 298–299 Thorndike, Edward, 260–261
Stowe, Calvin, 59 Tilly, Charles, 33, 149n82
Sustainable Development Goals (United Na- Torres, José María, 175
tions), 320 Trump, Donald, 315
Sweden: certification requirements for teach- Tsurumi, E. Patricia, 70
ers in, 190, 191; compulsory primary edu- Tuck, Richard, 94
cation in, 59, 195, 196; crime-­reducing Tunisia, 49, 64n35
effects of primary education in, 288; cur- Turkey, 49, 64n35, 246, 308
riculum for primary education in, 69, Tyack, David, 258
200, 201n19; 1842 Elementary School
Statute / School Act, 69, 183n1, 190, 195, Unión Cívica Radical (Argentina; UCR), 292
193, 196, 201n19, 220, 222, 298; expansion United Kingdom, 49, 180, 185, 188. See also
of schooling despite lack of parental ­England; Wales
demand, 57–58n22; first primary educa- United Nations, 4, 84, 230, 285, 320
358 | Index

United Nations ­Children’s Fund (UNICEF), on literacy rates, 311n2; democ­ratization

230 and primary education, 49; 1877 Ley
United Nations Educational, Scientific and 1.350, 45, 183n1, 190n10, 193, 195, 196,
Cultural ­Organization (UNESCO), 12, 201n19; enrollment rates, 44, 46, 82n69;
41–42, 230, 311, 320–321 feminization of the teaching profession,
United States: Black ­children in, efforts to 185; industrialization and primary educa-
educate, 258–259; Black teachers in, tion, 66; as a regional leader in primary
purges of, 308; boll weevil and enroll- education, 45
ment rates in the South, 68n38; as case
study, 251–261; Common School Move- Vaillant, Denise, 296
ment, 259–260; compulsory schooling Vargas, Getúlio, 56
laws in, 29, 59; curriculum for common Va­ri­e­ties of ­Political Indoctrination in Educa-
schools during the Early Republic, tion and the Media Dataset (V-­Indoc),
254–255, 257–258; curriculum reforms 234, 275, 315
­after Black Lives ­Matter (BLM) protests, Vasconcelos, José, 243–44
314–315; democracy and primary educa- Vaughan, Mary Kay, 240n45, 241n47, 241n49,
tion in, 47, 53; education for leveling the 242n53, 242n57, 243n60, 243n62,
playing field in, 257–258; ­European influ- 243nn64–65, 244n66
ence on ideas about education, 17, 59–60, Velasco, Andrés, 312
253, 259–260; expansion of primary edu- Venezuela, 49, 64n35, 65, 66, 184n1, 190, 193,
cation in, timing of, 38; first state educa- 196, 200, 201n19, 295
tion laws in, 252; goals of mass education Vieira, Everett, 270
during the Early Republic, 251, 253, Voitgländer, Nico, 151
257–258, 261; immigration and education Voltaire (François-­Marie Arouet), 96
reform in, 29, 256, 292; indoctrination Volksschule (Prus­sia), 305–6
through elementary education in, 5,
251–261, 314–315; military conflict and Wales, 264, 288
expansion of primary education in, 71; Washington, George, 252
Normal Schools in, 59–60; primary edu- Way, Lucan, 116
cation statistics, earliest availability of, Weber, Eugene, 24n29, 25n32
49; primary school enrollment rates in, Webster, Noah, 254–55, 257
43, 44; Progressive Era, education debates Westberg, Johannes, 221
during, 260–261; Prus­sian influence on Western countries: explaining the expansion
ideas about education, 17, 259–260; rebel- of primary education in, 38–39; industri-
lions during the Early Republic, 251–253, alization and enrollment rates in, 67n37;
256, 259; reports on Soviet education industrialization and expansion of pri-
system, 70; tension between indoctrina- mary education in, 67. See also Amer­i­cas,
tion and liberal education goals in, the; ­Europe
257–261. See also Adams, John Quincy; Whiskey Rebellion, 251, 256
Coram, Robert; Dewey, John; Jefferson, Wilde, Eduardo, 176, 181
Thomas; Mann, Horace; Rush, Benja- Woods, George, 229
min; Webster, Noah Words­worth, William, 226
universal access to schooling: collection of World Bank, 7, 32, 84, 229–230, 237, 270, 311,
data on, 40 321–322, 323n32; education, pressure to
Uruguay: Argentina, war with, 180; certifica- increase, 84. See also “learning crisis”
tion requirements for teachers, 190, 193; Wright, Susannah, 267–268
compulsory primary education, 195, 196;
curriculum for primary education, 199, Zambrano, Raul, 149n79
200, 201n19; data for, 64n35, 302n34; data Zimbabwe, 49, 64n35, 246
 The Prince­ton Economic History of the Western World

Joel Mokyr, Series Editor

Recent Titles

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