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The development and growth of national education systems
One of the most significant phenomena of the 20th century was the dramatic expansion and extension of public (i.e., government-sponsored) education systems around the world—the number of schools grew, as did the number of children attending them. Similarly, the subjects taught in schools broadened from the basics of mathematics and language to include sciences and the arts. Various explanations have been given for the substantial increase in numbers of youths as well as adults attending government-sponsored schools; social scientists tend to categorize the reasons for these enrollment increases as products of either conflict or consensus in the process of social change. In most cases these perspectives are rooted in theories of social science that were formulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Education and social cohesion
One major school of thought is represented in the work of French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who explained social phenomena from a consensus perspective. According to him, the achievement of social cohesion—exemplified in Europe’s large-scale national societies as they experienced industrialization, urbanization, and the secularization of governing bodies—required a universalistic agency capable of transmitting core values to the populace. These values included a common history that contributed to cultural continuity, social rules that instilled moral discipline and a sense of responsibility for all members of the society, and occupational skills that would meet the society’s complex and dynamic needs. Durkheim recognized that public schooling and teachers—as agents of a larger, moral society—served these necessary functions. As he observed in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), “Education sets out precisely with the object of creating a social being.”
Durkheim’s thoughts, expressed near the turn of the 20th century, were reflected in the policies of newly sovereign states in the post-World War II period. Upon achieving their independence, governments throughout Africa and Asia quickly established systems of public instruction that sought to help achieve a sense of national identity in societies historically divided by tribal, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and geographic differences.
Education and social conflict
The German political theorist and revolutionary Karl Marx viewed public schooling as a form of ideological control imposed by dominant groups. This perspective saw education not as building social cohesion but as reproducing a division of labour or enabling various status groups to gain control of organizations and to influence the distribution of valued resources. The German sociologist Max Weber regarded educational credentials as one such resource, in that credentials function as a form of “cultural capital” that can generally preserve the status quo while granting social mobility to select members of society.
Education and personal growth
The American philosopher John Dewey believed that education should mean the total development of the child. On the basis of the observations he made at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools—the experimental elementary schools that he founded in 1896—Dewey developed revolutionary educational theories that sparked the progressive education movement in the United States. As he propounded in The School and Society (1899) and The Child and the Curriculum (1902), education must be tied to experience, not abstract thought, and must be built upon the interests and developmental needs of the child. He argued for a student-centred, not subject-centred, curriculum and stressed the teaching of critical thought over rote memorization.
Later, in Experience and Education (1938), he criticized those of his followers who took his theories too far by disregarding organized subject matter in favour of vocational training or mere activity for their students. If prudently applied, progressive education could, Dewey believed, “shape the experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on their own.” Concurrent pedagogies appeared in European institutions such as Ovide Decroly’s École de l’Ermitage (the Hermitage School), which envisioned students utilizing the classroom as a workshop, and Maria Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini (“Children’s House”), which incorporated experiential and tactile learning methods through students’ use of “didactic materials.”
Education and civil society
Toward the end of the 20th century, comprehensive theories—such as those represented by the consensus and conflict models—were increasingly viewed as oversimplifications of social processes and, in many quarters, gave way to more particularized interpretations. One such perspective viewed educational expansion and extension less as a function of national interest and more as a by-product of religious, economic, political, and cultural changes that had occurred across most of Europe. Especially in the wake of the Enlightenment, an emphasis on the glorification of God was joined by the growing celebration of human progress (ultimately defined as economic growth), while concerns for the salvation of the soul were augmented by the cultivation of individual potential. As nation-states with centralized governments extended citizenship rights in the 18th century, state sponsorship of schools began to supersede the church-supported instruction that had become the norm in the 16th and 17th centuries (see Education, history of: Central European theories and practices). According to such scholars as John Meyer and Michael Hannan in National Development and the World System: Educational, Economic, and Political Change, 1950–1970 (1979), formal systems of education not only represent the means by which nation-states have modernized and prospered economically but are also the surest route to enhancing the talents of individuals. As a requirement for all children and youths between certain ages and as an institution regulated by the state, schooling also became the primary agency for creating citizens with equal responsibilities and rights.
These values emerged in education systems throughout the world, especially in the late 20th century as education professionals promoted them in developed and less-developed countries alike. As such, schools effectively carried modernity into many parts of the world, where it was met with varying degrees of resistance and acceptance. Teachers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government agencies contributed, for example, to standardization in the shape and style of the classroom, types of curricula, and goals for school enrollments. In the first half of the 20th century, schools in most industrialized countries came to exhibit similar characteristics—that is, schools could be identified as schools. By the second half of the 20th century, these traits had become prominent in most schools around the world.