For Comparative Workshop members
Not intended for general circulation
The Historical Origins of Mass Education in Europe and the Rise of the Individual:
A Project Proposal
Seth Chaiklin
February 2002
Prologue
The usual function of an abstract is to communicate, in abstracted form, the main content that will
be presented in the full presentation. This function is well-suited when author and readers share a
common disciplinary framework, so that shared assumptions can remain in the background and the
"new" material can be put forward. In the present case, I cannot enjoy the efficiency of this
tradition, because I am uncertain what disciplinary framework(s) are shared here. Therefore, this
note is meant to sketch some of my motivations and interests for wanting to participate in and
interact with the members of the Comparative Workshop. In that way, I do not have to bore you
with this background material during my presentation and can concentrate on presenting some more
substantive arguments, that might be more interesting for you than my own biographical
motivations.
Global Interests
My long-term research interest is to explore the relationship between the historical rise of the
nation-state and the concept of the individual. There are several reasons for this interest. First, as a
psychologist, the traditional focus is upon the individual. However, it is rare (for psychologists) to
consider that the notion of “individual” is historically constructed (and not a ‘natural’ category),
thus it is an open research problem to understand how to give a concrete account of that
construction. Second, one of my normal duties is to contribute to the preparation of persons who
will become practising psychologists (e.g., working for diverse welfare-oriented agencies in
schools, hospitals, and other forms of social services). I believe that (in principle), it is important to
have some reflective understanding of this historical construction, not only as an interesting story,
but as directly relevant to one’s practice. The (big) problem is to be able to formulate that analysis
in a way that is useful for persons engaged in psychological practice. Third, within my theoretical
tradition (cultural-historical psychology), a concept of personality (which I will not try to
summarise here, see Chaiklin, 2001) depends on understanding a person’s relation to societal
practices. Are we (as cultural-historical psychologists) sufficiently conscious of the assumptions
that are going into constructing such a theoretical concept? I think issues about the relation between
individual and nation-state are relevant in this connection. Fourth, I am interested in the
political/ethical consequences of understanding the individual in relation to the state — not as an
analytic problem, but in terms of its implications for psychological practice and intervention in
particular, and in civil society more generally. This problem has also been confronted in diverse
ways by people here at Stanford (e.g., Meyer, 1986; Meyer, 1997; Meyer, Boli, Thomas, &
Ramirez, 1997; Meyer & Jepperson, 2000, Ramirez, 1989; Thomas, Meyer, Ramirez, & Boli,
1987).
My current belief is that it is more productive to try to understand the development of particular
societal institutions (e.g., schools, care of the elderly, health care) as a way to understand how an
individual is conceptualised. Furthermore, it is not possible to study conceptions of the
‘individual’, rather what rights and responsibilities are (and are not) ascribed to persons reflect, in
effect, our conception of individuals. Therefore, at the most concrete level, my immediate objective
is to develop a dynamic-causal model of the origins of obligatory, nationally organised schooling in
Denmark. Of course there are many historical accounts of the origin of the Danish folkeskole
origins (e.g., Larsen, 1899, Nørgaard, 1977, Pedersen, 1978), but not so many that aim to give a
theoretical explanation. The ideal product will be an analysis of the factors or forces that have
contributed to the origins and maintenance of the national schooling system in Denmark. There are
several theoretical traditions that I will use to start this project. One approach is inspired by
Foucault, and consists of the analysis of documents as a way of understanding how societal
conceptions of individuals are constructed. In this respect, the work of Kharkhordin (1999), who
analysed the relation between the state and individual in Russia, is a useful model. Another is the
historical and political analysis made by Tim Knudsen (1991, 1995) about the relation between the
development of nation-states in Denmark and Sweden and the relation between the state and its
citizens. In particular, he shows how the form of the welfare state in Sweden and Denmark can be
understood in relation to historical differences in the power relations between the king, nobility, and
peasantry in the two nation-states. This kind of concrete historical analysis should be directly
useful in considering the discourses that also appear at that time. There is a specific study of the
historical development of the schooling system in Sweden (Boli, 1989), which will be considered as
well.
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Main Focus of My Presentation
I will start with a short summary of the main theses of Ramirez and Boli in relation to the origins of
schooling in Europe. For those who already know these ideas, it will provide an opportunity to
check whether I have understood them correctly, while for those who have avoided reading this
material, it will be an opportunity to get a brief orientation. Then I will outline the arguments of
Tim Knudsen in more detail (on the assumption that it is not familiar to this audience). I want to
use Knudsen’s work as an example of the potential value of taking a more historically concrete
approach. Finally, I will try to stop after 30 minutes so that I can get to my primary hidden agenda,
which is to (a) get your suggestions about relevant literature to read, (b) your opinions about
potential problems, and (c) your challenges to the coherence and sensibility of the proposed project,
so that I might have a chance to give a more substantive version later this year.
Slightly More Elaborated Background and Motivation
Over the past 20 years, there has been increasing attention to the necessity for considering
psychological questions in a relational way, including societal dimensions. This interest has
appeared within several different theoretical traditions including the ecological (e.g.,
Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994), situated (e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991),
cultural-historical (e.g., Leontjev, 1983; Chaiklin, Hedegaard, & Jensen, 1999) integrative levels
(e.g., Gottlieb, 1992), societal psychology (e.g., Himmelweit, 1990), systems approaches (Sameroff,
1983), contextualism (Lerner & Kaufman, 1985), and interactionism (Magnusson, 1999).
At the same time, it is difficult to find worked-out examples that clearly show the relationships
between historical, societal developments and specific psychological characteristics. That is,
although a number of different theoretical perspectives within psychology have come to recognise
the importance of societal processes in relation to the development of specific psychological
characteristics, the existing research has remained at a programmatic level, stating the importance
and need for this kind of work, but not actually providing concrete examples.
In reflecting about this state of affairs, I have come to the following hypotheses for explaining the
lack of psychologically-oriented research that integrates historical, societal analysis. First and
foremost, psychologists are not trained to do sociological and historical analysis. Even if there is
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interest, one does not usually know how to approach such problems in a systematic and professional
manner. Second, existing analyses in sociology, anthropology, and political science are conducted
in relation to their own theoretical interests and problems. It is therefore understandable that their
results are not formulated in a way that can be simply picked up from their research reports and
applied directly to questions and problems that concern psychologists. Nor is it surprising that it
will probably be necessary to rework or extend these analyses in ways that will be useful for
psychological questions. Third, there are institutional factors that also contribute to the lack of
adequate psychological research into these questions. For example, in many countries, psychology
is considered to be primarily an experimental science, and there are often strong institutional
pressures for persons to publish their work in specific journals that only accept experimental work.
Moreover, the use of historical and sociological research requires the investigation of many topics
that do not appear, on the surface, to be especially relevant to psychology. Both these factors can
create difficulties for researchers who are interested in addressing societal dimensions of
psychological questions, but must justify that they are working on psychological questions. In other
words, even if there is interest in considering societal questions, there are not always the
institutional possibilities for psychological researchers to work with such questions.
All these considerations lead me to believe that if psychologists are going to be able to integrate
historical and sociological considerations into their psychological analyses, then they will need to
learn to develop these analyses themselves. However, given that sociology, history, anthropology,
and political science have already developed methods and traditions about how to approach such
questions, it seems important for psychologists to become sufficiently oriented to these methods,
principles and standards, before starting their own research along these lines. This is not to say that
the disciplinary standards from other research traditions should be uncritically imported wholesale
into psychology, but only to recognise that it is likely that one can benefit from general theoretical
models already developed in other disciplines, while learning to avoid some of the mistakes and
pitfalls that they have discovered when doing this kind of work. If some psychologists can become
more familiar with these intellectual approaches, then it should be easier for them to develop
specific historical and societal analyses that can be more readily incorporated into psychological
research.
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My interest appeared initially because of the model developed by Ramirez and his colleagues about
the origins of obligatory mass schooling in Europe (e.g., Boli, Ramirez, & Meyer, 1985; Ramirez &
Boli, 1987; Boli & Ramirez, 1992). The central theme of their model is that schooling systems were
formed by nation-states as a process for creating national unity. (It is striking that another
researcher, in an independent analysis, came to similar conclusions about the importance of
schooling systems in relation to the rise of nation-states, Green, 1990.) Ramirez and colleagues
postulated that the institution of obligatory schooling was motivated by five legitimating "myths"
that are found in modern Western nation-states. One of these myths is the concept of the individual,
where actions by the state, such as schooling systems, contribute to the creation and maintenance of
the idea of "individual" as the main or important unit within the state.
Ramirez et al.'s model is, by their own account, somewhat speculative, in that it only considered the
year in which a school law was created, and some of the general, primarily economic and military,
conditions. They did not consider the specific historical process for the creation of these schooling
systems in individual countries. Although the general pattern of analysis may be valid for each
country, it is important, for a psychological level of analysis, to understand more specifically the
developments that have occurred within specific countries.
However, unlike the sociologists, my interest also goes further to consider the meaning of these
historical processes in relation to the demands and expectations that are formulated for teachers and
pupils alike. It is at this level of description that one is more likely to encounter issues that are
meaningful for the description of the psychological development. Therefore, I will use activity
theory as developed within the cultural-historical tradition (e.g., Leontjev, 1983). Although this
theoretical tradition emphasises the necessity of understanding individual development in relation to
societal development in its conceptual foundation, while specific studies are not usually conducted
in its actual practice (Chaiklin, 1994). However, the theoretical concepts of activity theory, with its
focus on individuals internalising societally-formed activities, provides a way to start to link the
societal analyses more specifically with the psychological ones. [Note1: the cultural-historical
tradition could be characterised as historical materialist and dialectical in its theoretical
commitments (even if most of its practitioners often do not have the theoretical and conceptual
knowledge to be able to put those commitments into practice.). My own interest in this project is to
attempt to give an explanatory account of the rise of mass schooling, by starting from a historical
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materialist perspective. At the same time, it is my expectation that a dialectical model will be a
promising way to formulate a tool that would be useful to practising psychologists. Note2: I do not
plan to talk about that unless asked about it.]
References
Boli, J. (1989). New citizens for a new society: The institutional origins of mass schooling in Sweden. Oxford:
Pergamon.
Boli, J., & Ramirez, F. O. (1992). Compulsory schooling in the Western cultural context. In R. Arnove, P. G. Altbach,
& G. P. Kelly (Eds.), Emergent issues in education: Comparative perspectives (Vol. 21, pp. 25-38). Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Boli, J., Ramirez, F. O., & Meyer, J. W. (1985). Explaining the origins and expansion of mass education. Comparative
Education Review, 29, 145-170. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature-nuture reconceptulized in developmental perspective: A bioecological
model. Psychological Review, 101, 568-586.
Chaiklin, S. (1994). Where is the "historical" in the cultural-historical tradition? Multidisciplinary Newsletter for
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Chaiklin, S. (2001). The category of 'personality' i cultural-historical psychology. In S. Chaiklin (Ed.), The theory and
practice of cultural-historical psychology (pp. 238-259). Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press.
Gottlieb, G. (1992). Individual development and evolution: The genesis of novel behavior. New York: Oxford
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Green, A. (1990). Education and state formation: The rise of education systems in England, France and the USA.
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