Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building: Contributions of Comparative Education to the Understanding of Nations and Nationalism 2022050534, 2022050535, 9781032307589, 9781032326474, 9781003315988

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Editor and Contributors
Introduction: Understanding nationalism through the lens of education
1 Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism
2 “The divine fire . . . burns within them.” National Davids and Goliaths in Swiss, Danish, and Scottish school lessons
3 Nation-building by education statistics and data: A comparative perspective on school surveys in Switzerland, France, and Scotland
4 Education and nationalism after empire: Imposing and inventing the nation as the fundament of the modern state in interwar Austria and “Slovene Yugoslavia”
5 Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America: An overview of early-twentieth-century Argentina and Mexico
6 Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education: Christianity and political ideologies in shaping one nation and two states
7 Nation-building and curriculum in Canada
8 Primers as a nation’s self-portrait: The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s
9 Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene: Insights from (post) soviet early literacy textbooks
10 Reform histories and changing educational conceptions of the nation and nationalism in Norwegian and Swedish curricula (1900–2020)
11 Concluding chapter: Education, nationalism, and internationalism: gap-filling and gap-creating
Index

Citation preview

Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building

Contributing to interdisciplinary discussions on nationalism, the book explores how educational systems and practices contribute to the phenomena of nationalism and nation-building. Using nine comparative case studies from four continents, the book elaborates a theoretical understanding of nationalism from the perspectives of comparative education research. It integrates the theme of nation, nationbuilding and nationalism and its involvement with issues of education. It explores the theoretical scope of concepts such as national identities, national literacies, or “doing” nation. The book revives the idea that nation should be the starting point of comparative research and contributes to the theoretically reflective integration of nationalism research into education research. This timely book will be highly relevant for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of comparative education, international education, education policy, and curriculum studies. Daniel Tröhler is Professor of Foundations of Education, University of Vienna, Austria.

Oxford Studies in Comparative Education Series editor: David Phillips, University of Oxford

Oxford Studies in Comparative Education explores a range of issues relevant to the field of comparative education. With a focus on innovative research of wide international interest, it brings together the work of established and emerging authors and researchers. The series comprises both edited volumes and singleauthored books that explore the vibrant field of comparative education and will be of wide relevance to academics and students interested in comparative inquiry, its methods and its lessons. Previously published by Symposium Books from 1991 to 2018, this longestablished series has a history of publishing quality titles across a huge range of topics. Books in this series include: Examining Teach For All International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network Edited by Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger, and Katherine Crawford-Garrett Schoolteachers and the Nordic Model Comparative and Historical Perspectives Edited by Jesper Eckhardt Larsen, Fredrik W. Thue and Barbara Schulte The Status of the Teaching Profession Interactions Between Historical and New Forms of Segmentation Edited by Xavier Dumay and Katharine Burn Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building Contributions of Comparative Education to the Understanding of Nations and Nationalism Edited by Daniel Tröhler

For more information about this series,  please visit: www.routledge.com/ Oxford-Studies-in-Comparative-Education/book-series/OSCE

Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building

Contributions of Comparative Education to the Understanding of Nations and Nationalism

Edited by Daniel Tröhler

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Daniel Tröhler; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Daniel Tröhler to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tröhler, Daniel, editor. Title: Education, curriculum and nation-building : contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism / edited by Daniel Tröhler. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Oxford studies in comparative education | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022050534 (print) | LCCN 2022050535 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032307589 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032326474 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003315988 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Nationalism and education—Case studies. | Education and state—Case studies. | Comparative education— Case studies. Classification: LCC LC71 .E294 2023 (print) | LCC LC71 (ebook) | DDC 379—dc23/eng/20221228 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050534 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050535 ISBN: 978-1-032-30758-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-32647-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-31598-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figuresvii List of Tablesviii List of Editor and Contributorsix

Introduction: Understanding nationalism through the lens of education

1

DANIEL TRÖHLER

  1 Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism

7

DANIEL TRÖHLER AND VERONIKA MARICIC

  2 “The divine fire . . . burns within them.” National Davids and Goliaths in Swiss, Danish, and Scottish school lessons

34

NICOLE GOTLING, VERONIKA MARICIC, AND LUKAS BOSER HOFMANN

  3 Nation-building by education statistics and data: A comparative perspective on school surveys in Switzerland, France, and Scotland

55

REBEKKA HORLACHER, SÉBASTIEN A. ALIX, AND LUKAS BOSER HOFMANN

  4 Education and nationalism after empire: Imposing and inventing the nation as the fundament of the modern state in interwar Austria and “Slovene Yugoslavia” FLORIAN GIMPL AND JERNEJ KOSI

77

vi Contents

  5 Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America: An overview of early-twentieth-century Argentina and Mexico

101

HOWARD PROSSER, JASON BEECH, AND ALONSO CASANUEVA BAPTISTA

  6 Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education: Christianity and political ideologies in shaping one nation and two states

124

TERRI KIM

  7 Nation-building and curriculum in Canada

149

JENNIFER WALLNER AND STÉPHANIE CHOUINARD

  8 Primers as a nation’s self-portrait: The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s

173

IVETA KESTERE AND IRENA STONKUVIENE

  9 Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene: Insights from (post) Soviet early literacy textbooks

194

DILRABA ANAYATOVA, KETEVAN CHACHKHIANI, SETRAG HOVSEPIAN, IVETA SILOVA, AND KETI TSOTNIASHVILI

10 Reform histories and changing educational conceptions of the nation and nationalism in Norwegian and Swedish curricula (1900–2020)

224

KIRSTEN SIVESIND AND MAGNUS HULTÉN

11 Concluding chapter: Education, nationalism, and internationalism: gap-filling and gap-creating

249

MICHAEL BILLIG

Index264

Figures

1.1 Educationally relevant keywords in relation to the theoretical approaches (in both index and full text) 11 1.2 Ranking of the educationally relevant keywords in the full-text search 12 9.1a Children within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Latvia 200 9.1b Children within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Armenia201 9.1c Children within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Georgia202 9.2a Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Armenia203 9.2b Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Georgia204 9.2c Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Latvia205 9.3a “Friendship of people” as reflected in national folk costumes. Soviet Armenian textbook for non-Armenian children 208 9.3b “Friendship of people” as reflected in national folk costumes. Soviet Latvian textbook for Latvian children 209 9.4a Wine-making and other national traditions in Georgia 211 9.4b Wine-making and other national traditions in Armenia  211 9.5a National heroes: Georgian King Vakhtang 214 9.5b National heroes: Armenian Hero Hayk Nahabet 214 9.5c National heroes: Kazakh Uyghur Hero Sadir 214

Tables

10.1 Overview of national curricula for public schooling in Norway and Sweden (1900–2020)

229

Editor and Contributors

Sébastien A. Alix is currently Assistant Professor of Education Sciences at the Université Paris-Est Créteil, France, and Researcher at the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les transformations des pratiques éducatives et des pratiques sociales (LIRTES, EA 7313). His research interests include the history of French and American schooling, with a focus on progressive education movements, as well as the transnational history of education. His publications include L’éducation progressiste aux États-Unis. Histoire, philosophie et pratiques (1876–1919) (Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2017); “Transnationalising American progressivism and emancipation: Frances B. Johnston and progressive education at the 1900 Paris universal exposition” (Paedagogica Historica, 2019); Crise(s) en éducation et en formation (with Laurent Gutierrez, L’Harmattan, 2022); and “Circulations transnationales en matière d’éducation (19e-20e siècles): note de synthèse des travaux d’un champ de recherche en expansion” (with Pierre Kahn, Recherches en education, 2023). Dilraba Anayatova is a PhD student in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, the United States. She is interested in education policies in the context of Central Asia, rural education, heritage language policies, and teacher education. Currently, she is working on projects in areas of environmental sustainability, refugee education, and topics of nationalism in post-Soviet countries. Alonso Casanueva Baptista teaches Sociology and Human Geography at La Trobe University and the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Australia. He is Commissioning and Production Editor of Thesis Eleven, journal of critical theory and cultural sociology. His research explores radical definitions of learning through a critical engagement with alternative pedagogies and American philosophies of education. Jason Beech is Associate Professor of Education (Global Policy) in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at The University of Melbourne and Visiting Professor at Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, where he holds a UNESCO Chair in Education for Sustainability and Global

x  Editor and Contributors

Citizenship. He is Senior Researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina (CONICET) and Associate Editor of Education Policy Analysis Archives. He has been Member of the Board of Directors of the Comparative and International Education Society (2014– 2016).  Jason has published extensively on the globalization of knowledge and policies related to education. He has also written and is passionate about the challenges of educating for global citizenship and a sustainable future. He has taught in several universities in the Americas, Europe, and Australia. Michael Billig is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, Leicestershire, England, where he worked for more than 30 years. His background is in social psychology, having been a student of Henri Tajfel at Bristol University, England. He has written books on a variety of different topics. These include Arguing and Thinking (1996), which discussed the relations between social psychology and rhetoric; Fascists (1978), which explored neo-fascism; and Learn to Write Badly (2013), which criticised the way that social scientists use jargon. Among his other books are Freudian Repression (1999), Laughter and Ridicule (2006), and Rock’n’Roll Jews (2000). The book that is most directly related to the study of nationalism is Banal Nationalism (1995). In his most recent book, More Examples, Less Theory (2019), Billig argues for the importance of social scientists studying real-life examples, rather than relying on abstract theorising. Lukas Boser Hofmann holds a PhD in History of Education from the University of Bern, Switzerland. Currently, he works as Senior Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, School of Education. He is also Guest Lecturer at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research interests cover the standardization of weights and measures and the epistemology embedded therein, as well as the education of national citizens in Europe during the long nineteenth century. He was one of the co-editors and authors of the book School Acts and the Rise of Mass Schooling in the Long 19th Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Most recently, he has published an article on math education in Switzerland with regard to the curricular construction of national identities (2020) and a book chapter in which he depicted seven notable educational biographies in the age of Enlightenment (2020). Ketevan Chachkhiani is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University, Arizona, United States. Her research explores discourses of teacher autonomy, the nature and process of achieving teacher agency, and manifestation of different dimensions of teacher autonomy in classroom practices and student achievement. Ketevan also studies students’ awareness of environmental sustainability and childhood memories in post-socialist educational contexts.

Editor and Contributors  xi

Stéphanie Chouinard is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Royal Military College, with a cross-appointment at Queen’s University (Kingston). She is Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She does research in the fields of language rights, minority and Aboriginal rights, and law and politics. She teaches in Canadian politics, comparative politics, and political geography. Florian Gimpl is a doctoral student at the Centre for Teacher Education at the Univer­sity of Vienna and grammar school teacher in Vienna. His research interests include Austrian and European contemporary history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well as history and historiography of nationalism and schooling from the eighteenth century on. His most recent article is, together with Kevser Muratovic, “Doing Nation in Empires: The Emergence of Turkey and Austria” (Croatian Journal of Education, 2020). He has recently completed his PhD dissertation on the interrelation of schooling and Austrian nationalism from 1918 to 1938. Nicole Gotling is a postdoctoral researcher with the Foundations of Education team at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include the historical, international development of modern nation-states, educational institutions and curricula, educational historiography and geo-historiography, reforms, and the intersections of these both within and across cases. She is also interested in studying educational systems and policies for multilingual and multicultural contexts. Her most recent work can be found in the edited volume The Nordic Education Model in Context (Routledge, 2023), and her dissertation (with the University of Vienna) Framing the National Mind of Students: A Textbook Case of the Prussian Wars (2022). Rebekka Horlacher is Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Lecturer at the Zurich University of Teacher Education. Her research interests include the history of schooling and curriculum, the age of Enlightenment, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in his context and questions of methodology. She is the lead editor of the six-volume Letters to Pestalozzi (nzz, 2009–2015) and published a comparative cultural history on The Educated Subject and the German Concept of Bildung (Routledge, 2016). She is currently working on the history of school subjects and on comparative perspectives of schooling in Europe with a specific focus on practices of education and schooling in the early nineteenth century. Setrag Hovsepian is a PhD student in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, the United States. His research interests include teaching and teachers of endangered languages, education in emergency situations, and refugee education in the MENA region.

xii  Editor and Contributors

Magnus Hultén is Professor of Science Education at Linköping University, Sweden. He is the PI for the project “Governing Educational Expectations: Swedish Standards-Based Education Since 1919, A History That Matters,” funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. His research stretches from science and technology education to educational policy and history of education and is published in journals such as History of Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies, Chemistry Education Research and Practice, and Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy. His latest book, Striden om den goda skolan: Hur kunskapsfrågan enat, splittrat och förandrat svensk skola och skoldebatt (2019), deals with the late-twentieth-century curriculum reforms in Sweden. Iveta Kestere is Historian of Education, Professor at the Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art, University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia. Her current research projects are focusing on the training of the “New Soviet Man,” visual propaganda in education under European totalitarian regimes, and childhood representations in Latvian museums. She is the author of numerous internationally published articles and the author and co-editor of seven books, such as the collected volumes History of Education and Pedagogical Thought in the Baltic Countries up to 1940: An Overview (Riga, 2009) and Pedagogy and Educational Sciences in the Post-Soviet Baltic States, 1990–2004: Changes and Challenges (Riga, 2020). She serves in the editorial board of academic journal Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia (Lithuania), as well as in the international advisory board of Paedagogica Historica. Terri Kim is Professor of Comparative Higher Education (Honorary Professor at UEL), Visiting Professor at Yonsei University, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Education, and Principal Fellow of Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) in the United Kingdom. Previously, she was Research Consultant to OECD/CERI; Visiting Scholar in International Relations at LSE and the I.E.C., Collège de France in Paris; Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Monash University in Melbourne; and Academic Visitor at St  Antony’s College, Oxford. Her scholarly interests centre on the relations of territory, mobility, knowledge, and identity; ethnic nationalism and internationalism, diaspora and internationalization; international relations; and sociology of knowledge. She is Member of the editorial board of Comparative Education, Intercultural Education, and Policy Reviews in Higher Education. She has published one book, Forming the Academic Profession in East Asia: A Comparative Analysis (Routledge, 2001/2018), 5 Special Issues, and 57 articles internationally. Jernej Kosi is Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Postdoctoral Researcher on the ERC Consolidator Grant project NEPOSTRANS at the Institute of Political History in Budapest. He has conducted research on various dimensions of Slovenian and Habsburg history and published books and articles on nationalism, World War I, and post-imperial transition.

Editor and Contributors  xiii

Veronika Maricic is a PhD student in Social Policy at the School of Social and Political Science, The University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include education policy, educational historiography, and history of ideas. In her PhD project, Teachers College and Its Pioneers: From a Faith in Numbers to Experts in Education, she examines the emergence of the concept of expertise in education and its discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. Her key publications are “Data, Trust, and Faith: The Unheeded Religious Roots of Modern Education,” co-authored with Daniel Tröhler (Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2021) and “National Identity Textbooks: Teaching Scottishness in the Wake of the Union of Parliaments” (Croatian Journal of Education, 2020). Howard Prosser is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Culture, and Society at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Iveta Silova is Professor and Associate Dean of Global Engagement at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, the United States. Her research explores the intersections of post-socialist, decolonial, and ecofeminist perspectives in envisioning education beyond the Western horizon. Her most recent research has focused on the role of culture and education in environmental sustainability. Kirsten Sivesind (Dr. Philos) is Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Oslo, Norway. Beyond her academic discipline of curriculum theory and general didactics, her research focuses on comparative policy analysis and the history of educational ideas and reform. Her publications feature in journals including the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) and the Journal of Curriculum Studies (JCS), where she serves as Associate Editor. Currently, she is Principal Investigator for the five-country study “Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison,” funded by the National Research Council in Norway. The most recent publication are Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy. A Comparative Network Analysis (Palgrave McMillan, 2022), co-edited with Berith Karseth and Gita Steiner-Khamsi, and Bildung: Alive and Allowed? A Critical Study of Work Plan Practices in Norwegian Schools in JCS, 2021, co-authored with Kari Bachmann and Bernadette Hörmann. Irena Stonkuviene (PhD in Educational Sciences) is Associate Professor at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania. Her research field is related to anthropology of education, cultural education, and history of education. She is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Acta Paedagogica Vilnensia and editorial board member of academic journals in Lithuania, Poland, Italy, and Turkey. She is Member of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), Baltic Association of Historians of Pedagogy, and Board Member of the Lithuanian Educational

xiv  Editor and Contributors

Research Association (LERA). She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters. She published the monography Growing Up in Lithuania: Sketches of Enculturation (2013). Her current academic project is Raising of the ‘New Man’ in Soviet Schools: The Case of Lithuania. Daniel Tröhler is Professor of Foundations of Education at the University of Vienna. His research interests include the international and transnational developments of the last 250 years and relating the history of modern ideas with the history of institutions in the context of a broader cultural history. He received the AERA’s Outstanding Book of the Year Award in 2012 for his Languages of Education: Protestant Legacies, National Identities, and Global Aspirations (Routledge, 2011). His recent book publications include being Lead Editor of the World Yearbook of Education 2022: Education, Schooling and the Global Universalization of Nationalism (Routledge) and of The Nordic Education Model in Context (Routledge, 2023). His most recent articles are “From National Exceptionalism to National Imperialism: Changing Motives of Comparative Education” (Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2022) and “Comparative Education or Epistemological Power Games of Western Rivals for World Domination” (Comparative Education, 2023). Keti Tsotniashvili is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy and Evaluation programme at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, USA. Her research interests include higher education systems, higher education policy change, academic life and identities in the context of postsocialist transformations, childhood memories, collective memories, and biographies. Jennifer Wallner is Associate Professor with the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and the Jean Luc Pepin Research Chair in Canadian Politics. Her work focuses on federalism and public policy, with areas of specialization in education policy, fiscal federalism, and intergovernmental relations. She has published extensively on Canada, Australia, and the United States.

Introduction Understanding nationalism through the lens of education Daniel Tröhler

In the nineteenth century, two new disciplines emerged at universities which became important for the academic establishment of education but whose objects were not in the traditional sense real, but imagined: psychology and sociology. Just as long before, theology had developed on the basis of imaginaries of a god or deity, psychology emerged on the basis of an imaginary of the soul, and sociology on the basis of an imaginary of society. Both university newcomers, psychology and sociology, had precursors. The imaginary of the soul had ancient philosophical as well as Christian occidental and later, since the Reformation, especially Protestant roots. The conception of society, on the other hand, as we still see it today, was much more recent, and yet it also presupposed a different imaginary, which however never became an academic discipline in its own right. This other imaginary was the nation: a cultural thesis about commonality, belonging, and identity that, with the French Revolution, became linked for the first time to the state’s apparatus of power and was given a lasting consolidation by the state’s institutions—not least its educational system. While this politicized imaginary of the nation—the nation-state—emphasized the communality and the unifying nature of people in a territory, thus overcoming the estates of the Ancient Regime, the imaginary of society aimed at the perception of differences and distinctions exactly within this imagined community (Tröhler, 2022a). The modern school should always serve both worlds of imagination. While the elementary school usually prepared for the common national values, the typically tracked secondary school supported social stratification. The two new university disciplines in question, psychology and sociology, continuously developed relevant subject traditions through degree programs, (usually national) associations, journals, book series, and congresses. They developed steadily, however, usually always within the framework of their respective nation-states, although there were also occasional international congresses. In a very interesting way, the imaginary world of the nation, which significantly promoted and determined the development of these two as well as other academic disciplines, seems to have become so self-evident that it never DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-1

2  Daniel Tröhler

became an academic subject of its own.1 The disadvantage of this is that the subject matter—the nation—has not been researched systematically, that is, with institutional backing and support. There were no degree programs on the study of the nation or nationalism, no national or international societies, and, for a long time, no journals or book series. On the other hand, this fact had the advantage of making nationalism research interdisciplinary in the best sense. Or this is at least almost the case, for there is at least one discipline that is centrally concerned with the continuity, and cultural reproduction of the nation is, so to speak, completely absent from this research community: education. This volume aims to bring education into the interdisciplinary research on nationalism in order to contribute to a better theoretical understanding of the nation and/ or nationalism. None of the more or less well-known researchers of nationalism have ever studied or even taught education at a university level. The closest is Juli Tamir, who studied political philosophy and political science and published two books on nationalism (Tamir, 1993, 2019) and who, after all, had once been an Israeli minister of education (2006–2009). Benedict Anderson (Anderson, 1983) has equally been a political scientist and a historian, and Walker F. Connor (Connor, 1994) and Umut Özkırımlı (Özkırımlı, 2017) are political scientists, too. More sociologically oriented are Craig J. Calhoun (Calhoun, 2007), Rogers Brubaker (1996), and Gabriella Elgenius (2011). In the intersection of sociology and philosophy, we find Ernest André Gellner (Gellner, 1983), and in the one of sociology and history is Anthony D. Smith (Smith, 1986). Proven historians are John Breuilly (Breuilly, 1982) and Eric Hobsbawm (1990). And Michael Billig (1995) is a social psychologist (Billig, 1995). Of course, this is not an accusation—but a fact. Conversely, and this must be mentioned as a fact as well, contributions to the understanding of nationalism in education research are obviously scarce. Yet, there was research in this direction in England a little more than 100 years ago, when comparative education was academicized on the occasion of the comprehensive political and economic crisis of the British Empire. The motive then was primarily national and directed against Germany, which was considered the leader at the time, and the example they used was sought from England’s socalled “cousin”—the United States. One could certainly admire the discipline found in the German school, but, as one of the meanwhile forgotten actors, Robert E. Hughes, said in 1902, this was only appropriate “for German children; . . . [since] there can be no doubt that such a system would be the very worst for English or American children” (Hughes, 1902, p. 11). This is because “[o]ur schools and teachers must be content to turn out English children, and leave the turning out of German children for the German school” (Hughes, 1904, p. 8). At that time, there was often an affirmative sense of nationality but no decided research on nationalism that could be linked to issues of education. Nationalism was thus the premise rather than the object of educational

Introduction 3

research, and thus no distinction was ever really made between nation, state, nation-state, or country. This irritating lack of precision persisted in education up to and including Andy Green’s 1990 classic in comparative education, Education and State Formation (Green, 1990). Yet, “nation” is mentioned again and again, but it is either used a synonym for the state or simply taken for granted. This is also largely true of the volume Schooling, Educational Policy and Ethnic Identity (Tomiak et  al., 1991), focusing on how Eastern European states as power apparatuses use school to “re-educate” ethnic minorities (pp. 1–11) and which further assumes the dichotomy between Western and Eastern European nationalism, according to which the former is progressively civic and institutionally and politically based, and the latter is rather backward and natural-ethnically based. This distinction had been brought into play by Hans Kohn in his The Idea of Nationalism (Kohn, 1944) and was repeatedly advocated until the end of the Cold War, but it is considered too schematic and Western-biased in today’s research on nationalism (Özkırımlı, 2017, pp. 36–38). In the last 15 years, however, there has been research that relates ethnicity and nation in a more value-neutral way and, with an especial focus on Eastern Europe and Asia, has resulted in relevant publications, such as in recent volumes of the journal Nationalities Papers, in a special issue of Compare published in 2007 (Janmaat & Vickers, 2007), and in specific case studies of, for instance, Estonia (Michaels & Stevick, 2009) and Moldova (Worden, 2014). For a few years now, new research has been characterized by an even clearer conceptual distinction between nation, state, nation-state, and education, in particular. Building on important studies published some time ago (e.g., Weber, 1976; Harp, 1998), recent research on this more theoretical basis shows increasingly clearly how curricula shape children’s national minds, with civics being a particularly interesting special case (Horlacher, 2020). There is also focus on how textbooks used in the classroom shape national identities, and research has shown that this can lead to terrible violence, as in the case of Rwanda (King, 2013). In addition, this type of research dives into how different nations present the very same historical matters quite differently (Gotling, 2020) and how not even mathematics education is protected from national appropriation (Boser, 2020). Even very young children encounter and negotiate different ideas and practices of nationalism, performances of national identity, and feelings for the nation in educational settings (Millei, 2019; Millei & Imre, 2021). In this context, childhood research is of particular importance, especially in the context of borderland studies (Venken, 2021), as it makes the link from the educationally defined child to the desired adult, the loyal national citizen, altogether clearer (Piattoeva, 2016). Evidently, globalization theories that have been popular since the 1990s have strongly seduced research in education into focusing on the supposed or real effects of international large-scale studies, thereby losing sight of the nation as an identity-forming organizing principle of everyday life (Tröhler et al., 2022).

4  Daniel Tröhler

Obviously, the question of how schools succeed in “doing nation” (Tröhler, 2020a), that is, in teaching children not only simple literacies but also national literacies by making them into certain kinds of (national) people (Tröhler, 2020b), has become an important research issue in an era that has perhaps been too long preoccupied with globalization and isomorphism. Taking this recent research as a starting point, this volume aims to go one step further and bring the theoretical discussion of nationalism more in line with the case studies in education—and conversely to contribute to a better theoretical understanding of nationalism. It seeks to bring educational research into the interdisciplinary discussions on nationalism and point out how theories of nationalism benefit when they do not marginalize education. This intention is reflected in the structure of the volume: it begins with a thorough analysis of the 28 most cited scholars of nationalism and examines the extent to which their theories of nationalism have involved issues of education, that is, what educational knowledge they contain. The result shows that these theories of nationalism, while very often containing arguments about school or education, usually make little reference to relevant educational research. Instead, they simply take for granted assumptions about education to legitimize their own theories. This blind spot is the starting point of the individual case studies in this volume following the introductory chapter in this volume. They examine, from a comparative and historical educational perspective, which theoretical models of nationalism are more convincing, which are less so, and why. On this basis, the author attempts to enrich the theoretical discussion of nationalism by reflecting these theories and testing them on the material of their cases. Notwithstanding the different cases, different time periods, and divergent approaches, the chapters are closely related—rather unusually so for an edited volume—in that they are precisely directed toward the question of how to better understand the phenomenon of nationalism from the perspective of education research. Since nationalism is understood today as a discourse (Billig, 1995; Özkırımlı, 2017), discursive formation (Calhoun, 2007), or a cultural thesis about commonality and belonging that distinguishes an “us” from an “other,” comparative approaches to the emergence and mediation of nationalism suggest themselves. This is not least because, as Bob Cowen has stated (Cowen, 2022), the starting point of comparative research has, as a rule, actually been the nation, although this has been forgotten for a long time (Tröhler, 2022b). However, since the emergence and mediation of these notions of nationality and belonging are empirical processes, a historical approach seems particularly helpful in these comparative studies. In seeking to relate comparative education to theories of nationalism, and vice versa, this volume certainly breaks some new ground. Great thanks are due to David Phillips, who supported the idea of this volume from the beginning and made it possible for it to be published in the Oxford Studies in Comparative Education series.

Introduction 5

Note 1 It must be acknowledged, however, that there is an Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and that there has been an Association for the Study of Nationalities since the early 1970s, which publishes the journal Nationalities Papers. Furthermore, ASEN’s journal, Nations and Nationalism, has been published for almost 30 years now.

References Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. SAGE. Boser, L. (2020). Nations and numbers: Elementary mathematics education as a nationalizing tool. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 47–63. doi:10.15516/cje.v22i0.4128 Breuilly, J. (1982). Nationalism and the state. Manchester University Press. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe. Cambridge University Press. Calhoun, C. (2007). Nations matter: Culture, history, and the cosmopolitan dream. Routledge. Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The quest for understanding. Princeton University Press. Cowen, R. (2022). Nations in the world: Interpreting the world yearbooks. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva,  & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2022: Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism (pp.  267–283). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003137801-21 Elgenius, G. (2011). Symbols of nations and nationalism: Celebrating nationhood. Palgrave Macmillan. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Basil Blackwell. Gotling, N. (2020). National textbook narratives and historiography: Presenting a same that is never the same. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 65–82. doi:10.15516/cje. v22i0.4124 Green, A. (1990). Education and state formation. The rise of education systems in England, France and the USA. Palgrave Macmillan. Harp, S. L. (1998). Learning to be loyal: Primary schooling as nation building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850–1940. Northern Illinois University Press Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press Horlacher, R. (2020). Civics in the curricular construction of the loyal national citizen: A comparative view of Switzerland. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 83–99. doi:10.15516/cje.v22i0.4121 Hughes, R. E. (1902). The making of citizens. A study in comparative education. Walter Scott Publishing. Hughes, R. E. (1904). The democratic ideal in education. Charles & Dibble. Janmaat, J. G., & Vickers, E. (Eds.). (2007). Education and identity formation in post-cold war Eastern Europe and Asia [Special Issue]. Compare, 37(3). doi:10.1080/03057920701330149 Kohn, H. (1944). The idea of nationalism: A study in its origins and background. Macmillan. King, E. (2013). From classrooms to conflict in Rwanda. Cambridge University Press. Michaels, D., & Stevick, E. D. (2009). Europeanization in the “other” Europe: Writing the nation into “Europe” in post-socialist civic education in Slovakia and Estonia. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(2), 225–245. doi:10.1080/00220270802515919

6  Daniel Tröhler Millei, Z. (2019). Pedagogy of nation: A concept and method to research nationalism in young children’s institutional lives. Childhood, 26(1), 83–97. doi:10.1177/0907568218810078 Millei, Z., & Imre, R. (Eds.). (2021). Children and nationalism. [Special Issue]. Children's Geographies, 19(5). Özkırımlı, U. (2017). Theories of nationalism: A  critical introduction (3rd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Piattoeva, N. (2016). Citizenship and nationality. In J. Stone, R. M. Dennis, P. S. Rizova, A. D. Smith, & X. Hou (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of race, ethnicity, and nationalism. Wiley Online Library. doi:10.1002/9781118663202.wberen560 Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Blackwell. Tamir, Y. (1993). Liberal nationalism. Princeton University Press Tamir, Y. (2019). Why nationalism. Princeton University Press. Tomiak, J., Eriksen, K., Kazamias, A., & Okey, R. (Eds.). (1991). Schooling, educational policy and ethnic identity. New York University Press. Tröhler, D. (Ed.). (2020a). Education, “doing nation,” nation building and the development of national literacies [Special Issue]. Croatian Journal of Education, 22 (Sp. Ed. 2). Tröhler, D. (2020b). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. doi:10.1080/00220272.20 20.1786727 Tröhler, D. (2022a). Magical enchantments and the nation’s silencing. Educational research agendas under the spell of globalization. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva, & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2022: Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism (pp. 7–25). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003137801-2 Tröhler, D. (2022b). From national exceptionalism to national imperialism. Changing motives of comparative education. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43(3). doi:10.1080/01596306.2021.2011077 Tröhler, D., Piattoeva, N., & Pinar, F. W. (Eds.). (2022). World yearbook of education 2022: Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism. Routledge. Venken, M. (2021). Peripheries at the centre. Borderland schooling in Interwar Europe. Berghahn Books. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford University Press. Worden, E. A. (2014). National identity and educational reform. Contested classrooms. Routledge.

Chapter 1

Education and the nation Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

After some milestones in the study of nationalism were published around 1983, the research topic was pushed into the background after 1989, because, for many observers, the end of the Cold War also meant a decline of the importance of the nation-state (e.g., Guéhenno, 1993), which would give way to what was perceived as a process of globalization (James  & Steger, 2014). As from around 2005, however, more and more voices emerged that questioned the previously almost unchallenged fascination with globalization, and that reaffirmed what French historian Anne-Marie Thiesse said over 20 years ago, namely, that there is hardly anything more international than the creation of national identities (Thiesse, 1999, p. 11). This statement is in line with Michael Billig, who as early as in 1995 stated that “globalization” would occupy perceptions in such a way that one would overlook how everyday nationhood is reproduced daily by its symbols and assumptions: “Nationalism, above all, has appeared so forgettable, so ‘natural’ to social scientists, and is today so globally important” (Billig, 1995, p. 9). Research(ers) asked (again) how we could better understand nationalism (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005), what theoretical approaches would promise helpful insights (Özkırımlı, 2017), and what actually constituted the success of long-lived nations (Wimmer, 2018). Even though the theoretical attempts at understanding nationalism are very diverse, a categorization seems to have established itself in research that significantly reduces the complexity. According to this, three “key theoretical approaches” (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005, p. 3; Özkırımlı, 2017, p. 7) or theoretical “paradigms” (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005, p. 3; Özkırımlı, 2017, p. 41) emerged in the twentieth century to which individual theoretical attempts can be assigned. There seems to be widespread agreement that the oldest model is the “primordial” or “perennial,” which assumes that nationality or nationhood is either inherent to human nature or at least goes far back in the cultural history of mankind (see Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005, pp. 51–55; Özkırımlı, 2017, p. 51). In contrast, the second “modernist” approach assumes that nationalism is something modern and therefore only arises in connection with the Industrial Revolution and its social and political consequences (see Ichijo  & Uzelac, 2005, pp.  9–14; Özkırımlı, 2017, p.  81). The third theoretical perspective, DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-2

8  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

“ethno-symbolism,” takes somewhat a well-argued middle way: the thesis of the modernity of nation-thinking is affirmed, but the possibility of the emergence of this thinking is traced back to pre-modern myths, symbols, and practices of loyalty and community, which are seen as having configured themselves under the conditions of modernity to the idea of the nation (see Ichijo  & Uzelac, 2005, pp. 89–93; Özkırımlı, 2017, p. 154). Since the time when these three approaches were identified, new research attempts have been published that are not easily assigned to these three “grand narratives” (Özkırımlı, 2017, p.  183). Özkırımlı (2017, pp.  182–227) labels them “contemporary approaches to nationalism,” among which he identifies a group of theories that suggest understanding nationalism as a discourse and, in the wake of the linguistic turn, can be labeled “constructivist.” The remainder of these contemporary approaches follow an operational interest and can thus be labeled “functionalist.” Hence, constructivist approaches focus on discourses, or “discursive formations,” daily reproducing nationalism (Calhoun, 2007, p.  3 et passim), and functionalist approaches focus on the analysis of political and social processes in given nations (nation-states) (Wimmer, 2018, p. 21 et passim). The bundling of different theoretical attempts into a limited number of different approaches or models has both advantages and weaknesses. The weakness is that these approaches run the risk of leveling out details and nuances between the individual theories assigned to them. The advantage is that they allow— perhaps somewhat superficially—clarity and order. Given that these models are apparently accepted on a broader level in the more contemporary study of nationalism itself (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005; Özkırımlı, 2017; Piper, 2004; Smith, 2010; Yuval-Davis, 1997), they are taken as a starting point for the present article, focusing on a particular research interest: the educational reasoning within the different attempts to explain or describe nation and nationalism. Many of the attempts to understand or explain nation and nationalism revolve around questions of sentiment, loyalty, and identity, that is, individual attitudes that make a person and inhabitant of a political territory a “good” member or citizen who is, of course, first and foremost a national member or citizen. Yet, questions concerning the transmission of these attitudes are usually dealt with only hesitantly and rather indifferently. A prominent exponent of ethno-symbolism talks about the “maintenance and continual reinterpretation of the pattern of values, symbols, memories, myths, and traditions that form the distinctive heritage of the nation” (Smith, 2003, pp. 24–25); an author representing modernism speaks of the continuous “reproduction” of modern society as national society (Gellner, 1983, p. 29); and a functionalist argument talks about processes that lead to “national identification” (Wimmer, 2018, p.  31). There are even concrete indications that this indicated transmission and reproduction has to do with education, respectively, within the modern school (system) (e.g. Connor, 1994, pp.  7, 21; Hroch, 1985, pp. 166–168; Nairn, 1997, p. 91; Wimmer, 2018, pp. 33, 38, 262). The point

Education and the nation 9

is that the various, often competing theories of nationalism do indeed contain educational knowledge or assumptions, but this knowledge, when used as arguments to explain the phenomenon of nationalism, is—and that is our thesis—surprisingly selective, imprecise, generic, and at the same time fragmented and often causal-instrumental. This is not, however, to claim that the educational sciences, in all their subdisciplines, have dealt with nationalism as the educationally fabricated “second nature” of mankind (Tröhler, 2020a) in such a way that the theoretical attempts at nationalism of the historians, sociologists, or political scientists involved may be accused of a grossly negligent disregard of the state of research in the field of academic education. That is not the case. Much more pertinent, though, is the question as to what kind of perceptions and conceptions these theorists of nationalism have of the role of education and schooling in the process of the reproduction of nationalism and of nation-building ‒ that is, with what kind of educational awareness and knowledge they argue and what their implicit and unspoken “educational theory” is.

Method To answer the question about the way in which theories of nation and nationalism deal with aspects of education and schooling, the following three methodological steps were chosen. First, a sample of works was determined. Then, quantitative analyses of the sample focusing on relevant keywords that are listed in both the indexes and the full texts were performed. Finally, qualitative analyses were conducted in two stages: One analysis focused on the authors’ reflective awareness when they expressed educational terms, and the other centered on the authors’ use of educational terms when they built their overall arguments in understanding or explaining nationalism. The procedure to determine the sample of theories of nation and nationalism was pragmatic in that it was deemed reasonable to focus on monographs only, as it can be assumed that the questions dealing with the fundamentals of the rise and interpretation of the nation and nationalism need much more space than a 7,000-word paper, which in turn is more likely to address specific aspects or case studies. When selecting the relevant books, it seemed legitimate to choose a broadly accepted survey work as a starting point, which—now already in three editions—took on the task of presenting a vast and systematic overview of the individual theories, namely Özkırımlı’s Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (2000, 2010, 2017). The selection of the respective monographs by these authors for the sample was based on the number of citations each of their works on nationalism theory has according to Google Scholar. This selection resulted in a list of 23 books1, which was then supplemented by other, recently published monographs that are (according to Google Scholar) often cited but not found in Özkırımlı’s (2017) overview, so that in the end, our sample comprised a list of 28 monographs2 in total.

10  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

The quantitative analysis consisted of a keyword analysis of the indexes and the full text in each of the monographs. For this purpose, they were examined for educationally relevant terms, which were defined very broadly to allow a comprehensive encompassment of the elements of educational reasoning: education, school(ling), teacher/teach(ing), student/pupil, curriculum/-a, classroom, learn(ing), school-/textbooks, and literacy. The index search was conducted by counting how many pages in the book the educationally relevant keywords listed in the index pointed to,3 and the full texts of the monographs identified the numbers of pages on which these terms appeared.4 This quantitative analysis led to first findings in connection with the question of what kind of educational knowledge (or even theory) is inherent in the theories and approaches to the study of the nation and nationalism, and with the question as to what extent one can identify differences in this respect between the different theoretical approaches, the primordial, the modernist, the ethno-symbolic, the constructivist, and the functionalist models. The following qualitative analysis was performed in two stages. First, utilizing the educationally relevant keywords defined earlier, we identified the pertinent research literature referenced by each author. In particular, we explored the authors’ understandings of the educationally relevant terms, by examining whether they themselves defined or paraphrased these keywords in some form or another or, if they, in this context, referred to primary literature or to definitions elaborated in the secondary or tertiary literature. If they referred to the literature, we examined which works were cited in order to ground the understanding of education displayed in the theories of nationalism. In the second stage of the qualitative analysis, we focused on the authors’ actual use of the educational key terms in their overall arguments in their respective theories on nationalism, paying attention to both the individual theory and the collective model of each of the five approaches. In conclusion, we critically assessed the performance of educational knowledge in the prevailing theories of nations and nationalism. The Quantified Physiognomy of Educational Knowledge in Theories of Nationalism (Index and Full-Text Research)

An overview of the frequency of educational key terms in the 28 monographs revealed great variation in both the indexes and the full texts. The index results ranged from no educational key terms at all pointing to pages in the monograph (Anderson, 1983; Billig, 1995; Connor, 1994; Grosby, 2005; Hazony, 2018; Hutchinson, 2017; Kohn, 1955; Roshwald, 2006) to 105 pages pointed to in the index of Hroch’s (1985) Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. The “peaks” of five authors, figuratively speaking, who listed educationally related key terms most often in the indexes, pointing to more than 33 pages, stood rather isolated in the sample that otherwise showed a range from 0 to 20 pages. These sporadic peaks indicated in general a rather peripheral

Education and the nation 11

Figure 1.1 Educationally relevant keywords in relation to the theoretical approaches (in both index and full text)

and negligible treatment of education within these theories of nationalism (see Figure 1.1.). Similarly, in the full text analysis, Hroch (1985) and Wimmer (2018) presented the highest frequencies of references to educational concepts, with more than 400 mentions of educationally relevant key terms in the full text of their monographs (see Figure 1.1). Chatterjee (1993), Hechter (2000), and Tamir (2019), which in the index search were among the monographs referencing the most educationally relevant pages in the indexes, were here among the 15 authors who mentioned educational key terms at least 100 times. In the monographs of 13 authors, however, the number of educational key terms to be found in the full text was strikingly below 100. Furthermore, it appeared that the theoretical attempts ascribed to the primordial model on average referenced educationally relevant key terms the least in both the indexes (M = 4.8) and the full texts (M = 96.4; see Figure 1.1). However, the assumption, which arises due to the otherwise opposing positions of primordialists and modernists, that modernists would in turn dedicate a larger portion of their theories to education as another creation of the industrialization period, turned out to be erroneous. Although the modernist’s average mention of keywords was second highest in both the index (M = 20.8) and full text analysis (M = 166.9), this was primarily explained by Hroch’s (1985) comparatively high number of utilized keywords. The theoretical “compromise” between these two models—that is, ethno-symbolism—was also not found to bristle with attention to educationally relevant terms (index: M  =  10.5; full text: M = 114), with two representatives (see Connor, 1994; Hutchinson, 2017)

12  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

including none of the key terms in their indexes. The constructivists operated within a similar quantitative use of the key terms, with the results of the index analysis being closer to the ethno-symbolists (M  =  10) and the number of the full text analysis falling only shortly behind the modernists (M = 152.1). In both analyses, the functionalist model ranked the highest in regard to the frequency of educational key terms (index: M = 32.2; full text: M = 202.2). Yet, here as well, the quantitative utilization of the key terms varied among the representatives, with one author of the functionalist approach, for example, not referencing any key terms in his index (see Hazony, 2018). The compiled number of mentions per key term in all 28 monographs revealed a striking picture. Whereas “school(ing)” (1.137 mentions) and “education” (989 mentions) dominated the scale, the seven other key terms fell clearly behind. In quantitative terms, “school(ing)” and “education” accounted for over 56% of all mentions of educational keywords in the overall corpus of the sample, whereas the central actors of the school and their core activities, teaching and learning, accounted for around 36%. Significantly less use was made of one possible outcome of teaching—literacy (just under 6%). Further, there was only marginal use of terms such as schoolbooks or textbooks, curriculum or curricula, or even classroom, which all added up to just over 2% (see Figure 1.2). This compilation led to a number of (related) theses. First, the predominant utilization of the two rather generic terms “school(ing) and “education” necessitated a closer look at the reflectiveness and theorical supportiveness of these terms in the author’s arguments. Especially against the background of the very weak use of terms that referred to the respective curricular order of knowledge

Figure 1.2  Ranking of the educationally relevant keywords in the full-text search

Education and the nation 13

and learning content in the teaching materials in the concrete classrooms, the first thesis was put forward that the educational knowledge of the theories of nationalism is not really differentiated. Second, these theories did use, occasionally even quite often, educationally relevant terms that have become part of the common property of ordinary intellectuals at least in the Western world. It can therefore be assumed—second thesis—that the not inconsiderable frequency of references to the field of education is an expression of what research calls the “educationalization of the world,” a taken-for-granted cultural attitude that is dominant especially in the West and according to which not only all kinds of social problems (Smeyers & Depaepe, 2008; Labaree, 2008) but also the modern world and the modern self, ultimately, have become educational projects (Tröhler, 2017). This led to the third assumption that research on nationalism as a rule largely ignores, as in concrete terms, how the schools, their curricula, and teaching materials generate national loyalties and identities, helping to generate not just literacies but also national literacies, which allow, in Renan’s words, the daily plebiscite that nations depend on to continue (Renan, 1882/n.d.), or, to follow Billig, which allow the identity-forming reading and interpretation of the banal national “flagging,” or reminding of nationhood that surrounds us daily and usually goes unnoticed (Billig, 1995). These three interdependent theses emerging from the quantified physiognomy of educational knowledge in theories of nation and nationalism are now discussed in the following section in two stages. The Understanding of the Uttered Educationally Relevant Keywords

Own definitions of the educational terms used were not necessarily to be expected and were not found. All the more our interest was directed to which literature the theories referred to. First, we examined to what primary, secondary, and tertiary literature the authors or our sample referred to.5 In the case of tertiary literature ‒ handbooks and encyclopedias ‒ the case was clear. None of the over 40 handbooks and encyclopedias consulted by the 28 authors of the monographs explicitly dealt with education, school, educational policy, curriculum, or textbooks—and there are many of these6—at all, and the perhaps closest works, the ones related to psychology were not queried on matters relating to education or schooling: the Handbook of Social Psychology was consulted for “Cognitive Theory,” the Handbook of Psychology for “The Social Significance of Animal Studies” (Geertz, 1973, pp. 45, 75), the Handbook of Language and Social Psychology for “Ethnic Identity, Language and Communication Breakdown,” and the Handbook of Social Psychology served as a source information for “Prejudice and ethnic relations” (Billig, 1995, pp. 183–184). To check whether the theorists of nationalism used relevant primary or secondary literature from educational research, all references made by the authors were examined according to the above-defined educationally relevant

14  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

key terms. Although this was not an absolutely perfect method,7 it was quite suitable for providing clear indications. To put it briefly, primary literature was almost hardly ever cited: Grosby (2005) was referring to Herder (1774a; 1774b); Tamir (2019) to Rousseau (1762/1965) and Fichte (1808/1968); and Kedourie (1961, pp. 82–84), too, referred to Fichte’s (1808/1968) nationalist educational reform plans. These are all historical authors who certainly can or even should be read in the light of a history of ideas or discourse of history of education and nationality but who, on the other hand, contributed little to the concrete development of the school system as an actual and effective pillar of nation-building. The hope that the lack of consultation of tertiary literature and the extremely marginal consideration of primary literature could somehow be compensated by respectable consultation of secondary literature was rather disappointed. The vast majority of authors did not cite a single book that includes any of these terms in its title, and for many of the altogether few studies that the authors cited, the question arises as to how far they (still) represented the state of research at the time of publication of the monographs that are the subject of this study. There were 2 exceptions in our sample of the 28 monographs, and they both belonged to the functionalist approach and were the two newest publications in the sample (Tamir, 2019; Wimmer, 2018). Tamir (2019) referred to a total of five publications that contained any of the educationally relevant terms, one of them published by herself (Tamir, 2011). Her reference literature for the development of Western or modern education was generally some 50 years old, and the only classic in this field of research, Andy Green’s 1990 pertinent Education and State Formation, has been mentioned as a quotation in a chapter written by Eric M. Uslaner and Bo Rothstein in 2016. The second most recent book, written by sociologist Andreas Wimmer (2018), referred to eight titles relating to education and schooling; in this respect, Wimmer was thus by far the leader. Two cited titles dealt with ethnic issues related to education in sub-Saharan Africa: one with the formation of higher education in the United States from 1890 to 1940 (an article published in 1999 by Goldin and Katz), another with the educational mediation of global and national attitudes (a 2014 article by Bekhuis et al.), and yet another with the political economy of public education against the background of demographic change (published by Poterba in 1997). One of Wimmer’s references concerned a widely recognized essay by Meyer et al. from 1992, “World Expansion of Mass Education, 1870–1980,” which argued more in the frame of a globalization thesis that perceives the nation-states only as implementing actors of exogenous forces and not as independent cultures of meaning and action. Rather unfortunate is the citation of an intriguing title by Keith Darden, Resisting Occupation: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties, which Wimmer dated as from 2013 but which is nowhere to be found.8

Education and the nation 15

Of course, dates of publication do not say anything about the research quality at the time of its publication (or later on), but the almost complete lack of recent research, together with the very small number and the relatively narrow thematic breadth of the publications consulted by the authors in the sample, did not suggest that the theorists of nationalism really incorporated educational research in the development of their arguments. This corresponded to the assumption that resulted from the quantitatively proven one-sided use of “education” and “school/schooling” and the neglect of phenomena that are related to terms such as “curriculum” or “schoolbooks/textbooks.” Obviously, the references to the scientific treatment of educational phenomena were extremely thin, and yet it was not uncommon at all to refer to “education” and “schooling” (see Figure  1.2). This raises the question as to how these terms were actually used by the authors of the monographs and what knowledge was associated with them. The Actual Use of Educationally Relevant Keywords or Educational Knowledge in Theories of Nationalism

The analysis of the theoretical validation and differentiation of the educationally relevant concepts expressed in the monographs on nation and nationalism made the first of the three theses—the disproportionate use of the generic terms “education” and “schooling” compared to “schoolbooks” or “textbooks,” “curriculum” or curricula,” or even “classroom” indicates that the educational knowledge of the theories of nationalism is not really differentiated—seem even more plausible. This led to the question of how, beyond their theoretical quality, the keywords expressed were actually used in the structure of the overall arguments. As it cannot be assumed that the five identified theoretical approaches to nationalism can be traced back to basic educational “paradigms” (as their origins), it can, conversely, be examined how educational knowledge was used or applied by the authors to make their approaches to nationalism credible. The second stage of the qualitative analysis began with the modernist approach, followed by the approach from which the modernist had departed, the primordial approach; we then turned to what can be considered as a synthesis of the two, the ethno-symbolist approach. After these three grand narratives on nationalism, the analysis focused first on the constructivist and finally on the functionalist approach. In this way, the focus was always on providing an overview of how educational knowledge was utilized in the argumentation of each approach to nationalism. Therefore, in the analytic discussion in the following, selected authors function as representatives of their respective model; not all 28 monographs are discussed. This is a facilitation in this respect, as the modernists in particular encompass too large a sample for us to discuss all monographs individually.

16  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

Modernism: Mass Schooling as an Expression and Facilitator of Modernity and Nationalism

It seemed justified to begin the second stage of the qualitative analysis with the monograph that, in comparison to all others in the sample, mentioned educational terms the most often (see Figure 1.1), Hroch’s (1985) Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. However, despite the frequency of educational keywords, a theoretically elaborated discussion of the concepts of education in general, of the differences between family upbringing, socialization, and institutional, and above all of school education was hardly found. Hroch had fairly accurate ideas of the impact that schooling had on patriotism, which he considered as being central to nation-building in his approach, but when attempting to describe the role of schooling, he became remarkably vague. In the subchapter explicitly devoted to the “impact of school education” (166–8), Hroch “argued” with unanswered questions or beliefs rather than with factbased arguments. Rhetorically Hroch asked: “To what extent did the growth of national activity in each region depend on the educational level of the population and the influence of schools?” (166). The response was not an answer but rather a call to the fact that there is a need for an “independent study . . . devoted to the problem of the relation of education in schools to the development of national consciousness” (166). Certainly, Hroch made crystal-clear causal statements; however, they turned out to be assumptions that were simply taken for granted: “Attendance at school as the prerequisite of literacy, without which national consciousness is hardly conceivable, must have influenced the territorial structure of patriotic activity [emphases added]” (168).9 The argument was not based on research findings but on the fact that it must have been this way—otherwise, the central main assumptions of modernism could not be defended. Similarly, Anderson commented on a statement in one of Hobsbawm’s (1962/1996, p. 135) earlier publication as follows: “Hobsbawm’s dictum that ‘the progress of schools and universities measures that of nationalism, just as schools and especially universities became its most conscious champions,’ is certainly correct” (Anderson, 1983, pp. 69–70).10 Here too, the assessment that Hobsbawm “is certainly correct” was not supported by Anderson’s own research; it simply confirmed the assumption that it must have been so. Hroch was an exception in terms of the frequency of the use of educational terms but was a good representative of the modernist approach, which, of the three grand narratives, emphasized most strongly the role of education and schooling in the emergence of nationalism, as can be further exemplified by Gellner’s (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Much like Hroch, Gellner frequently discussed the role of education as one of the crucial factors of “modern society” next to questions of power and a shared culture. But in the same way as Hroch and Anderson, Gellner was remarkably cautious when it came to defining or describing the actual role of education, curriculum, or teaching in the making of modern society: “All this suggests that the kind of education

Education and the nation 17

described—universal, standardized, and generic—really plays some essential part in the effective working of a modern society” (Gellner, 1983, p. 29). Again, the argument is that it simply had to be this way; otherwise, the position of the modernist approach could not have been maintained. Accordingly, questions on what made school an instrument for the occurrence of nationalism in the realm of what is labeled modernity remained unanswered. In summary, the way in which scholars representing the modernist approach actually used education as an argument was somewhere between a complete lack of questioning its importance and little virtuosity in actually demonstrating it. What they said, for all their diversity, was always on the level of the alleged obvious but never went into depth on the question of how national identities are built through education or how national loyalty is created at school and through its curriculum. Primordialism: National Permanence and Its Educational Practices

Obviously, the “primordial” approach was less dependent on the narrative of a “modern” education than the modernist approach, and, indeed, the monographs placed less emphasis on education as such. In some sense, Pierre L. van den Berghe summed up the primordial position: “Unless ethnicity is rooted in generations of shared historical experience, it cannot be created ex nihilo. Many attempts to adopt universalistic criteria of ethnicity based on legal citizenship or acquisition of educational qualifications, for instance, failed” (van den Berghe, 1981, p. 27). Whereas van den Berghe identified the role of education as means of social status (see, e.g., 175–7, 249) and in one example discussed education as the basis of conveying xenophobic attitudes (223), he did not make a reference to the internalization of nationality, the fabrication of a national identity, or the process of nation-building—understandably, because the primordial approach assumes that nationality is basically natural, not created. Hastings (1997), who saw education less in connection with the question of the nation than with the nation-state, was somewhat more proactive in this respect. He viewed education as being one of the constitutional elements of a nation-state but did not discuss the premises, functions, aims, or contents of formal schooling, with the exception of occasionally mentioning the importance of vernacular language for ethnicity and its spread through education as the language of instruction. Yet, the emphasis on the role of the modern school remained, after all, marginal: “Long before the advent of mass primary education vernacular culture and established authority had thus come together again as seed-bed of the nation-state” (Hastings, 1997, p.  25). This was in line with the monograph in our sample by Roshwald, who claimed that modern nationalisms cannot be fully understood without first examining their ancient counterparts and archetypes, and their trajectories up to the present time. Roshwald (2006) agreed with modernists that “universal education” is

18  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

indeed part of “contemporary nationalism” and accordingly “non-existent” in Antiquity (p. 16, see also p. 24). Education, therefore, was clearly less important in the primordial account on nationalism than in the modernist approaches. The representatives of the primordial approach did not deny the role of the school, of course. Some, like Roshwald, saw it as an integral part of modernity, which, with regard to nationalism, was seen simply as a new epoch of an enduring (hi)story. Others, on the other hand, emphasized that education was not precisely something new in the sense of cofounding or expressing a new era, modernity, but that it was in fact something ultimately natural, as Grosby (2005) argued: As the mind of the individual develops within various contexts, such as the family or different educational institutions, it seeks out those various and fluctuating traditions that are “at hand.” The child learns, for example, to speak the language of his or her nation and what it means to be a member of that nation as expressed through its customs and laws. These traditions become incorporated into the individual’s understanding of the self. (9) Therefore, according to Grosby (2005, pp. 57–58), schools teach the students important aspects and can, for example, through history lessons, contribute to the student’s self-understanding within the national collective. The way in which the theorists within the primordial approach used education and schooling revealed a clear difference from the use of education and schooling in theories representing the modernist approach. They did not deny either their existence or their function, even in connection with what they call “modernization” (Geertz, 1973, p.  272), but they refrained from creating something qualitatively new that claimed to break with the previous ages. Modernization was a continuous process in which education played a certain but not decisive role, but modernization was not a new departure that somehow built on new forms and organizations of education. Ethno-Symbolism: Modern State Schools as the Transformation of Ethnicity to Nationality

The arguably most prominent representative of the ethno-symbolist approach is Anthony D. Smith. His catchphrase in his Ethnic Origins of Nations, published in 1986, ethnie, or ethnic identity and its relation to culture, which were seen as the very basis for the later development of national sentiment, was eponymous for this approach. Like other ethno-symbolists, for instance, Armstrong (1982, pp. 271–279), Smith (1986, p. 26) emphasized the role of language and religion in differentiating and unifying people—with exceptions like the Scots, whose self-image did not rely on language (27). In this setting, education played an important role but not in standardizing people to modern living conditions,

Education and the nation 19

as in the modernist case, but for the relative power of the ethnie. In the case of migration, Smith argued that the reason why an ethnic group can assert itself against another ethnic group was because it was “much more technologically and educationally advanced” (98). As an example, Smith referred to the Welsh, who had been made subject to, and their elite “anglicised” by, the more educated English conquerors (110). In contrast to the primordial approach, the ethno-symbolist approach did indeed acknowledge a “break” that modernity brings with it ‒ a break, however, that connected the latter nationalism to the former systems and practices of community, ethnie, or culture, represented in myths and symbols. Modernity, Smith admitted, started with the economic revolution closely connected with “the spectacular transformation of military and administrative methods of control” (Smith, 1986, p. 132), and, accordingly, it entailed the “growth in staff colleges and military academies” (132) and triggered the preconditions of a cultural and educational revolution, [O]ne in which ecclesiastical authority and tradition were replaced by a whole new conceptual apparatus in which the sovereign state itself took the place of the deity with a promise of practical salvation, at once limited and visible, and where the instruments of that terrestrial salvation were exercised for the creation of a community of citizens and equals. (133) This secularization, the transition from church to state authority, affected the organization of the school which, according to Smith, was first a national and only then a state school. Smith first recognized concepts of “national education” in the late eighteenth century in some central and Western European states (Austria, France, England, Spain, and Prussia), presenting for the first time that state activities were undertaking more and more the role of an educator of the middle classes, “seeking by means of a standardized patriotic culture to form a committed and politically conscious citizenry” (Smith, 1986, pp. 133–134). According to Smith, these state-directed educational activities developing over a century and including “academies, galleries, museums and universities” were then aimed at “politically conscious citizenry” and not at national conscious citizenry; the state was not from the outset a self-confident actor or agent but emerged slowly out of historical developments (134). In the longue durée perspective of ethno-symbolism, education was seen as a power of transforming ethnies to nations (as the example of the Catalans shows; 166) that was only later utilized as a tool by the state to create state citizens. Hence, the state and its institutions were relatively unimportant in terms of nation-building. Its foundations were in old, meaningful myths and symbols that “shape the nation-to-be” (201), and the different school systems emerging in the modern age were seen more as an expression of national distinctions than a place of national identification formation and therefore comparable only to others on a

20  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

very abstract level (201). School systems were thus an expression of ethnie-based nationalism and not its engine (201). Smith’s primary aim was to demonstrate a particular kind of continuity from ethnicity to nation, and with this in mind, the role of the school was defined as if it institutionally anchored these previously developed national characteristics. Similar to Smith, Connor (1994) emphasized the powerful force of ethnic groups from which nations develop that were rarely identical with the state. Connor lamented the incorrect use of the term nationalism, which in actual use did not refer to the bond with the nation but with the state, hence “underestimating the magnetism and the staying power of ethnic identity” (Connor, 1994, p. 41). Regarding at least the United States, Connor identified tendencies of homogenizing the inhabitants via “countrywide media of communication . . ., the interregional movement of people, the geographic suffusion of industry and its products, and the increasing standardization of education” (51). However, on a more global scale, whatever the reason(s), the ‘nation-building’ school failed to give proper heed to what, in most states, was a if not the major obstacle to political development. Today, just as two decades ago, ethnic nationalism poses the most serious threat to political stability in a host of states. (p. 71) It is not quite clear whether Connor saw this as an accusation against the school or an accusation of misconceptions about the school. After all, he accused the school of indoctrinating children in matters of nationalism, that is, in matters of statehood—and keeping them at a distance from identifying with the ethnic group: Every schoolboy learns, for instance, . . . that nationalism is a vibrant force . . . But since nationalism is equated with loyalty to the state, the student has been preconditioned to perceive the state as the certain ultimate victor in any test of loyalties with these lower-form anachronisms that have been proven to be ephemeral (p. 41) which in turn was seen as a fundamental problem, as most states contained several ethnic nations (p. 98). Whatever Connor’s assessment of the role of the modern school, it was in no way related to ethnic nationalism but, in accordance with Smith, at best, to the production of loyal state-citizens — citizens, however, who ultimately could not resolve ethnic-national conflicts among themselves because ethnic ties were older and more powerful than artificial state ties. As in the two previous approaches, the representatives of ethno-symbolism used education and schooling by attaching considerable, albeit among

Education and the nation 21

themselves different, values to education and schooling. They tended to place greater emphasis on the difference between education as a quasi-anthropological fact and schooling as a modern institution. Although education was usually given greater importance, at least in terms of nation-building, schooling was given importance in terms of mediation of memory supported by myths and symbols. It remained largely unexplored how these mechanisms were used beyond assumptions about standardized languages, history, and possibly geography lessons, which were also best hinted at. Constructivism: Education and the Everyday Reproduction of Nationality

We began our qualitative analysis of educational knowledge in the theories of nationalism with the approach labeled modernism, because it could be expected to have the highest affinity with education and school, which are normally seen as the achievement and catalyst of modernity. Indeed, a high level of interest in the role of the school was expressed in modernist theories, yet these interests were never discussed in depth. Against this background, one could be particularly curious to see how a constructivist approach, often described as post-modern, conceptualizes education. What we already knew from the quantitative analysis was that the representatives of this approach used educationally relevant terms only half as often as the representatives of the modernism on average. Perhaps the best-known representative of the constructivist approach is Billig who would have been predestined, precisely because of his emphasis on Banal Nationalism (Billig, 1995) to refer to daily school practices and “normal” curricular content. According to Billig, citizens “are daily reminded of their national place in a world of nations” (1995, p. 8), and having a “national identity is to possess ways of talking about nationhood”; accordingly, it is a “discourse,” and it “involves being situated physically, legally, socially, as well as emotionally: typically, it means being situated within a homeland, which itself is situated within the world of nations” (p. 8). Billig (1995) aimed at investigating “national identity” as a “social psychological topic,” a kind of social psychology still needed to be created (p. 9). Billig was very cautious about historical developments and causalities and was more interested in the everyday reproduction of nationalism as ideology: “Ideologies are patterns of belief and practice, which make existing social arrangements appear ‘natural’ or inevitable” (p. 15, see also p. 37). However, as far as his analysis of the school’s contribution to the transmission of discourse is concerned, Billig (1995), like the “modernists,” nevertheless remained rather cautious. The daily Pledge of Allegiance in U.S. schools was mentioned twice (pp. 10, 50), but the example applies only to the United States and is perhaps no longer as valid as it may have been in the past. To be sure, Billig understood very well that schools can or even do shape (national) ways of thinking, and he even criticized U.S. sociologists for falling short of

22  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

recognizing and analyzing what he calls routine “flagging” of nationhood in the U.S. schoolroom (p. 50), but Billig himself, however, made promising but still very brief assumptions that were not supported or differentiated by further research: Unity within the bordered territory was the state’s goal.  .  .  . Citizens, with their way of thinking moulded by a common education, would use the same currency, travel on the state’s highways and be expected to show unequivocal loyalty to the nation. (p. 130) Focusing in his book Nationalism Reframed (1996) on post-Communist Europe and Eurasia, Brubaker was in line with Billig when he understood nationalism as a discourse that makes us what we think we are and that is not so easily disposable but rather disposes (p.  10). Brubaker’s critical argument against the assumptions of the “modernization theory” was that it either completely overlooked the power of the ethnic groups or assumed that these had been leveled out nationally by the various homogenization measures such as “markets, bureaucracies, armies, cities, school systems, transportation and communication networks” (Brubaker, 1996, p. 81). In the case of interwar Poland, Brubaker saw the school in fact as the institution that implemented the national unity policy that was directed against the influence of Germany and German: “the main area of language politics—and of cultural nationalization in general—was the school system” (p. 92). Hence, the Polish attempted the nationalizing of “the land, the schools, and the churches” (p. 100), whereby Brubaker saw the connection between nation and school—not unlike the arguments of some representatives of the modernist approach—primarily in the standardization of the one national language. More about the role of the school, which was always mentioned here, almost like name-dropping, among other powers of influences, could not be found in the book. In Symbols of Nations and Nationalism (Elgenius, 2011), Gabriella Elgenius had a different focus and, like the ethno-symbolists, addressed the power of symbols and rites as “distinct symbolic regimes” (p.  1). Her focus, however, rested mainly on national holidays and “national day designs” (p. 3), that is, on a “modern” institution, which is, of course, the contrary of “banality.” According to Elgenius (2011), “Nations are . . . work in progress and nation building is ongoing and continuous, as demonstrated by ongoing activity within the symbolic and ceremonial spheres” (p. 5). Elgenius differentiated between state and nation and emphasized their mutual dependency in modern times (p. 8). Nationalism was not something “given” but something constantly “operating,” and thus the “concept of national identity . . . refers to an active identity, the belief in a distinct and shared public culture, transmitted through symbols, expressed ceremonially in relation to historical complexities and geographical space” (pp. 8–9).

Education and the nation 23

Against this background, Elgenius (2011) examined various performances of national holidays as a means of discursive reproduction of the nation. Against this background, her interest in school is derived from the fact that in many countries, schools—often together with the military—contribute to these national celebrations. Prime examples were Greece, where the “Independence Day and the religious holiday of Annunciation are celebrated . . . with a large armed forces parade in Athens, school flag parades in every city and village and religious services” (p. 140), and Norway, with “large-scale celebrations and processions . . . organized by and involving all schools throughout the country” (p.  112). According to Elgenius (2011), the Norwegian “Constitution Day has remained a high profile political event thought significant for community regeneration” (p. 171): This was facilitated by the incorporation of Constitution Day into the curricula of primary and secondary schools, the extensive involvement of teachers and schools in the organization of children’s processions and their interpretation of national identity and its relationship to Constitutional Day. Furthermore, the encouraged relationship between children, the national day and the nation provides a route to early socialization into nationhood, children at an early stage becoming part of the public sphere as Norwegians. (p. 171, see also p. 175) Hence, regarding education, Elgenius concluded that the “incorporation of the national day into the educational curricula promotes a link between nationalism, nationhood and childhood and allows children to assume nationality and citizenship early on” (p. 193). The relation between the nation and the state was also a topic of still another focus on nationalism offered by Chatterjee. In The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Chatterjee, 1993), Chatterjee focused on anti-colonial nationalism that has “two domains,” namely, the “material and the spiritual” (p. 6). The “material is the domain of the ‘outside,’ of the economy and the state-craft, of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and the East had succumbed” (p. 6). Once this superiority had been accepted, the emphasis could be placed on the “spiritual” domain, “an ‘inner’ domain bearing the ‘essential’ marks of cultural identity” (p.  6). Thereby, the “greater one’s success in imitating Western skills in the material domain, . . . the greater the need to preserve the distinctness of one’s spiritual culture” (p. 6). According to Chatterjee (1993), in the postcolonial age, this separation caused “our postcolonial misery” (p. 11). Chatterjee noted for India in the nineteenth century that “nationalism sought to bring this area [network of secondary schools] under its jurisdiction long before the domain of the state had become a matter of contention” (p. 9). However, the idea of establishing a single colonial–cultural nationality via

24  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

Western educational concepts, as Chatterjee argued, had been naïve (p. 223). To explain the (resistance) power of the various communities to educational interventions, Chatterjee drew on Hegel’s philosophy of right, which he said reminded us of the “irreducible immediacy in which human beings are born in society: not as pure unattached individuals free to choose their social affiliations (whether gender, ethnicity, or class) but as already ascribed members of society” (p. 232). People were not free to choose the social locus of their birth, and it was the family that was responsible for the “education of children.” Chatterjee read Hegel “as saying that education properly belongs to the field of the ethical life of the community and not to the compulsory discipline of the school, the prison, the hospital, and the psychiatrist’s clinic” (p. 232). The very different theoretical conceptions ascribed here to the approach of constructivism were characterized, among other things, by the fact that they largely refrained from defining what nation or nationalism was but were interested in how nationality functioned—predominantly discursively—as a cultural thesis of togetherness. Thereby, education and schooling were used, even though rather moderately, to underline their constructivist approach. In a similar way, the theories of the last approach examined and labeled functionalism and dispensed with an essential determination of nationality and nationalism. Functionalism: The School as a Cog in the Governmental Machinery of the Nation-State

The label functionalism for the approach that we discussed last and which included some of the most recent publications on nationalism is perhaps best legitimated by the subtitle of the book that we found to contain the secondmost frequent use of educational terms in our sample (see Figure 1.2): Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart (Wimmer, 2018). Similar to the representatives of constructivism, Wimmer was less concerned with the validity of the three grand narratives and based his monograph on historical hypotheses combined with quantitative sociological and economic data in relation with perceptions of “what works.” Wimmer (2018) did not define the concept of “nation” and, as a rule—and as is not uncommon in Anglo-Saxon literature ‒ used “nation” almost synonymously with “state.” He focused in six comparative case studies (Switzerland and Belgium, Botswana and Somalia, and China and Russia) on the stability of governments which was seen as the “legitimacy of the state” (pp. 258–60), resulting from the governments’ policies with which they integrated ethnic minorities and allowed them to participate in public goods. In this setting, Wimmer (2018) spoke little of education in general but of school in particular, and, as the qualitative analysis revealed (see Figure 1.1), even very often. However, schools were understood at one point very generally as an expression of the distribution of public goods among many others— “roads, schools, health services, clean water, protection from arbitrary violence,

Education and the nation 25

and so forth” (69). It is not entirely clear what Wimmer saw as the specific quality of public goods, but he was interested in “literacy rates” (pp. 165–6, 199), so it could be assumed that he meant, inexplicitly but in broad agreement with the modernists, something like political-economic self-empowerment. Two very special achievements of the school, however, were emphasized: the school as the site of political training for the next generation of bureaucrats and politicians (pp. 125–6), and, also in broad agreement with the modernist approach, the standardization of (national) language. In this context, one of Wimmer’s core arguments was that China had been successful as a nationstate because it had—in contrast to Russia, for example—developed and taught in the educational institutions—beyond its national “polyglossia”—a “monographia,” a “scriptural homogeneity, which facilitated building and maintaining political ties across a vast population speaking different tongues” (p. 114). In the same year that Wimmer published Nation Building, Hazony published The Virtue of Nationalism (Hazony, 2018) in which he argued that the nationstate, as compared to both the historic great empires and modern forms of global governance such as the United Nations, was the best form of governance (p. 9). Hazony started from the assumption that “human beings are born into . . . collectives or adopt them later in life, and are tied to them by powerful bonds of mutual loyalty among their members” (p. 9). To the question of how such “powerful bonds of mutual loyalty” arise and are handed down, Hazony gave hardly any answers, and certainly none that would place education and training at the center. Schools, in their empirical reality, were—in line with “local political chapters, churches, and synagogues . . . and other community organizations” (p. 70)—more an expression of nation(ality) than their maintainer, even if they told completely wrong understandings of the nature of the state or the alleged causes—exalted nationalism—of the First World War (pp. 76, 116). Only in one passage, in which Hazony opposed statements according to which the United States and other “successful” states were in fact independent of the idea of the nation (he did not provide a reference to this), did he emphasize, in a footnote by referring to Kaestle’s 1983 Pillars of the Republic, that the “American public-school system was established in the 1830s with the aim of maintaining a public culture based on Protestantism and American nationalism” (Hazony, 2018, p. 268). Here, schooling seemed to be an institution of implementing a “public culture” that itself was composed by Protestantism and U.S. nationalism. This fundamental educational argument, however, which Hazony adopted from Kaestle’s 1983 study, was not adopted for other countries in the world or for other periods in history; it served Hazony purely as an argument that Western states were not merely rational but national states or even nation-states. The last monograph in our sample to be discussed here is the most recently published one—Why Nationalism by Tamir (2019). Tamir, too, referred often to the United States and began with the cultural crisis in the United States after the Soviet launch of Sputnik in the autumn of 1957 (Tamir, 2019, p. 16).

26  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

If it were only a matter of counting Tamir among the three great narratives, she would undoubtedly belong to the approach of modernism. Based on Greenfeld’s (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Tamir urged that the nation . . . is the constitutive element of modernity” and that “the true power of nationalism in modern times is grounded in its ability to promote processes of modernization and industrialization that go hand in hand with the universalization of education, information, and technology. (p. 28) More in accordance with constructivist arguments, however, Tamir (2019) saw the constant need to “supply individuals with reasons for membership,” which in turn “forces nations to constantly produce and reproduce the national narrative,” and that in times of modernity “this effort was state sponsored” and led to, among others, institutions that “cultivate the national narrative and nurture national feelings” such as “schools that taught the national language and spread the national culture” (p.  57). In this respect, what may be called “national consciousness” (p.  58) was the result of an educational process between the collective and the individual, as Tamir (2019) argued. The educational program in creating this national “consciousness” or “national identity” (p. 75)11 was described as turning or transforming “Subjects into Citizens” (Tamir, 2019: chapter  11). In this respect, the “public school system” was seen as “the most effective and constructive tool” for nation-building and its ongoing maintenance, and, again, it was seen as a characteristic of modernity and even modern democracies (p.  77). Thus, modern “states used schools to spread the narrative and heritage of the nation, teach national languages, and install attachment to the state and its symbol” (p. 77); they “all embarked on an educational journey intended to transform inhabitants into fellow nationals” (p. 78). What the schools did, and here Tamir argued somewhat in an ethno-symbolist manner, was that they “taught the national language, nurtured, rehearsed, and remembered the national narrative, venerated national heroes, celebrated the nations’ exceptionality (leaving out—forgetting—all that could shatter the preferred national image), fostering national consciousness, imprinting children with the national vision” (p. 80). Tamir (2019) concluded: National education was to encompass a person’s life, offering tools for political, cultural, and economic engagements and carrying a promise of equality. It turned subjects into citizens, allowing for the development of a set of linguistic and symbolic skills that facilitate communication between fellow nationals, evoking a willingness to work for the benefit of a common good. (p. 83)

Education and the nation 27

It is probably no coincidence that Tamir was not very optimistic about the trio of modernity, nation, and education in the face of what is called globalization. For Tamir, “national public education” was seen as “the main victim of globalization” (p.  95), as “those who favor globalism regard national education as ineffective and opt for private schools they can shape to fit their purpose” (p. 95), and these advocates joined those disappointed by the “inability of national education to play its designated mobilizing and integrative role” (p.  96). In this same vein: “Schools are made less relevant not only because of their inability to allow a real meritocracy to develop but also because they are deprived of the role of promoting social cohesion” (p. 96). In this context, Tamir spoke explicitly of a “crisis” (p. 97; see also p. 138), a choice of words that obviously called for solutions, and this solution did not lie in the educational convictions of a globalized elite, as “more and more people realize that education”—as a “key for greater competitiveness”—“is not enough to secure a prosperous life” (p. 167). Hence, for Tamir (2019, p. 179), the solution was to be found in returning to the strengths of the nation-state, which must then actually be implemented. Even if this is unmistakably normative and expresses a commitment to the (liberal) nation-state, its basic assumption is representative of the functionalist approach, which is less concerned with the question of what nation and nationalism actually are or when they emerged historically, but which seeks to see under what conditions nation-states function and what role education plays as a cog in this machinery.

Educational Knowledge as Putty in the Explanatory Architecture of Nation and Nationalism Derived from the results of the quantitative analysis, we formulated three interdependent theses. The first was that the educational knowledge of the theoreticians of nationalism in our sample is not really elaborated or differentiated. Second, that it is precisely the not inconsiderable frequency of references to the field of education that is an expression of what research came to label as the educationalization of the world—a taken-for-granted cultural attitude according to which not only all kinds of social problems but also the modern world and the modern self, ultimately, have become educational projects. Finally, the third thesis held that research on nationalism as a rule ignores how mass schooling with its curricula and teaching materials generates national loyalties and identities, just as they help to generate not just literacies but also national literacies. The first thesis was essentially substantiated in the first stage of the qualitative analysis. Even with the best will in the world, one cannot say that the theorists of the nation and nationalism take note of even a fraction of the relevant research literature in education, including primary or tertiary literature. Educational knowledge is used, even frequently, yes, but not reflected upon, not considered, and not examined. This becomes almost painfully apparent in the aforementioned overview and collaborative-controversial discussion by Ichijo

28  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

and Uzelac (2005) on the three approaches of nationalism that had dominated up to then, titled When is the Nation? Ichijo and Uzelac, the editors of that volume, briefly raised the question of the relation between “the topics nation, nationhood and nationalism” and education (p.  129). The way the question was asked and the way three dominant scholars of nationalism replied to this question ultimately show a remarkable uncertainty: “What kind of educational impact do the topics of nation, nationality and nationalism have?” (p. 129)— Hobsbawm replied that education systems are too “deeply imbued with nationalism” and that “the main problem is precisely how to emancipate education and higher education from this built-in nationalist virus” (130). Breuilly was “pessimistic” and regretted that this question has been too little researched because “school education has become so complex” (p. 130), but history as a school subject must be undermined in its nationalist stance (p. 130). Last, Smith claimed that education has been a victim of nationalism “to the detriment of dispassionate analysis, thereby encouraging one-sided and exclusive attitudes” (pp. 130–1), adding that “the study of nations and nationalism can have a useful corrective function—both for nationalist one-sided bias and for naive and idealistic cosmopolitanism,” although Smith doubts that the school can ever meet these expectations (p. 131). The answers reveal how little is known about schooling and how education and schooling are seen as a thoroughly moral issue: education is a “victim” of nationalism and deserves to be “emancipated” (Hobsbawm), or it is “undermined” (Breuilly), possibly by the study of nationalism, although it is doubtful that the school can ever perform this task. This leads directly to the second thesis, which aims at explaining why there is such a strong preference for educational arguments that are not being reflected upon. This observation can only be explained by the fact that the promises made in connection with education are shaped by culturally shared expectations, according to which all kinds of social problems must first be solved educationally. Research has dubbed this expectation the educationalization of social problems. However, it has been shown that not only are problem solutions almost always preceded by an educational reformulation of the perceived problem (Depaepe, 2012; Labaree, 2008; Smeyers & Depaepe, 2008) but also that the understanding of the modern self and the world is basically educationally constructed and perceived (Tröhler, 2017, 2019, 2021; Bruno-Jofré, 2019; Noguera-Ramírez & Marín-Díaz, 2020). In this sense, it appears that the educationalized perception of the world is transferred to questions of nation(-states) and nationalism in the same taken-for-granted way and thus without the need of critical examination. In the comfort zone of arguing with self-evident facts and taken-for-granted assumptions, particular issues almost necessarily stand out less. Accordingly, the third thesis was that research on nationalism tends to ignore how schools, their curricula, and teaching materials create national loyalties and identities, just as they help to create not just literacy but also national literacies (Tröhler, 2020b). It is highly interesting to see that there is indeed some awareness of this issue but that it is not further investigated. A prime example of this phenomenon is van den Berghe, who toward the end of his book, The Ethnic Phenomenon,

Education and the nation 29

inserts a very long footnote that begins with an apologetic request for permission, not because of its length but because of its autobiographical content. The autobiographical reminiscence is set in van den Berghe’s youth of the 1930s and 1940s in multilingual Belgium. He describes the social difference between the (then) wealthy Francophone Walloons and the rather modest-living Dutchspeaking Flemings at the time; how his parents’ grandparents, noble Flemings, spoke French and looked down on their Flemish-speaking contemporaries; and how his grandfather, a physician, had two different consulting rooms in his practice, a noble one for the Walloons and a very simple one for the Flemings (p. 203). He then describes how his father became “Frenchified,” and how he, like his father, “went to a French-medium elementary and secondary school where Dutch was taught as the ‘other’ national language, but where social prejudices ascribed distinctly lower status to Dutch” (p. 203). Beyond this curricular preference, van den Berghe (1981) remembers how his “Dutch teacher was treated as a social pariah by his colleagues,” as Dutch was “considered pas sérieux, roughly on par with physical education” (p. 203). This, in fact, would have been a unique opportunity to get to the bottom of the matter—for example, by means of relevant secondary literature. But van den Berghe makes as little use of this opportunity as does Connor (1994), who inserts comparable autobiographical memories in his monograph but at least not in a footnote. Discussing how “even governments of complex multiethnic states are free to . . . adopt the idiom of nationalism when attempting to inculcate loyalty to the state” (p.  207), Connor (1994) then reminds himself of his own youth: From my own primary school education .  .  . I  recall how we students— many . . . from highly diverse national backgrounds—were told we shared a common ancestry. We were programmed to consider Washington, Jefferson, et al. as our common, “founding fathers.” We memorized Lincoln’s reminder in the Gettysburg Address [and] repetitively sang that very short song— “America”—one of whose seven lines reads “land where my fathers died.” (pp. 207–8) However, even this reminiscent insight remains an episode that is related without consequently identifying a field of research that could be consulted— curriculum history or curriculum studies are simply not topics of research on nation and nationalism, even if one’s own memory leads into the middle of this field, as for instance is the case in another autobiographical account: Tamir (2019) tells how as a child she had received a textbook, Our Country’s Flora, with beautiful black-and-white illustrations of the local flowers, which became “my guide to nature” (p. 73). But much later in her life, Tamir (2019) recognized something important that she had neglected as a child: Little did I realize its total disregard of the fact that biological habitats do not overlap national borders.  .  .  . Reading Our Country’s Flora, one got

30  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic

the impression that Israel was a unique botanic habitat whose flora and fauna were special and whose borders were natural. One day I came across a nature book published by a Palestinian Israeli. It had the same beautiful sketches of the same flowers and trees, and yet the mere fact that it was written in Arabic made it alien. This was a clear expression of the geopolitical reality of two nations sharing a land, each pretending it was its sole owner. (pp. 73–4) In a very striking way, van den Berghe, Connor, and Tamir recall very formative experiences in education and at school in general, in the curriculum and in textbooks, but in their theoretical elaboration of the role of education and nationalism, these dimensions of interactions—that are obviously deeply rooted in their consciousness—do not play a role. As we have seen in our sample (Figure 1.2), “classroom” was used only 8 times out of over 4,000 mentions of educational terms (less than 0.2%), curriculum was used 34 times (0.84%), and textbooks was used 63 times (1.57%).12 It seems we are dealing with a strange, perhaps unique phenomenon: educational knowledge—which we were looking for in this study—is certainly present in the theories of nations and nationalism, but it is rather ordinary, not very specific, not backed up by research, and therefore very well usable to support the different ideologies or theories advocated by the authors in the sample. The apparent interest of nationalism theorists in the subjects of education research, however, signals the advantages that an intersection or at least reciprocal awareness of the two fields would bring. Insights from education research, particularly curriculum studies, on the objectives, functionality, and limitations of school systems could aid nationalism theorists in grasping the role of education in successful long-lived nations (Wimmer, 2018), facilitate new theoretical perspectives (Özkırımlı, 2017), and thus maybe even better understand nationalism per se (Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005); this would not least also help educational research to integrate the question of the nation into its research horizon and thus increase its own interdisciplinary visibility and acceptance.

Notes 1 Özkırımlı’s (2017, p. ix) list of central theorists of nationalism included one more name, that of Edward Shils (1910–1995). However, Shils was excluded from this sample, as he did not publish a monograph on nationalism. As a matter of fact, Özkırımlı (2017) cited only one of Shils’ articles in his entire review of theoretical approaches. 2 The books in the sample are listed in the reference list and marked with an asterisk. 3 This means, on the one hand, that a single, educationally relevant keyword was always counted as only one page in the book, even if it was frequently used on that exact page, and, on the other hand, that a page was counted multiple times if an author listed it under multiple keyword entries in his or her index, thus indicating that a single page contained more than one educationally relevant term. In short, this enumeration was not about finding out how often a particular keyword was written in an index, but about how many pages were listed thematically with this term.

Education and the nation 31 4 Obviously, the page numbers were not counted here but the total numerical number of citations in the entire text. 5 The publications referenced by the authors are not included in the reference list in this article, as they are merely discussed here regarding their utilization by the theorists of nation and nationalism. 6 We refrain here and elsewhere in the chapter from referring to specific publications that in our opinion certainly deserve to be consulted. 7 In particular, this leaves out of consideration a relevant chapter in a book that was cited by almost half of the theorists in our sample but that does not see itself explicitly as a contribution to the question of nationalism; it makes a case study of France and examines how inhabitants (peasants) were transformed into citizens: Eugene Weber’s (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen. 8 On Keith Darden’s webpage at American University, “forthcoming” is still listed as the publication date for Resisting Occupation in Eurasia: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties; see www.american.edu/sis/faculty/ktdarden.cfm (retrieved April  3, 2020). We contacted several authors who cited this nonexistent book but received either no answers at all or only evasive ones. 9 It has to be noted that Hroch added 13 footnotes to that subchapter on the “Impact of school education,” pointing to research literature comparing school provision density in regions of different countries with national activities. However, none of those references served the purpose of defining how schooling, curriculum, or instruction is related to teaching nationalism as sentiment or identity (Hroch, 1985, p. 205). 10 The passage to which Anderson referred in Hobsbawm reads as follows: “The great proponents of middle-class nationalism at this stage were the lower and middle professional, administrative and intellectual strata, in other words the educated classes. .  .  . To be precise, the advance guard of middle-class nationalism fought its battle along the line which marked the educational progress of large numbers of ‘new men’ into areas hitherto occupied by a small elite. The progress of schools and universities measures that of nationalism, just as schools and especially universities became its most conscious champions” (Hobsbawm, 1962/1996, p. 135). 11 To describe this notion, Tamir (2019) quoted Liah Greenfeld’s (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity: “National identity is, fundamentally, a matter of dignity. It gives people a reason to be proud” (Tamir, 2019, p. 88). 12 Accordingly, the authors in the sample did not consult any research literature on textbooks. However, it should be pointed out here that there is one exception, the article by Susan-Mary Grant (2005), which refers to Ruth Miller Elson’s (1964) Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century. Grant’s article is published in the overview book edited by Ichijo and Uzelac (2005), which has already been mentioned several times and which served us here to identify the three major narratives or approaches to nationalism but which, as a compiled book, is not part of the sample itself.

References (* = Monographies belonging to the sample) *Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. *Armstrong, J. A. (1982). Nations before nationalism. University of North Carolina Press. *Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. SAGE. *Brass, P. R. (1991). Ethnicity and nationalism: Theory and comparison. SAGE. *Breuilly, J. (1993). Nationalism and the state (2nd ed.). Manchester University Press.

32  Daniel Tröhler and Veronika Maricic *Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe. Cambridge University Press. Bruno-Jofré, R. (2019). Educationalization and its complexities: Religion, politics, and technology. University of Toronto Press. *Calhoun, C. (2007). Nations matter: Culture, history, and the cosmopolitan dream. Routledge. *Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press. *Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The quest for understanding. Princeton University Press. Depaepe, M. (2012). Between educationalization and appropriation: Selected writings on the history of modern educational systems. Leuven University Press. *Elgenius, G. (2011). Symbols of nations and nationalism: Celebrating nationhood. Palgrave Macmillan. Elson, R. M. (1964). Guardians of tradition: American schoolbooks of the nineteenth century. University of Nebraska Press. Fichte, J. G. (1968). In G. A. Kelly (Ed.), Addresses to the German Nation. Harper and Row (Original work published 1808). *Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. Basic Books. *Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Basil Blackwell. Grant, S.-M. (2005). When was the first new nation? Locating America in a national context. In A. Ichijo & G. Uzelac (Eds.), When is the nation? Towards an understanding of theories of nationalism (pp. 157–176). Routledge. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five roads to modernity. Harvard University Press. *Grosby, S. (2005). Nationalism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Guéhenno, J.-M. (1993). La fin de la démocratie. Flammarion. *Hastings, A. (1997). The construction of nationhood: Ethnicity, religion and nationalism. Cambridge University Press. *Hazony, Y. (2018). The virtue of nationalism. Basic Books. *Hechter, M. (2000). Containing nationalism. Oxford University Press. Herder, J. G. (1774a). Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit: Beytrag des Jahrhunderts. Weidmann. Herder, J. G. (1774b). Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts. Cotta. Hobsbawm, E. (1996 [1962]). The age of revolution 1789–1848. Vintage Books. *Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press. *Hroch, M. (1985). Social preconditions of national revival in Europe. Cambridge University Press. *Hutchinson, J. (2017). Nationalism and war. Oxford University Press. Ichijo, A., & Uzelac, G. (Eds.). (2005). When is the nation? Towards an understanding of theories of nationalism. Routledge. James, P., & Steger, M. B. (2014). A genealogy of “globalization”: The career of a concept. Globalization, 11(4), 417–434. *Kedourie, E. (1961). Nationalism (rev. ed.). Hutchinson & Co. *Kohn, H. (1955). Nationalism and its meaning and history. Van Nostrand. Labaree, D. (2008). The winning ways of a losing strategy: Educationalizing social problems in the United States. Educational Theory, 58(4), 447–460. *Nairn, T. (1997). Faces of nationalism: Janus revisited. Verso. Noguera-Ramírez, C. E.,  & Marín-Díaz, D. L. (2020). Educationalization of the world: A genealogical perspective of modernity. Cadernos de História da Educação, 19(2), 360–376.

Education and the nation 33 Özkırımlı, U. (2000). Theories of nationalism: A critical introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing. Özkırımlı, U. (2010). Theories of nationalism: A  critical introduction (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Özkırımlı, U. (2017). Theories of nationalism: A  critical introduction (3rd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. Piper, L. (2004). Return to the organic: Onions, artichokes and “the debate” on the nation and modernity. Nationalism and modernism by Anthony D. Smith; Theories of nationalism: A critical introduction by Umut Özkirimli; Understanding nationalism by Montserrat Guibernau and John Hutchinson. Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 103, 122–140. Renan, E. (n.d. [1882]). What is a nation? [Text of a conference delivered at the Sorbonne on March  11th, 1882] (E. Rundell, Trans.). http://ucparis.fr/files/9313/6549/9943/ What_is_a_Nation.pdf *Roshwald, A. (2006). The endurance of nationalism: Ancient roots and modern dilemmas. Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, J.-J. (1965). Emil. Basic Books (Original work published 1762). Smeyers, P., & Depaepe, M. (Eds.). (2008). Educational research: The educationalization of social problems. Springer. *Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Blackwell. Smith, A. D. (2003). Chosen peoples: Sacred sources of national identity. Oxford University Press. Smith, A. D. (2010). Nationalism: Theory, ideology, history (2nd ed.). Polity. Tamir, Y. (2011). Staying in control: Or, what do we really want public education to achieve? Educational Theory, 61(4), 395–411. *Tamir, Y. (2019). Why nationalism. Princeton University Press. Thiesse, A.-M. (1999). La création des identités nationales: Europe XVIIIe-XXe siècle. Editions du Seuil. Tröhler, D. (2017). Educationalization of social problems and the educationalization of the modern world. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory (pp. 698–703). doi:10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_8-1 Tröhler, D. (2019). The dignity of Protestant souls: Protestant trajectories in the educationalization of the World. In R. Bruno-Jofré (Ed.), Educationalization and its complexities: Religion, politics, and technology (pp. 27–49). University of Toronto Press. Tröhler, D. (2020a). Nation-states, education and the fabrication of national-minded citizens. Croatian Journal of Education, 21(6) (Special Issue Nr 2), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.15516/ cje.v22i0.4129. Tröhler, D. (2020b). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. doi:10.1080/00220272.20 20.1786727 Tröhler, D. (2021). Die Pädagogisierung des Selbst und die Pädagogisierung der Welt. In D. Miller & J. Oelkers (Eds.), „Selbstgesteuertes Lernen“: Interdisziplinäre Kritik eines suggestiven Konzepts (pp. 52–74). BeltzJuventa. *Van den Berghe, P. L. (1981). The ethnic phenomenon. Greenwood. Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1880–1914. Stanford University Press. *Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation building: Why some countries come together while others fall apart. Princeton University Press. *Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender & nation. SAGE.

Chapter 2

“The divine fire . . . burns within them.” National Davids and Goliaths in Swiss, Danish, and Scottish school lessons Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

Heroes are “men and women who grasp their destinies, use their human qualities of courage, cunning, ambition, speed and strength to perform astonishing deeds, vanquish terrible monsters and establish great cultures and lineages that change the world” (Fry, 2019, p.  1). Stories of great heroes have long been part of national historiographies, and as such, they usually go hand in hand with nation-building processes. They have also helped to shape ideas of the modern nation-state: ideas in “which trust, faith and ideas of salvation .  .  . are intimately linked” (Tröhler & Maricic, 2021, p. 2). In our chapter, we will analyze how the trope of one of the best-known biblical stories—David and Goliath—was used in three different countries (Switzerland, Denmark, and Scotland) to create national imaginaries of who “we” are and how “we” differ from the “others.” William Tell, Niels Ebbesen, and William Wallace were three legendary heroes whose stories were based on genuine historical figures (Wallace and Ebbesen) or folk tales (Tell) from the Middle Ages. They were all regional “freedom fighters” who stood up against a larger outside force that wanted control of their “homeland.” But they were not unsung heroes. On the contrary, national Swiss, Danish, and Scottish historiographies and educational historiographies have written their heroic, mythical stories for centuries, no matter whether those stories were actually true or not, melding them into the historical consciousness of their societies. Songs, plays, movies, and children’s stories have been made about them, and their feats have been written into the curricula with textbooks turning them into national heroes whom students should revere. They were the Davids versus their respective Goliaths. And just like David, they became renowned as fighters for the “right” (i.e., national) cause, as clever men who bravely faced the odds at any cost, even if that cost was their life. We aim at not just focusing on the “heroes” but also diverting attention to their “foes”: while children have been socialized around their national “David,” how were they also learning to discern and depict their “Goliath”? When William Tell resisted Austrian Habsburg rule, Niels Ebbesen thwarted Germans from deteriorating Denmark, and William Wallace stood up to the English throne seekers, they were fighting with principle against some “evil,” outside DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-3

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 35

enemy force that caused suffering and pain. But who were those “Goliaths,” and why is it worthwhile to analyze their stories? Drawing upon Ernest Renan’s remark in the context of his discussion of the phenomenon of the nation that “suffering” unites as much as “joy” (Renan, 1882), we explore the narratives that are constructed in formal education by portraying these heroes as initially seemingly disadvantaged in the fight against great (figurative and literal) evil. We argue that while “national heroes” are embedded in school curricula as prime examples of the desired national citizen, “arch foes” are equally important. They give the “heroes” a “foe” to rise against, while, at the same time, the suffering they caused unites the people behind those “heroes.” To explore the use of the David-versus-Goliath myth in formal education as a tool for nation-building, our analysis will draw upon textbooks and other teaching materials used in Swiss, Danish, and Scottish schools. The tale of William Tell’s fight against a Habsburg bailiff is looked at as it has been depicted in the imagery of mid-nineteenth century to mid-twentieth-century reading books, teaching materials, and school wall charts. Niels Ebbesen’s heroic stand against the Germans with the murder of Holstein's Count Gert III will be drawn from analyzing primarily nineteenth but also twentieth-century Danish school reading books, songbooks, history textbooks, and wall charts. William Wallace’s valorous actions against King Edward I of England during the Wars of Independence will be examined in Scottish English, history, and geography textbooks which were published in the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Switzerland’s William Tell Versus Gessler, the Austrian Bailiff In the early twentieth century, Swiss history teachers were expected to “[b]ring out the love of freedom” in their students. This particular love of freedom is what “led the three Swiss and their countrymen to take the Rütli Oath.1 This love of independence is embodied in the person of William Tell, our national hero, the symbol of the free man in revolt against tyrants” (Rosier & Savary, 1926, p. 54). Those short didactic remarks for the use of primary school teachers conclude a chapter called “the national traditions” in a Swiss schoolbook from 1926. The book itself is called the Illustrated History of Switzerland, which was written by William Rosier and Ernest Savary, and it was meant to be used in French-speaking primary schools in the Swiss cantons of Vaud, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and Bern. In short, this chapter on Swiss national traditions tells the story of devout, hardworking, and freedom-loving people living in Central Switzerland in the early fourteenth century. Those people suffered from the tyranny of Habsburg bailiffs appointed by Emperor Albert I. “These bailiffs were arrogant and cruel. They increased taxes; for the smallest offenses they fined the inhabitants heavily and missed no opportunity to humiliate them,” the textbook by Rosier and

36  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

Savary explains (Rosier  & Savary, 1926, p.  54). One of those bailiffs by the name of Gessler (Grisler in French) even put his hat on a pole and ordered the people to greet this hat with all honors. When a herdsman from Uri, known as William Tell, refused to greet the hat, Gessler came up with a particularly cruel punishment. Knowing of Tell’s reputation as an excellent crossbowman, he sentenced him to shoot an apple off his son’s head. Tell, trusting in God’s help, took the shot, hit the apple, and therewith saved his and his son’s lives. But before he took the shot, he grabbed a second bolt. When asked what he intended to do with this additional bolt, Tell honestly explained that he had intended to kill the bailiff in case he fatally missed his first shot. Gessler, enraged by this answer, captured Tell and sent him to jail in his stronghold. On the way there, Tell managed to escape and finally shot Gessler in a narrow path which has since come to be known as Hohle Gasse. This event marked the beginning of an uprising in Central Switzerland which swept away the foreign masters and secured Swiss independence and freedom. For centuries, this story of the murder of a cruel tyrant by the righteous huntsman has been told to Swiss children. His heroic deeds have been commemorated with numerous statues and festivities (see Hettling, 1997), songs (see Brändle, 2004), plays (see Aschwanden, 2004), paintings, movies, coins, and even comic books. Since he is the most famous Swiss national hero, Tell’s story was also included in textbooks used in Swiss schools in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as the one by Rosier and Savary. However, the story of the master crossbowman who shoots a fruit from his son’s head does not originate from Switzerland. It has been recorded in the Persian Poem Maqāmāt-uṭ-Ṭuyūr (Conference of the Birds) and the Danish Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danish) which were both written in the last decades of the twelfth century and therewith predate the Swiss story. As to how and why this “traveling story” came to Switzerland is unknown, but it found fertile ground there, flourished, turned into a tale of a freedom fighter and tyrant slayer, and, as such, it eventually traveled around the world (see Blatter & Groebner, 2016), not least in the form of a play from 1804 by the German writer Friedrich Schiller. In Switzerland, for a long time, the story of Tell was known as a folk tale. In the 1470s, it was written down for the first time by Hans Schriber, a state secretary in the canton of Obwalden. As Blatter and Groebner assume, Schriber recorded that story to provide proof that the Swiss, when fighting the Habsburgs, were within their rights, which means that they did not deserve to be punished, but which nonetheless started happening in 1469 when Emperor Frederick III imposed an imperial ban over Switzerland (Blatter & Groebner, 2016, pp. 18–35). There were, however, no other recordings that could verify Schriber’s story, and until today no such document has ever been found. Nevertheless, over the centuries, historians, playwrights, and book authors have added detail to the narrative, such as precise dates, venues, statements, and descriptions of events to give the story the veneer of authenticity (see Sieber,

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 37

2007). Yet, while Tell and most of his supporting cast are fictive heroes, it is a historical fact that the Habsburgs and the cantons in Central Switzerland were engaging in repeated violent struggles over political rights and matters of sovereignty. It is also a historical fact that the emperor had sent bailiffs to Central Switzerland to assert power which, from a Habsburg perspective, was righteously his. Although none of those bailiffs’ names were Gessler (or Grisler) at the time when the Tell story allegedly took place (see Frisch, 2016), through the Tell story, the name Gessler/Grisler became synonymous with “foreign bailiff” (fremder Vogt) and “tyrant” in general. Over time, the name Gessler/ Grisler and the term “foreign bailiff” were emancipated from their historical (i.e., Habsburgian) origins until eventually everyone who was considered to be a tyrant could be called Gessler, Grisler, or fremder Vogt. In this sense, eighteenth-century Swiss used the name “Gessler” in inner Swiss conflicts to denounce their opponents, and up until today Swiss isolationists have used the term fremder Vogt in their political fights over Swiss engagement with international organizations. Notwithstanding the success of the Tell story, either parts of it or the story as a whole have always been contested. Reluctant intellectuals such as the humanists of the sixteenth century or Voltaire in the eighteenth century expressed doubts (Morerod, 2010; Blatter  & Groebner, 2016), particularly about the story with the apple. Others followed by debunking the Tell story as a “Danish fable” (Freudenberger & von Haller, 1760) or by pointing out that there was no historical evidence to verify the story (see Largiadère, 1931). In the nineteenth century, the dispute over whether the Tell story was a myth or historical truth also began to affect the production of textbooks for history classes. Throughout the century, such classes were introduced in most Swiss cantons in order to provide their future citizens with some knowledge of great men and their deeds and a modicum of patriotism (see Dahn & Boser, 2015). To pass an entry exam carried out by the Swiss military in 1887, for example, the conscripts had to at least show knowledge of “some men from Swiss history, [and] a little of the freedom fights” (Näf, 1887, para. 2). And while the Tell story seemingly was a perfect match to teach that exact matter, some textbook authors did not want to ignore the fact that this story might have been a myth. Rosier and Savary, the authors of the already introduced book, dealt with that issue by writing the following: The research of historians has brought to light the events that preceded and accompanied the founding of the confederation. The Waldstätten had not forgotten these events, but by telling them to each other from Father to Son, they transformed them little by little, without realizing it, as it always happens when stories are passed from mouth to mouth. Thus, some facts were placed at an inaccurate date, others were modified, amplified, arranged, embellished: or after two or three centuries, legends, on many points, replaced history. These legends, these traditions which are

38  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

sometimes based on facts, are part of our national heritage; they have had a considerable influence on our ancestors and have contributed to the love of our country. The children of Switzerland must know them, engrave them in their memory and in their hearts. (Rosier & Savary, 1926, p. 50) In this regard, the book by Rosier and Savary does not stand out; similar explanations of why the Tell story remained part of history classes although its historical authenticity was dubious can be found in many Swiss textbooks from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (see, e.g., Lehr- und Lesebuch, 1868, p. 297). What makes Rosier and Savary’s book particularly interesting is the fact that the chapter on national traditions tells a story that has had next to no relevance for most parts of Switzerland. As Teuscher and Hugener explain, until the 19th century, . . . in German-speaking Switzerland, only a small part of the population had taken part in the so oft-invoked Swiss freedom. The subject countries included not only the common bailiwicks of Aargau and Thurgau, but also most of the countryside surrounding the Confederate towns. (Teuscher & Hugener, 2010, p. 254) In French-speaking Switzerland, the situation was similar. Only the canton of Geneva has had a long-standing tradition of freedom and sovereignty, whereas the canton of Vaud had been ruled by Bernese bailiffs until 1798, the canton of Neuchâtel was ruled by German and French families between the 1400s and 1700s and then by Prussia until 1848, and the French-speaking parts of Berne did not get their independence until 1979. Thus, one might ask why the Tell story, which was in essence a local myth about freedom from tyranny and foreign rule, was adopted in other parts of Switzerland under the label of “national traditions”? Our answer to this question reads like this: the Tell story, such as it has been told and illustrated in textbooks and on wall charts, has a high resemblance to the biblical David versus Goliath story. “If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.” With those words, the giant warrior Goliath challenged the men of Israel (King James Bible, 1 Sam. 17: 9). In essence, this is also the plot of the Tell story: a fight to the death, man to man, where the freedom of a whole people is the prize for the winner and enslavement the fate of the loser. And there is even more resemblance. Although Gessler is not described as a giant wearing shiny armor and a helmet (1 Sam. 17: 5–7), on images and wall charts he is usually portrayed as wearing fancy clothes and sitting on horseback looking down at the Swiss people—a true Goliath, no doubt. Tell, on the other hand, is portrayed as a simple yet devout, skilled, and brave man wearing the traditional white linen shirt of a herdsman. In such a way, he appears as a David,

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 39

ready to save his people from being enslaved by the Philistines, or in this case: the Habsburg monarchy. Like children in any other Christian society, Swiss children had been taught by priests and teachers that biblical stories such as the one about David and Goliath had a meaning beyond their historical and local context. The message embedded in those stories was addressed to all Christians at any time. In the same vein, textbooks such as the one by Rosier and Savary assumed that the message embedded in the Tell story was equally addressed to all Swiss people. Switzerland as a nation could not rely on a common language, a common culture, or even a common religious denomination. Thus, it was hard to find common threads to characterize the Swiss. One of the few has been described in a textbook for use in primary schools written by the then Swiss Federal Council Numa Droz in 1885: “What has always characterized the Swiss people is their spirit of independence” (Droz, 1885, p. 47). This is why it is not surprising that Rosier and Savary, as many other textbook authors at the time, wanted the Tell story to be “engraved” in all Swiss children’s memories and hearts. As it is difficult to define what makes Switzerland a nation, Swiss national identity relies all the more on an understanding of what the Swiss are not. To quote from Droz’s textbook again: “We Swiss do not want to be Austrians, Germans, French or Italians: we want to remain what we are, and we will never suffer the laws, customs or beliefs of other people to be imposed on us” (Droz, 1885, p. 15). In this regard, the character of Gessler or Grisler in the Tell story was particularly important as he gave the children an idea of what that “other” was, and we, the Swiss, do not want to be or to become that “other.” But at the same time, Gessler or Grisler did not only stand for a foreign threat. As a bailiff, he could also be seen as a domestic enemy. As already said, large parts of nineteenth-century Switzerland have had a history of being ruled by Swiss bailiffs. And when the Swiss themselves became bailiffs, their subject invoked the Tell story when revolting against their oppressors (Brändle, 2004). In this sense, the passage on national traditions in Rosier and Savary’s textbook could also be interpreted as a double gesture: on the one hand, it confirms that the French-speaking Swiss will be part of this nation and protect it from foreign threats. On the other hand, it also warns their German-speaking compatriots to never ever strive to dominate them again.

Denmark’s Niels Ebbesen Versus Gert, the German Count While Switzerland’s William Tell represented a national freedom fighter to the Swiss people, his older, Danish counterpart of the tenth century, Toki (a.k.a., Palnatoke,2 Palno Tokki, or Pálnatóki; see Saxo, ca. 1208/2015, pp. 696–699), was not necessarily a national figure. Instead, this mantle was taken up by the legend of one of the earliest Danish freedom fighters—Niels Ebbesen. Similar

40  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

to the reach of Switzerland’s national heroic tales, Ebbesen’s tale also dates back to the fourteenth century. Also like Switzerland’s Tell, Niels Ebbesen represented the figure of a national liberator; his was also the story of the murder of a cruel tyrant, the German Count Gert (or Gerhard) III of Holstein, who was threatening the national people; and his tale became even more legendary from the fourteenth century into the nineteenth century with the rise of nationalism (see, e.g., Dzeko et al., 2011; van Gerven, 2020). If there is any event in our history about which almost every child knows how to tell, it is that of Count Gert’s Fall in Randers at the Hands of Niels Ebbesen. We have heard stories about this act, for we knew what it meant; we have sung about it and thought about it, for we ourselves have felt what a Fatherland in need would say, and we have thanked the noble hero who gave his life for the salvation of Denmark, for we could measure out its significance also for us. The history of the Danish people cannot be written without him being remembered among the supreme men it has produced. (Jørgensen, 1882, pp. 109–110) The story of Niels Ebbesen, according to Danish historiography and educational historiography, actually starts with the villainous foreigners, the relentless German oppressors (see, e.g., Jørgensen, 1882, pp. 109–120). As of 1326 and then even more so from 1332 on, when there was no king in Denmark, Holstein’s Count Gert took advantage of the civil strife that arose and entered Denmark to act as a regent and ruler for much of the country even though he was a foreigner. Under his leadership, German warriors and horsemen were roaming in the different Danish regions, plundering and burning their way across the country while also committing other inhuman atrocities. Their acts were such that Danish peasants and nobles alike came together to drive the Germans out only to have Count Gert return with an even larger German army to wreak more havoc and break up the Danish resistance. It is at this point that the nobleman Niels Ebbesen starts to take action against the foreign tyrant and his forces, leading a vastly outnumbered few dozen Danish against 4,000 Germans. Since he posed a threat to the Germans, Ebbesen was later called upon to visit and swear allegiance to Gert. Even though he was warned that such a visit was dangerous, Ebbesen declared that he would go even if it would cost him his life so that “we Danes should be a free people” (Eriksen & Paulsen, 1868, p. 200). In the meeting, Ebbesen would not be swayed from his convictions, and his life in Denmark was threatened. Therefore, on the night of April 1, 1340,3 the brave Ebbesen decided to risk everything, and, with just a small band of 604 men who were willing to die for their Fatherland, they rode to where the cruel German count was sleeping and killed him so that he could not become their new king. Upon hearing the news that Ebbesen had killed the count and that he and his men had safely escaped the scene, all of the Danish people celebrated and were inspired to drive the Germans out of the country.

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 41

Beyond the strong imagery of the brave, successful Dane versus an overpowering yet beaten foreigner, though, why has it been Ebbesen in particular who has become the representative national hero of Denmark? For, surely, there have been other instances of legendary men and women who have also played a part in the coming together and power of Denmark. Before Ebbesen’s time, for instance, there was Harald Bluetooth, who was said to have united (or conquered) all of Denmark and Norway as well as to have expanded the nationally famous Dannevirke fortifications in the tenth century. And there have been others since Ebbesen’s time, for example, Queen Margrete, who brought together the renewed union of Denmark and Norway and then eventually the Kalmar Union during the late fourteenth century. Yet, neither of these powerful rulers were even listed as required topics in the national curriculum as Niels Ebbesen was (Ministeriet for Kirke- og Undervisningsvæsenet, 6 Apr. 1900, p. 73). The integral aspect of Ebbesen’s story that Harald’s and Margrete’s ultimately lacked was essentially that of a clear enemy, and not just any enemy but an outside villain who threatened Denmark, Danes, and the Danish way of life. It was a story of a Danish David versus an anti-Danish, German Goliath. In Ebbesen’s time, again according to Danish historiography and educational historiography, this characteristic foreign, villainous Goliath was Count Gert III from German Holstein who was, either as a regent or as a ruler on his own, trying to infiltrate and change Denmark by making it more German. Gert was the count of Holstein at a time when many Danish were so unhappy with their king, Kristoffer II (see, e.g., Rom, 1878, p. 50), that they turned to their German neighbor Gert who helped them dethrone Kristoffer II only to make his own 10-year-old nephew Valdemar, the Duke of Schleswig (a.k.a., Southern Jutland—the southernmost Danish region), the king and himself regent of Denmark. When the Danish people still were not happy and revolted, he brought Kristoffer II back as king in 1329 but in a limited capacity which split the country of Denmark so that Gert ruled the major Danish territories of Jutland and Funen. Then, after further warring, Gert took over as the ruler of Denmark from the time of Kristoffer II’s death in 1332 until his own in 1340 (see, e.g., Albrectsen, 1988). These years were seen as a time of civil war in Denmark, but it was not due to this civil strife alone that Count Gert was considered a villain. The German Count Gert, also called the Bald Count, was a villain because he was a foreigner who threatened the existence of Denmark itself. In revolts against the Danish King Kristoffer II and his costly policies, Denmark started fractioning, and the Danish people became divided especially between the regions as well as between the classes, with the nobility incredibly privileged over the poor masses. Instead of helping the Danish people, the foreign count and his hired German men took advantage of the situation and exacerbated Denmark’s problems. The German Count Gert was the worst of anyone, and he was considered “the executioner of the Fatherland.” He resorted to trickery and false flattery to try and get his way while, at the same time, he and

42  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

his many Germans were so thwarting and violent that the Danish could not hold their own against them as they terrorized and divided up the Fatherland for themselves until Denmark was on the brink of perishing completely. The Danish were unable to band together and reunite until Count Gert was gone (thanks to the honest Niels Ebbesen’s bravery; e.g., Munthe, 1806, pp. 136–137; Munthe & Werlauff, 1837, pp. 109–110; Allen, 1867, pp. 63–64; Rom, 1878, p. 51). Not only had Count Gert been working for his own benefit to the detriment of Denmark, but he also made critical political and cultural changes that would have long-lasting effects for Denmark. One of the most well-known documents produced during Count Gert’s time as regent of Denmark was the Constitutio Valdemariana, a constitution established in 1326 which made the southern Danish region of Schleswig independent from Denmark and which ensured that the Duchy of Schleswig could not, or rather could never again, be united to the kingdom and crown of Denmark (see Mügge, 1846, pp. 350–351). At the time, the immediate significance of this document was that it moved the dukedom of Schleswig from the king, Valdemar, to Gert. This not only gave Gert more power, but, through him, it also created more of a link between German Holstein and Danish Schleswig. With Schleswig being tied to a German ruler and another German region, it became more and more Germanized over time (see Rasmussen, 2019). Also, in having German rulers who were fractioning the country, many at the time and since have believed that the country of Denmark could have been eradicated (e.g., Dzeko et al., 2011). Schleswig’s separation from Denmark, its connection to Holstein, and the progressive Germanization of the region led to numerous complicated relations and what would ultimately come to be known as the Schleswig(–Holstein) Question. The complications arising from these were at the base of many conflicts and even wars between the Danish and German territories over the next five and a half centuries. As nationalism grew in Denmark during the nineteenth century, the Schleswig Question was tied to the nation-building agenda (see, e.g., Mügge, 1846; Rosenberg, 1891), and the history of Schleswig, especially in relation to its history with Denmark, was increasingly inserted into Danish national discourse, educational historiography, and schoolbook narratives (see, e.g., Gotling, 2023). With the history of this nationally critical issue stemming in large part from the actions of the German Count Gert who worked to divide and destroy Denmark in the fourteenth century, it is no wonder that it is the man who rose up and killed Gert, Niels Ebbesen, who became Denmark’s national hero. Although some historiographers have questioned the praiseworthiness of Ebbesen’s actions through means of murder, he has ultimately been uplifted as a national hero who ended a period of foreign rule in Denmark and, thus, instigated the liberation of Denmark. One of the most notable Danish nationalists of the nineteenth century, N. F. S. Grundtvig, even highlighted the noble assassination of the German oppressor by Niels Ebbesen in 1340 as one of just

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 43

“two . . . events in Denmark’s history that miraculously restored the self-respect of the Danes and saved the country” (Lundgreen-Nielsen, 1997, p. 91). Then, when Ebbesen and many other Danish soldiers were killed in a battle against retaliating Germans later in the year, this only cemented the idea that the peace and happiness of the nation were worth fighting for at all costs. The ideas of peace from war and evil men, freedom from foreign invaders, and the ability and happiness to be Danish were the main themes attached to national stories like Ebbesen’s. Danish children were to read about these themes in their schoolbooks across the decades, where, for example, school reading books, songbooks, and history textbooks emphasized what Ebbesen’s actions meant for freedom for the Danish people and for Denmark. He had “laid the foundation for the freedom of the Fatherland,” and even though he also eventually fell, he was a victor because “Denmark was liberated from its oppressors” (Munthe, 1806, pp. 136–137; Munthe & Werlauff, 1837, pp. 109–110; see also, e.g., Allen, 1867, p. 64). “Ebbesen was so much loved, even by the poorest and most destitute, because he had saved the country” (Eriksen & Paulsen, 1868, p. 203), his homeland, “from the violence of the Germans” (Klaussen, 1906, pp. 58–59). Building upon these themes across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, poems and ballads alike have sung Ebbesen’s praises, plays and books have been written to bring the meaning of Ebbesen’s times onto contemporary events, and monuments have been erected in his honor. N. F. S. Grundtvig’s 1840 poem of Niels Ebbesen, written in honor of the 500th anniversary of his heroic deeds, was reprinted in books, schoolbooks, and songbooks for both school and home for several decades. In the politically unstable times of the late eighteenth century, the German-Danish poet Levin Christian Sander wrote the national Danish tragedy Niels Ebbesen af Nørreriis eller Danmarks Befrielse (Niels Ebbesen of Nørreriis or Denmark’s Liberation) in 1797, and Malthe Conrad Bruuns published the anti-monarchical Niels Ebbesen: Tyrandræberen (Niels Ebbesen: Tyrant-killer) that same year (see Kjærulff, 2019). Eduard Meyer was just one of a number of authors who revived Niels Ebbesen during the time of the nineteenth-century Schleswig Wars, his being in 1864. And in 1882, a statue of Ebbesen by sculptor Ferdinand Edvard Ring was erected and still sits in the town of Randers where Count Gert was slain. The tale of Ebbesen’s heroic deeds against the Germans was even revived with new fervor during and after the German invasion of Denmark during World War II. The twentieth-century Danish playwright Kaj Munk wrote a play called Niels Ebbesen in 1942 which paralleled the story of “the legendary Danish folk hero, Niels Ebbesen, who liberated Denmark from an occupying German army in 1340” with an allegorical depiction of the evil Nazi-German invasion of Denmark in 1940. In his turn, Kaj Munk also became a martyred Danish national figure when he was killed by the German Gestapo in 1944, due in part to his regular promotion of Niels Ebbesen (see, e.g., Carley, n.d.; Lund & Carley, 2006; Arestad, 1954, p. 152).

44  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

Just as with the tales of William Tell in Switzerland and, as we will show, William Wallace in Scotland, the literature, art, and school lessons about Niels Ebbesen’s story represented the courageous underdog in pursuit of a just cause against a far greater adversary. It was clear even to the authors of the first national Danish curriculum that Ebbesen could not be taught in history lessons without his counterpart, Count Gert (Ministeriet for Kirke- og Undervisningsvæsenet, 6 Apr. 1900, p. 73). Niels Ebbesen was the valiant David to Count Gert’s looming Goliath. In nineteenth- and twentieth-century Danish teaching materials and school wall charts, Ebbesen was regularly portrayed as a knight in shining armor who was often rallying the men around him or leading them (see, e.g., Hansen, 1879; Jørgensen, 1882, p. 121; Hansen Reistrup, 1907). Count Gert, on the other hand, was depicted in images in his bed as a relatively weak, old, and bald man (he was often referred to as the Bald Count). Yet, in the textual narratives of the Danish school reading books and songbooks, he was also referred to as a giant: “Count Gert was a giant, a full neck, like steel and iron” (a poem by Grundtvig, as cited in, e.g., Geleff, 1864, p. 63; Eriksen & Paulsen, 1868, p. 203). Yet Ebbesen still beat him, he still “struck him down without a fight” (Munk, 1942/1944, p. 26). The resonance of such biblical stories stayed with those who learned them. In the time when he was developing Niels Ebbesen, for instance, Kaj Munk had even written to an old primary school teacher of his to tell him that the religious lessons had taught him “that this is where the battle should stand” (as cited in Møller, 2000, p. 16).

Scotland’s Sir William Wallace Versus Edward I, the English King Sir William Wallace is undoubtedly Scotland’s most enduring national hero. His exploits lie at the heart of Scottish history and have been celebrated and commemorated in such forms as monuments, literature, music, and, to the delight of an international audience, even the Oscar-winning film Braveheart (Gibson, 1995). While the first literary work dedicated to William Wallace dates back to the 1470s, it was not until the wake of the Union of Parliaments (1707) that a veritable Wallace cult was created (Coleman, 2016; Morton, 1998). As in other cases (see, e.g., Tröhler, 2017), in post-union Scotland, literati such as Robert Burns, David Hume, and Sir Walter Scott became the driving forces behind the (re-)production of the national narrative, and William Wallace became a key to their success. However, the accounts of Wallace’s exploits were not only disseminated populistically but also became a central subject in Scottish formal education. With more or less detail and some deviations, the (hi)story of William Wallace was told in Scottish schoolbooks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as follows (see, e.g., Guthrie, 1771; Scott, 1826, 1828; Stewart, 1829). William Wallace was born without nobility or wealth and demonstrated his heroic qualities and his disdain toward English oppression from a young age.

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 45

For example, Sir Walter Scott’s first volume of his Tales of a Grandfather (1828), which was used as a schoolbook, recounts an incident in which two or three English soldiers demanded young Wallace surrender the entire catch he had made while fishing. Wallace offered the English half, but when they insisted on having the entire yield, Wallace killed one of the soldiers with just his fishing rod and frightened away the others. As Wallace grew older, not only did his righteousness, prudence, and strength increase but so did the number of his followers, too. United in the cause for Scottish independence, Wallace led them in various successful strikes against the English. The most remarkable of his triumphs was the Battle of Stirling Bridge. When Wallace, busy with the siege of Dundee Castle, heard of the English advancement toward the castle of Stirling, he rushed to guard the passage of the River Forth with his troops. While he was offered terms to surrender, Wallace was adamant in his pursuit of freedom and independence for Scotland. This in turn infuriated the English soldiers who advanced toward the bridge to besiege Stirling Castle despite the clever and advantageous Scottish position. Wallace and his troops then attacked the English army and achieved a full victory over the English not only at Stirling Castle but also all over Scotland as the English were subsequently chased away from all of the towns and castles that they had occupied. His grand victory and the title of Guardian of Scotland that was bestowed upon him afterwards, however, earned him jealousy and distrust from the Scottish nobility. Even though Wallace resigned from his role as Guardian of Scotland, the Scottish population was no longer united behind him and the cause for Scotland’s freedom. Thus, when the tyrannical king of England, Edward I, retaliated against his loss of supremacy in Scotland, the agitations within Scotland led to their loss at the Battle of Falkirk after which English rule was once again secured. Unlike the nobles of Scotland, Wallace, now hiding in the woods, continued his strikes against the English, albeit with a much smaller group of followers. However, being wanted by Edward I, Wallace was betrayed by a friend and stood trial and was executed in London—Scottish pupils were seldomly spared from reading the details of his gruesome death. But at last, the king’s cruelty and injustice only served to strengthen the Scottish cause for freedom and independence—a cause that was fulfilled at the Battle of Bannockburn a mere nine  years after Wallace’s demise in 1314—as Wallace had only done what was right and dutiful, that is, defend his own country. While Wallace thus dedicated his life to the pursuit of a laudable cause, his foe, King Edward I—or Scotorum Malleus (“Hammer of the Scots”), as the inscription on his tomb at Westminster Abby reads—is portrayed as ambitiously and ruthlessly pursuing a dishonorable goal. Edward I had ruled over England for 14 years, and, in the meantime, he set his plan of primacy over the British Isles into motion by conquering Wales. It was during this time that the sudden death of the heirless Alexander III, King of Scotland, disrupted the Scottish line of succession. With many nobles claiming their right to rule Scotland, they are said to have turned to Edward I for help. Edward I, however, used this

46  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

opportunity to his advantage and convinced the nobles to declare him the Lord Paramount of Scotland and, narrowing down the eligible claimants to Robert (the) Bruce and John Balliol, chose the latter as king. Unsatisfied still, after provoking the removal of Balliol from the throne, Edward I proceeded in his conquest of Scotland as the new sovereign—that is, until he was opposed by William Wallace and his followers (see, e.g., Leitch, 1845; Scott, 1828; Stewart, 1829). The legacy of William Wallace, as it was repeated in Scottish school lessons, is well illustrated by the following quote from Robert Simpson’s (1818) History of Scotland: Wallace was a patriot and hero endowed with gigantic strength of body, with heroic courage of mind, with disinterested magnanimity, with incredible patience and ability to bear hunger, fatigue, and all the inclemencies of the seasons; and had through the course of many years with single conduct, intrepidity, and perseverance, defended against a cruel and overbearing enemy, the liberties of his native country, whose sons must ever regard his memory with the warmest feelings of gratitude and affection; whilst they drop the sympathetic tear over his unhappy fate. (Simpson, 1818, p. 37) Like Denmark’s Niels Ebbesen, William Wallace was a genuine, historical reality whose existence could be proven historiographically (Coleman, 2016; Morton, 1998). The first and most enduring of these sources was the epic verse The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, or The Wallace for short, written between 1474 and 1479 by an author known as Blind Harry. Already before the post-union razzmatazz surrounding the myth of William Wallace, The Wallace was a popular book among the Scottish people and continued to serve as the basis for modernized interpretations of Wallace’s story in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Morton goes so far as to say that even “before the times of Burns and Scott . . . it was the book next to the Bible most frequently found in Scottish households” (1998, p. 225). However, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the veracity of The Wallace came under scrutiny for reasons such as the elusiveness of the author himself, the quality of the historical evidence and historical inaccuracies, the passages borrowed from other texts, and its rough language (Morton, 1998). Similar to our findings in the Swiss case, admissions of the incomplete knowledge of Wallace’s life could also be found in Scottish schoolbooks of the time alongside attempts to explain these unfavorable circumstances: It is a great pity we do not know exactly the history of this brave man; for, at the time when he lived, every one was busy fighting, that there was no person to write down the history of what took place; and afterwards, when there was more leisure for composition, the truths that were collected were

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 47

greatly mingled with falsehood. What I shall tell you of him, is generally believed to be true. (Scott, 1828, p. 77) These inconsistencies can also be traced within the actual recountings of Wallace’s exploits, even regarding his most celebrated and historically dated victory. A seemingly decisive moment in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, that is the collapse of the bridge itself, was for instance described by Robert Simpson (1818, p. 32) as “an event . . . highly favourable” which Wallace cleverly took advantage of; Neil Leitch (1845, p. 73) noted this incident as a rather negligible, saying that “the bridge was [either] broken down or burned”; and Alexander Stewart (1829, pp. 43–44) claimed that it was the remaining English soldiers who set fire to the bridge before they fled. Wallace’s humble origins, too, which are central to his myth of the man who rose through the ranks of society on his own merit, only driven by a laudable cause, were questioned. In accordance, Simpson (1818, p. 32), for instance, wrote that Wallace was in fact from a noble and ancient family. However, the patchy knowledge and disputes regarding the authenticity and veracity of the existing sources had little effect on the popularity and significance of the Wallace myth. On the contrary, Wallace became a central memory in the post-union re-imagining of the Scottish nation precisely because of the malleability of his story (Coleman, 2016; Morton, 1998). The Union of Parliaments (1707) constituted the last step in a two-centurylong, gradual nexus of Scotland and England. After the royal marriage of James IV, King of Scots, and Margaret Tudor, daughter of England’s King Henry VII in 1503, which had eventually led to the Union of Crowns in 1603, the two nations were bound together under one British government in 1707. This union was by no means the result of a hostile takeover but was viewed as a necessary and historically inevitable political solution by both parties to the intricate question of succession to the throne (see, e.g., Hechter, 1975; Nairn, 1997; Robertson, 2006). And what was even more crucial for the success of the union was that Scotland and England were viewed as distinct nations and equal partners—a narrative which had to be upheld. Consequently, the Scots sought to preserve their national identity within the new British experience by (re-)producing this national narrative. Thereby, formal education became a central tool for framing the national minds of the (future) Scottish citizens. The school system, like the religious and legislative institutions, had remained remarkably independent in Scotland after the union—that is, at least until the 1840s when Westminsterian laws and policies were enacted on Scottish education (Bischof, 2015). Thus, for decades following the union, Scottish schools could be used freely to not only proclaim the benefits of the union from a distinctly Scottish perspective but also perpetuate the Scottish national narrative (Maricic, 2020). The basis of Scotland’s claim of being a distinct cultural, political, and territorial entity was laid during a tumultuous time period spanning from the death of Alexander III (1286) to the rule of Robert I (1306–1329), which came to be

48  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

known as the Wars of Independence during the nineteenth century. As Eriksonas (2004) argues, these wars (1296–1328, 1332–1357) had apparent attributes which constituted their endurance as a central theme in Scottish history. First, from the Scottish perspective, this unprecedented occupation (in duration and impudence) had a clear narrative of England as the aggressor and Scotland as the defender of its rightful sovereignty. Second, this rightful reinstatement of Scotland’s sovereignty ended Scotland’s dependency upon England for at least 200 years. And lastly, this success was ascribed to the actions of two people: William Wallace, with his early victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (1297), and Robert the Bruce,5 with his conclusive victory at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314). William Wallace therefore not only embodied the qualities of a hero but was also a decisive figure in the events that laid the path for Scotland’s history, not least its parliamentary union with England; for without the idea of Scotland as a distinct nation, the idea of a union is futile. Interestingly, William Wallace, Niels Ebbesen, and the fictional William Tell appear to have been contemporaries, fighting for the freedom of their own nation during the late thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries and were used some 500 years later in curricula of the modern mass school to strengthen the national identities of the future citizens. As in the previously discussed Swiss and Danish cases, when examining the myth of William Wallace closely, it becomes apparent that, in order to create this successful imagery, the well-known and thus powerful biblical trope of David versus Goliath is being utilized. As David and Goliath fight for the freedom of their own people, William Wallace and Edward I, too, fight in the interest of their respective kingdoms—a fight that can only have one outcome: the total gain of one people and the total loss of the other. However, it is David and his belief in God and Wallace and his belief in the cause of Scotland that emerge victorious. In regard to size, Edward I was by no means a giant, not even superior in bodily fitness to Wallace. Although, at least according to Sir Walter Scott, he apparently was “so tall, that he was popularly known by the name of Longshanks, that is, long legs” (1828, p.  66), and he is commonly praised as a capable warrior or soldier. Yet, Edward I’s giganticness does not stem from his bodily features. What constitutes his depiction as a giant is the much larger army he commanded, which was additionally, unlike Wallace and his companions, in possession of a cavalry. Moreover, the English king is commonly described as cruel, tyrannical, and greedy, which are not the qualities of a hero. Conversely, according to the myth, William Wallace possessed these qualities: next to being strong and skilled in war, he was also prudent, clever, resilient, righteous, and kind. Even though Wallace’s strength and appearance are often emphasized, it is his humble origins (David, too, was only a shepherd), his self-reliance, and his belief in a laudable cause that make Wallace the David of this story. While Wallace then teaches the Scots who they are and should be, Edward I teaches them what the threat to their national existence is. This

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 49

does not necessarily need to be interpreted as the English per se. In fact, other passages in the schoolbooks often describe their English neighbors and union partners favorably (Maricic, 2020). The actual threat is the tyrannic, unfounded, and complete oppression by England. Thus, the lesson to be taken is that as long as the Scots ensure their national consciousness, they will remain Davids ready to fight off any Goliath.

Discussion One of the three theoretical paradigms in theories of nationalism discussed by Tröhler and Maricic in their chapter on “Education and the Nation” is called “ethno-symbolism” (Tröhler  & Maricic, 2023 [this volume]). In this ethnosymbolic paradigm, national myths play an important role because, together with “symbols, and practices of loyalty and community,” they have “configured themselves under the conditions of modernity to the idea of the nation” (Tröhler  & Maricic, 2023 [this volume]). Thus far, our chapter can be seen as a perfect illustration of this paradigm: In eighteenth- to twentieth-century textbooks from Switzerland, Denmark, and Scotland, stories of men, who were struggling for freedom at the turn of the thirteenth to the fourteenth century, were presented as moments of birth for their respective nations. What once had been the story of men fighting for their freedom, their rights, power, glory, and even their lives was now interpreted as the nations’ salvation stories. No matter if Tell’s, Ebbesen’s, and Wallace’s deeds were true or false, right or wrong, glorious or gruesome, the men were no longer seen as individuals nor discussed as such, but they were depicted and discussed as personifications of “national traditions” and therefore as symbols of the nation themselves. Our chapter also goes beyond that mere description of national myths, however, by analyzing how the stories of rebels, murderers, and usurpers, which in many aspects were not even true stories, could become part of the school curricula between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries in Switzerland, Denmark, and Scotland. How is it possible, we ask, that such stories were used in schools to teach the children about their nation and to imbue them with a national consciousness? One of the ways that this sense of a national consciousness was imbued was through the use of such devices as myths and symbols to mediate memory. However, the use of such mechanisms for the mediation of memory, at least as they are understood in ethno-symbolic approaches to nationalism, remains under-researched (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023 [this volume]). Our work can be seen as a response to this assertion as we have explored the importance that timeless national myths have had for each of the cases. Our analysis of textbooks, school wall charts, and other schoolbooks and teaching materials has shown how religious knowledge and beliefs were translated into knowledge and beliefs about the nation. Our cases are therefore also telling examples of how schools helped to create and to promote national consciousness and “national literacy” (see Tröhler & Maricic, 2023 [this volume]; Tröhler,

50  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

2020). At first, the stories we analyzed were probably just good entertainment; featuring a humble hero and a mighty foe; and having a dramatic plot with twists, turns, and a lot of action. For all we know, those stories were told long before they became the quintessential national stories. Yet, as Rosier and Savary (1926) explained, by passing down a story from generation to generation, it slowly transforms. One type of such a transformation is that several well-known stories merge into each other. This is what happened in our cases, when the characters of Tell, Ebbesen, and Wallace took the shape of the biblical David. And, as the heroes became Davids, the villains took the shape of Goliath—mighty foes, who threatened to subjugate and presumably change everyone who was not strong enough to withstand their force. As almost every European nation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been threatened by a powerful neighboring country, people could easily identify with these elements in the stories. Through centuries of biblical exegeses from the pulpit, Christians all over the world knew how to understand the story of David and Goliath in a metaphorical sense. They learned that the story is not so much about a boy who was lucky enough to kill a giant man in a distant past but that it is about God helping those who keep their faith. When in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, the stories of Tell, Ebbesen, and Wallace were told from the lecturing desks in schools, those stories were interpreted in the same figurative sense. However, the focus of interpretation was no longer on God and faith but on the nations and their freedom told as national, davidical people versus a foreign, formidable other. This shift of focus, however, does not mean that the national stories were secularized. On the contrary, through the amalgamation of biblical and national stories, the nation itself was sacralized, and the national liberation myths turned into sacred stories. The thing to be learned from these national lessons was that if there is a Goliath in front of you, there is also a David inside of you—meaning, whenever the nation is at risk, everyone can and must rise to be a hero who is fighting for freedom, sovereignty, and national independence.

Notes 1 According to Swiss mythology, in 1307, representatives of the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden conspired against the hated Habsburg bailiffs. 2 Narratives about the life of a man named Palnatoke have often been included in (at least) late modern Danish educational historiography. However, even though the schoolbooks of the time which mention him always interwove his life story with those of King Harald Bluetooth and his son Sven Forkbeard in the late tenth century, there were two different narratives about him. Some of the schoolbook narratives referenced the tale of him, sometimes as Toke, shooting an apple off of his son’s head (see, e.g., Geleff, 1864, pp. 23–25; Rom, 1878, p. 26; Klaussen, 1906, p. 30; Gjerløff, 1910, pp. 30–31), while many others did not and instead described his connection as a guardian and mentor to Sven and in his creation of republican laws for the territory of Jomsborg that he ruled (see, e.g., Munthe, 1806, pp. 46–48; Munthe & Werlauff, 1837, pp. 37–38; Estrup, 1826, p. 198; Allen, 1867, pp. 21–22).

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 51 3 Although April 1, 1340, is the most widely used date for when Ebbesen killed Count Gert, March 18, 1340, can be found in earlier sources such as a school reading book from 1806 (Munthe, 1806, p. 137). 4 By the early twentieth century, this number was often lowered to 50 or 47 men (see, e.g., Klaussen, 1906, p. 58; Gjerløff, 1910, p. 63). 5 Robert the Bruce is indisputably an important and celebrated figure in Scottish history. However, his life was more thoroughly recorded, and his story therefore does not have the same malleability which would allow for the creation of such a powerful myth as that of William Wallace (Coleman, 2016).

Primary Sources Allen, C. F. (1867). Lærebog i Danmarks Historie til Skolebrug. Ellevte Udgave (11th ed.). C. A. Reitzels Forlag. Droz, N. (1885). Instruction Civique. Cours élémentaire à l’usage des écoles primaires. Daniel Lebet. Eriksen, A. E., & Paulsen, P. A. (1868). Norsk Læsebog. Tredje Del. W. C. Fabritius. Estrup, H. F. J. (1826). Lærebog i den almindelige Verdens-Historie. F. Holms Forlag. Freudenberger, U., & Haller, G. E. von. (1760). Guillaume tell: Fable danoise. u.p. Geleff, P. J. (1864). Sangbog til Brug ved Undervisning i Fædrelandets Historie. V. Schönemanns Forlag. Gjerløff, N. S. (1910). Mit Fædrelands Historie. Lære- og Læsestykker for Folkeskolen. Danske Læreres Forlag. Guthrie, W. (1771). A new geographical, historical and commercial grammar: And present state of the several kingdoms of the world (Vol. I, 2nd ed.). J. Knox. Hansen, H. P. (1879). Niels Ebbesen dræber Grev Gert. J. H. Schultz. http://www5.kb.dk/ images/billed/2010/okt/billeder/object1658726/da/ Hansen Reistrup, K. K. (1907). Niels Ebbesen undsiger Grev Geert. Carl Stenders Kunstforlag. http://www5.kb.dk/images/billed/2010/okt/billeder/object546617/da/ Jørgensen, A. D. (1882). Fyrretyve Fortællinger af Fædrelandets Historie. Med 5 stentrykte Kort og 55 Billeder. Ved Udvalget for Folkeoplysnings Fremme. I Kommission hos G. E. C. Gad. Klaussen, V. (1906). V. Klaussens Fædrelandetshistorie for Borger- og Almueskolen. Forhen udgiven ved N. C. Rom. Autoriseret af Kultusministeriet. 49de Udgave (49th ed.). Det Schubotheske Forlag. Lehr- und Lesbuch für den deutschen Sprachunterricht und den Unterricht in den Realien an den drei oberen Klassen der Primarschulen des Kantons Solothurn. (1868). J. Gassmann. Leitch, N. (1845). A history of Scotland: Civil and ecclesiastical (2nd ed.). Geo. Thomson. Ministeriet for Kirke- og Undervisningsvæsenet. (1900, April  6/1902). Cirkulære af 6. April 1900 til samtlige Skoledirektioner uden for Kjøbenhavn. In C. A. Tvermoes (Ed.), Skoleloven, Lov af 24. Marts 1899. Om Forskellige Forhold Vedrørende Folkeskolen. Med Dertil Hørende Ministerielle Bekendtgørelser, Cirkulærer og Skrivelser. Udgivet paa Foranstaltning af Ministeriet for Kirke- og Undervisningsvæsenet. Anden Forøgede Udgave (pp.  69–75). Det Schubotheske Forlag. Munk, K. (1944). Niels Ebbesen. Nyt Nordisk Forlag (Original work published 1942). Munthe, E. (1806). De vigtigste indenlandske Tildragelser og de merkeligste Personers Levnetsbeskrivelse fra de ældste Tider indtil vore Dage. En Læse- og Lærebog, i Fædrelandets Historie for Begyndere og Ustuderede. Thoring & Coldings Forlag. Munthe, E., & Werlauff, E. C. (1837). De vigtigste indenlandske Tildragelser, og de mærkeligste danske og norske Personers Levnetsbeskrivelser fra de ældste Tider til vore Dage. En Læse- og

52  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann Lærebog i Fædrelandets Historie for Begyndere og Ustuderede. Sjette Oplag, gjennemseet og rettet (7th ed.). N. Coldings Forlag. Näf, H. (1887). Wegleitung für die Prüfung in der Vaterlandskunde. Swiss National Archives; inventory: E27; file number: 04.B.10.d; dossier: Experten, Archiv Nr.: 5864—Rekrutenprüfung. Rom, N. C. (1878). Fædrelandetshistorie for Borger og Almueskolen (2nd ed.). N. C. Roms Forlagsforretning. Rosier, W., & Savary, E. (1926). Histoire illustrée de la Suisse. Payot & Cie. Scott, S. W. (1826). Beauties of eminent writers: Selected and arranged for the instruction of youth in the proper reading and reciting of the English language (Vol. II, 2nd ed.). Oliver & Boyd. Scott, S. W. (1828). Tales of a grandfather: Being stories take from Scottish history, humbly inscribed to Hugh Littlejohn, Esq. (Vol. I). Cadell and Co. Simpson, R. (1818). The history of Scotland from the earliest times to the general peace of Europe concluded at Paris, 1815. Law and Whittaker. Stewart, A. (1829). Stories from the history of Scotland, in the manner of stories selected from the history of England (2nd ed.). Oliver & Boyd.

References Albrectsen. (1988). Var Sønderjylland i middelalderen en del af Danmarks rige? Historisk Tidsskrift, 15(3), 1–16. Arestad, S. (1954). Kaj Munk as a dramatist (1898–1944). Scandinavian Studies, 26(4), 151–176. Aschwanden, F. (2004). Der Freiheitsbegrif in Schillers “Wilhelm Tell”. Historisches Neujahrsblatt, 95, 9–24. Bischof, C. R. (2015). Schoolteachers and professionalism, 1969–1906. In R. Anderson, M. Freeman, & L. Paterson (Eds.), The Edinburgh history of education in Scotland (pp. 208–225). Edinburgh University Press. Blatter, M., & Groebner, V. (2016). Wilhelm Tell. Import—Export. Hier und Jetzt. Brändle, F. (2004). Wider die eigenen Tyrannen: Tell als Widerstandsfigur von unten, 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Historisches Neujahrsblatt, 95, 61–78. Carley, D. (n.d.). Niels Ebbesen. DaveCarley. http://davecarley.com/plays-full-length/ niels-ebbesen/ Coleman, J. (2016). Remembering the past in nineteenth-century Scotland: Commemoration, nationality and memory. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/ edinburgh/9780748676903.001.0001 Dahn, N., & Boser, L. (2015). Learning to See the Nation-State—History, Geography and Public Schooling in Late 19th century Switzerland. Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 5(1), 41–56. Dzeko, N., Andersen, L., & Engelbrecht, T. (2011, November 3). Niels Ebbesen, ca. 1300–1340. danmarkshistorien. https://danmarkshistorien.dk/vis/materiale/niels-ebbesen-ca1300-1340/ Eriksonas, L. (2004). National heroes and national identities: Scotland, Norway, and Lithuania. Peter Lang. Frisch, M. (2016). Wilhelm Tell für die Schule. Suhrkamp. Fry, S. (2019). Heroes. Volume II of Mythos. Penguin Books. Gibson, M. (1995). Braveheart [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

“The divine fire . . . burns within them” 53 Gotling, N. (2023). The Danish nation-state as crafted in textbook narratives: From democracy toward a Nordic model. In D. Tröhler, B. Hörmann, S. Tveit, & I. Bostad, (Eds.), The Nordic education model in context: Historical developments and current renegotiations (pp. 36–55). Routledge. Hechter, M. (1975). Internal colonialism: The Celtic fringe in British national development, 1536–1966. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hettling, M. (1997). Das Denkmal als Fetisch—Rütli und Tell. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 47(1), 46–55. Kjærulff, B. (2019). Frihed og kong Valdemar!—Politisk middelalderisme i Levin Christian Sanders Niels Ebbesen af Nörreriis (1797) og Malthe Conrad Bruuns “Niels Ebbesen. Tyrandræberen” (1797). Slagmark—Tidsskrift for idéhistorie (79), 149–165. Largiadèr, A. (1931). II. Die Anfänge der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft. In Allgemeine Geschichtsforschende Gesellschaft der Schweiz (Eds.), Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz (Vol. 6, pp. 273–276). Administration des Historisch-Biographischen Lexikons der Schweiz. Lund, A., & Carley, D. (2006). Niels Ebbesen. DaveCarley. Lundgreen-Nielsen, F. (1997). Grundtvig as a Danish contribution to world culture. Grundtvig Studier, 48(1), 72–101. Maricic, V. (2020). National identity textbooks: Teaching Scottishness in the wake of the union of parliaments. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(2), 29–46. Møller, P. S. (2000). Munk. Gyldendal. Morerod, J.-D. (2010). La libération des Suisses, de l’histoire au mythe: un débat très surveillé. In J.-D. Morerod & A. Näf (Eds.), Guillaume Tell et la Libération des Suisses (pp. 177–208). Société d’Histoire de la Suisse romande. Morton, G. (1998). The most efficacious patriot: The heritage of William Wallace in nineteenth-century Scotland. The Scottish Historical Review, 77(2), 224–251. Mügge, T. (1846). Streifzüge in Schleswig-Holstein und im Norden der Elbe. Erster Theil. Literarische Anstalt. Nairn, T. (1997). Faces of nationalism: Janus revisited. Verso. Rasmussen, C. P. (2019, May 9). Language conditions in Southern Jutland before 1800. danmarkshistorien. https://danmarkshistorien.dk/vis/materiale/sprogforhold-i-soenderjyllandfoer-1800/ Renan, E. (1882). Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? Conférence faite en Sorbonne, le 11 mars 1882. C. Lévy. Robertson, J. (Ed.). (2006). A union for empire: Political thought and the Union of 1707. Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, C. (1891). Danmark i Aaret 1848. Anden Udgave, gjennemset af S. B. Thrige. Ved Udgalvet for Folkeoplysnings Fremme. I Kommission hos G. E. C. Gad. Saxo Grammaticus. (2015). Gesta Danorum. The history of the Danes (Vol. I, K. Friis-Jensen, Ed., P. Fisher, Trans.). Clarendon Press. (Original work published ca. 1208) Sieber, C. (2007). Geschichtsschreibung als gelehrte Konstruktion: Aegidius Tschudi und seine Datierung der Befreiungstradition in die Jahre 1307/08. Der Geschichtsfreund: Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins Zentralschweiz, 160, 25–52. Teuscher, S., & Hugener, R. (2010). Postface. Guillaume Tell à travers le “Röstigraben”. In J.-D. Morerod & A. Näf (Eds.), Guillaume Tell et la Libération des Suisses (pp. 251–258). Société d’Histoire de la Suisse romande. Tröhler, D. (2017). Shaping the national body: Physical education and the transformation of German nationalism in the long nineteenth century. Nordic Journal of Education History, 4(2), 31–45.

54  Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. https://doi.org/10.1080/0 0220272.2020.1786727 Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2021). Data, trust and faith: The unheeded religious roots of modern educational policy. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(2), 138–153. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1872371 Tröhler, D.,  & Maricic, V. (2023 [this volume]). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nation-building. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (Oxford studies in comparative education, D. Phillips, Ed.). Routledge. van Gerven, T. (2020, April 1). Niels Ebbesen. Scandinavism. https://scandinavism.com/2020/ 04/01/niels-ebbesen/

Chapter 3

Nation-building by education statistics and data A comparative perspective on school surveys in Switzerland, France, and Scotland Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

In recent discussions of the relationship among nation, nation-state, and education, the view has prevailed that nation is a cultural thesis of commonality and belonging, (re)produced and transmitted through various social and cultural practices which are mostly unremarkable and “banal” (Billig, 1995). The contributions of education, in general, and of modern schools in particular are mainly considered from a perspective focusing on how loyalty is created by developing national literacies (Tröhler, 2020a), which allow future citizens to recognize the myriad national symbols accompanying their lives as their own. Thus, research focuses on the construction of the formal school system, the curriculum, and the teaching materials for the various school subjects. The assumption of “nation” as a cultural thesis about what we are and ought to be—and what distinguishes “us” from “others”—shall not be disputed in the following. We believe, however, that this agreement in defining the meaning of “nation” has led to the historical reconstruction of nation-building as being primarily cultural-historical, focusing on ideas, concepts, institutions, and cultural practices (e.g. Levine, 2003; Berger et al., 2008). In this coupling of nation as a cultural thesis with cultural studies’ research of the practices that (re)produce a nation, we see a latent narrowness that we wish to expand here by looking at education statistics and data. We wish to argue in this chapter that survey-generated data and numbers displayed in statistics play a relevant role in nation-building. They do not simply reflect logical or nationally relevant knowledge related to the topic of the survey but are used for educational policy decisions and political governance (Yeo, 2003, p. 86). Within a perspective of cultural history, surveys and the resulting statistics follow specific cultural concepts and categories, containing ideologies of social order accordingly. In doing so, not only do they define what or who belongs to the nation and what or who does not, but they also locate the various categories within the nation and thus contribute to the creation and perpetuation of a certain social order (Alonso & Starr, 1983). In addition, DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-4

56  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

surveys help to develop “categories to morally evaluate populations” (Przyrembel, 2017, p. 369) by defining which of the measurable factors allow conclusions about nonmeasurable characteristics, ideologies, or normative beliefs. The use of surveys and statistics has differed greatly across European countries. Whereas in Great Britain, private associations and statistical societies have played an important role in data collection, statistics in Germany “became a subject of scholarly inquiry and were used in the education of state officials” (Bulmer et al., 1991, p. 16). Thus, the political entities in charge—that is the organizational apparatus of the nation-states—displayed different understandings of how and what data should be collected and used, and by who. These different perspectives also manifest themselves in school surveys as a means of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century governance to gain knowledge of the current state of schools and schooling and of other educational questions and problems waiting to be solved. Knowledge about schools—and knowing how to reform or develop them based on that knowledge—was even more necessary because public schools had become the institutions which were to transform former subjects of the Ancient Régime into citizens of the new nation-states (Tröhler et al., 2011; Tröhler, 2020b). Producing loyalty towards the nation-state, raising a “national feeling” or “identity,” and fabricating the moral, educated subject were claims to be enforced through respective curricula, where the school subjects “geography” and “local history” played a prominent role (Winandy, 2018). These fields of knowledge, however, were not the only ones to help accomplish the task (Boser, 2020); the curriculum per se was considered a tool to educate future citizens (Tröhler, 2016; Horlacher, 2020a). However, while contemporaries repeatedly emphasized that schooling had to serve this goal, it was clear to all concerned that the existing schools could not do so properly because they were not sufficiently organized, not comprehensive, and lacked suitable teaching materials. In consequence, school surveys were to assess the status quo and plan appropriate organizational measures. Given the various traditions of surveys and statistics in European nationstates and given that there are close links between these different traditions and the distinct national understandings of what “state” means, is, or should be, the chapter takes a comparative perspective on three encompassing school surveys conducted in the Helvetic Republic, France, and Scotland between 1798 and 1833. Focusing on these three political and geographical entities, which differed both in terms of religion and political organization, the question examined is how the respective nations as imagined communities (Anderson, 2006) were not only depicted but also formed by statistics and numbers, that is by school surveys. To this end, a socio-historical approach is combined with analyses of ideological and cultural concepts to uncover the historical trajectories of schooling while creating the nation as a culturally distinct community within a state—the nation-state. We follow a rather free interpretation of an “ethno-symbolistic”

Nation-building by education statistics and data 57

notion of nation (see introductory chapter), meaning a perspective that balances the novelty of nation-thinking at the beginning of the long nineteenth century and the fact that these concepts have roots in early modern times, symbols, and practices of loyalty and community (see Smith, 2003; Ichijo & Uzelac, 2005, pp. 89–93; Özkırımlı, 2017, p. 154). The surveys discussed in the individual case studies mirror the contemporary concepts of schools and schooling as vehicles of national (re)production. At the same time, they preform new contents and organizational structures through their questionnaires and thus help to reconstruct notions of importance and relevance through the direction and formulation of the specific questions. How were the questionnaires structured? What did they inquire about, and what did they omit? What content categories were chosen? Were there more open-ended or closed-ended questions, and what content areas did they refer to respectively? Were the respondents allowed to add their own suggestions or comments? Last but not least, the debates which accompanied the launch of the surveys are also relevant as they provide information on the purposes of the specific school surveys and the socio-political goals associated with the improvement of schools. The chapter discusses the three surveys in chronological order and examines the political goals, the agents involved, the structures and objectives of the respective questionnaires and the answers given. The first part, dealing with the Stapfer-Enquête, illustrates the importance attached to the “hard facts” during the planning phase of school reforms. The second part, outlining the 1833 Guizot-Enquête, shows that not only did this educational endeavor constitute a means of getting a statistical picture of the state of French primary education at the time, but that it also represented an important political gesture to create national awareness and mobilization in support of primary education. The third part, which addresses Scottish educational statistics from the 1820s and 1830s, shows how education not only was used as an identifying feature for the Scottish nation, but also involved the danger of putting this nation at risk. Overall, the chapter illustrates how differently and context-dependently numbers and surveys were used to approach the common goal of strengthening national identity through schooling.

The Stapfer-Enquête In February  1799, Philipp Albert Stapfer, the Minister of Education of the Helvetic Republic, launched a survey to inquire about the condition of the schools.1 A five-page questionnaire (Fragen Zustand Schulen, 1799) was dispatched to the approximately 2,900 teachers in the Helvetic Republic, containing a request to complete it as soon as possible and submit it to the competent authorities (Tröhler, 2014, p. 7). Barely a year earlier, in April 1798, the intervention of French troops on the territory of the Old Swiss Confederacy had led to the establishment of the Helvetic Republic, a centralistic state following the ideals of the French Revolution. The members of the upper classes in the

58  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

countryside, that is in the former subject territories, generally supported the new political order, since many of them had belonged to eighteenth-century Societies and had led intense discussions about reforming the Old Swiss Confederacy (Böhler et al., 2000). Especially among the members of the Helvetic Society, the conviction prevailed that it was both necessary to strengthen the sense of a Swiss national identity and to educate the citizens needed for it, for example by training the next generation of politicians in newly established, domestic, republican-oriented educational institutions instead of sending these young people abroad (Tröhler, 2000). These debates also entailed the new government’s concept of state and its underlying constitution and involved the formulation of ambitious goals. The federalist confederacy of the Ancien Régime was to be transformed into a centralized, unified state, and—following the example of the French constitution— the principles of popular sovereignty, the separation of powers, and general legal equality were to be enforced (Entwurf, 1798, pp.  3–5). As the new constitution did not codify a pre-existing political, social, and spatial order, but rather normatively justified and established one from scratch, it was necessary to disseminate and popularize its underlying principles. To this purpose, official statements and publications such as political catechisms were used to explain the new constitution while using the well-known patterns of religious catechisms (Tosato-Rigo, 2012) and popular periodicals like the Helvetische Volksblatt, which considered itself as the government mouthpiece. But it was especially the schools that were seen as a central vehicle to “create” the new, loyal citizen envisaged in the new constitution. Therefore, it was necessary to both revise curricula and textbooks and to redesign the entire organization of schools (teacher training, funding, and governance) in new and better ways, in accordance with the new requirements. Ennoblement of the Nation by Public Education

Stapfer’s survey was accompanied by several official statements for the newly established education councils explaining the survey (Entwurf, 1799). Already the preface to the manual for the education councils emphasized the connection between the “education of younger citizens” and the “ennoblement of our nation” (Vorrede, 1799, p. v). In addition, the establishment of education councils and local school inspectors was a means to provide institutional support for the widespread commitment of individuals to improve teaching and schools. “So, whoever collects, examines and sorts relevant materials, and thus provides legislators or the executors of the law with the rightest insights and aids, renders outstanding services to his country” (ibid., p. xii). The education councils were given a wide range of tasks, such as managing the local schools, reporting to the political authorities, organizing further training, and exchanging and networking with colleagues.

Nation-building by education statistics and data 59

The concrete instructions that were sent to the prospective education councils reveal a conviction that with clearly defined responsibilities, a precise distribution of tasks, and, above all, “with the knowledge of all the institutions aiming at public education, of the aids assigned and used for this purpose, of the most suitable persons, etc.”, it would be possible to achieve the envisaged goal of the “ennoblement of our nation” (Entwurf, 1799, p. 6). The objective was to collect comprehensive data of existing schools as a basis for reform decisions. Education councils were asked to provide information on the number and geographical distribution of existing schools in their jurisdiction, the number of teachers, their teaching methods, and the respective financing models of the schools, with particular attention paid to the adequate compensation of teachers (ibid., p. 14). This sort of information was also collected with Stapfer’s questionnaire. The survey launched by Stapfer benefitted from older local school surveys (Tröhler & Schwab, 2006; Fuchs, 2010) and was part of the general efforts to initiate reform projects based on numbers and data (Holenstein, 2014). One of the preceding surveys had been launched by the education council of the canton of Aargau—a new canton created from former subject territories—only a few weeks before the Helvetic survey, addressing the local inspectors with a questionnaire consisting of 90 questions (Fragen Aargau, 1799; Büttner, 2015, p. 28). The all-Helvetian survey sent out by Stapfer shows striking parallels with the Aargau survey, although it is much shorter (59 instead of 90 questions) and mainly inquires about framework conditions of schools, living conditions, and teachers’ economic situations rather than internal tuition settings or teachers’ concrete levels of knowledge (Büttner, 2015, p. 36). Stapfer’s survey goes into great detail with respect to individual schools’ (ecclesiastical) political affiliations, students’ routes to school, student numbers, and (geographic) school density. The questions on the topic of “instruction” are much briefer than those in the Aargau survey and focus—with the exception of the questions on learning content, writing requirements, and utilized textbooks—on the external form of instruction, that is on the mode of offering instruction, the daily duration of schooling, or the structuring of the student body. However, there are more detailed questions about the “staff situation,” which include the person of the schoolmaster, his family, background, and possible additional employment, as well as the composition of the student body and the question of whether, and if so how regularly, students attend school lessons. The most extensive portion of questions deals with the “economic situation,” which includes both the basic funding of the school and the school fees paid by the parents, the condition of the school building, and the details of the teacher’s salary (Fragen Zustand Schule, 1799). Structure, Organization, and Funding as Means of School Reform

The Stapfer-Enquête did not primarily focus on what was or should be taught but rather on how and under what conditions tuition could take place at all, who

60  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

participated in the lessons, for how long, and how regularly. Accordingly, the Stapfer questionnaire offers little concrete evidence of a vision of the future community’s school settings, except that the realization of its goals was aimed at by providing institutionalized framework conditions to enable a professional transfer of knowledge rather than by direct pedagogical interventions. For the new government, organizing, funding, and providing adequate premises were at the centre, because only constant and comprehensive availability of instruction accessible to all students could help to build the new society. Thus, teachers were spotlighted as they gained social significance, serving as a hinge between the political–social mandate and establishing the future community through education and schooling (Horlacher, 2020b). An opportunity to freely express personal views on the role of education and schooling in building the new state system was offered by the last question, which solicited teachers to “freely add all sorts of remarks and messages to the answers to these questions” (Fragen Zustand Schule, 1799, p. 99). Approximately a quarter of the respondents answered this question. Most of these individual comments regarded organizational and didactic issues, teachers’ own educational aspirations, or the new political order in general (Fuchs, 2015, pp.  141–143). Less than 1% of all responses (i.e. fewer than 20  comments) addressed the relationship between schooling and education and shaping the new political order and the nation’s future. About half of these remarks addressed this issue in a rather clichéd manner, pointing out in general terms that the respondent was doing everything possible to actively contribute to the well-being of his home country (Stapfer-Enquête, 1799, Nr.  679; Nr.  792; Nr. 2109). However, these few individual teachers’ comments reveal that great hopes were placed in the new government (and the new era arising with it). One teacher maintained that since the new leadership paid greater attention to schooling, one could expect “better and more civilized people in our dear fatherland” in the future (ibid., Nr.  85). Another respondent shared this assessment, pointing out that now was the time to improve young people’s education so that no one would have to remain “ignorant.” However, he feared opposition to reform plans by conservative parents (ibid., Nr.  351). Other comments mentioned the insufficient funding of teachers and schools, making the formation of “useful citizens for the common fatherland” impossible (ibid., Nr. 553). One comment underlined the importance of teachers in forming the new society drafted by the government; its author assured that he would spare no effort “for the good of my fellow humans, especially the youth,” as “the current situation of our dear free fatherland” required him “particularly to do so” (ibid., Nr.  2287). Another respondent noted that good intentions alone would not do: “Arrangements should be made” to form “skilful, capable and worthy schoolteachers . . . capable of instructing the young in all parts of science and forming them into good and useful republicans” (ibid., Nr. 315).

Nation-building by education statistics and data 61

Another comment referred to the importance of the relationship between school and education. Its author pointed out that there were indeed possibilities for the new government to improve the living conditions of the population, but he also warned against expecting results too quickly. Based on his long years of teaching experience, the writer claimed that schools could not be reformed very easily, since they, unlike buildings, could not be constructed according to the wishes of their architects. If a schoolmaster wanted to improve things, thorough knowledge of local realities was indispensable. He also pointed out that parents in the country were much less interested in their children’s education than those in the cities. Thus, the population was to trust the schoolmasters, who needed to be able and prudent enough to make the necessary changes palatable to both parents and children. Moreover, they were not to be discouraged by resistance and setbacks. In his view, one could not expect to achieve “in a few months . . . what will only be possible in two or three years” (ibid., Nr. 2228). These remarks express implicit criticism of the government’s approach, which—as the questionnaire suggested—assumed that the facts and figures about schooling collected in the survey would provide sufficient information to reform the schools in agreement with political requirements. In these few comments on the relationship among education, schooling, and the political collective, teachers unanimously emphasized the vital role of schooling and education for communal life under the new constitution. Yet, they also show the challenges of fundamental school reforms on behalf of the new political ideals, which could not be solved in the short term. Prioritizing organization and financing instead of trying to reform content-related aspects were also one teacher’s concern who taught in a “community consisting largely of people who have left their homeland for economic reasons.” He claimed that these people were not always the best stay-at-home fathers and mothers, so that “public education often has to fully care for their children” (ibid., Nr. 1041). He equally stressed the importance of the population’s economic situation, stating that it needed to be improved if schooling was to function effectively. As both the survey and the schoolmasters’ responses show, school reforms were expected to focus mainly on structure, organization, and funding. The purpose of the survey was to help identify circumstances which were particularly precarious. Although the publications accompanying the survey certainly appealed to teachers’ attitudes and normative convictions, both the government and the schoolmasters were primarily interested in the “hard facts” of school organization. These facts needed to be established before one could proceed to improve schools in order to produce a new society. Although school reforms had been one of the central projects of the Helvetic government, the cause soon petered out, not least due to the numerous coups d’état and respective changes of government accompanying the Helvetic Republic. Moreover, it seems likely that the political authorities were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and were unable to handle it—after all, the school survey was merely 1 of a total of 20 surveys launched

62  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

between April 1798 and August 1801 (Holenstein, 2014, p. 20). How could such an abundance of information on individual cases possibly serve as a basis for decisions on reform projects? Nevertheless, one of Stapfer’s reform ideas which did prevail was the introduction of education councils and school inspectors as public governance bodies for schools. Only in the course of the nineteenth century were all the other reform plans realized, this being a rather gradual process instead of a direct implementation of the original reform idea. What remained constant, however, was the conviction that schooling and education were the frameworks within which the new, national citizen should and could be created.

The 1833 Guizot-Enquête In the autumn of 1833, soon after the passing of the Guizot Law on primary education in France, the French minister of public instruction, François Guizot, launched a major investigation into the state of primary education, commonly referred to as the 1833 Guizot-Enquête2 (Chervel, 2006; JacquetFrancillon, 1999; Nique, 1990; Rouet, 1993; Savoye, 1994). With regard to its purpose and perspective, the Guizot-Enquête shows significant similarities with the 1799 Stapfer-Enquête. Indeed, Guizot was influenced by the ideas, works, and achievements of Stapfer, whom he knew personally and admired. After having spent most of his childhood in Switzerland, Guizot moved to Paris in 1805, where he tutored Stapfer’s children from 1807 to 1810. During that period, Stapfer played an important role in Guizot’s training and career and infused him with many ideas on education (Kirschleger, 1999, p. 50; Theis, 2013, p. 127). At the time, the Guizot-Enquête was conceived as an “extraordinary inspection,” ordered “to ensure full implementation of the Law of 28 June  1833.” Indeed, after the passing of this law, Guizot wanted to “properly allocate the resources for the creation and maintenance of a [boys’] primary elementary school” in every French commune (Guizot, 1833b, p.  144). He then “realized that the information on the state of primary education in France was so incomplete that the authorities [i.e. the State government] were constantly acting blindly, and very often obtained only poor results” (Guizot, 1834, p. 62). The Guizot inspection thus constituted an unprecedented means of getting an accurate statistical picture of primary education in France after the passing of the law. In many ways, this interest in school statistics was a continuation of previous efforts by the French government to document the state of primary education and to initiate school reforms based on numbers and data (Luc, 1985, p. 9). The 1833 Guizot-Enquête was part of “the first major period of activity of school statistics in France” (Ozouf, 1977, p. 142), which began at the end of the 1820s and developed significantly in the 1830s under the French July Monarchy, the latter marking the first “golden age” of primary education statistics in France

Nation-building by education statistics and data 63

(Luc, 1985, p. 1, 15). At the time, this increased interest in primary education statistics was closely linked to the advent of the July Monarchy in 1830. With Louis-Philippe as King of the French, this liberal, constitutional monarchy ratified the principles of 1789 concerning sovereignty derived from the nation; the revolutionary tricolor flag was re-established, press censorship was abolished, and Catholicism as the state religion was rejected. Census suffrage, however, was maintained. Beginning amid troubled times—the years spanning 1830 to 1834 witnessed numerous revolts and insurrections, as well as the rise of republican ideas—the new regime adopted measures to shape public sentiment and opinion in favor of a centralized French monarchy led by Louis-Philippe, the “Citizen King” (Bouveresse, 2012, p. 129). Among these measures, the 1833 Guizot law was designed to play a pivotal role in unifying the French nation through public education. Schools were considered a major instrument for ensuring the supremacy and endurance of the constitutional monarchy. In a letter sent to all primary schoolteachers in France, Guizot, the creator of the law, highlighted the government’s view of what an educative state was. It is not only for the commune that the law wants all Frenchmen to acquire the knowledge indispensable for social life . . . it is also for the State itself, and in the public interest. . . . From now on, universal primary education is one of the guarantees of order and social stability. (Guizot, 1833a, pp. 125, 126) In this perspective, although they worked within their local communities, schoolteachers essentially belonged to the French nation-state and were thus entrusted with a state, public, and “national” mission. School statistics were viewed as “the indispensable auxiliary” of educational reform: data, numbers, and statistics on schooling then became “a process of government” (Luc, 1985, p. 9). Before 1833, however, most primary school statistics consisted of secondhand reports based on replies to mostly quantitative questionnaires (Nique, 1990, p. 133). The July Monarchy marked a turning-point in that regard, with a stronger will of the State to—in Guizot’s words—actually “govern minds” through gathering more accurate, both quantitative and qualitative, statistical data on primary education (Rosanvallon, 1985, pp. 255, 260). An “Extraordinary,” First-Hand School Inspection

The 1833 Guizot-Enquête contrasted with earlier school statistics gathered by French officials. Not only did it collect first-hand, more precise, and unprecedented knowledge of the state of French primary education, but it also aimed at establishing new, more direct, and intimate relationships between the State and local primary schoolteachers and authorities. In the government’s view, the way of collecting data was therefore just as essential as the data itself. This

64  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

is evident in the circular sent by Guizot to French rectors on 28 July 1833. In this circular, Guizot detailed the goals of his survey: I cannot be satisfied with the knowledge of the external and material facts. . . . This knowledge is of unquestionable value. . . . But it is of no less importance to study the interior economy of the schools, the aptitude, zeal, and conduct of the teachers, their relationships with the pupils, the families, the local authorities .  .  . Facts of this nature cannot be ascertained at a distance. . . . Special visits, personal communication, and a close examination of things and men are indispensable to a just estimate and understanding. (Guizot, 1833b, p. 144) Obviously, not only did Guizot wish to assess the “external state” of primary education through quantitative data, but he also wanted to seize its “moral”— or internal—state, drawing on qualitative analyses. In that regard, this extraordinary school inspection was typical of the kind of social and political inquiries that were burgeoning at the time in other fields of social endeavor (KarilaCohen, 2008; Rosanvallon, 1985, p. 260). For 4 months—from September to December  1833—490  individuals, the greater number of whom were civil servants (secondary school principals, regents, professors, academy inspectors) (Guizot, 1833c, p.  157; 1834, pp. 367–393), crisscrossed the country on horseback and visited, inspected, and described more than 33,000 primary schools in 86 French departments. For each school they visited, the inspectors filled in a questionnaire consisting of 67 questions grouped under a set of 34 content-related headings. Their answers were based on “special visits” to the schools and “personal conversations” with local community members and primary schoolteachers. The printed questionnaire sheet was organized as follows: on the left, there was a column listing all the questions. Immediately to their right, there were 27 additional columns, one for each school, where the inspectors had to fill in the answers. At the head of each column, inspectors were to write the name of the commune. If several schools existed in the commune, “inspectors had to join the columns by means of a bracket, above which they wrote the name of the commune” (Guizot, 1833c, p. 159). On the blank sheets following each table, inspectors were to add “general observations on the moral situation of the primary schools,” as well as “the measures which they would deem suitable for improving and propagating elementary education in the various localities” (ibid., p. 160). In much the same way as the 1799 Stapfer-Enquête, the Guizot inspection included closed questions about the material, administrative, and financial conditions of schools, that is queries on school settings, teachers’ lodgings, the number of children attending school (summer and winter attendance), tuition fees, the number of pupils attending school for free, teachers’ salaries, possible additional occupations, and schools’ religious affiliations. Like the Swiss survey,

Nation-building by education statistics and data 65

Guizot requested quantitative data on tuition (subjects, textbooks, methods of teaching, school discipline) and on the teachers themselves (name, age, marital status, the number of children, training, qualifications). In addition to collecting the afore-mentioned data, the Guizot inspection went a step further, assessing the internal functioning of the primary schools. Inspectors had to answer closed questions regarding the quality of tuition, students’ learning and progress as revealed in their notebooks and activities, as well as the teacher’s “capacity, character, aptitude, zeal” and “the nature of his relations with local authorities, both civil and religious, and with his fellow citizens” (Guizot, 1834, p. 63). In that regard, the Guizot-Enquête introduced an important “State” bias in the assessment procedure, unlike surveys like the Stapfer-Enquête. In fact, the data collected in 1833 reflected the point of view of the State, as expressed in the questionnaires filled in by loyal inspectors (instead of local school authorities and primary schoolteachers). The Guizot-Enquête and Nation-Building in France

There are two major concerns in terms of schooling and nation-building in France which appear in the Guizot-Enquête. First, the focus on the quality of the teachers themselves (reflected in the questions related to their status, their training, their teaching practices, their zeal, or the relations they maintained within their local community) revealed the French government’s view of the vital role of teachers in unifying and shaping the national community. In line with the Guizot law, the survey indeed served as a means of nation-building by highlighting and making primary schoolteachers’ “nation-state” mission visible to all within their local community. On the other hand, by stressing the importance of classroom equipment and materials (as revealed in the questionnaire items pertaining to teaching methods, schoolbooks, teaching materials, objects), the survey aimed at creating awareness and mobilization in support of primary education among local community members. Primary schools were thus identified as key settings for the development of both local and national communities (Nique, 1990, p. 142). Such elements were salient in the official reports presenting the results of the survey at the time. Published in 1834, Guizot’s report to the King on the implementation of the 1833 Law represented one of the first statistical studies of primary education in France based on relatively reliable records (Guizot, 1834; Ravier, 2012, p. 38; Nique, 1990, p. 135), although data, especially those related to the number of pupils, remain dependent on individual inspectors’ interpretations (Luc, 1985, pp. 104–105). Three years later, in 1837, Paul Lorain, Guizot’s close friend and “grey eminence” (Lelièvre, 1990, p. 67), published a final report on the results of the survey (Lorain, 1837). These reports present a critical assessment of the state of primary education in France. At the end of 1833, there were 33,695 primary schools distributed across 26,180 French communes, out of a total of 36,618. Consequently, 10,438

66  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

communes, or approximately 28.5% of the total number of French communes, did not have elementary schools at that time (Guizot, 1834, p. 424). Most of the existing schools were located in the north-eastern part of the country, above a line stretching from Saint-Malo to Geneva, Switzerland. North of this “Saint-Malo–Geneva” axis, at least three quarters of the communes had primary schools for boys. South of this line, however, a great number of communes did not have any primary schools, especially in regions such as Brittany and the Massif Central (Chevalier, 2000, p. 5–6). Among the existing 33,695 primary schools, 22,641 (approximately 67%) were public schools (Guizot, 1834, p. 424). Overall, French primary schools took care of 1,654,828 pupils, with a significant difference between winter and summer, when most children had to work on their home farms (ibid., p. 424). Pupils, numbering 377,164 (approximately 22.8%), attended schools free of charge. In general, school settings and classrooms were considered ill-equipped and insalubrious. Books and teaching materials were missing in 43% (14,503) of the schools, and children often got sick because most classrooms were too small, overcrowded, dirty, and poorly lighted and ventilated (Lorain, 1837, p. 1–2). Classes were often taught in barns, sheds, chicken coops, damp cellars, or in teachers’ homes, in the presence of their relatives. Most teachers were ill-trained and poor, and many of them could barely read or write. The Guizot inspection therefore provided “the last picture of schools in the Ancien Régime” (Albertini, 2014, p. 58). In his 1834 report, Guizot nonetheless used the data of the inspection to highlight the progress that had been made in giving primary education “a new and fruitful [national] impulse,” as well as in creating “a universal link” between the nation-state and the teachers since the passing of the Guizot law. Guizot also used the survey to pinpoint the actions that were required to further develop mass schooling (Guizot, 1834, p. 64) and establish a national system of school supervision (Nique, 1999, p. 155). Numbers and data therefore took on “a political value” (Luc, 1985, p. 1). With this inspection, Guizot left an important political mark to “make real the presence of the central government everywhere in the sphere of elementary education” (Guizot, 1834, p. 62). At the time, however, the Enquête failed to fully establish the close relationship Guizot wanted to create between primary schoolteachers and the French nation-state. Nevertheless, it marked a decisive step (Nique, 1990, p. 134) in the process of turning primary education in France into a task of the nation-state.

Educational Statistics of the Scottish Highlands and Islands In the same year the Guizot-Enquête was launched, the Education Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland published a report entitled Educational Statistics of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833; see also Chambers, 1975). The report consisted of a 22-page text and three numerical tables. Table  I shows, for a

Nation-building by education statistics and data 67

total of 221  parishes located in the Scottish Highlands and on the Islands, absolute numbers for the following categories: “Population as by government census 1831”; “Number of Schools, not including Sabbath and Week-day Even. Schls.”; “Number of Scholars”; “Num. learning Mathematics in all the Schools”; “Num. learning Latin in all the Schools”; “Num. of Persons of all ages above 6  Years unable to read in Gaelic or English”; “Num. of Persons betwixt 6 and 20 years of age unable to read in either language”; and “Num. of Stations where new schools are required, and might be attended by upwards of 40 Scholars, without interfering with other Schools” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, table I). A second table listed the people or institutions responsible for the schools of the parishes. It depicts the Scottish school system as it had been established on the basis of a Scottish Parliament Act of 1696, that is about a decade before the unification with England. This act had imposed a structure in which the “landowner and Established Church clergyman were responsible for the provision of education in each parish” (Cameron, 2015, p. 155). Accordingly, the Scots were educated in a “statuary system, but one run by the church and local notables rather than the state” (Anderson, 2018, p. 99), which also explains why it was the Church of Scotland which launched this survey instead of a government agency, as had been the case with the surveys in Switzerland and France. The categories on this second table were: “Parochial Schools”;3 “Schools supported by Societies”; “Schools Endowed, where no fees taken, or supported by subscription”; “Schools partially Endowed, where fees taken”; “Schools on Teachers’ own adventure, without Salary”; Num. of Sab. Schools”; and “Num. of Week day Even. Schools” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, table II). For each school type (except for the sabbath schools and the week-day evening schools), the number of students, the number of teachers, and the “Joint amount of Teachers’ Yearly Emoluments, exclusive of the value of accommodation” were specified (ibid.). A third and last table included in this 1833 report gave a summary of table I by showing the number per synod instead of the parish (ibid., table III). Compared to the 67 items of the Guizot-Enquête or the 59 items of the Stapfer-Enquête, the report by the Educational Committee with its 16 items (not including the sub-items on table II) is less impressive than its Swiss and French counterparts. It provides no information on the teachers, and it offers only little insights into actual teaching and learning. However, together with other sources from around 1830, this report is a telling source about how statistical enquiries on education contributed to national identity discourses. Education in Scotland

The political situation in Scotland was somewhat different from the ones in Switzerland and France. Since the Union with England in 1707, Scotland had been part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and was

68  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

therefore not a sovereign state. The aforementioned report of 1833 uses the word “country” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, pp. 12–13), while the word “nation” appears only in context with “national resources” (ibid., 13). In a report on the Moral Statistics of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland published in 1826 (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826), education was referred to as one of the distinctive elements to which Scotland owed its “proud rank among the nations” (ibid., p. 34)—a note that implicitly hints at Scotland being a nation of its own. John Sinclair, the Scottish politician, whose Analyses of the Statistical Account of Scotland was published in 1831, explicitly called Scotland a “nation” (Sinclair, 1831, p. 7). Following a primordial understanding of the term, the Scottish nation was characterized by its people’s “undaunted courage,” its “unconquerable spirit,” and “other valuable qualities” (ibid.). While Scottish authors writing around 1830 were primordialists when it came to “nation,” almost two centuries later, the texts they wrote can be analyzed through the theoretical lenses of ethno-symbolism. If this is done, the sources show how education was sometimes explicitly, but most often implicitly, counted among national qualities, for example, when Scottish people’s level of education was compared to that of the English, Welsh, or Irish. In fact, late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century surveys revealed that, as opposed to other parts of the United Kingdom, education was widespread in Scotland (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826, p. 33). Statistical data also show that it was indeed no trifling distinction, and of no little benefit, to Scotland, that throughout so large a portion of its extent, the young of both sexes, before being called off to the laborious occupations of life, have almost universally been taught to read. (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 4) This, the Society for the Education of the Poor stated, set Scotland apart from Ireland, where people were “ignorant and miserable” (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1825, p. 33). And when S­ inclair stated that the Scottish were superior to the English and Welsh regarding “healthiness and longevity” (Sinclair, 1831, p. 159), he attributed this to “temperance, prudence, and good conduct of the people” (ibid.), which in turn was thought to be the result of a good (Christian) education. Even the Englishman Thomas Robert Malthus acknowledged the comparatively high quality of education in Scotland when referring to a certain Mr Howard, who “found fewer prisoners in Switzerland and Scotland, than in other countries, which he attributed to a more regular education among the lower classes of the Swiss and the Scotch” (Malthus, 1803, p. 601). Even though nineteenth-century education might have been generally good in Scotland, the quality of tuition varied regionally. As Sinclair noted in 1831, “various circumstances prevented the blessings of education, from being

Nation-building by education statistics and data 69

enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland, in the same degree with the other parts of the kingdom” (Sinclair, 1831, p. 92).4 One of the circumstances explicitly mentioned by Sinclair was the fact that whereas English was the general language of education, most of the Highlanders and Islanders were Gaelic speakers (see also General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 8; Donovan & Niven, 2018, p. 565). However, Gaelic was not used in education (Cameron, 2015, p. 162). There were, as the report from 1833 pointed out, “no school-books in Gaelic either of grammar or of arithmetic” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 7), and while the New Testament had been translated in 1767, the whole Bible was not available in Gaelic before 1801 (Cameron, 2015, p. 163). Another problem discussed in the 1833 report was the fact that the educated gentry was spread too thinly in the Highlands and on the Islands, which means that their knowledge and wisdom could not benefit large parts of the population (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, pp. 9–10). Moral Education and the Malthusian Angst

This assumed “backwardness” of the people in the Scottish Highlands and on the Islands (Cameron, 2015, p. 165) had several institutions take a closer look at the “actual” situation in said regions (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 3). One of those institutions was the Society for the Education of the Poor in the Highlands in Inverness, which published the aforementioned report of 1826; another was the General Assembly of the Educational Committee of the Church of Scotland, which published the aforementioned 1833 report. What fueled the curiosity of those institutions was not only the fear that the poor, uneducated masses could endanger Scotland’s advantage over neighboring nations, but mostly some sort of Malthusian angst. This fear originated from a book first published by Malthus in 1798, which had a great (international) impact after its second, revised edition of 1803 (Gaillard, 2011). Malthus’ main argument was that while the population grows at a geometrical (i.e., exponential) rate, agricultural production grows at a (much slower) arithmetical (i.e. linear) rate. This means that eventually, food production cannot keep up with a growing population. According to this theory, demographic growth endangers a nation’s health and wealth by causing “poverty, malnutrition, and disease” (Dziewulska  & Ostrowska, 2016, p.  64) as soon as the population increases “beyond the means of subsistence” (Malthus, 1803, p. 3). The only chance to avoid a catastrophe lies in population control, that is in emigration (ibid., p. 7). As shown by the 1826 and 1833 reports, this Malthusian angst was not unfounded. The 1826 report includes demographic statistics showing a massive population growth in the Highlands and on the Islands of Scotland between 1791 and 1821. According to those numbers, the overall population of the Highlands and Islands had grown from 300,805 in 1755 to 416,852 in 1821

70  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

(Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826; see also Cairncross, 1954, p. 12). Although a large portion of the population had emigrated, this was obviously not enough to curb demographic growth (Sinclair, 1831, p. 149). And while, according to Malthus, the means of subsistence could not keep up with such increase in population, neither could the educational system, as the 1826 and 1833 reports illustrated. Both reports revealed huge numbers of uneducated people living in the Scottish Highlands and on the Islands. As the 1826 report documented, the number of people aged 6 or older unable to read was over 100,000 (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826, p. 64). In 1833, their number still amounted to 83,397 (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 6).5 For the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, such high numbers of illiteracy among the common people of the Highlands and the Islands were more than a mere technicality. Reading skills were key to religious and therefore moral education, and statisticians such as Sinclair and Malthus showed that there was, in fact, a correlation between education and “safety, peace and happiness of society” (Sinclair, 1831, p.  64; see also Malthus, 1803, p. 601).6 It was expected that the lack of reading skills would result in social and moral decay. In this context, the Inverness Society for the Education of the Poor wanted to find out how many books were owned by each family in the Highlands and on the Islands (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826, p.  37). The result of the investigation was that almost half of the families did not own a Bible.7 Thus, what both reports showed was that Scotland was at risk, as its Highlands and Islands were trapped in a Malthusian crisis—a crisis not primarily caused by insufficient means of subsistence, but by a lack of education. There was, however, a glimpse of hope in the reports. While the only remedy against a traditional Malthusian crisis was emigration, there was a hope that a crisis induced by a lack of education instead of a lack of production could be solved by other means. In the 1833 report, some hope shone through as far as two quantifiable issues were concerned: the first being the number of people aged 6 to 20 who were unable to read and the second consisting of the required number of new schools. The non-readers were those people who could still be educated, if only they were to attend school. Their number was rather high. The number of missing schools, on the other hand, was relatively moderate. The report also discussed shortcomings of the existing schools, such as poorly skilled teachers and insufficient teachers’ salaries, but the main issue was to provide the 28,000 non-readers with an education. However, to give the Highlanders and Islanders that opportunity, a total of 217 additional schools and 167 itinerant teachers were required (General Assembly’s Education Committee, pp.  22–23). With that number of new schools and teachers, which would come at an estimated cost of £7,680, education in the Highlands and on the Islands could be brought “merely on a level with the Lowlands” (ibid.).

Nation-building by education statistics and data 71

Thus, the 1833 report, as well as other sources, contains a discursive inscription of what Thomas S. Popkewitz calls the “double gestures of hope and fear” (Popkewitz, 2017, p.  25), with parochial schools becoming symbols for this “hope and fear.” The fear was fueled by the Malthusian angst of a rural population outgrowing the number of parochial schools and thus ending in amorality, malady, and misery. If improved, the same parochial schools, however, gave reason for hope. This hope was that, by means of the aforementioned efforts, Scotland could become “perhaps the only country in the world possessing a population of more than two million, of whom scarcely an individual would be found unqualified to read” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 24). In the contemporary discourse on education inscribed in those reports and surveys, the number of parochial schools symbolized the status of the nation’s well-being. Only if there were enough schools would Scotland keep its “proud rank among the nations.”

Nation-Building by Statistics? In the entry on “political arithmetic” in the Encyclopédie by Diderot and D’Alembert, the first stated that he did not doubt “that one would convince oneself that the political world, just like the physical world, in many respects may be regulated by weights, number and measure” (Diderot, 1751/2008, p. 678). In the decades to come, Diderot was proven right when many European countries began to “engineer” their national societies. Two of the main tools for social engineering or “producing the right ‘kind of people’ ” (Bürgi & Tröhler, 2018, p. 83), that is the systematic use of statistical data and the education of the masses, were implemented throughout the nineteenth century. And while both the impact of mass education and the use of statistics could be analyzed separately with regard to nation-building processes, school statistics provide an opportunity to analyze what happened when those (supposedly modernizing) tools were intertwined. The examples of school statistics from the first half of the nineteenth century collected here illustrate the nationally different approaches and demands which were associated with school statistics. While the Stapfer-Enquête was explicitly linked to the hope of being able to reform schools in a better, more effective, and more targeted way with the help of reliable empirical data, the GuizotEnquête pursued both the goal of evaluating the impact of the new Guizot Law on schooling and the collection of data in order to improve the current state of the schools and reach the goal of unifying the nation by strengthening primary education. Despite all similarities with the Stapfer-Enquête, the GuizotEnquête was clearly initiated as a top-down state project and as a strategy of political justification to reform primary education. The example of Scotland shows that national school statistics were not isolated phenomena, but closely connected to other statistics-based efforts such as “demographic engineering” (McNamee, 2019, p. 8). In this context, questions of education were linked

72  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann

to arguments of population policy, a nation’s health and wealth, and its performance compared to others. Thus, this range of perspectives also points to a certain discrepancy between the ideological demands on schooling to fabricate the future citizen and the concrete steps taken to achieve this goal. Despite such differences, however, these three case studies reveal similar ways of viewing statistics as political instruments of social order, not only to deal with the current state of education but also to shape the future of each country’s community, the nation. In that regard, although all three examples used school surveys as a means of achieving the envisaged goals, and although the school surveys collected similar data and did not differ fundamentally in their structures, a closer examination reveals different ideas hidden behind or beneath a formal sameness. It is not irrelevant whether a school survey was addressed to teachers or to superintendents or if it was carried out by the Church. The respective addressing allows to draw particular conclusions as to who or what was considered to be responsible for the fabricating of the future citizens. These differences regarding addressees and responsible authorities represent different ideas of political order and competence, different ideas of political responsibility and co-determination, and thus also different ideas of how the future citizen was imagined. In France, the very design of the Guizot-Enquête, which was entrusted to civil servants and had a special focus on teachers, revealed a strong state-centered view of education and schooling in which schoolteachers belonged to the nation’s system of public education and acted as state agents of tuition within their local communities. However, the surveys also reveal that the future was not their only focus, as their questionnaires and emphases also addressed existing ideas on the role of education and schooling with regard to social cohesion. Thus, interpreting our cases with a uniquely defined modernist approach to the study of nationalism would be short-sighted. The idea of establishing national identity through schooling was not “invented” around 1800 but built on older ideas, which varied from place to place and depended on idiosyncratic political and economic histories. Although the idea of “the nation” fell on fertile ground “everywhere” at the turn of the nineteenth century, concrete conceptions of it differed, and education and schooling followed these different ideas and trajectories just as policies did. It is therefore not surprising that the designs of the school surveys differed as well. Although similarities and borrowings have become visible, each was unique in its own way and followed idiosyncratic national preferences. Given these different traditions and images of nation-building, the question arises as to what extent this comparative view on school surveys helps to sharpen theories of nationalism. The main point might be quite simply that the past holds a range of ways in which nation, education, and schooling can be thought together and that the closer one looks, the more differentiated and complex the past becomes. However, the focus on school surveys can also serve as an example of how the connection between education, schooling,

Nation-building by education statistics and data 73

and nation was—as current debates suggest—taken for granted and needed no further discussion. Research, however, is well advised to question such seeming self-evidence.

Notes 1 The approximately 2,400 surviving responses are digitally edited (www.stapferenquete. ch). 2 The Guizot-Enquête consists of reports written by inspectors who visited boys’ primary schools. These reports are preserved in the French National Archives (F/17/80 to F/17/160, Enquête sur la situation des écoles primaires). Data still exists for most of the French departments, except Aisne, Allier, Ile-et-Vilaine, and Nord. Corsica was not included. In the 1980s and 1990s, a group of researchers, led successively by Jean Hébrard, Gilles Rouet, and Anne-Marie Chartier, analyzed data and created a database for 20 departments (see www.inrp.fr/she/guizot). 3 According to the 1833 report, “the Parochial School appears as the center or nucleus of the whole System” (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 5). 4 As the 1833 report points out, there were also issues concerning education in the Scottish Lowlands. The Educational Committee, however, focused on the Highlands and Islands exclusively (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, pp. 5–6). 5 According to the 1833 report, the number of those who cannot write was 84,219 (General Assembly’s Education Committee, 1833, p. 13). 6 According to the 1826 report, “education” in the Highlands and on the Islands was almost synonymous to “reading” (Society for the Education of the Poor, 1826, p. 32). 7 The 1833 report does not include this information.

Sources Diderot, D. (2008). Political arithmetic (1751). In M. D’Auria (Trans.), The encyclopedia of diderot  & d’Alembert collaborative translation project. Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library. Entwurf. (1798). Entwurf der helvetischen Staatsverfassung. Wilhelm Haas. Entwurf. (1799). Entwurf der Instruktionen für die neuerrichteten Erziehungsräthe (pp.  3–26). Gruner und Gessner. Fragen Aargau. (1799). Fragen über den Zustand der Schulen im Canton Aargau. [s.n.]. Fragen Zustand Schule. (1799). Fragen über den Zustand der Schulen an jedem Orte. In Entwurf der Instruktionen für die neuerrichteten Erziehungsräthe (pp.  96–100). Gruner und Gessner. General Assembly’s Education Committee. (1833). Educational statistics of the highlands and Islands. J. and D. Collie. Guizot, F. (1832). Circulaire portant demande de renseignements et d’observations sur l’instruction primaire et l’instruction supérieure. In Circulaires et instructions officielles relatives à l’Instruction publique (Vol. 2, 1831–1839, pp. 85–88). Delalain. Guizot, F. (1833a). Circulaire relative aux moyens de faire immédiatement une inspection générale des écoles primaires. In Circulaires et instructions officielles relatives à l’Instruction publique (Vol. 2, 1831–1839, pp. 144–145). Delalain. Guizot, F. (1833b). Circulaire relative à l’époque de l’inspection générale des écoles primaires et au choix des fonctionnaires chargés de cette inspection. In Circulaires et instructions officielles relatives à l’Instruction publique (Vol. 2, 1831–1839, pp. 157–158). Delalain.

74  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann Guizot, F. (1833c). Instruction prescrivant l’inspection générale des écoles primaires et réglant le service des inspecteurs. In Circulaires et instructions officielles relatives à l’Instruction publique (Vol. 2, 1831–1839, pp. 158–165). Delalain. Guizot, F. (1834). Rapport au Roi par le Ministre secrétaire d’État au département de l’Instruction publique; sur l’exécution de la loi du 28 juin 1833 relative à l’instruction primaire. Imprimerie royale. Lorain, P. (1837). Tableau de l’instruction primaire en France. Hachette. Malthus, T. R. (1803). An essay on the principle of population: Or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness. J. Johnson. Nachricht. (1799). Nachricht über die beygedruckten Fragen an die Schullehrer. In Entwurf der Instruktionen für die neuerrichteten Erziehungsräthe (pp. 94–95). Gruner und Gessner. National Archives, France, F/17/80-F/17/160, Enquête sur la situation des écoles primaires. Sinclair, J. (1831). Analysis of the statistical account of Scotland. William Tait. Society for the education of the poor in the highlands. (1826). Moral statistics of the Highlands and islands of Scotland. Education Society. Stapfer-Enquête. (1799). Die Stapfer-Enquête. Edition der helvetischen Schulumfrage von 1799. www.stapferenquete.ch. Vorrede. (1799). Vorrede. In Entwurf der Instruktionen für die neuerrichteten Erziehungsräthe (pp. v–vi). Gruner und Gessner.

References Albertini, P. (2014). L’école en France du XIXe siècle à nos jours de la maternelle à l’université. Hachette. Alonso, W., & Starr, P. (1983). The politics of numbers. Russell Sage Foundation. Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities (Rev. ed.). Verso. Anderson, R. (2018). Historical perspectives. In T. G. K. Bryce, W. M. Humes, D. Gillies, & A. Kennedy (Eds.), Scottish education. Fifth edition (pp. 99–107). Edinburgh University Press. Berger, S., Eriksonas, L., & Mycock, A. (Eds.). (2008). Narrating the nation: Representations in history, media, and the arts. Berghahn Books. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. Böhler, M., Hofmann, E., Reill, P. H.,  & Zurbuchen, S. (Eds.). (2000). Republikanische Tugend. Ausbildung eines Schweizer Nationalbewusstseins und Erziehung eines neuen Bürgers. Slatkine. Boser, L. (2020). Nations and numbers: Elementary mathematics education as nationalizing tool. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 47–63. Bouveresse, J. (2012). Histoire des institutions, de la vie politique et de la société françaises de 1789 à 1945. Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre. Bürgi, R., & Tröhler, D. (2018). Producing the ‘right kind of people’: The OECD education indicators in the 1960s. In S. Lindblatt, D. Pettersson, & Th. Popkewitz (Eds.), Numbers, education and the making of society: International assessments and its expertise (pp. 75–91). Routledge. Büttner, P. (2015). Schreiben lehren um 1800. Wehrhan. Bulmer, M., Bales, K., & Sklar, K. K. (1991). The social survey in historical perspective. In M. Bulmer, K. Bales, & K. K. Sklar (Eds.), The social survey in historical perspective 1880–1940 (pp. 1–48). Cambridge University Press.

Nation-building by education statistics and data 75 Cairncross, A. K. (Ed.). (1954). The Scottish economy. A statistical account of Scottish life by members of the staff of Glasgow University. Cambridge University Press. Cameron, E. A. (2015). Education in Rural Scotland, 1696–1872. In R. Anderson, M. Freeman,  & L. Paterson (Eds.), The Edinburgh history of education in Scotland (pp.  153–170). Edinburgh University Press. Chambers, D. (1975). The Church of Scotland’s Highlands and Islands education scheme, 1824–1843. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 7(1), 8–17. Chevalier, J.-P. (2000). Des cartes pour figurer la géographie de l’école en 1833. Re-source, La revue scientifique de l’IUFM (1–21). CRDP de l’académie de Versailles, 2. Chervel, A. (2006). Histoire de l’enseignement du français du XVIIe au XXe siècle. Retz. Donovan, A., & Niven, L. (2018). The Scots language in education. In T. G. K. Bryce, W. M. Humes, D. Gillies, & A. Kennedy (Eds.), Scottish education. Fifth edition (pp. 565–575). Edinburgh University Press. Dziewulska, A., & Ostrowska, A. M. (2016). The crooked logic of migration policies and their Malthusian roots. Yearbook of Polish European Studies, 19, 62–82. Fuchs, M. (2010). Der rationale Staat und seine bürokratischen Grenzen. Zeitschrift für pädagogische Historiographie, 16(2), 122–128. Fuchs, M. (2015). Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerperspektiven in der Helvetischen Republik. Klinkhardt. Gaillard, U. (2011). Malthusianisme. In Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS). Retrieved February 5, 2022, from https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/017430/2011-03-02 Holenstein, A. (2014). Reform und Rationalität. Die Enquêten in der Wissens- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Helvetischen Republik. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Volksschule um 1800 (pp. 13–32). Klinkhardt. Horlacher, R. (2020a). Civics in the curricular construction for the loyal national citizens: A comparative view of Switzerland. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 83–99. Horlacher, R. (2020b). Teachers and teaching. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), A cultural history of education in the age of enlightenment (pp. 131–145). Bloomsbury. Ichijo, A., & Uzelac, G. (Eds.). (2005). When is the nation? Towards an understanding of theories of nationalism. Routledge. Jacquet-Francillon, F. (1999). Instituteurs avant la République. La profession d’instituteur et ses représentations de la monarchie de Juillet au Second Empire. Presses universitaires du Septentrion. Karila-Cohen, P. (2008). L’État des esprits. L’invention de l’enquête politique en France (1814–1848). Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Kirschleger, P.-Y. (1999). La religion de Guizot. Labor et Fides. Lelièvre, C. (1990). Histoire des institutions scolaires, 1789–1989. Nathan. Levine, D. A. (2003). Building classroom communities. Solution Tree Press. Luc, J.-N. (1985). La statistique de l’enseignement primaire, 19e-20e siècles. Politique et mode d’emploi. Economica, INRP. McNamee, L. (2019). Demographic engineering (Doctoral dissertation). Stanford University. Nique, C. (1990). Comment l’école devint une affaire d’État. Nathan. Nique, C. (1999). François Guizot. L’École au service du gouvernement des esprits. Hachette-éducation. Özkırımlı, U. (2017). Theories of nationalism: A  critical introduction. Third edition. Palgrave Macmillan. Ozouf, J. (1977). Les statistiques de l’enseignement primaire au XIXe siècle. In F. Bédarida (Ed.), Pour une histoire de la statistique Vol. 1, (pp. 139–153). Economica/INSEE. Popkewitz, T. S. (2017). Teacher education and teaching as struggling for the soul. Routledge.

76  Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann Przyrembel, A. (2017). From cultural wars to the crisis of humanity: Moral movements in the modern age. In S. Berger & H. Nehring (Eds.), The history of social movements in global perspective (pp. 355–383). Palgrave Macmillan. Ravier, J. (2012). L’évaluation des enseignants du primaire en France de 1835 à 1850. L’inspection primaire de Guizot à Falloux. Spirale – Revue de recherches en éducation, 49, 37–51. Rosanvallon, P. (1985). Le moment Guizot. Gallimard. Rouet, G. (1993). L’invention de l’école. L’école primaire sous la Monarchie de Juillet. Presses universitaires de Nancy. Savoye, A. (1994). Les débuts de la sociologie empirique. Analyse institutionnelle. Klincksieck. Smith, A. D. (2003). Chosen peoples: Sacred sources of national identity. Oxford University Press. Theis, L. (2013). Guizot et le Salon de 1810. Napoleonica. La Revue, 18(3), 126–135. Tosato-Rigo, D. (2012). Political catechisms and nation-state building in revolutionary Switzerland (around 1800). Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 2(2), 162–175. Tröhler, D. (2000). Republikanismus als Erziehungsprogramm: Die Rolle von Geschichte und Freundschaft in den Konzepten eidgenössischer Bürgerbildung der Helvetischen Gesellschaft. In M. Böhler, E. Hofmann, P. H. Reill, & S. Zurbuchen (Eds.), Republikanische Tugend. Ausbildung eines Schweizer Nationalbewusstseins und Erziehung eines neuen Bürgers (pp. 401–421). Slatkine. Tröhler, D. (2014). Die Stapfer-Enquête 1799 als historischer Meilenstein und historiographische Chance. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Volksschule um 1800 (pp. 7–12). Klinkhardt. Tröhler, D. (2016). Curriculum history or the educational construction of Europe in the long nineteenth century. European Educational Research Journal, 15(3), 279–297. doi:10.1177/1474904116645111 Tröhler, D. (2020a). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. doi:10.1080/00220272.20 20.1786727. Tröhler, D. (2020b). Nation-state, education and the fabrication of national-minded citizens. Croatian Journal of Education, 22(Sp. Ed. 2), 11–27. Tröhler, D., Popkewitz, T. S., & Labaree, D. F. (2011). Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century. Routledge. Tröhler, D.,  & Schwab, A. (2006). Volksschule im 18. Jahrhundert. Die Schulumfrage auf der Zürcher Landschaft in den Jahren 1771/1772. Klinkhardt. Winandy, J. (2018). From the “known” to the “unknown”: Nationalistic “description(s) of the earth” as a school subject in the multinational Habsburg Empire. Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 8(1), 85–99. Yeo, E. J. (2003). Social surveys in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In T. M. Porter & D. Ross (Eds.), The Cambridge history of science. Volume  7: The modern social sciences (pp. 83–99). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 4

Education and nationalism after empire Imposing and inventing the nation as the fundament of the modern state in interwar Austria and “Slovene Yugoslavia” 1 Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

In autumn 1918, Austria-Hungary disintegrated. On its ruins, new successor states began to emerge. The parcellation of the now-defunct empire was based on the principle of national self-determination, an idea formulated and propagated by Woodrow Wilson in its American liberal form (Wolff, 2020). Post-1918, political rhetoric and diplomatic deliberations thus revolved around the claim that the sovereignty of a state resided in its nation, and so the future should therefore lie in the nation-state. Accordingly, the year 1918 marked the beginning of “the apogee of nationalism,” the “moment when the nineteenthcentury ‘principle of nationality’ triumphed” (Hobsbawm, 1990, p. 131). The right to national self-determination and the notion of national sovereignty were two terms that defined post-Habsburg space in legal and political terms, but most of all rhetorically. Post-imperial political and legal sources indicate that “interwar states replacing the Habsburg Monarchy explicitly regarded themselves as nation-states” (Wingfield, 2005, p. 10). In the words of Pieter Judson, post-Habsburg polities were rather “miniempires” (Judson, 2017). Even though the legitimacy of newly emerged polities was built on a nationalist assumption that they represented a single homogenous national community which supposedly lived within its borders, the successor states were in reality linguistically and culturally diverse entities that often retained many Habsburg administrative practices and institutions. As such, in the immediate postwar years, they strikingly resembled the defunct empire in smaller form. Yet, the cultural and political elites that came to power after the end of the war did not show willingness to tolerate the continuation of what they understood as an oppressive Habsburg imperial heritage and tradition. Facing the evident incongruence between the reality on the ground on the one hand and normative nationalist discourses on the other, victorious nationalist elites incited a series of institutional, legal, and organizational initiatives that were characterized by the (mis)use of the power of state institutions to harmonize existing cultural and linguistic diversity with the vision of DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-5

78  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

a triumphant normative nationalist discourse. Rogers Brubaker’s concept of a “nationalizing state” sums up many such efforts (Brubaker, 1995). At the same time, Moritz Csáky (2017) has pointedly emphasized that the goal of national activists and nationalists who came to power in the post-Habsburg successor states was nothing less than the “nationalization of culture.” In the post-imperial period, nationalists drew their attention also to educational institutions as part of the “nationalization of culture.” The political leaders of post-Habsburg successor states firmly believed that schools would be instrumental in instilling the “correct” national ideology and appropriate national patterns of collective identification. This was unsurprising, however, given that the idea of a school as a tool of nationalization had already been an important part of nationalist discourse in the late Habsburg era (1867–1918). Among political and cultural elites living in Cisleithania (i.e. the Habsburg imperial administrative units outside of the Kingdom of Hungary), the nationalist assumption that schools could contribute to the spread of national belonging among citizens was thus far from novel. As is well known from recent historiographic accounts (Cohen, 2007; Zahra, 2008; Judson, 2016; Stergar  & Scheer, 2018; Almasy, 2018), state institutions in Cisleithania facilitated and implicitly encouraged the classification of citizenry according to nationalist worldviews. These institutions contributed to the compartmentalization of the population into separate and supposedly culturally different and internally homogeneous national groups. In addition, the state’s school curricula incorporated many nationalistic tropes and actively contributed to one’s subjective feeling of attachment and identification with different nations (German-speaking pupils learnt about poets from the German canon, Slovene-speaking about the Slovene, etc.). Already in the late Habsburg era, one can observe how, in a social environment decisively shaped by forces of modernization, “the state and the specific social movements utilise their organisational powers to communicate and reinforce a particular ideological message that aims to project a sense of unity among millions of individuals that will never meet each other” (Malešević, 2019, pp. 60–61). As a result, even before the outbreak of the First World War, notions of “Germanness” and “Sloveneness” had gained ground among broader layers of the population. In this sense, the imperial heritage largely determined postimperial interwar dynamics. However, processes of national identification and the presence of official nationalist discourses in the interwar Republic of Austria as well as the “Slovene territories” of interwar Yugoslavia happened in political realities that differed significantly from the late Habsburg era. In the interwar period, the pre-1918 notion of Sloveneness had to adapt to official Yugoslav state ideology, which in turn was built on the idea of a “three-named nation (troimeni narod)” consisting of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian tribes. In Austria, by contrast, pre-war German nationalists became citizens of the Republic of German-Austria (and from 1919 on, the Republic of Austria), despite their aspirations to merge the “German territories” of the former Habsburg Empire with the new Weimar Republic. It took more than a decade

Education and nationalism after empire 79

before the Republic of Austria started to consolidate its legitimacy by disseminating the notion of a distinct Austrian identity and concomitant national belonging. In sum, both Slovenian and German nationalists were forced to reconcile their imperial nationalist heritage with the political realities of two interwar countries that were not idealtypisch nation-states. The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, on a chronological and descriptive level, we will analyze in separate sub-chapters how Austrian and Yugoslav politicians, civil servants, officials, and teachers used the newly acquired levers of power to influence school organization and curriculum in order to impose specific nationalist worldviews and influence the political socialization of their respective future citizens. By examining legal frameworks, curricula, textbooks, and everyday life in schools, we will compare the discursive function and organizational role of nationalism in the field of primary and secondary education in Austria and the “Slovenian” regions of Yugoslavia. For the sake of comparison, we limit ourselves exclusively to those post-Habsburg regions of Yugoslavia where Slovene was used as the language of instruction in the interwar era. This northernmost sub-territory of the new South Slav state shared an important common Cisleithanian heritage with the Republic of Austria in the early post-imperial years, namely a clear institutional continuity in the field of education. Drawing on such a comparison, we will show the similarities and differences between the two school systems and highlight several common features between state-financed educational frameworks in the post-Habsburg political and cultural context, ones where nationalist ideological assumptions constituted the basis of political legitimacy. Second, the chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the link between mass education and the strengthening of national identity. The classics of the so-called modernist school of nationalism have already highlighted the role that educational systems play in the consolidation of political and national loyalties through the dissemination of national content in the educational process (Gellner, 1983/1998; Hobsbawm, 1990). The importance of schools for successful nation-building has been recognized at least since Eugene Weber’s seminal Peasants into Frenchmen (1979), while Eric Hobsbawm observed in his Age of Revolution (1962) that “the progress of schools and universities measures the progress of nationalism, just as schools and especially universities have become its most conscious advocates” (cit. in Hobsbawm, 1996, p. 135). Aside from providing a descriptive insight on how the organization of interwar Austrian and Yugoslav schools contributed to the spread of nationalist discourse, a second aim of this chapter is to evaluate how such empirical data corresponds with the theoretical propositions of several distinguished scholars of nationalism.

Laws and curricula When Austria-Hungary collapsed in autumn 1918, both the Slovene part of the emerging Yugoslav state as well as German-Austria inherited educational

80  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

systems that had been developed and established in Cisleithania. Unsurprisingly, by legitimizing a new post-imperial political order with the use of nationalist and anti-Habsburg discourses, many members of the political and cultural elite in both states sought to tailor the normative framework and the content of education to suit their own needs, expectations, and visions. In Austria, it was the Social Democrats who showed great eagerness for change. At the same time, it is also true that the Austrian political elite did not view the organization of education as the most important question at the beginning of the post-1918 era, given that this social stratum expected such matters to be dealt with only after the unification of Austria with Germany (Engelbrecht, 1988, p. 5; Meissner, 2009, pp.  358–360). By contrast, Slovene politicians reached an almost undisputed consensus that the educational system ought to be “Slovenized” and aligned with the altered political circumstances (Gabrič, 2019; Studen, 2019). Yet, such changes could only be implemented gradually. While the political and territorial changes brought about by the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire were in fact radical, quite the opposite proved to be true in the case of educational reforms. Thorough interventions were rare and sporadic. As a result, the normative and organizational frameworks of state education remained defined by the imperial legacy. In the first decade after World War I, the school systems in both territories, Austria and Slovene Yugoslavia, could be thus described as a mere continuation of Cisleithanian legislative and financial initiatives that, from the late 1860s onwards, had established a dense network of educational institutions and contributed enormously to a high level of literacy and a substantial increase in the average educational level of the population as compared to the preceding decades and centuries. Despite the shared background and strong imperial continuities, the development of the education system in Austria and Yugoslavia went in separate directions from the mid-1920s onward. Unsurprisingly, internal political dynamics were the driving forces behind the states’ respective interventions in their school systems. Slovene Yugoslavia

After the political and social turmoil in autumn 1918, the so-called Slovenian parts of the Habsburg Empire were integrated into the emerging South Slav state (officially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes from 1918 until 1929, when it was then called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) (Šišić, 1920; Perovšek, 2018). Upon its emergence, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was a patchwork of different territories with a wide variety of institutional traditions and administrative practices (Calic, 2019, p.  72; Slapnicka, 1973, pp. 86–87). Thus, the educational system reflected the composite nature of the new state. In 1919, at least 37 different provincial laws and regulations provided the normative framework of school organization on the territory of the Kingdom (Janjetović, 2005, p.  233). Although a number of ministers of

Education and nationalism after empire 81

education attempted to unify the organization and content of state schools in the following decade, the state of permanent political instability and the conflicting interests of regional and national political elites did not allow for a unified Yugoslav educational system to emerge (Janjetović, 2005, pp. 233–234; Troch, 2015, pp. 43–50). As a result, crucial guidelines for the organization of education and its curricula in the “Slovenian areas” of Yugoslavia, which were put in place right at the beginning of the Yugoslav era, remained almost intact during the first decade of the state’s existence (Velikonja, 1928, pp. 691–706). The administrative bodies that oversaw education in the Slovenian part of Yugoslavia did not significantly interfere in the organizational structure of the state school network. The old imperial arrangements remained in force in the new Yugoslav era, with minor interventions and changes. Much more important adjustments, however, concerned the content of teaching and the way in which it was done. The most important matter of concern for the new Slovene authorities in the immediate postwar era was the language of instruction (Gabrič, 2019, 142). Until the end of the First World War, in many primary and secondary schools on “Slovenian” Habsburg territory, German was the language of instruction. This was not surprising. German had been the predominant language of education, science, and administration in Cisleithania—all the more so in areas densely populated by German-speaking or bilingual populations. After acquiring power in autumn 1918, Slovenian politicians and state administrators shared the belief that the German language should be removed from schools and replaced with the standardized national Slovene language. The political rationale for such decisions stemmed from the ethnolinguistic dimension of Slovenian nationalism. The core ideological premise of ethnolinguistic nationalism (Kamusella, 2006), which was adopted by many Central European national movements from the beginning of the nineteenth century onward, was the association of a postulated nation with a postulated national language. The promoters and proponents of Central European ethnolinguistic nationalisms in the nineteenth century therefore propagated the idea that speakers of the same language form a national community and that the space inhabited by speakers of the same language is a national territory. Ethnolinguistic nationalism is thus a linguistically justified model of nationalism that places at the center of its political program the requirement that the boundaries of national language, national community, and—ultimately—nation-state should overlap (Kamusella, 2009, p.  29). Ethnolinguistic nationalism, according to Tomasz Kamusella, thus “legitimizes statehood with the notoriously difficult to achieve tight overlapping of language, nation, and state” (Kamusella, 2006, p. 57). As in the case of many other Central European national movements, the whole project of Slovenian nationalism from the mid-nineteenth century onwards was based on the premise that Slovenes were speakers of the Slovenian language and that the national language was therefore an objective marker of national identity (Kosi, 2018, pp.  90–92). Believing that the very presence

82  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

of the German language within the borders of “Slovenian national territory” could erode Slovenian “national consciousness,” Slovenian nationalists and politicians who came to power in autumn 1918 thus decided to drastically curb the presence of the German language in the public sphere. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Slovenian National Government thus carried out a set of administrative measures to “Slovenize” society. Already at its first session on 1 November 1918, the National Government declared Slovene as the official language of the territory under its control. Bilingual and German street signs and signs above public institutions, shops, workshops, and office buildings were replaced by signs in the Slovenian language (Dolenc, 2004). The field of education was radically affected by the so-called process of “Slovenization.” The new Slovene authorities immediately pushed hard for the introduction of Slovene as the language of instruction in all primary and secondary schools as soon as possible and as thoroughly as possible. In a very short time, a series of decrees made Slovene the exclusive language of instruction in all state schools. Many teachers who were either classified by the Slovene administration as Germans—or themselves identified as Germans—were dismissed. Parallel German classes or monolingual German schools were allowed in places with a German population, but the authorities severely restricted the enrolment of citizens classified as Slovenes in monolingual German-language schools. In doing so, the state officials used a variety of more or less violent or repressive means, in particular administrative violence: only parents who were recognized by the authorities as true Germans were allowed to enroll their children in German-language schools, whereas the administrative classification and ascription of nationality were essentially based on an interplay of rigid ethnolinguistic and biological notions of national identity. As an obvious result, only a small number of pupils were enrolled in schools devoted to legally recognized minorities—German and Hungarian—where instruction was supposed to take place in the minority language (Studen, 2019). While the language of instruction was a major concern in the immediate postwar years, Yugoslav school administrators soon turned their attention to revising the substance of teaching. During the interwar era, the content of the curriculum in all Yugoslav schools—and thus also in Slovenian-language schools on Yugoslav territory—was explicitly subordinated to state interests and the ideological preferences of the new social elite. Politicians, officials, and organizers of the educational process regarded schools as an important element in the construction of the new state and in the national education of schoolaged youth. As early as January 1919, the President of the (Slovenian) Higher School Council stressed the need to educate “a new generation, free and democratic, conscious of its freedom and its duties, so that it will be a worthy member in the society of free nations” (Velikonja, 1928, p. 701). The national importance of education was also clearly defined by the 1921 Vidovdan Constitution in Article 16: “All schools must give moral education and develop civil consciousness in the spirit of national unity and religious tolerance” (cited

Education and nationalism after empire 83

in Troch, 2015, p. 45).2 Yugoslav schools were supposed to promote a centralist state and the national unity of all Yugoslav tribes. In the 1920s, this ideological agenda was often met with disapproval among Slovenian teachers who, in the tradition of Slovenian nationalism, sought recognition of Slovenian particularism and greater administrative and political autonomy for the Slovenian regions of Yugoslavia (Velikonja, 1928, pp. 692–694). However, centralist and unitarist tendencies prevailed by the end of the 1920s, and the January 6 Dictatorship— named after the day when King Alexander Karađorđević abolished the Vidovdan Constitution, prorogued Parliament, and assumed dictatorial powers— marked the beginning of a “top-down” process to create a single Yugoslav nation. During the period of the royal dictatorship (1929–1931), the Yugoslav educational system was legally unified for the first time, and a universal system of primary and secondary education was established. In accordance with the proscribed notion of (integral) Yugoslavism, the state school network was given an explicit task: the construction of a modern Yugoslav nation. The effort to transform pupils into Yugoslavs became part of the curriculum, as well as of extracurricular education (Troch, 2015, pp. 46–50). Austria

Ethnolinguistic nationalism (Kamusella, 2006, pp.  77–78) was a well-known phenomenon in the Habsburg Empire; language consequently played a crucial role in the foundation of its successor-states. In the autumn of 1918, the political representatives of the German-speaking districts of Cisleithania began to discuss the foundation of a new republic. On November 12, the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed in front of the Parliament in Vienna, the seat of the (now former) Imperial Council. Yet, the aspiration of gathering all German-speaking inhabitants of the former Empire into one state, and in addition to merge this state with the newly founded Weimar Republic, did not last long. Less than a year after its founding, the Republic of German-Austria had to change its name to the Republic of Austria and was prohibited from merging with Germany—consequences of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en Laye in 1919 (Olechowski, 2019, pp. 379–380). Due to the precarious immediate postwar economic and political circumstances, the reformation of school organization and curricula was not at the top of the political agenda. But even when the most urgent problems had been settled after 1918/19, the new Austrian authorities hesitated to reform the educational system and adapt it to the new political and social circumstances, similar to what happened in the Slovenian territories of Yugoslavia after 1918. Yet, because the two biggest political parties—the Christian-Social Party (CSP) and Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP)—could not come to a common agreement, education and instruction remained as they had been in the Habsburg Empire (Engelbrecht, 1988, p. 5). Accordingly, most students attended 8 years of elementary school and then entered the labor market. The

84  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

remainder—a small percentage of students from middle- and upper-class families—joined a secondary school (Realschule or Gymnasium) after 4  years of elementary school to prepare for a university education (Sorgo, 1978, p. 11). The first lasting changes at the state level were initiated only in the middle of the 1920s. Elementary schools received new curricula in 1926 (BGBl 1926, No. 250, pp. 1115–1126), but even the new curricula contained only minor changes as compared to the imperial period, rather emphasizing the importance of the homeland and of folklore for the upbringing of young people. While referring to Austria as the homeland, Austrians were—according to the elementary curriculum of 1926—part of the German people and should therefore be encouraged to discover their “love for the literature of the German people” (BGBl 1926, No. 250, p. 1118). In 1927/28, secondary schools (Mittelschule and Gymnasium) were provided with new curricula and administrative structures, and a modern secondary school (the Hauptschule) was established, in order to simplify the transition to the Gymnasium and make university education more accessible. Gymnasium and Hauptschule had very similar curricula, and in both of them “Austria” often denoted the students’ homeland, whereas the students were nevertheless depicted as members of the German nation (BGBl 1927, No. 249, p. 1048). The final curricula of 1928, based upon the tentative 1927 curricula, added general outlines of instruction in the Austrian secondary school: the main task of secondary schools was to “develop the mental, moral and physical potential of the youth” and to bring them up “in a social, civic, national, and moralreligious spirit” (BGBl 1928, No. 138, p. 934). While students should become good citizens of the state of Austria, they nevertheless should also become aware of their belonging to the great community of the German people and become “well-educated Germans” (BGBl 1928, No. 138, p. 935). The curricula for primary schools (BGBl 1930, No. 186) and teacher education schools (BGBl 1932, No. 192) went along with this scheme: Austria was the students’ homeland, and the students should become good citizens of Austria, but their national affiliation was German, which meant that they should also become proud members of the German national community. A fundamental shift in the conception of education and schooling in Austria can be detected around 1933–34, as a consequence of two key political events: first, the abolition of democracy in Austria through a coup d’état by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß, who used a gap in the rules of procedure of the National Assembly to disempower it in March 1933. Second, the chancellor-dictatorship established in 1933 came under massive pressure from the German National Socialist movement, which in turn led to the latter’s prohibition and the assassination of Dollfuß in July 1934. From this point on, Austria was in a clear rivalry with Germany under Hitler, so all Austrian parties removed or suspended their claim to unite Austria with Germany from their programs. Promoting the idea of Austrians as Germans no longer seemed convincing. Political elites deemed it necessary to emphasize (or “create”) the “Austrianness” of the Austrians,

Education and nationalism after empire 85

thereby reducing but not concealing their Germanness. This policy lasted until the Anschluss—when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany on March  12, 1938—which found great enthusiasm among the Austrian population. Since schooling and education were seen as effective and appropriate ways of spreading the national idea among the youths, new curricula for secondary schools (1935) and teacher education schools (1937) were consequently introduced, following the new Austrian constitution of May  1934. Among the most striking innovations was pre-military youth education (vormilitärische Jugenderziehung), including instruction in marching, exercise, and shooting for male youth. Being Austrian now meant being a “better German,” summed up in the notion of the “New Austrian” (Ehs, 2013). Following the official policy, Austrians were still seen as members of the German people, but because they conceived of themselves as having a rich culture and glorious history, they saw themselves as being superior to the “barbaric,” anti-Catholic Germans under Hitler’s rule. This notion of Austrianness thus attempted to connect earlier notions of Austrianness (with a strong emphasis on the House of Habsburg and the Habsburg Empire) and Germanness on the one side, but on the other side allowed for a denial of the Nazi notion of Germanness that was established in the 1930s by German politicians also outside of Germany (Mezger, 2020). Although the authoritarian system in Austria put the people—and foremost the youth—under strong pressure (e.g. any independent associations or clubs were prohibited, teachers had to make sure students attended Catholic mass on Sundays, students were expected to wear the official student-emblem of the only approved political party—the Fatherland Front), it is difficult to assess how successful efforts to implement a national Austrian idea into the educational system were. As a matter of fact, nobody defended Austria against German troops in March  1938; on the contrary, German troops were welcomed by large parts of the population of Austria.

Subjects and textbooks: the basis of instruction Slovene Yugoslavia

When primary and secondary schools in the Slovene-speaking parts of Yugoslavia opened in the autumn and winter of 1918, teachers were still using textbooks published in the Habsburg Empire. To many non-specialists in the history of the late Habsburg era and interwar Yugoslavia, this might sound surprising. In reality, it was only logical. On the one hand, for many years after the end of the First World War, the unstable economic and social situation in Yugoslavia did not allow the authorities to prepare and print new textbooks. Everything was in short supply, especially paper. On the other hand, there was no particular need to introduce new textbooks, given that the ones from the imperial era already included many topics that legitimized the new Yugoslav ideology.

86  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

Even in the radically altered postwar political context, Slovene textbooks from the Habsburg era provided a good basis for the dissemination of nationalist tropes. Above all, they had been written in the Slovene language, that is the language that Slovene nationalists understood as the national language of the Slovenes and the basic marker of national identity. Who, if not nationally Slovene pupils, should be expected to use Slovene-language textbooks? At the same time, from the 1860s onwards, textbooks used in Cisleithanian elementary and secondary schools had already promoted national categories of identification alongside dynastic, state, provincial, and religious ones. As a result, even if textbooks in late imperial Austria were intended for use in state schools in order to mold good Austrian citizens and loyal subjects of the Habsburg Crown, Habsburg Slovenian textbooks fostered the idea that speakers of the Slovenian language were also members of the Slovenian nation. Even more, they also contributed in some respects to the promotion of the idea that the Slovene nation densely populated the territory between the Gulf of Trieste in the west and the Pannonian Plain in the east (Almasy, 2016, 2018, pp. 282–304; Žigon et al., 2017, pp. 121–131; Pejić, 2019, pp. 52–62). The unintentional effect by which the speakers of Slovene dialects who attended schools with Slovene as a language of instruction were nationalized into members of the Slovene nation was therefore already significant in the late Habsburg era (Stergar & Scheer, 2018, p. 582). To be sure, in textbooks, motives which promoted identification with the Habsburg dynastic house, the imperial state, and smaller territorial units (i.e. crownlands) predominated. However, nationalist myths and national motifs were also tolerated—although, of course, only when they did not conflict with Habsburg state myths (Bruckmüller, 2009, p. 247). The ideological motives and identification preferences promoted by Habsburg state schools were most pronounced in officially certified imperial Austrian school readers published in the Slovene language. In many of them, one can come across national classifications, ethnonyms, national myths, and even explicit nationalist tropes. Pupils could get acquainted with the categorization of peoples into Slavs and Germans already at a very young age by leafing through the school readers intended for use in primary education. Moreover, some Slovenian school readers used in grammar schools contained and sometimes explicitly promoted the ideological assumptions of (Slovenian) ethnolinguistic nationalism. Simultaneously, from the 1860s onwards, the frequency of the words ‘Slovenian’ and ‘Slovenes’ in textbooks increased. Thus, well before the First World War, Slovene-speaking pupils in Austrian state grammar schools were already able to acquire a mental image of the spatial representations of Slovene national territory and the ideological premises, essential for an effective process of imagining a territorially bounded Slovene ethnic community. School readers included texts with historical themes that reproduced nationalist portrayals of Slovenian national history which had been invented and promoted by Slovenian national activists from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

Education and nationalism after empire 87

Moreover, pre-1914 Slovenian readers often characterized their Balkan Slavic neighbors—the South Slavs or Yugoslavs—in a positive light (Almasy, 2016; Pejić, 2019, pp. 52–62). Even though Slovenian textbooks from the late Habsburg era remained in use after the collapse of the Empire, they still had to be adapted to some extent so that they could fulfil their mission in a changed ideological context. In the early 1920s, the new Yugoslav state was defined at the constitutional level as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, named after the three tribes that made up the Yugoslav nation. As Pieter Troch contends, the Yugoslav national program of the interwar Yugoslav state assumed two mutually complementary levels of national identity, the “national” Yugoslav level and the “tribal” level of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian identity. It left room for articulations of Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian identities but required the mobilization of such elicitations of ‘tribal’ identity in the direction of Yugoslav national identity. (Troch, 2015, pp. 181–182) In practice, this normative aspiration implied a reduction of content that did not correspond to the new reality. Pages which glorified, for instance, the imperial state or the Habsburg dynasty or depicted the former Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, were torn out of textbooks. At the same time, school authorities also gave very precise instructions to teachers on how to supplement any missing content with elements that would emphasize the new social reality (Gabrič, 2019, p. 148). In practice, this meant that Slovenian teachers in the early 1920s in primary schools were instructed by the Ministry of Education to teach “in the national spirit” about “our vast fatherland and glorious history” (Predmet, 1921). The common historical experience and the struggles of the Yugoslav tribes for freedom against foreign invaders were to come to the fore. At the same time, pupils were expected to learn about the borders of the new country, its size, population, geographical characteristics, and the cultural circumstances that characterized Yugoslavia (Predmet, 1921). With the beginning of the royal dictatorship in January 1929 and the administrative introduction of integral Yugoslavism—the state’s imposition of a single Yugoslav identity “from above”—the state also intended to radically intervene in the content of individual school subjects and, as a result, to adjust textbooks in a way that would eliminate the “tribal” and religious differences that were to blame for the political instability of the 1920s. However, “Slovenian textbooks did not implement in depth the educational policies of the 1930s”—in fact, they were still “able to maintain an explicit Slovenian national framework for the teaching of language, history and geography” (Troch, 2015, p.  136), which did not conform to the dictatorial notion of a single undivided Yugoslav nation. In retrospect, during the interwar period, Slovenian language schooling

88  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

successfully perpetuated and promoted nineteenth-century nationalist notions of Slovenian ethnolinguistic collectivity, while simultaneously conforming to the normative expectations of state authorities insofar as state schools would primarily cultivate a Yugoslav national identity. Austria

After 1918, the legal basis of schooling and education in Austria did not substantially change as compared to the period before 1918. Consequently, teaching materials from the late Habsburg era were still used throughout the 1920s. Little changed in terms of instruction. The point is that—due to the lack of political reforms of the educational system—schooling and education continued to promote a national ideology that was based on the assumption that the German-speaking inhabitants of the former Habsburg Empire were part of the German nation. In what follows, an analysis of the contents of selected subjects from textbooks will not only show continuities between the Habsburg Empire and the Republic of Austria after 1918, but also demonstrate the changes that occurred at the beginning of the 1930s. The first example which fortifies the continuity thesis is a textbook of geography for secondary schools that was used throughout the last years of the Empire. In one of the first chapters, the text described the shape, size, and population of the state. The population of the so-called Austrian Crownlands was described the following way: The population is mixed and consists of Germans, Slavs . . . Magyars and Romance-speakers . . . 1. The Archduchy of Austria below the Enns . . . counts 2 million people. . . . The population is German. 2. The Archduchy of Austria above the Enns . . . The population [is] German. (Weingartner, 1918, p. 52) Very little changed in the years after the proclamation and foundation of the Republic of Austria. As stated in a new textbook for fatherland studies from 1923: “With the exception of the Burgenland and of Carinthia, the population of all federal states is more than 95% German, so they [the federal states] are merely a German settlement area” (Goll, 1923, p. 38). These statements can also be found in the second edition of the textbook (Goll, 1926) which clearly indicates that textbook writers and school authorities still shared the belief that Austrians were part of the German nation and, consequently, that students had to learn Germanness at school. This idea was still so strong that not only did it remain in textbooks that were used during the monarchy and the republic (Weingartner, 1918), but was also included in completely new ones (Goll, 1923, 1926). The notion of the republic itself was never fully integrated into schooling or the educational system—or into society in general—by the time it was abolished in March 1933.

Education and nationalism after empire 89

When Austrian republican statehood had become widely accepted at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, the political system was turned upside down by Dollfuß’s coup in 1933. Although democratic parliamentarism was hardly popular among many supporters of the two biggest parties— the Christian Social and the Social Democratic Parties—it was still a working compromise during the crises of the late 1920s. The changes in politics and society that followed Dollfuß’s coup were radical and affected schools almost immediately: While it took several years after the last system change of 1918 to begin reforms in education, novelties were now introduced rather quickly, as was the case after the introduction of the royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia in 1929. Even at first glance, one can see that textbooks looked different in the Corporate State (Ständestaat, 1934–38) of Austria. Two examples from 1936 and 1937 perfectly illustrate this point: First, the cover of a 1936 textbook for geography displays the colors of the Austrian national flag (Becker & Helmer, 1936). Second, this textbook was not just a singular phenomenon, as the 1937 reader for modern secondary school (Hauptschule) shows: the cover is white with the title written in red letters and the Austrian national flag across the cover above and below the title (Österreichisches Lesebuch für die erste Klasse der Hauptschulen, 1937). The new regime did not only change the contents and textbooks of already existing subjects. Moreover, a new subject was introduced for male students in secondary schools: pre-military youth education (vormilitärische Jugenderziehung). Young men had to learn military principles and acquire knowledge as a preparation for defending Austria in the future. To be able to teach this pre-military education, mainly physical education teachers underwent training courses during the summer break (Proksch, 1936). With help from the army and army officers, teachers were prepared and handbooks written for them which read like military training manuals (Burger & Groll, 1936; Koske, 1937). Students were now called soldiers; teachers were called commanders. This subject was introduced to foster the physical development of students and consequently strengthen their belief in a sovereign Austrian nation that was independent from Germany. However, it seems contradictory that Austrian students were often referred to as “better Germans” in official state propaganda. In contradiction to Yugoslavia and Slovenia, Austrian political elites did not realize that several layers of identity existed which could potentially interfere with each other.

Everyday school life Slovene Yugoslavia

Throughout the 1920s, in Yugoslav schools with Slovene as the language of instruction, the school year was marked by the glorification of three themes: Slovenian ethnic particularity, the Yugoslav state, and the three-named Yugoslav

90  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

nation. The intertwining of Slovenian and Yugoslav subjects characterized celebrations, ceremonies, and commemorative practices throughout the interwar period. However, the royal dictatorship imposed in January 1929 introduced considerable changes: While in the first decade after the end of the First World War, the continuity of Slovenian ethnolinguistic discourses and practices was strongly emphasized, after 1929, unifying Yugoslav themes came to the fore in accordance with the prescribed state ideology. The annual report of the “First Six-Class Elementary School for Boys in Ljubljana” from 1921 illustrates to what extent and in what way the school promoted both the notion of “Yugoslavism” and the Slovene national discourse among its pupils through official celebrations and manifestations. On 29 October 1921, a memorial service and a celebration in the school building marked “the national liberation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes from centurieslong slavery.” There were no classes on the anniversary of the day the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs was proclaimed in 1918, as the celebration was intended to inspire a firm belief “in our Yugoslavia.” Participants in the celebration also took an oath “to serve and love Yugoslavia faithfully and with all our hearts, so that the world will respect it and us.” Then, just over a month later, on December  1, on the third anniversary of the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the school celebrated the national holiday “of the unification of the three-named nation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” On May 24, the school commemorated the “Apostles of the Slavs,” the Saints Cyril and Methodius. At the end of June, two historical events were commemorated with a mass and a public lecture on June 28, “St. Vitus’ Day.” Both June 28, 1389, and 1914, were considered to be the most important days for the fate of “our nation”: In 1389, that terrible battle, so important for our nation, took place on the Kosovo Polje. St Vitus’ Day in 1914, however, signalled the beginning of the struggle against the old Austria, which wanted to enslave the whole Yugoslav race. (Dimnik, 1921, pp. 19–20) A month earlier, on April 30, 1 hour of classes was dedicated to the memory of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan, two noblemen from the seventeenth century who had taken part in an attempted conspiracy to overthrow Habsburg rule—their struggle was to be given a new meaning and role in the new Yugoslav school. They were considered national martyrs and “fighters for Yugoslav national freedom.” (Dimnik, 1921, pp.  19–20). And since the birthday of King Peter I  was celebrated nationwide in the middle of the school holidays (July  12), this Serbian king—who was then crowned king of the new South Slav state in December  1918—became a topic of frequent lectures in Ljubljana primary schools during the school year. Peter I was portrayed as a leader who “in his youth had fought for the liberation

Education and nationalism after empire 91

and unification of the Yugoslav nation,” but now, as a liberator-king, “lives as a victor in the liberated homeland of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes” (Dimnik, 1921, pp. 19–20). Since the practice of celebrating national holidays in different schools depended very much on the personal preferences of headmasters or teachers, an order from the Department of Education for Slovenia, dated 5 December 1924, stipulated that the celebration of national holidays should henceforth be used consistently for patriotic and educational purposes in the sense of the regulations in force and of the tendencies in view of the consolidation of the state, the constitutional form of the state, the national and cultural unification of Yugoslav tribes, etc. (cited in Snoj, 2017, p. 432) Moreover, from now on, all schools were to follow a very precise scenario when organizing the celebration of national holidays. The order contains six points. The first two are the basic points: 1. After the usual church service, the entire school, including all teachers, gathers in a room suitably decorated with the royal image. Where there is no room for all the people to be together, they should be divided into large groups in two or three school rooms. The decoration of the room should evoke a sense of festivity appropriate to the occasion. 2. The headmaster (school administrator) or a member of the teaching staff addresses the young people with a celebratory speech lasting 10 to 30 minutes. The substance of these speeches should fit the character of the celebration. Suitable themes would be: a) The Royal House of Karadjordjević—the core of both the development of Serbia and the present-day Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS). b) The importance and benefits of the unification of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (in economic terms, in terms of international security, in terms of the harmfulness of disunity, in terms of the destructiveness of tribal or religious hostility). c) The heroic history of our royal family: 1. before the World War and 2. during the last war. d) The sacrifices made for the idea and realization of Yugoslav cultural and state unity. e) National feeling in the service of higher national interests. f) How can we best serve our Fatherland? g) The rights and duties of citizenship. h) Healthcare—our national and state duty (the fight against alcohol, care for comprehensive physical education, etc.).

92  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

i) Unredeemed compatriots and our country. j) etc. Another four items complete the order: 3. One or two declamations by the male (or female) pupils appropriate to the holiday. 4. A short speech by a male (or female) pupil from grade 4 onwards. 5. A short play or a scene from a drama (where feasible). 6. Singing of the National Anthem—in organic connection with the leading item of the program. The entire program must include at least items 1, 2, 3 and 6 (cit. in Snoj, 2017, p. 433). In the period after the proclamation of the royal dictatorship, there was, as said, a turn towards a marked “Yugoslavism.” Schools were instructed to “develop and cultivate the Yugoslav ideology of one nation, one state, one king” (Fink, 1931, p. 32) both in the classroom and elsewhere. In practice, this meant that a kind of implied national “balance” was achieved in the selection of historical events or personalities that were given more attention in schools with Slovene as the language of instruction. “Yugoslav ideology” meant that in the 1936/37 school year, the Maribor Classical Gymnasium also organized a celebration in honor of St. Sava (a Serbian saint) and the Croatian bishop J. J. Strossmayer (Izvestje, 1937, p. 10), although, of course, a large part of the curricular content and the school’s commemorations was still devoted exclusively to Slovene themes. Austria

In Austria, the continuities between monarchy and early republic prevailed, whereas the introduction of an autocratic dictatorship in 1933 had lasting effects on schooling and education. As a first example, we will deal with national holidays and celebrations at schools after 1918. As research indicates, political changes often cause radical changes in the educational system as political elites try to secure their influence on future generations (Tröhler, 2018, 2020). In the Austrian case, it was even more surprising that very few schools mentioned any kind of commemorative events for the founding day of the Republic of Austria in the early 1920s. Some schools indeed conducted festivities that included performances by students, speeches, and singing, as a report in the 1927/28 yearbook from the Viennese Schottengymnasium indicates (Hübl, 1928). It is interesting, however, that the following yearbooks do not mention a similar event in honor of the Republic, whereas other occasions gave reason for big events at school: the yearbook from 1931/32 names two big events to honor the composer Joseph Haydn and the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Blaha, 1932, p. 56).

Education and nationalism after empire 93

After Dollfuß’s coup in early 1933, the event program in the Schottengymnasium became tighter: On 7 October 1933, the school took part in the allAustrian celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the victory of the Siege of Vienna of 1683, and even the Minister of Education, Kurt Schuschnigg, visited the school that day. After the revolts in February 1934, Schuschnigg visited again, and in the following months, the students were exposed to lectures about aerial defense in March, attended a famous speech by Dollfuß in the biggest stadium of Vienna on May 1, and attended a school ceremony dedicated to the “Fatherland” on May 26. The next day, students of the Schottengymnasium took their new coat of arms and school flag to a loyalty rally next to the official residence of the chancellor who was murdered months later in July  1934 by Austrian Nazis in a failed coup d’état. At the memorial service for the murdered chancellor in October 1934, students welcomed the new minister, Hans Pernter. After the performances of school choir and orchestra, the students listened to a speech on Dollfuß’s life. The same year, the German poet Friedrich Schiller and Andreas Hofer, the leader of the Tyrolean rebellion against Napoleon and the Bavarians, were also honored with similar festivities at the Schottengymnasium. In the following years, occasions like this were also used by the headmaster to admonish the students to love their home country and worship its beauty and history and of course to strengthen their faith in God (Blaha, 1936, p. 23). Apart from Dollfuß, other protagonists of Austrian history were used to set examples of how to be a good and patriotic “Austrian”: field marshal Prince Eugene of Savoy and the poet Ferdinand Raimund were considered suitable role models for the students, and the anniversaries of their births and deaths were good occasions to remember these great “Austrians.” A similar tendency existed in the school’s exit examinations, which were also published in yearbooks. In the yearbooks from the Gymnasium and OberRealschule (secondary school with emphasis on maths and the sciences) in Baden near Vienna, for example, the thematic references of the final exams indicated a phase of continuity from 1918 until the beginning of the 1930s. In this regard, it is important to mention that the exams were designed by local teachers, not by any kind of central school authority (as is the case in present-day Austria). Teachers were consequently free to choose whatever was in their or their students’ interests. In the beginning of the period under study, the exams in German, for example, were strongly related to given reading matter. Students were therefore asked to analyze a poem or give their view on an author and his influence on literature or culture: for example “Shakespeare and his influence on Germany” (Sulzenbacher, 1926, p. 14) or “Do we need arts in everyday life?” (Sulzenbacher, 1932, p. 97). After 1933/34, however, the exams were often centered on topics related to Austria in a political and national sense. From 1934 onwards, one can find the following tasks in the exams: “What has our fatherland Austria achieved for German literature?” (Sulzenbacher, 1934, p. 23); “Austria and its mission on the Eastern March [Ostmarksendung]” (Sulzenbacher, 1935, p.  19); “Austria, a Great Power in the realm

94  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

of poetry;” or “Austria, a solid rock in the tempest of history” (Sulzenbacher, 1937, pp. 17–18). Of course, it would be even more interesting to read what the students had to say on these topics, but, unfortunately, the exams were not preserved. Still, the tasks themselves are a clear indication of a school system that was nationalized in the 1930s and which aimed to serve as a place of transfer for dominant visions of society.

Conclusion Drawing on the comparative examination of legal frameworks, curricula, textbooks, and everyday school life in Austria and “Slovenia,” we came to the conclusion that in both cases, the means of instilling a national ideology were similar, and the educational system played a crucial role in this process. While inheriting the same Habsburg legal framework and similar educational practices, Slovenian and Austrian schools experienced both divergent and similar developments through the interwar period. Post-1918, Slovenian politicians and officials responded to the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy with a number of new school laws, mainly to get rid of German as the language of instruction and the (perceived) German ideological influence on schools, only for the Yugoslav authorities to try, 10 years later, to impose the state ideology of Yugoslavism—one Yugoslav nation—from above, through the schools, by instrumentalizing the pedagogical process. Austria, however, imposed major changes in school laws only after the middle of the 1920s. Until 1927/28, laws and curricula were not changed and carried on the notion of Austrians as ethnic Germans even until the 1930s. Even when the political elites started to emphasize the Austrianness of the Austrians, they could not develop a convincing nation-state ideology that would have allowed schools to foster the idea of a genuine Austrian nation-state until its annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. As the comparisons show, in the Slovene case, the content of instruction changed quite rapidly, whereas Austrian schools received new curricula only a decade after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire. But there were certain moments in the history of both school systems when one can observe radical top-down political interventions that changed structures and content: in the Slovene case, this was the introduction of the royal dictatorship in 1929; in Austria, something quite similar happened a few years later when chancellor Dollfuß introduced a semi-fascist regime in 1933/34. Either way, in Slovenian and Austrian schools, schooling was exposed to the influence of nationalist tropes provided by, paradoxically, textbooks from the Habsburg era. The counterintuitive fact—abundantly confirmed by the content of the teaching material—is that in terms of the dissemination of national identification, the imperial school heritage provided a fertile ground. Of course, both countries also relied heavily on extra-curricular activities, celebrations, and public holidays in spreading national identifications and state loyalties.

Education and nationalism after empire 95

School books not only allowed us to examine the common heritage of Austrian and Slovene school after 1918, but also further enabled us to trace the trajectories of this common heritage throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Both cases emphasized the importance of textbooks for the state agenda, the very purpose of modern schooling: the upbringing of loyal national citizens through linking the institutions of the state with the theory of a common, national society—the nation. As the comparison of everyday school life shows, Slovene and Austrian schools served as places of transmission for non-curricular content. From 1918 to the beginning of the 1930s, the Austrian school and educational system was not a-national, but transferred a rather unquestioned German-cenetred national ideology as the idea of belonging to the German nation. At that time, it was self-evident that Austrians lived in an Austrian state but were part of the German nation. Although we see a slight shift in this national (self-)perception of Austrians in the beginning of the 1930s, the feeling of belonging to an Austrian nation—spread through and supported by schooling—stayed vague, caught between the old imperial idea of Austria and the role of the new statenationalism that was strongly linked to Germanness. A similar development can be observed in Slovenia between 1918 and 1929, when, on the one hand, the spread of Sloveneness was one desired aim of schooling, but on the other hand, the Yugoslav state also aimed at spreading its national ideology. The efforts to integrate Slovene schools and students into the Yugoslav nation became stronger after 1929 when the royal dictatorship was introduced. In both cases, the close ties between politics and schooling, and the manifestations of these politics in school life, are evident. In addition, empirical data on pathways of development of school systems in interwar Austria and Slovenia correlate with many theoretical propositions derived from the so-called modernist school of nationalism. Judging from the laws and curricular changes implemented in the interwar era, Slovene and Austrian interwar historical actors responsible for the field of education would not oppose Gellner’s claim that the emergence of the modern nation—a prerequisite for the functioning of industrial societies—could not take place without a state-controlled and centralized educational system (Gellner, 1983/1998, pp.  19–38). In addition, the presence of “nationalized” historical events and themes in textbooks and repetitive “national” school calendars demonstrate the ways in which schools contributed to the process of the imagination of the nation “as a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history” (Anderson, 2006, p. 4). Moreover, school-sponsored or imposed interpretations and stagings of a “national past” in interwar Austrian and “Slovenian” schools can be described as “the nation’s programmatic mythology” (Hobsbawm, 1990, p. 6) that could, by using a combination of mythical elements and historical events, facilitate and legitimize different, and even contradictory, nationalist projects (Sloveneness and Yugoslavism in “Slovenia” and Germanness and Austrianness in Austria). Last but not least, data collected on interwar Slovenian and

96  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi

Austrian educational practices shed light on the role of schools in the process of the institutionalization of certain classificatory schemes and national categories. Perhaps this also reveals a way forward for the intersection of educational and nationalism studies by examining how, in various educational contexts and political settings, a nation functions “as a practical category, as classificatory scheme, as cognitive frame” (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p. 5).

Notes 1 Historically, we cannot speak of an interwar “Slovene Yugoslavia” as a separate political entity. The term refers to the territory that was an integral part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (from 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia)—more simply, Yugoslavia. As will be shown later in the chapter, we use the term “Slovene Yugoslavia”—and all terms denoting the Slovene character of state institutions or of a particular Yugoslav territory—exclusively as a classificatory device to limit our research focus to the territory of Yugoslavia defined by (1) Slovene as the language of instruction in schools and (2) a common institutional past with the other case study, Austria. Jernej Kosi wrote the parts on “Slovene Yugoslavia,” while Florian Gimpl wrote the parts on Austria. The introductory and concluding sections were co-written by both authors. Translations of primary sources from German to English were done by Florian Gimpl, and those from Slovenian to English were done by Jernej Kosi. Jernej Kosi gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency through the grant project “Schools and Imperial, National and Transnational Identifications: Habsburg Empire, Yugoslavia and Slovenia” (J6-2573). 2 All translations from Slovene and German to English by the authors.

References a) Literature Almasy, K. (2016). ‘Za Boga in véro, za cesarja in domovino!’ Kultura prevajanja in ideološko usmerjanje v slovenskih šolskih berilih (1848–1918). Zgodovinski časopis, 70(3/4), 490–508. Almasy, K. (2018). Kanon und nationale Konsoldierung: Übersetzungen und ideologische Steuerung in slowenischen Schullesebüchern (1848–1918). Zur Kunde Südosteuropas II: Vol. 45. Böhlau Verlag. https://doi.org/20787 Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. ed.). Verso. Brubaker, R. (1995). National minorities, nationalizing states, and external national homelands in the New Europe. Daedalus, 124(2), 107–132. Brubaker, R. (2011). Nationalizing states revisited: Projects and processes of nationalization in post-Soviet states. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(11), 1785–1814. https://doi.org/10.10 80/01419870.2011.579137. Brubaker, R., & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond “identity”. Theory and Society, 29(1), 1–47. Bruckmüller, E. (2009). Patriotic and national myths: National consciousness and elementary school education in imperial Austria. In L. Cole & D. L. Unowsky (Eds.), Austrian and Habsburg studies: Vol. 9. The limits of loyalty: Imperial symbolism, popular allegiances, and state patriotism in the late Habsburg monarchy (1st ed., pp. 11–35). Berghahn Books. Calic, M.-J. (2019). A history of Yugoslavia. Purdue University Press.

Education and nationalism after empire 97 Cohen, G. B. (2007). Nationalist politics and the dynamics of state and civil society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914. Central European History, 40(2), 241–278. https://doi. org/10.1017/S0008938907000532. Csáky, M. (2017). Culture as a space of communication. In J. Feichtinger & G. B. Cohen (Eds.), Austrian and Habsburg studies: Vol. 17. Understanding multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European experience (pp. 187–208). Berghahn Books. Dolenc, E. (2004). Deavstrizacija v politiki, upravi in kulturi v Sloveniji. In D. Nećak, B. Jesih, B. Repe, K. Škrilec, & P. Vodopivec (Eds.), Historia: Vol. 8. Slovensko-avstrijski odnosi v 20. stoletju: = Slowenisch-österreichische Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (pp. 81–94). Oddelek za Zgodovino Filozofske Fakultete. Ehs, T. (2013). Neue Österreicher. Die austrofaschistischen Hochschullager der Jahre 1936 und 1937. In C. Jahr & J. Thiel (Eds.), Lager vor Auschwitz: Gewalt und Integration im 20. Jahrhundert (pp. 250–267). Metropol-Verlag. Engelbrecht, H. (1988). Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens: Erziehung und Unterricht auf dem Boden Österreichs: Band 5: Von 1918 bis zur Gegenwart. Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens: Vol. 5. Österreichischer Bundesverlag. Gabrič, A. (2019). Hitra slovenizacija šolskih in kulturnih ustanov. In A. Gabrič (Ed.), Slovenski prelom 1918 (pp. 141–160). Slovenska matica. Gellner, E. (1998). Nations and nationalism (Reprint). New perspectives on the past. Blackwell (Original work published 1983). Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1996). The age of revolution 1789–1848 (1st Vintage Books ed). Vintage Books (Originally published in 1962). Janjetović, Z. (2005). Deca careva, pastorčad kraljeva: Nacionalne manjine u Jugoslaviji 1918–1941. Biblioteka “Studije i monografije”/Institut za Noviju Istoriju Srbije: Vol. 29. INIS. Judson, P. M. (2016). The Habsburg Empire: A new history. Harvard University Press. Judson, P. M. (2017). “Where our commonality is necessary . . .”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy. Austrian History Yearbook, 48, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0067237816000527. Kamusella, T. (2006). The normative isomorphism of language, nation, and state: The case of central Europa. In W. J. Burszta, T. Kamusella, & S. Wojciechowski (Eds.), Nationalisms across the globe: An overview of nationalisms in state-endowed and stateless nations: The world (pp. 57–92). Wyższa Szkoła Nauk Humanistycznych i Dziennikarstwa. Kamusella, T. (2009). The politics of language and nationalism in modern central Europe. Palgrave. Kosi, J. (2018). The imagined Slovene nation and local categories of identification: “Slovenes” in the Kingdom of Hungary and Postwar Prekmurje. Austrian History Yearbook, 49, 87–102. Cambridge Core. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0067237818000103. Malešević, S. (2019). Grounded nationalisms: A  sociological analysis. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589451. Meissner, A. (2009). Die Nationalisierung der Volksschule: Geschichtspolitik im Niederen Schulwesen Preußens und des deutschsprachigen Österreich, 1866 bis 1933/38 (Diss.). Zugl., Humboldt-University, 2005 u.d.T.: Meissner, Andrea: Nationalismus zwischen Kanonisierung und Polyvalenz. Quellen und Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte: Vol. 38. Duncker & Humblot. Mezger, C. (2020). Forging Germans: Youth, nation, and the national socialist mobilization of ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, 1918–1944 (First edition). Studies in German history. Oxford University Press.

98  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi Olechowski, T. (2019). Das “Anschlussverbot” im Vertrag von Saint Germain. Zeitgeschichte, 46(3), 371–385. Pejić, O. (2019). Predstave o Drugem v habsburškem izobraževalnem sistemu: imagološka analiza slovenskih in nemških beril pozne habsburške monarhije: magistrsko delo. https://repozitorij. uni-lj.si/IzpisGradiva.php?id=109313. Perovšek, J. (2018). Slovenski prevrat 1918: Položaj Slovencev v Državi Slovencev, Hrvatov in Srbov = The Slovenian turning point of 1918: Slovenian position in the state of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. Zbirka Razpoznavanja Recognitiones: Vol. 35. Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Šišić, F. (Ed.). (1920). Dokumenti o postanku Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca 1914.-1919. Matica Hrvatska. Slapnicka, H. (1973). Österreichs Recht ausserhalb Österreichs: Der Untergang des österreichischen Rechtsraums; mit 6 Kt. Schriftenreihe des Österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropainstituts (Wien): Vol. 4. Verl. für Geschichte u. Politik. Snoj, A. (2017). ‘Maščevano bo tudi naše Kosovo!’: Govori na osnovnošolskih patriotskih slovesnostih v kraljevini Jugoslaviji. Zgodovinski Časopis, 71(3/4), str. 428–448. Sorgo, W. (1978). Autoritärer „Ständestaat“ und Schulpolitik 1933–1938 (Dissertation). Universität Wien. Stergar, R., & Scheer, T. (2018). Ethnic boxes: The unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification. Nationalities Papers, 46(4), 575–591. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00905992.2018.1448374. Studen, A. (2019). “Odstranjevanje prejšnje zunanjosti in ponemčevalnega stremljenja šolske oblasti”: preustroj šol na Spodnjem Štajerskem v prevratni dobi. In A. Gabrič (Ed.), Slovenski prelom 1918 (pp. 161–180). Slovenska matica. Troch, P. (2015). Nationalism and Yugoslavia: Education, Yugoslavism and the Balkans before World War II. International library of historical studies: Vol. 95. Tauris. Tröhler, D. (2018). Menschen, Bürger und Nationen: Motive, Argumente und Organisationsprinzipien moderner Schulsysteme im Westeuropa des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts. In M. Gardin & T. Lenz (Eds.), Die Schule der Nation: Bildungsgeschichte und Identität in Luxemburg (1st ed., pp. 33–54). Beltz J. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220 272.2020.1786727. Velikonja, N. (1928): Razvoj šolske uprave. In J. Mal (Ed.), Slovenci v desetletju 1918–1928: zbornik razprav iz kulturne, gospodarske in politične zgodovine (pp.  691–744). Leonova družba. Weber, E. (1979). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914. Chatto and Windus. Wingfield, N. M. (2005). Introduction. In N. M. Wingfield & H. L. Agnew (Eds.), Austrian and Habsburg studies: Vol. 5. Creating the other: Ethnic conflict and nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (1st ed., pp. 1–17). Berghahn. Wolff, L. (2020). Woodrow Wilson and the reimagining of Eastern Europe. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503611207. Zahra, T. (2008). Kidnapped souls: National indifference and the battle for children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948. Cornell University Press. Žigon, T., Almasy, K., & Lovšin, A. (2017). Vloga in pomen prevajanja učbenikov v 19. stoletju: Kulturnozgodovinski in jezikovni vidiki (Prva izdaja). Zbirka Prevodoslovje in uporabno jezikoslovje. Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani.

Education and nationalism after empire 99

b) Sources 138. Verordnung des Bundesministers für Unterricht vom 1. Juni 1928, betreffend die Festsetzung der Lehrpläne für die Mittelschulen, Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl) 933–942 (1928). 186. Verordnung des Bundesministers für Unterricht vom 16. Juni 1930, betreffend die Lehrpläne für die allgemeinen Volksschulen, Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl) 985–1050 (1930). 192. Verordnung des Bundesministeriums für Unterricht vom 7. Juli 1932, betreffend die Lehrpläne für Lehrer= und Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalten, Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl) 623–651 (1932). 249. Verordnung des Bundesministers für Unterricht vom 8. August 1927 zur vorläufigen Durchführung des Gesetzes vom 2. August 1927, B. G. Bl. Nr. 244 (Mittelschulgesetz), Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl) 1047–1050 (1927). 250. Verordnung des Bundesministeriums für Unterricht vom 30. Juli 1926, betreffend den Lehrplan für die 1. bis 5. Schulstufe der allgemeinen Volksschulen, Bundesgesetzblatt für die Republik Österreich (BGBl) 1115–1126 (1926). Becker, A., & Helmer, L. (1936). Arbeits- und Lernbuch der Erdkunde für Lehrer- und Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalten: IV. Teil. Franz Deuticke. Blaha, V. (1932). 125. Jahresbericht des Schottengymnasiums in Wien: Am Schlusse des Schuljahres 1931/32. Wien. Blaha, V. (1936). 129. Jahresbericht des Schottengymnasiums in Wien: Ausgegeben am Schlusse des Schuljahres 1935/36. Wien. Burger, E. W., & Groll, H. (1936). Handbuch der vormilitärischen Erziehung. Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk. Dimnik, J. (1921). Letno poročilo I. mestne šestrazredne deške ljudske šole v Ljubljani. I. mestna šestrazredna deška ljudska šola. Fink, F. (1931). Zbirka važnejših novih naredb in odredb za osnovne in meščanske šole ter učiteljišča v Sloveniji. Nr. 10. Slovenska šolska matica. Goll, K. (1923). Die Republik Österreich: Ein Behelf für den Unterricht in der Vaterlandskunde. Österreichischer Schulbuchverlag. Goll, K. (1926). Die Republik Österreich: Ein Behelf für den Unterricht in der Vaterlandskunde (zweite umgearbeitete und ergänzte Auflage). Österreichischer Bundesverlag für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Kunst. Hübl, A. (1928). Jahresbericht des Schottengymnasiums in Wien: Am Schlusse des Schuljahres 1927/28. Wien. Izvestje za šolsko leto 1936–1937. Državna klasična gimnazija v Mariboru. (1937). Založba državne klasične gimnazije. Koske, K. (1937). Vormilitärische Jugenderziehung an den Schulen: Behelf für die vormilitärische Ausbildung im Rahmen des Turnunterrichtes, an Wandertagen und an Freiluftnachmittagen 1. Teil (2. berichtigte und erg. Auflage). Österreichisches Lesebuch für die erste Klasse der Hauptschulen: Herausgegeben von einer Arbeitsgemeinschaft (2nd ed.). (1937). Österreichischer Bundesverlag für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Kunst. Predmet: Pouk narodne zgodovine in zemljepisja v osnovnih šolah. (1921). Instruction issued by the ministry of education (box 6, file 294). Sresko načelstvo Murska Sobota—Okrajni šolski svet za Prekmurje (1920–1941), Pokrajinski arhiv Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia.

100  Florian Gimpl and Jernej Kosi Proksch, J. (1936). Der Kurs für vormilitärische Jugenderziehung in der Bundeserziehungsanstalt in Wien XIII (31. August bis 12. September 1936). Pädagogischer Führer, (86), 684–685. Sulzenbacher, O. (1926). Jahresbericht über das Schuljahr 1925/26. Bundesgymnasium und Oberrealschule in Baden bei Wien. Sulzenbacher, O. (1932). Jahresbericht über das Schuljahr 1931/32. Bundesgymnasium und Realschule in Baden bei Wien. Sulzenbacher, O. (1934). Jahresbericht über das Schuljahr 1933/34. Bundesgymnasium und Realschule in Baden bei Wien. Sulzenbacher, O. (1935). Jahresbericht über das Schuljahr 1934/35. Bundesgymnasium und Realschule in Baden bei Wien. Sulzenbacher, O. (1937). Jahresbericht über das Schuljahr 1936/37. Bundesgymnasium und Realschule in Baden bei Wien. Weingartner, L. (1918). Grundzüge der Erdbeschreibung: für die erste Klasse der Mittelschulen (8th ed.). Manz.

Chapter 5

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America An overview of early-twentiethcentury Argentina and Mexico Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

This chapter considers the key role that education plays in the development of national identity in Latin America via the history of Mexico and Argentina. These two instances are by no means representative of the whole region. Yet, both nations’ educational systems, formal and informal, remain influenced by issues that are common to all Latin American republics and to many nationsstates beyond the region, under the sign of modernity: indigenous dispossession and resilience, Enlightenment thinking and Catholic/Christian preponderance, localized communities, and globalized economies. To capture these dynamics, we focus on two crucial moments in the history of both nations where educational impetus emerges as a national project to build a loyal citizenry. In Argentina, we consider a moment of nationalist transformation in the Republic, during the early twentieth century, towards an identity beyond simple visions of Europe in the Pampas. In Mexico, we explore the post-revolutionary 1920s when a reconsideration of Mexican identity coincided with the regeneration of educational institutions that celebrated mestizo pasts and futures. Two different moments in time for the region—but both similar in the history of education in each nation. These instances add to the discussion of theories of nationalism by showing the way that national knowledges (in plural) came to be shared through a combination of public pedagogy and schooling. To make our point, we have divided the chapter into three sections. The first part establishes some key historical context for the emergence of the Latin American states while also outlining the theoretical approach underpinning this chapter. Benedict Anderson (1983/2006) is a point of departure here. His “imagined communities” thesis drew heavily on the origin of modern nations as a Latin American phenomenon. But his work has been revised and eclipsed by critiques. One such is that of historian Nicola Miller, who offers what we consider a better explanation of national identities emerging in the region, including via education. Miller’s (2020) recognition of nations as “communities of shared knowledge” offers insight into the social and material practices that made various identities stick DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-6

102  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

with growing populations during the nineteenth century. According to this volume’s schema, this thinking positions our work at a point connected to the modernist lineage while indicating ways beyond it through constructivist considerations of social discourse and symbolism (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023). In parts 2 and 3, we consider how Argentines and Mexicans came to share certain knowledges—some similar, some different—at the beginning of their journey to use mass education as an instrument for promoting nationalist sentiments of belonging. In Argentina, we emphasize specific symbolic and material elements that made up the identity of Argentine education, and society more generally, which paid homage to a secular civilizing ideal derived from European modernity. In Mexico, by contrast, we explain how different interpretations of national identity, in particular an emphasis on mestizo identity, were integral to the formation of the school system after the revolutionary years. Finally, in the conclusion, we position these two similar and different stories with a view to showing, with some caveats, the crucial history of education in the formation of nationalism as a shared knowledge of societies, communities, and individuals.

Nationalism and Latin America Latin American nationalism, according to historian James F. Siekmeier, “has been left out of the scholarly conversation with regard to the increased interest in nationalism since the 1990s” (2017, p. 4). This absence is similar to the usual oversight from transatlantic scholars to regions—namely African and Asian— instrumental in the economic and political dominance of European powers and, then, the United States. Any persistent neglect of the region by those outside of it ran counter to the fact Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983/2006), probably the most influential work on nationalism for the past 40 years, argued that Latin America was nationalism’s fountainhead during the nineteenth century. Anderson’s book turned the usual thinking about nationalism, if not on its head, then at least slightly askew. Originally appearing in the early 1980s and revised a decade later, Anderson destabilized the “provincial European thinking” of nationalism’s origin story. For him, the Latin American nationalism that emerged during the nineteenth century’s first few decades marked the beginnings of the global nationalist phenomenon under modernity. Temporally, these nations preceded those of Europe by half a century or more. Italy’s Risorgimento and Germany’s Reich, both fulfilled around 1870, are obvious comparisons; so too are the new states that emerged from the contraction of Empires after 1918. Politically, the Latin American republics indicated the reach of liberal revolution to a new part of the world keen to depose ancien régimes. Here, French bourgeois thought and radical action played a key role, as did the success of like-minded brethren in the United States (although as Republics, both France and the United States revealed their imperialist bent by retaining presence and

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 103

interest in the region). The states of Europe, still largely either Empires, small principalities, or small principalities in Empires, lacked the spry dynamism of the Americas’ new republics. Anderson based his argument on the fact that nationalism grew from an internal contradiction in the administration of Spain and Portugal’s empires. Locally born male leaders (criollos) were always subordinate to those administrators from Spain and Portugal (peninsulares). Frustration with this arrangement led to localized identities opposing the metropoles’ dominance. Latin American nationalism sprung from a power-hungry, upper-class creoles just as it had in the burgeoning United States. As Anderson (1983/2006, p. 58) put it: “born in the Americas, he could not be a true Spaniard; ergo, born in Spain, the peninsular could not be a true American.” That this movement for independence was not a unified transcontinental phenomenon indicates the established provincialism of the various locations from which each nation emerged. In this sense, the burgeoning capitalist enterprise of the post-imperial continent offered a vision of European modernity— states as nations—prior to its arrival in Europe. Some specific historical details on how this occurred are important to establish before turning to schooling in particular. As Anderson suggests, the history of Latin American nations is a story of imperial interests ebbing and flowing. These interests surge against the assertion of localized republicanism with varied characteristics. What’s striking is how rapidly each national identity emerged from newly imagined politicogeographic forms by around 1830. The details cannot be covered here beyond a foundational snapshot for the chapter ahead. As elsewhere around the globe, republican ideas gained momentum throughout the colonies of Spain and Portugal during the eighteenth century and came to a head in the early nineteenth. Confident local leaders— usually creoles with social standing and military connections—embarked on their own grab for power. A series of wars for independence ensued between patriots and royalists. These protracted struggles took decades to resolve, just as they had been in the United States of America a generation earlier. Their rebellious leaders were similarly self-interested and far from being the champions of people’s liberation they have since been portrayed. Many identified with the existing imperial regions’ social and political hierarchies—including Catholicism—and as such used these regions as a template for the future nations they forged. A  larger vision of their constituent citizenry—including indigenous peoples and freed slaves—came later. With this teleology in mind, such “colonial difference,” as decolonialists like Mignolo (2002) remind us, means that we should be careful not to conflate Latin American nations and their knowledges. And likewise, heed should be taken of the current argument, especially Malešević (2017), that post-imperial nation-states retain much in common with their previous forms. Still, successive victories throughout the Americas permitted the emergence of the today’s larger nations in quick succession: Colombia (1810), Venezuela

104  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

(1811), Argentina (1816), Chile (1818), Peru (1821), Mexico (1821), Bolivia (1825), Uruguay (1828), Paraguay (1842), and, more unorthodoxly, Brazil (1822/1889). These staggered dates point to the conflicts that accompanied the colonizers’ collapse. Assertions of national identity throughout the continent betrayed their martial origins in European culture. Newly empowered local elites, sizzling with republican zealotry, used warfare to delineate borders between nations and settle any internal disputes from dissenters or indigenous inhabitants. Once peace settled, each nation embarked on building their state and society, including schooling. The Enlightenment ideals that underpinned each nation’s political culture thrust education into the center of their nation-building project. This momentum swelled to project an air of civilization into the new nations while simultaneously reinforcing new symbols of national identity. Anderson pointed to the usual suspects—intellectuals, printers, newspapers— as the initial engineers of the nationalisms’ creole architects. In Anderson’s account, as the editors of this volume make plain (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023), schools and universities are mentioned in the gestural manner of most studies of nationalism. For a short global study of the subject, Anderson does slightly more than other key thinkers to note education as a crucial element in cementing nationalism’s place in human history. And he convincingly argues that formal education was of little importance for the initial phase of nationalism’s arrival on both sides of the Atlantic. “Academic institutions,” he claims, “were insignificant to the American nationalisms” (Anderson, 1983/2006, p. 71). Formal, massified education did not appear in most nations until at least a century after independence. From Imagining to Sharing

Anderson’s influence has been vast, but his thinking deserves revision. As an ur-text that transcends disciplines, Imagined Communities is often a must-have reference, which has limited critical interrogation from many. Those who have taken his work to task point to manifold problems with the examples offered (see Breuilly, 2016). Such are the problems with sweeping analyses of global history. In spite of these problems, Anderson continues to hold significant sway. But this influence should be questioned, and lip-service to imagined communities quelled, so as to productively move on from his foundational analysis. Historian Nicola Miller’s recent Republics of Knowledge (2020) takes up this task, with generosity, in relation to thinking about nationalism in Latin America and beyond. Miller contends that Anderson was right about Latin American nations being the “ultimate test-cases of viable nation-statehood, because they were constituted without any obvious differences of race and language to differentiate one from another” (Miller, 2020, p. 12). But his thinking about imagined communities overlooks important ways in which knowledge functions as cultural and material forms through social connections. Indeed, Miller

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 105

offers more concrete social relations, thus eclipsing Anderson, by suggesting that Latin American nations are “best understood as communities of shared knowledge rather than as imagined knowledge” (2020, p. 9). Miller’s methods are a sign of more recent intellectual times—partly in content, partly in analysis. In the former case, there is a distinct engagement with educational practices throughout Latin America, especially from the formative late-nineteenth century period and into the twentieth century when mass education became a hallmark of civilized statehood. When thinking in line with the categories of this volume (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023), Miller’s approach departs from Anderson’s “modernism” to include elements of the “constructivist” present in the work of Chatterjee (1993), Billig (1995), Brubaker (1996), and Elgenius (2011). That is, national symbols and rituals reinforce identity forms through discursive repetitions in everyday practices. These practices solidify national mythologies and ideologies but, at the same time, by virtue of their repeated enactment, reveal these ideas to be malleable and thus changeable. Miller’s methodical sophistication also aligns with other recent intellectual history approaches to material representations of ideas (see Zubrzycki, 2017). Latin America brims with instances of how common cultural knowledge’s circulation enabled national identities to settle. She demonstrates such settling by blending sociological approaches to “institutions and practices” with those of intellectual history and cultural studies’ thinking about “ideas, images and discourses” (Miller, 2020, p. 9). This approach in itself can offer a new direction for nationalism studies. Yet, there is something more distinct about Miller’s approach that makes it apposite to this volume’s intentions. She emphasizes the crucial role education plays within nationalism’s public acceptance and reproduction. Apart from the elegance of her method, she, unlike many other scholars of nationalism, devotes specific attention to the way that education—formal and informal—was crucial in fostering national identity throughout different Latin American states during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. At the time of the wars of independence, Miller (2020, p. 198) notes that popular education was “one of the few priorities upon which royalists, reformers and revolutionaries could agree” because it offered immediate “social order”, “political legitimacy”, and “public accountability.” Such agreement continued well into the period of national consolidation, especially towards the end of the nineteenth century, once larger public education systems were established. Indeed, the instances of Argentine and Mexican nationalism offered later in this chapter signal the importance of educational bureaucracy in constructing shared knowledges—Miller (2020, p. 7) makes a useful point that both nouns for knowledge in Spanish and Portuguese tend to be used as plurals. It is through these systems that order and legitimacy, if not accountability, were brought to bear. In the following sections, we work with Miller’s (2020) concept of “communities of shared knowledge” as a general frame to demonstrate how two transitional moments in their nationalisms, at different geographic ends of

106  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

Latin America, can be understood as influenced by and influencing educational movements within them. Mexico and Argentina’s past educational commonalities form part of the pattern set elsewhere in Hispanic colonies. The influence of globally mobile European ideas, especially Enlightenment republicanism, underpinned by racialized and gendered hierarchies, established systems of education aimed at producing a new citizenry. Yet this citizenry had to be connected through readily distinguishable knowledges associated with national identities. In both locations, and especially in their major cities, Mexicans and Argentines came to understand these shared political and social conventions through their formal education. The inflection of each identity was sufficiently different to tell them apart. Indeed, the very terms Mexican and Argentine as meaningful signifiers are evidence of the respective nationalism projects’ success. This difference, we suggest, emerges from shared ways of knowing that interpret national identity relative to European-inspired conceptions, on the one hand, and those connected to more localized social arrangements— particularly indigenous peoples and migrants—on the other. The creation of these different national identities was therefore not a simple linear process. Rather, like all identities, there was a contest over what constituted being Mexican or being Argentine. Different elements of these national identities were inflected at moments of social reform and reconstruction. During these junctures, which we highlight in our examples later, state-run education systems and their schools played a key role in the legitimation of how citizens came to share knowledge about themselves and their compatriots. Miller’s interest in education—formal and informal—avails both social elements (sharing) and epistemologies (knowledge). This combination, a culmination of twentieth-century social-scientific thinking, allows us to consider the relationship between material and symbolic elements of key educational moments in the history of Argentina and Mexico. Apportioning Nationalism Through Schooling

Developing shared national knowledges through schooling requires a combination of discourses about education’s worth, a contest between epistemologies worth reproducing, and specific political, and therefore policy, orchestration to enable such knowledge to take hold. These three offer a general framework for the instances we highlight in this chapter with attention to two specific conjunctures—Argentina in the decades immediately following the 1890s and Mexico during the 1920s. First, proving education’s worth was a global phenomenon of social legitimacy. Universal education’s long and slow emergence during the industrial age has been well documented. Education’s democratization synchronized with modernity’s acceleration and arguably contributed to this speed. Latin America was no different to elsewhere with this general trend. The establishment of public education systems in various nations occurred at a similar time and in

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 107

similar ways, while the roll out of each system had its own idiosyncrasies as well as unevenness in timings and reach. Some nations, like those in the Southern Cone, sought to offer public education as rapidly and widely as possible as a way of ensuring stability and prosperity. They began the process during the mid-1800s, while other counterparts, especially in central America, didn’t start until the early twentieth century. Capital cities predominated in educational provision, while regions lagged behind. This was certainly the case for Mexico. There were also significant roles played by the Catholic church in supporting, and directing, burgeoning educational systems struggling for laicism (Gvirtz & Beech, 2008). Religious iconography’s vestiges persisted in secularized schools to differing degrees. Whatever the particular case, having a public education system signified nation-state legitimacy. Second, consensuses must emerge if jockeying epistemologies are to become shared knowledges. Within certain intellectual circles, à la Anderson’s imagined communities, this means sustained attention to specific ideas through agreedupon media—specifically newspapers and other journals of the day. These means of communication presupposed a certain level of literacy which was only achievable on a mass scale once educational institutions were established. Here, the importance of educational institutions and practices deserve greater credit in galvanizing national identities. It’s worth thinking of epistemologies less in the sense of theories of knowledge, but more as everyday collective thinking. That is within educational terms, there’s an understanding of civic practices that go towards being an Argentine or Mexican citizen, while also recognizing that this thinking exists alongside certain knowledges deemed worthy of being taught in the curriculum. Notions of national or civic identity—flag raising, national anthems, patriotic holidays—exist as part of the same syllabus as mathematics, science, languages, arts, and others. The former are often embedded—hidden or visible—in the latter. Thus, we explore the learning of everyday collective thinking about national identity in educational institutions like schools. Third, the acceptance of certain ways of thinking and acting, in line with national identities, is legitimated through stable political organization. Historically, such organization is almost wholly reliant on state-based institutions, especially with democratic foundations, and compliance from civil society arrangements. Within the newly formed nations of Latin America, educational systems offered a quick way forward. Sociologically, popular identification with such institutions is contingent on their representation and reproduction of common identifiers. Thus, the power of the nation in Latin America emerged from versions of Republicanism defined by and against the Old World. In some places, like Argentina, schools took up this identity work quickly with a commitment to public education for its growing migrant population. In others, like Mexico, the identity was forged in more militant moments of post-imperial resistance—against France and the United States—which offered a pride in Mexican-ness that was then transferred to educational settings. Such identity work within the educational systems of Latin America reinforced and refined

108  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

the popular idea of the nation as much as the key centers of government and judicial power. The outcome here was the rationalization and transformation of republican political models under the flag of nationalism. For this arrangement to gain traction, a readily understandable sentiment of common identity had to be communicated. In this sense, the sharing of ideas, as well as affects, of nationalism became the work of teachers as much as politicians. With this triptych of factors—global, epistemological, political—education in Latin America was entering a moment of convergence. One of the key elements was the way in which national identity, as a global political idea, manifested deliberately in public and school-based learning as nineteenth-century republics became twentieth-century nation-states. By the Mexican revolution (1910–1920), versions of nationalism in the Americas were heavily influenced by the ideas of European counterparts committed, once again, to internecine warfare in the name of imagined identities. Subtle changes in the Argentine and Mexican national identity reflect the continued influence of this global phenomenon. But like most global ideas, they had their own local inflection depending on the discourses of power being wielded at that time.

Nationalism and Schooling Argentina Argentina’s move to mass public education began with the republican ideals of its founders during the early nineteenth century. The commitment to a European enlightenment sensibility saw the championing of science alongside republicanism. This placed education at the heart of the Argentine project. In 1810, as historian Inés Dussel (2011) has pointed out, one of the initial acts of the first autonomous government of what would later become independent Argentina—Primera Junta (First Assembly)—was to translate Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762) as a “civic catechism” and to establish public schools called “schools of first letters.” Citizenship was immediately understood as reliant on literacy. At this stage, however, the concept of citizenship was not connected to an idea of nationalism as we understand it today but rather to a notion of a Republican identity that promoted respect for authority and for a Republican form of government. This sentiment set the stage for republicanism’s transformation into the later Argentine nationalism from the 1860s onwards. The liberal governments that inherited the Argentine nation-state around the time, after decades of instability and civil wars, were committed to expanding primary education. The main figure here is Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the rural-schoolmaster-turnedjournalist and eventual president of Argentina by 1868. Sarmiento represents a version of Argentine liberalism, albeit problematic, in which civilizing practices like schooling would bring the people of the republic together and stamp out the barbarism that characterized many of its members. His 1845 book, Facundo: Civilisation and Barbarism, is a foundational document of Argentine identity and became even more important once he became the president (Sarmiento,

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 109

1845/2004). For him, and others in Buenos Aires’ learned elite, the civility of city life surpassed the barbarism of the interior, best represented by el gaucho— the idealized pampas cowboy whose life was connected to the land, to death, and to indigenous pasts. This sensibility was assailed by two intertwined policies direct from European civilization: immigration and education (Tedesco, 1986). If Argentine leaders believed that civilization was reliant on literate citizens, they also understood that success was also reliant on increasing their numbers. Much like the United States, whose founders these Argentine liberals greatly admired, the relatively new nation was opened up to all at this time. The 1853 constitution, which remains in place, enshrined such openness “to every man who wants to inhabit Argentine land” as well as a commitment to public education. Half a century later, Argentina was inundated with new arrivals mostly from Europe who then became new citizens—in 1869, Argentina had 1.8 million inhabitants; by 1914, there was 7.8 million. In 1895, two thirds of the population of the City of Buenos Aires was foreign born, while 25% of the population of the whole country was composed of immigrants. By 1914, when many of the immigrants in the first waves had already had Argentine children, 30% of the population of the country were foreigners—28% from Europe (Solberg, 1970; Romero, 2001). However, as much as immigration was a fundamental instrument in the project of creating a civilized nation, by the end of the nineteenth century, foreigners also started to be seen as a challenge in promoting a national homogeneous identity (Bertoni, 2001). Most of the immigrants came from the South of Europe and did not have the kind of “industrial attitude” that was expected of them. Many had been active participants in working class struggles in Europe and brought with them Anarchist, Socialist, and other ideologies that were seen by the Argentine elite as a dangerous threat that could result in “national disintegration.” Faced with growing industrial action, and other forms of civil unrest (including the murder of the chief of Police by an Ukrainian-Argentine anarchist), the governing elite represented these ideologies as foreign anti-national influences that should be eradicated (Ascolani, 2020; Lagos, 2014). More importantly, the newly arrived introduced many different cultural traditions, languages, and values, adding to existing cultural diversity. As they started to organize in cultural associations, their national celebrations became very visible and reinforced the need to promote a national identity (Bertoni, 2001; Ascolani, 2020; Lagos, 2014). The Argentine elite had a quite ambiguous position towards the culture that should constitute Argentine nationalism: they promoted a “European way of life,” but at the same time they struggled against the perpetuation of the ways of life of each of the particular foreign communities (Tedesco, 1986). It was in the aftermath of this period of republican zeal for immigration and education that Argentine nationalism began to take on a more modern form. The hopes of liberals like Sarmiento extended directly from the “republic of

110  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

letters” ideals of the Primera Junta. All citizens were to be civilized burghers. But this ideal, as most nations were to discover during the twentieth century, proved difficult to achieve on a mass scale. Certainly, education was a means through which to assist with literacy. But political identity was also coalescing around larger concepts—specifically the nation or class. As Ernest Gellner (1983) pointed out, nationalism in particular offered a means through which to cope with the rapid changes brought about by modernity. Argentina exemplified such endurance. Modernity arrived headlong thanks to massive British investment in railways and agriculture as well as the growing population from Southern and Central Europe. Economic growth soared. The institutions of the republic were quickly expanded to cope with the situation. A nationwide public education system was one of them. Belle époque Argentina, as many Argentines continue to lament, was among the wealthiest countries in the world. With this confidence in themselves, the idea of Argentina as a republic in Sarmiento’s sense made way for the modern nation of the new century. The expansion of education was at the heart of this historic change (Dussel, 2011; Tedesco, 1986; Bertoni, 2001). Certainly, the line between a republican identity and a nationalist one is not clear cut. But the open republican identity changed into a more exclusionary one during the 1880s. As with Mexico given later in the chapter, the shift can be seen in subtle changes to the signifiers with which the nation’s citizens came to identify themselves. Champions of cultural nationalism in the early twentieth century offered new ways of belonging to Argentina. More to the point, there is a distinct role played by education systems at the time in transforming civic identity through new tropes of nationalism and homogenization. In Argentina, this shift began to take place thanks to the influence of public schools catering to a growing population and public campaigns creating and reinforcing the symbols of the nation. Both of these phenomena—school pedagogy and public pedagogy—worked together to build a national identity by sharing certain knowledge as indelibly Argentine. In the two sections that follow, we point to instances of both in the emergence of modern nationalism in the first decades of the twentieth century: first as monuments and then as patriotic schooling. Monuments of Argentine Knowledge

Teaching the public how to be a citizen of the nation was common throughout Latin America. Miller (2020) points to public pedagogy, broadly defined, as the means through which the republics or, later, nations would make themselves concrete. Libraries, universities, and engineering feats like roads and railways all amounted to public goods brought to the people by the state. These were material manifestations of the “republics of knowledge” to which Hispanic-American governments were committed. Many of these institutions, in both senses of the word, have origins during the pre-nationalist period of the mid-1800s. Yet,

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 111

they soon became part of the new move to define the nation state as present in everyday life. Major capital city libraries, as Miller (2020, p. 17) points out, changed their titles from “public” institutions to “national” ones. For instance, Argentina’s Biblioteca Pública de Buenos Aires, founded in 1812, was renamed Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina in 1884. The nation was expanding in the minds of the people at that time and so too did the institutions that exemplified this identity. In Argentina, this alteration in language away from republicanism and towards nationalism was pronounced during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of twentieth century (Dussel, 2011). Many figures were involved in this process of celebrating an exclusive cultural nationalism, synonymous with being Argentine. But if Sarmiento loomed over Argentine republican identity during the late nineteenth century, then Ricardo Rojas replaced him during the early twentieth (Dussel, 2011; Lagos, 2014). Rojas was a journalist and intellectual influenced by European nationalist ideas. In the first decades of the twentieth century, he sought to replace older ideas around republican patria with revamped ideals of authentic Argentine identity (Miller, 1999). Rojas was not the only voice of nationalism at that time, but, taking up this civilizing mantle, he proceeded to turn it inside out. Civilization and barbarism remained a theme—although instead of the interior being cruel, it was now the city that lacked civility. Rojas championed argentinidad (Argenticity) which combined indigenous-creole identities in contrast to those affiliated with the cosmopolitan Europeanness as well as a suspicion towards European migrants’ loyalties. To be Argentine was now something distinct and in line with the European national spirits that were also being invented in the lead up to the First World War—an exclusive yet elusive identity worth dying for. To be sure, his writings were not solely responsible for the nationalist focus. But Rojas’ thinking translated into a different way of interpreting Argentine identity that amplified subtle shifts in the public pedagogy, especially in statues and monuments, from the 1890s onwards. Rojas’ nationalist project for the future of Argentina was mostly based on a reinterpretation of the nation’s past. He argued that the Argentine people had gone astray in their understanding of national origins. On the one hand, those forces that stressed American influences were anti-Hispanic, while views that emphasized Spanish origins tended to be anti-Indigenous. To overcome this misinterpretation that he saw as immature, he promoted a view of Argentine history and culture in which he sought to find some continuity among Indigenous peoples, Spaniards, Creoles, and the present in a new melting pot that would find an equilibrium between the different ancestries (Dussel, 2011; Lagos, 2014). If the perceived threat during Sarmiento’s time was the barbarism of the indigenous and the interior, in Rojas’ era it was the decadence of the city, cosmopolitanism, and exotic ideologies. Even though Rojas was suspect of the sectarian intentions of some foreign communities (Ascolani, 2020), in his book La Restauración Nacionalista published in 1909, he also alerted about the

112  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

risk of fanatic dogmatism and of nationalism turning into hostility towards the foreign or into “simple patriotic liturgy” (Rojas, 1909/2011; Ascolani, 2020). Rojas also used history to find myths, symbols, heroes, traditions, and popular folklore that would contribute to integrate the masses and promote nationalist belongings as the cement of social cohesion (Lagos, 2014; Devoto, 2005). For Rojas, as for most of the leading intellectuals of the time, the privileged arena for promoting these symbols and beliefs was public education. However, the pedagogic project should also extend beyond formal schooling into the everyday life of the people. History is not only taught in class lessons: the historical sense, without which lessons are sterile, is formed in the spectacle of daily life, in the traditional names of places, in the sites that are associated to heroic memories, in the remains and pieces preserved at museums, and even in the commemorative monuments, whose influence on the imagination I have called the pedagogy of statues. (Ricardo Rojas, Nationalist Restoration, 1909, quoted in Gorelik, 1998, p. 206) Around that time, a pantheon of heroic figures guiding the history of the nation’s creation was decided upon by these public intellectuals. History books on Argentina began to appear alongside more localized and regional narratives of identity making. The national heroes, all men, figured prominently in these tales and then were made more concrete as statues scattered around the capital and country. Such iconography was crucial to the consolidation of national figures. A  similar statuomania played out in Mexico during the 1890s as a way of replicating the “invention of traditions” (Hobsbawm, 1983) occurring throughout the world at that time. Statues of Argentina’s national heroes of independence began to appear throughout Buenos Aires and other major cities and towns by the last decades of the nineteenth century (Bertoni, 2001). They were laden with political meaning at a time when literacy in Argentina was still relatively low. In 1887, the inauguration of a statue of General Lavalle in Buenos Aires and one of General Paz in Cordoba was celebrated in the news as the beginning of a new period in which the Argentine people would honor their most prominent citizens. Other monuments commemorated collective ventures, such as the one celebrating the May Revolution in the heart of Buenos Aires and another memorializing the Army of the Andes that heroically crossed the rugged mountains to fight the Spanish in what is now Chile and Peru, led by San Martín (the Father of the Nation) (Bertoni, 1992). But what illustrates the change in sentiment towards exclusive nationalism was a change in attitude to statues—some were now deemed suspect. Dussel (2011) writes of the furor in Buenos Aires during 1907 at the unveiling of a statue of the Italian national hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other similar statues of foreign heroes, in line with liberal republicanism, also existed in the city. But

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 113

since the idea of cosmopolitan universalism no longer proved popular in the city, bronzed versions of other nations’ heroes were problematic to say the least. Understanding the meaning of these monuments was therefore a way of sharing specific knowledge about what constituted the Argentine national identity, or its community, as well as what did not. In spite of around a million Italians, and almost as many Spaniards, arriving in the nation in the preceding decades, it was clear by the early twentieth century that these identities were meant to be left behind. School Rituals of Argentine Knowledge

If public monuments were supposedly intractable representations of the nation, then Argentina’s public schools became the locations where its meaning was reproduced. The school system was also representative of a subtle shift to a more exclusive belief in argentinidad. What had been upheld as a virtue of the Argentine republic soon came to be synonymous with the Argentine nation. In the same way that monuments represented state figures, so too did schools—in their names, the names of the streets they resided on, and in the portraits of national founders made mandatory in their corridors. The national state, with some participation of provincial states, took control of education almost completely displacing the Catholic Church and civil society. The expansion of the system was impressive. In 1930, in the city of Buenos Aires, 95% of the population was literate and 30% had access to secondary education. At a national level, 48% of the schooled-aged population attended primary schools by 1914; enrolments grew to almost 70% by 1930. The Argentine education system was among the most advanced in the world in terms of primary school enrolments (Gvirtz et al., 2008). With so many young Argentines attending school, especially in comparison to elsewhere in Latin America, those overseeing the curriculum had a captive audience for a concerted campaign of national indoctrination. This worked in conjunction with the simultaneous movement of cultural nationalism that figures like Rojas promoted. The national project became embedded within the everyday practices of Argentine schools from the 1890s onwards. Such an association occurred within the curriculum and increasingly via ritualized patriotic practices. The school system was a key arena of what was called the Patriotic Crusade. As Dussel (2011) notes, before the turn of the century, commemorations in schools could celebrate nature and science, while shortly after it such themes were displaced by patriotic celebrations of independence, the May revolution, the founding fathers of the nation, and the discovery of the Americas. Other forms of nationalist symbology in schools included the daily honoring of the flag and mural paintings and busts of the heroes of the nation. Patriotic celebrations in schools did not only involve students, they were also used to cognitively and emotionally influence the general public as they were sometimes

114  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

performed in the main plazas of towns and reproduced through radio, in cinemas, and newspapers (Ascolani, 2020). Furthermore, nationalism in schools became militarized (Ascolani, 2020). Dussel (2011) notes that “children’s battalions” were created in 1888, and since the 1910s, boys in the upper grades of primary education were taught shooting. Nationalism in schools also turned chauvinistic, and this was also reflected in the curriculum. Knowledge of the nation was enshrined by law. Since massified public school systems in general were a new global phenomenon, what to include within the curriculum also reflected the consolidation of the state. In the wake of Sarmiento, the public school system was enshrined through the national Congress in 1884 through Law 1420 of General Common Education. This set public, compulsory, and lay education for all. It also established in Section 6 that the minimum compulsory instruction encompassed the Republic’s specific geography and a basic knowledge of universal geography, the Republic’s specific history and a basic knowledge of general history, the national language; morality and civility; a basic knowledge of hygiene; . . . a knowledge of the National Constitution. (Acosta, 2022) The policing of school practices to ensure proper knowledge, proper Spanish, and the adherence to the nationalistic rituals was extensively performed by a body of conspicuous school inspectors. Regulations also included a nationalistic approach to the composition of the teaching force. Only Argentines could teach History and Geography, while Spanish could only be taught by those who had it as their mother tongue (Ascolani, 2020). Such state apparatuses ensured that new shared nationalist knowledges were deliberately fostered through comprehensive schooling.

Nationalism and Schooling Mexico Just as Argentina used education to alter its republican identity into a more exclusive nationalist one, Mexico also mobilized public and school-based pedagogies to renovate its national identity after the Revolution of the 1910s. Certainly, these two nations share similarities in the way that their independence and transition to republicanism played out. But Mexico’s journey suffered more turbulence: from imperial delusions to civil wars as well as battles with the United States and France. By the late-nineteenth century, Mexico’s republic stabilized through the long, authoritarian reign of President Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911) who was far more interested in holding power than liberal reform. To be sure, during this period of Porfiriato, as well as earlier, there is a Mexican identity emerging from the Hispanic Empire. But, as in Argentina, it is not quite the modern nationalism of the fin de siècle. Such nationalism was deliberately cultivated after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) via similar

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 115

public projects—monuments and schooling—in Argentina and elsewhere. But the Revolutionary government paid particular attention to race—especially mestizo identity—as integral to being Mexican in a way that connected with pre-conquest and post-independence pasts. This was different from the cultural nationalism of Argentina where indigenous elements especially were often more latently expressed through connections to folklorico movements. Of course, education figured in the thinking of the nation prior to the revolution. The public system during the nineteenth century was limited; yet, enough foundations had been laid for it to be expanded later. When compared with Argentina’s relatively rapid deployment of a comprehensive school system, education in Mexico was characterized by stop-start initiatives which limited public schooling to the major cities. The political instability of the mid-nineteenth-century saw political figures—such as the 1860s liberal Indigenous leader Benito Juárez—committed to educational massification, but such reforms did not take hold throughout the country. Nevertheless, during the Porfiriato, the government understood the modernizing effect that a school system would have on the nation. And loyalty to the state, or patriotism, was best produced through history teaching (Vásquez de Knauth, 1970). Public intellectuals like Justo Sierra Méndez pushed further for a national system and had enough influence within government (in his roles as legislator and as Díaz’s secretary of education) to promote educational opportunities for the urban middle classes. Ironically, such circumstances, as Scott et al. (2018) point out, helped rally the liberal forces that made up part of the revolutionary wave that overthrew the Díaz government from power. The details of the revolution in Mexico are too intricate to outline here. Indeed, the controversy surrounding it—not least historiographical—indicates the controversial themes of nationalism this volume explores. It was not simply a liberal coup d’état, nor a people’s uprising. And the meaning is arguably still undecided (Knight, 2016). Suffice it to say, for our purposes, that once the dust had settled, the new government was willing and able to finally bring a national education system to fruition. In keeping with the argument that we are putting forward, there was a direct connection between public and school-based pedagogies. In 1921, the post-revolutionary government established the Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP) to oversee the 1917 national constitution’s secular impetus. Its third article expressed a promise to free, compulsory non-religious education. This directly challenged the Catholic church’s long-standing influence in Mexican society and expounded a new national identity that synthesized symbolism of the colonial and indigenous peoples. The first president of the SEP, José Vasconcelos, was instrumental in providing the momentum for this social and ideological shift. Certainly Vasconcelos, like Sarmiento or Rojas in Argentina, was not responsible for all that came afterwards in nationalism and schooling. Yet his relatively short tenure at the SEP, as well as the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), set in motion significant reforms which influenced

116  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

the nature of both during the twentieth century. His main role can be read as making manifest, through public policy, ideas about an inclusive Mexican national identity. Many of these ideas preceded the revolution. The history taught in schools during the Porfiriato espoused a mestizo identity as a cornerstone of the nation (Florescano, 2005, p.  243). Vasconcelos popularized this notion through distinct public buildings and artwork as well as through farreaching public education. The new Secretariat was not only responsible for schools; its warrant extended to universities, museums, art galleries and exhibitions, and monuments devoted to preserving (read authenticating) Mexican heritage and patrimony as well. The politics here are clear: the promotion of culture went hand in hand with the promotion of education. The Revolution signaled a desire for Mexican nationalism in line with the popular movements elsewhere in the region and the globe. Some of these were internationalist in intent—communism being the exemplar. But it was nationalism that rallied public opinion in its promise of belonging. Vasconcelos was attuned to the symbology and rhetoric that would appeal to the majority of Mexicans as well as placate those looking for a more universalist identity offered by more globally minded alternatives. He sought to unite the country through its education. As in Argentina, monuments and schools were a means to achieve this nationalist consent. But Mexico differed slightly in both approach and outcome. Murals of Mexican Nationalism

The SEP under Vasconcelos directed the pre-revolutionary impetus for national identity through its more robust and enthused institutions. In this sense, there was a continuity within the Mexican identity with that which preceded the revolution. But the inflection given to Mexican-ness amplified the mestizo identity that had previously been used to reconcile the realities of Spanish colonization and indigenous resilience. As in Argentina, the specific heroes of the nation were identified during the late nineteenth century that were to remain touchstones even after the revolution. Monuments to the nation appeared much like elsewhere as part of public pedagogy. In the final days of President Díaz’s reign, for example, Díaz inaugurated a set of monuments that continue to stand in the famous Paseo de la Reforma. Among them, the Column of Independence (now known as El Ángel de la Independencia) is a perfect example of the European cosmopolitan connection: the architect studied in Europe, the sculptor was Italian, the column replicates ancient Roman columns, and the “Angel” is in fact a representation of the Greek god Niké (Victory). At the base, sculptures of a lion led by a child and four muses accompany the representations of the “heroes of independence.” According to Dixon (2010, p. 132), the column served pedagogical purposes not dissimilar to the “secular catechism” being announced in Argentina. On

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 117

one end, there are names of heroes and heroines of the Independence movement engraved on the column. These were meant to be read and for the reader to familiarize themselves with the national history. More importantly, however, is the monument’s meaningful composition—its elements convey values that the government wished to promote among the citizenry. After the revolution, this public pedagogy continued via a considerable campaign of public works building explicitly educational institutions as well as overt celebrations of mestizo identity. The post-revolution symbology in Mexico continued the idea of the mestizo as a racialized citizen but amplified its presence as a unique instance of a universalizing national identity with legacies throughout the Americas (Manrique, 2016). The politics of Vasconcelos’s mestizo offered an almost proto-post-racial citizen which tried, as Lund (2012, p. x) suggests, to sublimate the “racialized identity by way of universalizing Mexico.” Most famously, Vasconcelos celebrated this idea through murals rather than monuments. As an aesthete, whose youthful comrades in the Ateneo de Juventud (Mexican Youth Athenaeum) believed in modern art’s political power, he began building new public and educational institutions that were adorned with images celebrating the lives of ordinary Mexicans. Diego Rivera was among the famous muralists sought by Vasconcelos. He stands alongside the two other tres grandes David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco and other prolific national artists with less global renown. ­Vasconcelos had many of them paint murals in important government buildings, including the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School) which became the headquarters for the Secretariat of Public Education. It is known that Vasconcelos gave the muralists creative freedom (Charlot, 2008), and this, in return, influenced his own revolutionary mystique. This included well-known tolerance for internationalist motifs from communists like Siqueiros, which were reconciled with the populist celebration of working life, including teachers, in Mexico. In contrast to the monuments of the previous era, the mestizo replaced European neo-classical allusions and was promoted as the quintessential national subject. According to Mandel (2007), in Vasconcelos’ early years, there was no real consideration of indigeneity as part of his ideology. It was the muralists’ work that brought with it the subject of “the people” and offered a symbolism of a racialized nationalism different to the racist versions espoused in Europe and elsewhere during the same period. This new nationalist ideology of 1920s Mexico celebrated an identity with which many could readily identify. Vasconcelos believed a vast education system was the best means to achieve this identification. Schooling Mexican Nationalism

Where Argentina’s public-school system was established relatively swiftly from the 1860s onwards, it was only after the revolution in Mexico that a nationwide system there became both desirable and feasible. The competing factions and

118  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

regionalism of the revolution meant stabilizing the nation and limiting ongoing foment. Vasconcelos oversaw this process by focusing on producing a knowledge bureaucracy, including teachers, needed to facilitate the public system as well as the institutional foundations of primary schooling in rural and regional areas previously overlooked. Underpinning this dual approach was a belief in civic unity in line with the hyper-mestizo ideology being celebrated at the time. In the first instance, this required investment in preparatorias (upper-secondary schools) and revival of the national university to instill ways of thinking that could then be taught to others. In the second, it meant coordinating public educational administration to foster public acceptance of the new government’s national spiritual project. The SEP’s expansion of primary schooling throughout Mexico had an unironic missionary zeal. Vasconcelos was a great synthesizer of previous and new anti-positivist versions of public education. On the one hand, this meant extending the civilizing ideals of European cosmopolitanism, while on the other offering textual justification of the nationalist discourse he was promoting. He published many manuals and primary school books written by national and international authors committed to the post-revolutionary project of renewal. Vasconcelos organized the publication of the magazine El Maestro, where the texts of nationals (like Jaime Torres Bodet) and foreigners (Tolstoy, Gorki, Tagore) had a place altogether. The magazine was financed by the education ministry and distributed for free, since according to Vasconcelos, the Mexican people were poor and did not have the habit of reading (Vasconcelos, 1921, p. 7). He was aiming to promote the humanistic ideals of freedom and justice as the values to ensure the freedom of Mexicans, and these would be guiding principles for education (Vásquez de Knauth, 1970). On top of this, the public libraries overseen by SEP were also responsible for the publication of the textbooks used in schools. Prior to the revolution, most school books were imported from the United States. But this was not in keeping with the nationalist fervor under Vasconcelos. And so a uniformity spread throughout the nation: every child of the same age would learn from the same textbook published by the central government. The enthusiasm for this homogenizing public education ran deliberately counter to the Catholic church’s influence in Mexican schooling and daily life. There was no mistaking the antipathy of the Revolutionary government for the church—murals famously positioned the clergy as the enemy of the people. This battle was fought educationally as well. The new religion of Mexico was portrayed as Vasconcelos’s “cosmic” nationalism: to him, education was a “crusade against ignorance” (Florescano, 2005). Indeed, analogies to the Christian missionaries of the 1500s were deliberately fostered as primary schooling was established throughout the remote regions of the state. The SEP set up “cultural missions” as alternatives to the preparatorias and universities of the capital where teachers of limited education themselves could learn to teach local children. As Ocampo López (2005) describes them, these “ambulant

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 119

Normal schools” would settle temporarily in a rural area with the prospect of training the teachers, stabilizing the schooling projects in each community, and promoting an education that was both practical (relative to the social and economic conditions of the locals) and civilizing (via alphabetization and the promotion of reading). Under the auspices of educational enlightenment and national unity, the new government’s public-school system spread the ideas of mestizo nationalism to every corner of Mexico. This moment can be read as the final consolidation of the Mexican nation-state where the tutelage of the public in what being Mexican means was finally accomplished. The question remained, however, over the extent to which this education was imposed or was genuinely public. That is, the construction of the Mexican national identity within this period—by functionaries and textbooks alike—was limited in its inclusive conceptualization. As historian Elsie Rockwell (2011) has rightly pointed out in her study of this post-revolutionary process in the central Tlaxcala state, there is a genuine question mark over the extent to which the popular education of the people far outstripped the idea of popular education for the people. Nevertheless, the combination of symbology and public schooling consolidated the identity of Mexican nationalism throughout the country in a way that previous false starts or urban-centered approaches did not. The Revolution achieved not only political transformation; it altered the knowledge shared by its citizenry as well.

Some Conclusions By way of conclusion, we consider the Argentine and Mexican experiences of altering nationalism outlined with a mind to the larger discussions about nationalism and schooling. Any similarities and differences in the arrival of Mexican nationalism will be patent with those in Argentina. In the examples we’ve used, both nations faced a reconstruction of their existing national identity through movements and moments connected to public pedagogy and school-based learning. In the chapter, we’ve sought to add to current discussion of nationalism with specific examples of how they manifest as everyday educational practices to (re)orient and (re)produce the national identities of both nations. These practices are not the same everywhere, but there’s a sense, at that time, that national identity’s consolidation was an important social, cultural, and political event. Mexico’s educational discourse of nationalism differs from Argentina primarily in the way that it was deliberately cultivated after a revolutionary change in government. Argentina’s shift in its public nationalist discourse, away from republicanism and towards more distinct exclusivity, occurred as part of a more subtle cultural revolution. This change was influenced by global forces like migration as much as by global discourses of nationalism circulating between various centers of power like Europe and North America.

120  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista

But one key point in the transformation of these nationalist discourses is the paradox of continuity within the change. Rojas’ cultural nationalism in Argentina and Vasconcelos’ didacticism in Mexico reframed their respective national identity. Yet, there was still some connection to the republican states in the period immediately prior. In Argentina, the belief in an exclusive argentinidad offered a clear distinction from previous republican openness and the challenges of large migrant populations. It also tried to position the identity as something, albeit tenuous, connected to indigenous peoples and, less tenuously, the minority of citizens living beyond the metropolis of Buenos Aires. Vasconcelos, by contrast, reformed the acceptance of the mestizo reality of latenineteenth-century Mexico under Díaz, eclipsing initial criollo republicanism, and moved towards a more transcendental version of mestizo identity. This gave legitimacy to a national identity in the provinces, just as much the more folklorico sentiments in Argentina worked to help citizens understand themselves as collectively distinct. That said, the pedagogies—public or school—were not especially unique. All of this occurred as part of a world system that made these practices fundamentally similar to other massified educational systems being implemented throughout the globe. Changes to nationalist discourses take time. To make these changes stick requires state apparatuses of learning—either as public pedagogy or via schooling. Miller’s concept of “communities of shared knowledge” works well in this instance not only because of the specific Latino cases offered by way of example. It is a compelling theoretical tool that points to the epistemic connections between people through particular discourses made concrete in everyday artefacts and practices. Within the context of this book, we consider her work a landmark contribution to the constructivist theory of nationalism, as loosely defined by a “cultural thesis of togetherness” (Tröhler  & Maricic, 2023). In the same vein, we’ve offered some examples here of how the education systems of Mexico and Argentina, though distinct, worked to circulate new versions of nationalism that were readily and repetitively identifiable. This was the case for monuments and murals as much as the teaching of history or use of similar textbooks. To be sure, the pedagogy was limited by today’s standards of critical learning sciences because it deliberately embroiled young citizens in state hegemony. Nevertheless, the process in both Argentina and Mexico established shared knowledges about national identity that stand to this day. They are not so much imagined as recognized to be fundamental to the social and political interactions of everyday life. That said, it’s worth installing a caveat or two when outlining such histories of nationalism. There is clearly more work to be done on the everyday consequences of these educational campaigns of nationalism. As this volume shows, education has played an integral and overlooked role in the reproduction of nationalism, including the facilitation of varying shifts in the nature of identity— from benign to malignant. But in writing about nationalism, we must also be cautious in reproducing the same closed narrative on which it thrives. What we have presented remains yoked to the metropolitan version of this past

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 121

as well as to a patriarchal narrative of its great men. Such work, while critically reflective, is in keeping with the actual national narratives themselves which has political ramifications for revising patriarchal histories in nationalism. A focus on education can help correct this oversight as schooling’s gendered nature— the pantheon of national heroes were men, but the majority of teachers were women—cannot be denied. Furthermore, it is also worth sounding a word of warning about the rush to position education in the history of nationalism. There is a risk in such writing that this positioning reinforces nationalist mythologies. This is a fine line that we hope we have managed to walk on the side of critical distance. That is, public education in Argentina and Mexico has served nationalist causes that deserve skeptical appraisal. To be sure, there’s an element of civilizing purpose in both late-nineteenth-century Argentina and post-revolutionary Mexico. Such intentions were in keeping with the push for a responsible and employable citizenry in burgeoning liberal-ish states. But this impulse also continued the long tradition in Latin America, as elsewhere, of portraying other ways of knowing as barbarous, on the one hand, or easily conflated, on the other. For us, the European educational model was supplemented by indigenous or localized visions of identity that became synonymous with the nation state. They were not on equal footing. Any discussion of nationalism as a collective consciousness, like this chapter, runs the risk of reinforcing a limited notion of the nation founded on post-imperial regimes of knowledge. Schools have played a considerable role in fettering more expansive notions of human identity and settling for what historian Shlomo Sand (2017) calls “history-myths.” They certainly deserve attention, as this volume attests, but should not be absolved of any responsibility for helping establish prejudicial versions of national identity or silencing alternative versions from often marginalized groups, especially indigenous peoples. In spite of that, for the cases of Argentina and Mexico presented here, we hope that it is clear that the tempering of prejudice occurs best through educational spaces like schools. The shared knowledge of citizens within these nations at these specific junctions—as opposed to earlier and later reactionary moments—shows the possibility of civic nationalism as a social and political arrangement. Along with the aforementioned history-myths, the limits to this “benign” version, just as the cosmopolitan alternatives, should not be understated (Fine, 2011). Nevertheless, both the Argentinian and Mexican instances here are versions of school connectedness to national identity with an emphasis on civic unity more than jingoism—a coming together after political rupture in the case of Mexico and a move towards a more exclusionary cultural nationalism in Argentina. Lessons remain in both.

References Anderson, B. (1983/2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. Verso.

122  Howard Prosser, Jason Beech, and Alonso Casanueva Baptista Acosta, F. (2022). Nation-states, nation-building and schooling: The case of Spanish America in the long 19th century. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattoeva,  & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), World yearbook of education 2022: Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism (pp. 29–45). Routledge. Ascolani, A. (2020). Nacionalistas y libertarios: tensiones en torno de las conmemoraciones y símbolos patrios en la educación primaria (Argentina, 1910–1930). Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 20. Bertoni, L. (1992). Construir la nacionalidad: héroes, estatuas y fiestas patrias, 1887–1891. Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana “Dr. E. Ravignani” (5), 77–111. Bertoni, L. (2001). Patriotas, cosmopolitas y nacionalistas. La construcción de la nacionalidad a fines del siglo XIX. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. Sage Publishing. Breuilly, J. (2016). Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities: A symposium. Nations and Nationalism, 22(4), 625–659. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national Question in the new Europe. Cambridge University Press. Charlot, J. (2008). Patrocinio y libertad creativa: José Vasconcelos y sus muralistas. Parteaguas, Revista del Instituto Cultural de Aguascalientes, 4(13), 97–105. Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton University Press. Devoto, F. (2005) Nacionalismo, Fascismo y Tradicionalismo en la Argentina moderna. Siglo XXI. Dixon, S. (2010). Making Mexico more “latin”: National identity, statuary and heritage in Mexico City’s monument to independence. Journal of Latin American Geography, 9(2), 119–138. Dussel, I. (2011). Republicanism “out-of-place”: Readings on the circulation of republicanism in education in 19th-century Argentina. In D. Tröhler, T. S. Popkewitz, & D. F. Labaree (Eds.), Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century (pp. 131–152). Routledge. Elgenius, G. (2011). Symbols of nations and nationalism: Celebrating nationhood. Palgrave Macmillan. Florescano, E. (2005). Imágenes de la Patria a través de los Siglos. Taurus. Fine, R. (2011). Benign nationalism? The limits of the civic ideal. In E. Mortimer & R. Fine (Eds.), People, nation and state: The meaning of ethnicity and nationalism (pp. 141–148). I. B. Tauris. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press. Gorelik, A. (1998). La grilla y el parque. Espacio urbano y cultura urbana en Buenos Aires, 1887–1936. Editorial Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Gvirtz, S., & Beech, J. (2008). Going to school in Latin America. Greenwood Press. Gvirtz, S., Beech, J., & Oria, A. I. (2008). Argentina. In S. Gvirtz & J. Beech (Eds.), Going to school in Latin America. Greenwood Press. Hobsbawm, E. (1983). Introduction: Inventing traditions. In E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (Eds.), The invention of tradition (pp. 1–14). Cambridge University Press. Knight, A. (2016). The Mexican revolution: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Lagos, G. (2014). El nacionalismo de Ricardo Rojas en tiempos del centenario (1900–1916). Cuadernos de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy (45), 211–225. Lund, J. (2012). The mestizo state: Reading race in modern Mexico. University of Minnesota Press.

Sharing nationalism through public education in Latin America 123 Malešević, S. (2017). The foundations of statehood: Empires and nation-states in the longue durée. Thesis Eleven, 139(1), 145–161. doi:10.1177/0725513617701925 Mandel, C. (2007). Muralismo mexicano: arte público/identidad/memoria colectiva. ESCENA. Revista de las artes, 61(2), 37–54. Manrique, L. (2016). Dreaming of a cosmic race: José Vasconcelos and the politics of race in Mexico, 1920s–1930s. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 3(1). doi:10.1080/23311983.2016.1 218316 Mignolo, W. (2002). The geopolitics of knowledge and the colonial difference. South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 57–96. Miller, N. (1999). In the shadow of the state: Intellectuals and the quest for national identity in twentieth-century Spanish America. Verso. Miller, N. (2020). Republics of knowledge: Nations of the future in Latin America. Princeton University Press. Ocampo López, J. (2005). José Vasconcelos y la educación Mexicana. Revista Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana, 7(1), 137–157. Rockwell, E. (2011). Popular education and the logics of schooling. Paedagogica Historica, 47(1–2), 33–48. doi:10.1080/00309230.2010.505576 Rojas, R. (1909/2011). La restauración nacionalista: informe sobre educación. UNIPE Editorial Universitaria. Romero, L. A. (2001) Breve historia contemporánea de la Argentina. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Sand, S. (2017). Twilight of history. Verso. Sarmiento, D. F. (1845/2004). Facundo: Civilización y barbarie. El Cid Editor. Scott, D., Posner, C. M., Martin, C., & Guzman, E. (2018). The education system in Mexico. UCL Press. Siekmeier, J. F. (2017). Latin American nationalism: Identity in a globalizing world. Bloomsbury. Solberg, C. E. (1970). Immigration and nationalism: Argentina and Chile, 1890–1914. Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), University of Texas—Austin. Tedesco, J. C. (1986) Educación y sociedad en la Argentina (1880–1945). Ediciones Solar. Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nationbuilding: Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7–33). Routledge. Vasconcelos, J. (1921). Un llamado cordial. El Maestro: Revista de Cultura Nacional, 1(1), 5–9. Vásquez de Knauth, J. (1970). Nacionalismo y Educación en México. El Colegio de México. Zubrzycki, G. (Ed.). (2017). National matters: Materiality, culture and nationalism. Stanford University Press.

Chapter 6

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education Christianity and political ideologies in shaping one nation and two states 1 Terri Kim

The modernity of nations and nationalism has been taken for granted as a self-evident truth, as Gellner (1983) claims, prevailing ‘in the modern world and nowhere else’ (p.  138). However, the conventional commentaries about tensions between ethnicities and nationalism in making modern nations (e.g. Smith; Hutchinson & Smith) have not been of major relevance to the case of Korea. The notions of Korea as ‘an ethnic nation’ and ‘a state’ (with no recognized ethnic or cultural minority) have been coeval since ancient times—first identified with Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom (2333 bc to 108 bc) which indicates the origin of the Korean people2, and since the seventh century, identified with unified Silla (668–935 bc), followed by Goryeo (918–1392 bc) and Joseon (1392–1897 bc). Until the late nineteenth century, Korea had been a thorough-going Confucian ideology-based bureaucratic nation-state, applying the tenets of Confucianism in its governing system (Kim, 2001/2018). Korea adopted Confucianism in the fourth century together with the Chinese written language (Eckert et al., 1990, p.  30). The ancient Confucian civilization world had its own rational cosmopolitanism, within which Joseon [the Korean Confucian State] (1392– 1897) was a neo-Confucian ideology-based bureaucratic nation-state. Education was a key instrument to uphold the Confucian state ideology and maintain the state apparatus and socio-economic structure. Sungkyunkwan (1392–1894), the national higher education institution in Joseon, was a training institution for the higher civil service as was its predecessor, Gukjagam in Goryeo (935–1392) (Kim, 2001/2018). The Confucian state in Korea, as in China, orchestrated the national civil service examination system, through which civil servants (Confucian scholar mandarins) were selected in meritocratic principle. In this regard, the conventional juxtaposition of ethnic versus civic nationalism in the existing literature (e.g. Hutchinson & Smith, 1994) is a Eurocentric assumption and thus limited to explain the origins and evolution of Korean nation and nationalism which entailed both ethnic and civic elements (Kim & Bamberger, 2021a). Furthermore, the drastic change in the nature of the state in modern Korean history is atypical: that is from the long-standing Confucian DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-7

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 125

ideology-based bureaucratic nation state (1392–1897) to a modern Korean ethnic nation (as a stateless nation) within the Japanese Empire (1910–1945) and then to two ideologically contrasting Korean nation-states (1948 to present): Republic of Korea (ROK) and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In the age of nationalism, there have been confusions and tensions between the concepts of the nation and the state (Tröhler, 2020, p. 622; Kim & Bamberger, 2021a, p. 530; Ryan, 1997, p. 157). National identity and state identity are not the same and should be differentiated where necessary. Nevertheless, the two terms, the nation and the state, have been used interchangeably, often in an indiscriminate fashion such as the ‘United Nations’, which is, in fact, an association of ‘states’, not of nations (Kim  & Bamberger, 2021a, p.  530; Tröhler, 2020, p.  623). This confusion may be attributed to the ‘League of Nations’ founded in 1919 (the predecessor of UN), following Woodrow Wilson’s vision for a new international order after WWI, proclaiming the principle of ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ (Kim & Bamberger, 2021a). Tröhler (2020) suggests the misleading equation of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ itself results from nationalist perceptions. Connor (1994, p.  xi) notes that ‘nation connotes a group of people who believe they are ancestrally related, and nationalism connotes identification with and loyalty to one's nation as just defined. It does not refer to loyalty to one’s country [state]’. Hence, loyalty to the ethnic group (nationalism) and loyalty to the state (patriotism) are ‘not naturally harmonious’ (Connor, 1994, p. 30). This issue is particularly complex in the modern history of Korea during the colonial period (1910–45) and after national partition (since 1945). Tröhler and Maricic in the first chapter of this volume offered a systematic overview of the ways to understand nationalism: first, the three grandnarrative approaches to nationalism—that is the primordial, the modernist, and the ethno-symbolic and then the two new attempts, which are constructivist approach to nationalism as a discourse and discursive formation and functionalist approach, focusing on the analysis of political and social processes in given nations. They ask: [W]hat kind of perceptions and conceptions these theorists of nationalism have of the role of education and schooling in the process of the reproduction of nationalism and of nation-building—that is, with what kind of educational awareness and knowledge they argue, what their implicit and unspoken “educational theory” is. (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023, p. 6) This chapter examines the case of Korea. It will also attempt to make explicit the implicit ‘educational theory’ imbedded in the interpretations of Korean ethnic nationalism as shaped by modern education and schooling, initiated under the influence of Protestantism.

126  Terri Kim

Taking the ‘ethno-symbolic’ approach (Smith, 2009), it is suggested that while the notions of Korea as an ethnic nation and a sovereign state date back to pre-modern times, it was under the conditions of ‘modernity’ (­Christianity, imperialism and social Darwinism) that a ‘modern’ Korean nation, ­ethnic nationalism, and internationalism were made tangible on the international stage. In Gellner’s interpretation of the nation and nationalism in the modern epoch, it was ‘secular education’ in a specific language that provided the key to modern identity and citizenship (Gellner, 1983; as cited in Smith, 2009, p. 5). However, such generalization would be inapplicable in many non-European contexts. In the case of Korea, it was not secular public/state education but ‘private Christian education’ that had provided the key to modern Korean ethnic nationalism and internationalism. Thus, the argument of the chapter is two-fold: first, private education in Korea provided by Western Protestant missionaries and Korean nationalists with an international outlook had played a major symbolic and (re)constructionist role (Wells, 1990) in shaping ‘modern Korean ethnic nationalism’ from the very inception of modern education in Korea. Second, Korean ethnic nationalism has been the backbone of political visions of the future and the foreground of ideological debates amid a series of crises in the modern and contemporary history of Korea. To analyze this, the chapter takes up the following four themes: • • • •

Christianity and modern Korean nationalism: the making of the modern educationalized nation-state Trajectories across the first half the twentieth century and the emergence of two Koreas Ethnic nationalism in the two Korean states Korean ethno-nationalist internationalism and Weltanschauung

Christianity and modern Korean nationalism: the making of the modern educationalized nationstate Korea was virtually unknown to the world outside the Sino-centric region until the late nineteenth century. The long-standing strictly isolationist policy in Joseon [the Korean Confucian State] kept the country from all foreign forces except China. The late nineteenth century was a turning point for Korea in both domestic politics and international relations. Korea then became extremely vulnerable to rival international powers seeking to gain hegemony, and the Treaty of Ganghwa in 1876 with Japan eventually forced Korea to sign its first unequal treaty which opened up Korea. It was just the beginning of many unequal treaties that Korea acceded to. King Gojong [the last King of Joseon Dynasty in Korea] tried to play foreign powers off against one

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 127

other—the so-called Yiyizheyi [이이제이; 以夷制夷] tactics but was undermined by local factions and plotters favoring one power or the other (Hara, 1998; Salmon, 2014). Against this backdrop, the ‘National Enlightenment Movement’ started in Korea at the grassroots level, combining the ‘modern education for the nation’ movement and the ‘national socio-economic reconstruction’ movements, led by the Korean nationalists who encountered international and modern knowledge transferred by the Western missionaries in the late nineteenth century. These grassroots movements were supported by the Protestant Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (Kim & Bamberger, 202, p. 518). Since its introduction in 1884, Protestant Christianity has become Korea’s largest religion. Although Roman Catholicism was introduced to Korea a century earlier in 1784 (Hara, 1998), Joseon [the Korean Confucian state] was then suspicious of Christianity and Western imperial powers. However, academic interest in Christian teaching in the early days led to conversion among Korean elites, and Christianity spread quickly without much involvement of missionary activities in Korea in the late eighteenth century. It soon became subjected to severe persecutions because Joseon considered Roman Catholicism to be undermining Confucian norms and customs. Over the course of 100  years (until 1866), as many as 10,000 Catholics were martyred in Korea, including French priests (Finch, 2009). Nevertheless, Roman Catholicism has steadily grown to become Korea’s third largest religion after Protestant Christianity and Buddhism (Choi, 2009). It should also be noted that as Koreans began converting to Christianity, they adapted the religion to their own context and formed their own beliefs and practices both in concert with, and apart from, Western missionary activities (Finch, 2009; Yoo, 2016). In 1894, a decade after the introduction of Protestant Christianity, the Donghak Peasant Revolution erupted in the southwest region of the Korean peninsula. It was the largest scale peasant insurrection in Korean history. This Revolution was an incipient form of modern Korean ethnic nationalism. Donghak [동학; 東學] started in 1864 in reaction to Catholicism spreading in Joseon and developed as the first modern domestic religion in Korea, renamed Cheondogyo (meaning ‘religion of the Heavenly Way’) in the early 1900s. Donghak means ‘Eastern Learning’ to distinguish it from Seohak [서학; 西學] (meaning ‘Western learning’). Donghak promoted the themes of exclusion of foreign influences, Korean ethnic nationalism, salvation, and consciousness among Koreans with a strong sense of national crisis. Donghak rejected the Confucian social system and emphasized the principle of equality of all human beings (Bell, 2004). The Donghak peasant army was infused with a strong patriotic ardor, seeking an end to the foreign interference in Korea and demanding reforms of the traditional Korean Confucian class and caste system, claiming fundamental human rights especially, for those low on the social ladder (Kallander, 2013).

128  Terri Kim

Donghak’s fundamental teaching is that all humans are equal because every human being is an embodiment of heaven/Haneulnim [하늘님] (meaning Heavenly Lord); thus, every one of them is worthy of respect equally. Syncretizing Korean shamanism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Neo-Confucian metaphysics, Donghak’s conception of God is anthropocentric, egalitarian, and panentheistic (Chung, 2007; Jeong, 2019). This holistic, egalitarian, humanistic idea of Donghak (later Cheondogyo) also resonates with Hongik Ingan [홍익인간; 弘益人間]—the founding spirit of the first Korean nation, Gojoseon (2333 bc to 108 bc), which means ‘widely benefits the whole community of human beings’. Although Donghak started in reaction to Seohak (i.e. Western learning identified with Roman Catholicism), there was growing mutual understanding and increased collaboration and solidarity between Donghak (Cheondogyo) believers and Protestant Christians in Korea at the turn of the last century as they were all imbued with Korean ethnic nationalism (Lee, 2014). Especially during the colonial period, among the 33 leaders, who drew up a Korean ‘Proclamation of Independence’ to be announced on the First of March 1919, were 16 Christian and 15 Cheondogyo and 2 Buddhist leaders (Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). In the post-colonial era, Donghak was revived and embraced by both North and South Korean states. Bell (2004) suggests that both North and South Korea sought to claim the legacy of the Donghak movement in their respective nation-states to legitimize their political goals. The Donghak Peasant Revolution had the potential to develop into a fullfledged social revolution, if only foreign intervention had not brought it so abruptly to an end (Eckert et al., 1990). In hindsight, however, the Donghak Peasant Revolution had the opposite outcome. Ironically, it hastened the loss of Korean sovereignty. It sparked the Sino-Japanese War on Korean soil as China and Japan both dispatched troops to quell the revolt. It proved to be an easy victory for the Japanese, eradicating Korea’s traditional relationship with China. Although the Donghak Peasant Revolution was unsuccessful, it was an important impetus behind the Gabo Reform [갑오개혁; 甲午改革] (1894–1896). The Gabo Reform was a series of sweeping reforms to update the state apparatus and social and economic systems with new political visions of the future to be disseminated by modern education. It thoroughly revamped the traditional Confucian state apparatus, but under the influence of Japanese imperialists. It terminated the 1,000-year-old tradition of Confucian civil service examination in Korea. It eliminated the Confucian class distinction, cancelled traditional castes, and banned slavery, thus opening access to modern education and the ranks of officialdom to men of talent—regardless of social background. It also established a modern police force and military on the basis of conscription regardless of background (Eckert et al., 1990, pp. 222–230). The Gabo Reform brought a fundamental reform of the Korean education system after abolishing the traditional Confucian State civil service examination and working out plans for a number of modern schools and colleges to

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 129

teach Western knowledge. Protestant missionaries, who had already established mission schools from 1885, also participated in organizing the modern government schools. Major efforts were made then to give the Korean people with a sense of national identity and patriotism by using the Korean alphabet (Hangul ) and by teaching Korean history at all levels. All official government documents were to be written in Hangul—instead of Hanja (logographic Sino-Korean) from then on (Eckert et al., 1990, pp. 222–230). Overall, the Gabo Reform marked the first ‘transitology’3 (1894–97) (Cowen, 2000) in modern Korean history to cancel the 500-year long Confucian State apparatus and the traditional Confucian class-based social barriers by abolishing the Confucian civil service examination. It laid the ground for a modern Korean nation-state. The collapse of the Sino-centric East Asian world order in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the condemnation of Confucianism in Korea as a major cause of economic failure and stagnation (Kim, 2009, p.  857). Many Korean ethnic nationalists then accepted social Darwinism4 as the dominant world view (Weltanschauung), and it is in this context that Koreans accepted (often proactively) Christianity and Western education provided by Western Protestant missionaries. Koreans saw the missionaries as conduits of Western knowledge, and they wanted to learn Western political and economic ideas to replace the Confucian world order. They attended Christian private schools in hopes of acquiring both religious and technological knowledge to strengthen the nation and achieve Korea’s independence and regain sovereignty. Due to Japanese imperialism and colonialism, Protestantism in Korea did not suffer the stigma of Western imperialism (Kim, 2001/2018; Kim, S. C., 2018). Protestantism cultivated a national consciousness among Koreans (both elite and commoners alike), transmitting Western knowledge directly to Koreans, regardless of social class and gender (Choi, 2009), at private schools founded and taught by both Western missionaries and modern-educated enlightened Koreans. Many young Korean intellectuals and political leaders were converted to Christianity and led socio-economic reconstruction movements in Korea as a part of the National Enlightenment Movement (Kim & Bamberger, 2021a). As a result, Korea fast became one of the most promising foreign mission fields (Yoo, 2016; Lee, 2007). By 1909, just 25  years after Protestant missionaries first arrived in Korea, there were 965 American Presbyterian churches and 590 Christian mission schools established in Korea, and the total of adherents was 96,400 (The Report . . ., 1909). At that time, the ‘national literacy’ (Tröhler, 2011, 2020) in Korea had a fundamental shift, moving away from Confucianism and logographic SinoKorean, Hanja, and embracing Protestantism and pure Korean, Hangul, to create a new ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1983). It is important to acknowledge Homer Hulbert (1863–1949) among prominent Protestant missionaries in Korea. Hulbert contributed to promoting Hangul (Korean alphabet) with his research and study into the orthography and the grammar of Hangul with

130  Terri Kim

Ju Si-gyeong, one of the major Korean scholars devoted to Korean linguistics. Homer Hulbert declared in his book, The Passing of Korea (1906): the Korean vernacular writing system “has not its superior in the world” in terms of its “simplicity of construction and phonetic power.” (Hulbert, 1906; cited in Choi, 2009, p. 112). The Korean language has a unique alphabet, Hangul, invented by King Sejong the Great (the fourth king of the Yi Joseon Dynasty in 1443). King Sejong’s purpose of creating the pure Korean alphabet was for the Korean nation to become linguistically independent and increase literacy among the whole population and communicate with the whole population. However, the Confucian literati class continued to use the logographic Sino-Korean, Hanja. The use of Chinese characters among the Confucian literati in East Asia (Hanzi in Mandarin, Kanji in Japanese, Hanja in Korean, and Hán tự in Vietnamese) was equivalent to the use of the Latin script in Europe, which indicates the Confucian origins of learning in East Asia and the Christian origins of learning in Europe. Hulbert’s work, along with the work of Ju Si-Gyeong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, would eventually become the academic foundation for modern research of the Korean language. Hulbert also wrote Samin Pilji [사민필지; 士民必知; Essential Knowledge for Scholars and Commoners], which was the first-world geography textbook written in Hangul (Korean). Soon after its publication in 1891, Samin Pilji not only was used as a teaching material by educational institutions in Korea but also became popular among the Korean nationalist elites. However, in 1909, the Japanese authority banned the publication and sale of Samin Pilji in Korea as they thought the textbook was too stimulating for the Korean people’s ideological education process (Schmid, 2010).

Trajectories across the first half the twentieth century and the emergence of two Koreas Soon after the Gabo Reform, King Gojong of the Yi Dynasty Joseon declared the ‘Great Korean Empire’ [대한제국; 大韓帝國] in 1897, effectively ending the ancient vassal state relationship with China to become a new modern nation-state. However, it was only a precursor to losing Korea’s sovereignty to Japan. Eventually, through the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905, Korea became the protectorate of Imperial Japan, and 5 years later in 1910, Korea was annexed to Japan as a colony of the Japanese Empire, which marks the second transitology (1905–1910) in modern Korean history. Korea became a stateless ethnic nation, for the first time in Korean history. Japanese efforts to control the educational system in Korea started early during the Protectorate period. In a series of ordinances promulgated after 1906, the Japanese-led government control of textbooks and curriculum started in public schools. In 1908, the Private School Ordinance required licensing and

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 131

annual reports for all private schools (Eckert et al., 1990). After the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, codes regulating all public and private schools were unified. The Educational Ordinance for Korea after annexation encapsulates the Japanese colonial intent of the public education system: Common education shall pay special attention to the engendering of national [Japanese] characteristics and the spread of the national language [Japanese]; the essential principles of education in Chosen [Chosun; Joseon] shall be the making of loyal and good subjects by giving instruction on the basis of the Imperial Rescript concerning education. (Eckert et al., 1990, p. 262) The Ordinance on Joseon Education in 1911 and, subsequently, Regulations on Professional Schools and Revised Regulations on Private Schools in March  1915 were intended to stifle Korean national education in private schools. All courses were to be taught in Japanese in line with the Japanese colonial assimilation policy, placing primary emphasis on teaching the Japanese language and excluding from the educational curriculum such subjects as Korean language and Korean history (Kim, 2001/2018). The tight regulation of private schools by the Japanese authority was significant because the private schools operated by Korean nationalists and Western missionaries encouraged intellectual freedom and provided cover for political activity as the counter-hegemonic spatial agency against Japanese imperialism. Japanese colonial officials argued that the existence of private education altogether ran antithetical to the empire’s goals. There was the strong demand that Christian private schools should conform to the Japanese colonial government standards and teach the prescribed government curriculum (Fisher, 1928, pp. 6–7). With the enactment of strict regulations, many private schools were closed. In 1907, Western missionaries alone operated 532 Christian schools (508 primary schools, 22 high schools, and 2 theological schools), but, by 1917, this number got halved and by 1937 only 34 Christian schools of all types remained. Korean-operated private schools suffered a similar fate (Eckert et  al., 1990, pp.  262–263). When a revised regulation was promulgated in 1915 to reinforce control over the private institutions, the Federal Council of Missions in Seoul protested against the regulation. This paved the way for the authorization of Chosun Christian College (later Yonhi College) (Kim, 2001/2018, pp. 64–65). In 1915, Chosun Christian College (initially started in 1896 by Dr H. G. Underwood) was established as the first private higher education institution in Korea, focusing on liberal arts education with Christian principles and purporting to produce Christian leaders with the spirits of freedom and truth. In 1917, Chosun Christian College was accredited as ‘Private Yonhi College’, teaching Humanities, Mathematics, Physics, Business, Agriculture, and Theology.

132  Terri Kim

Severance Medical College (founded in 1895)5 was also accredited as ‘Severance Union Medical College’ (Kim, I-W., 2015; Yonsei University, 2015). The Japanese colonial state in Korea (1910–45) repressed Christianity to foster the loyalty of Koreans to the Japanese Emperor, inhibited Korean freedom of expressions and academic autonomy, and banned all political activities by Koreans. Koreans under Japanese colonial rule had no freedom of assembly or media to convey the will of the people. Speaking Korean was forbidden, and it also became a crime to teach Korean Geography and Korean History from non-approved texts (Kim, 2001/2018; Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). Many academics and students in private Christian schools were directly involved in Korean independence movements during the colonial period. Stirred up by Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination, Koreans rose en masse on 1 March 1919. Despite peaceful demonstrations, the Japanese colonial state brutally suppressed it. However, it drew worldwide attention and influenced China’s May Fourth movement in 1919 and India’s non-violence movement in the 1920s (Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). James Earnest Fisher (1886–1989), who worked at Yonhi College as a missionary educator, evaluates the March First Independence Movement in 1919 as a turning point for ‘The Rebirth of Korea,’ which [E]xpressed itself in an eagerness and a demand for education, the suddenness and intensity of which has probably never been paralleled in any other country. From the most remote parts of Korea students came to fill the schools, and mission schools were suddenly faced with an entirely new situations; they were being besieged and implored on all sides by boys and girls begging to be taken in and given an opportunity to study. (Fisher, 1928, p. 6) Unlike the Keijo Imperial University, Christian private colleges opened the academic profession to both Korean and Western missionary scholars who taught Korean history, literature, and language as part of Oriental History classes in both Korean (secretly) and English. However, during the Pacific War, the Japanese colonial state banned teaching in English in Christian private colleges and censored texts of English writers (Kim, 2001/2018). In 1942, the Japanese Colonial Government of Korea arrested 33 Koreans, including 3 faculty members of Yonhi College and prominent Korean language scholars as well as other graduates of the school. They were charged with organizing the Joseon Language Society [조선어학회; 朝鮮語學會; now the Korean Language Society], studying the Korean language, and attempting to publish a Korean-language dictionary (Kim, I-W., 2015; Yonsei University, 2015). Despite the Japanese colonial State’s brutal suppression, Christian private colleges continued to produce Korean nationalist leaders with an international outlook. Most of the distinguished Korean national elites were graduates of Christian private colleges, and many of them moved abroad to study in major

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 133

Western universities as foreign students and/or political exiles (Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). Overall, in Korea, it was Christian private education that opened a direct path to Western knowledge for Koreans (Kim, 2001/2018) and brought out fundamental change to Korea, in tandem with Korean people’s grassroots nationalist movements.

Ethnic nationalism in the two Korean nation-states Korea’s independence came suddenly at the end of World War II. The surrender of Imperial Japan on 15 August 1945, however, led to an abrupt national partition at the 38th parallel with the Soviet Union occupying the north and the United States occupying the south. In the summer of 1945, neither the Soviet Union nor the United States had envisioned the formation of two separate Korean nation-states. The United States and the Soviet Union had agreed at the highest levels to an ‘internationalist’ solution to the Korean problem through trusteeship (Shin, B-r, 2008). However, their occupation forces on the ground resulted in pursuing ‘nationalist’ policies, reflecting the ideological division among the Koreans themselves (Eckert et al., 1990, pp. 339–40). As a result, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) were established in the south and the north, respectively, in 1948 in the Cold War geopolitics. This marks the third transitology (1945–53) in modern Korean history. Since the foundation of ROK and DPRK in 1948, each of them has promoted their respective state sovereignty on the international stage with a new state identity with opposite political ideologies—that is capitalist democracy in South Korea and communist autocracy in North Korea. Christianity was important as a founding principle of the Republic of Korea in the south while it was more implicitly so in the north. James Earnest Fisher (1886–1989), as a missionary and scholar with many years of experience in colonial Korea, came to play an important role as an USAMGIK (United States Army Military Government in Korea) official in the years leading up to the establishment of the Republic of Korea. Fisher first came to Korea as an educational missionary and worked mostly at Yonhi College (currently Yonsei University) as a professor from 1919 to 1934. During that time, he introduced John Dewey’s ideas on democracy and education and tried to reinterpret the goals of mission education in Korea (Fischer, 1928). He returned to Korea as Director of Political Education in the Office of Public Opinion, Ministry of Public Information of the USAMGIK. Fisher’s ideas and activities reflect the character of Korean democracy being formulated during the era of US military occupation, which could not resolve post-colonial issues such as pro-Japanese collaboration and political strife (An, 2020, pp. 116–117). For decades, the Korean independence movement was torn by factionalism and in-fighting, and most of the leaders of the independence movement hated

134  Terri Kim

each other as much as they hated the Japanese. Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), who had lived for decades in the United States, was a figure known only from afar in Korea and therefore regarded as a more or less acceptable compromise candidate for the conservative factions. More importantly, Rhee was Christian and spoke fluent English (with a PhD from Princeton University), whereas none of his rivals did, and therefore he was the Korean politician most trusted and favored by the American occupation government. Syngman Rhee became the first President of ROK by defeating Kim Gu who had been the last president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (KPG) (1919–45). As the USAMGIC and the first Republic of Korea led by Syngman Rhee relied on the pro-Japanese factions after liberation, the investigation activities of pro-Japanese collaboration were disbanded by 6 June 1949 (Fields, 2019). The most salient aspect of Rhee’s ideology was his commitment to Korean national independence, a commitment that lasted his whole life. He believed that a divided Korea was not an independent Korea. His one consistent ideological test was whether any given ideology, politics, or strategy furthered the cause of Korean independence. Fields (2017) suggests that Rhee should be regarded as an anti-Soviet rather than an anti-communist. Rhee’s anti-communist stance was more functionalist than philosophical; and Rhee’s politics for most of his life resonated more with the ideals of left-wing social democracy than with right-wing free-market capitalism (Field, 2017). Two years later after the foundation of the two Korean nation-states, ROK and DPRK, the Korean War was started by the North Korean invasion of South Korea on 25 June  1950. The Korean War (1950–53) was not only a civil war but also the biggest proxy war during the Cold War, involving the USSR, China, the United States, and the United Nations Command (UNC) formed for the first time. Under the UN flag, 22 countries contributed either combat forces or medical assistance to support South Korea during the war (Eckert, et al., 1990), but the Korean War failed to resolve the political division of Korea, which continues to remain a source of tension and danger to the present day. The fourth transitology (1961–1972) in South Korea started with the May  16 military coup d'état in 1961, led by General Park Chung Hee, who was formerly a lieutenant in the Japanese-controlled Manchukuo Army during the colonial period and the second-highest ranking officer in the South Korean army. General Park oversaw the swift militarization of South Korean life. His military regime in South Korea transformed the state apparatus and created a strong ‘Developmental State’ (Kim, 2009). Under the bureaucratic authoritarian military regime led by Park, a new South Korean socialeconomic stratification system emerged, and the state’s vision of becoming a newly industrializing export-oriented economy was realized, known as the ‘Miracle on the Han River’ with the extraordinarily high GNP growth rate, averaging 10% annually during much of his 18-year rule. Park also revolutionized the educational standards of South Korea with the rapid eradication of illiteracy

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 135

and massification of higher education. In the name of ‘anti-communism’, however, the Republic of Korea’s attempts at fostering democracy were dashed, and the state morphed into a military dictatorship (Kim, T., 2000). The establishment of the Yushin [Revitalization Reform] order by President Park Chung Hee in 1972 directly altered the national curriculum as well as the State apparatus. The emphasis of Yushin was on a Saemaul Undong [New Community Movement] to provide better living conditions for the common people in rural villages and to yield unity and prosperity among the Korean people. To this end, many schools have been built and educational programs initiated. The fostering of a Korean ethnic national identity in youth was a conscious aim of the Yushin educational system. In the new ‘Yushin Constitution’, school education became highly conformist to inculcate Korean ethno-nationalist identity and produce well-trained skilled labor in keeping with national industrial goals. Meanwhile, North Korea, in this period of the 1970s, consolidated Juche sasang [주체사상; 主體思想; ‘self reliance’ ideology] as the state doctrine. North Korea was admitted to the Non-Aligned Movement in 1975 and began to present itself as a leader of the Third World. It fostered diplomatic relations with developing countries and promoted Juche as a model for others to follow. In the 1980s, a tactic used by the North Korean propaganda apparatus was to establish alliance with European left-wing intellectuals, turning development shortfalls into a selling point for European visitors. Luise Ringer, for instance, a leading member of the German Green Party and a notable author, who visited North Korea 11 times and met with Kim Il Sung 45 times between 1980 and 1992 praised North Korean socialism as “socialism with a human face” and “model not just for the Third World” (Young, 2015, June  12: www.nknews.org/2015/06/ north-koreas-unlikely-alliance-with-german-environmentalists/). The fifth transitiology (1992–2002) in South Korea came with a new civilian democratic government led by President Kim Young-sam, ending the 30-year-long military leaderships, with the slogan ‘correct the national history’. In 1995, as a part of the revisionist history movement, the government demolished the dominant symbol of Japanese colonialism, the Government General Building built during the colonial period. The state’s new vision of the future in the period of Kim Young-sam government (1992–1997) consistently focused on ‘globalization’ [Segyehwa], with neoliberal policies such as flexibility of labor market, privatization, and the ‘lean’ state. At the international level, globalization policy focused on making South Korea a more visible and influential member of international society. One measure was to strengthen the Korea Foundation’s overseas projects, and another measure was to join the OECD as the second Asian country (after Japan) in 1996 (Kim, T., 2000, 2011). However, the outbreak of the East Asian economic crisis in 1997 followed by the IMF bailout brought a collapse and restructuring of the South Korean

136  Terri Kim

social and economic stratification during the succeeding government led by President Kim Dae-Jung (1998–2003), the leader of the opposition party and the most visible dissident in the country. Assuming the presidency amid the economic crisis in 1998, Kim Dae Jung proclaimed a new state vision of the future: ‘A Second Nation-Building’ [Je Yi-ey Guenguk]. More precisely, it means ‘a second nation-state building’. He mastered the economic crisis and initiated the drastic change in the inter-Korean relations with the pro-North Korean ‘Sunshine Policy’ (Kim, 2001/2018). Since the time of Kim Dae-Jung, the Korean government has been led by the ‘left-wing progressive’ party and then by the ‘right-wing conservative’ party in turn, repeating this pattern twice. However, what determines ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’ in South Korean politics cannot be understood in accordance with the European tradition of political ideologies. In South Korea, party politics are guided by ‘ethnic nationalism’, and their relations to the North Korean regime are often the most important barometer for measuring their political positions in the left-right political spectrum. Progressives have pushed for a kind of appeasement and peace policy towards North Korea, such as ‘Sunshine Policy’. On the other hand, conservatives have pushed for a hard-line policy against North Korea, which they call ‘anti-communism’, even though North Korea under the Kim family regime with its quasi-religious doctrine, Juche sasang, has fundamentally deviated from Communism long ago. In the 1990s, North Korea also underwent major geopolitical and economic shifts. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the sudden death of the North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung in 1994, North Korea had horrific famines for 5  years—a period of mass starvation together with a great economic crisis from 1994 to 1998, caused by its agricultural mismanagement and floods and the anomaly of the state-controlled distribution system, slashing food rations (Noland, 2004). In the midst of cataclysm of the worst famine in Korean history, the hardships imposed and justified by the DPRK state ideology, Juche, ironically led to the growth of rudimentary markets in North Korea as individuals had to seek new means to survive the calamities of the 1990s. The state’s political apparatus, however, remained strong, regardless of the sudden death of Kim Il-sung (the first leader of North Korea) in 1994, succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Il, and continued to develop its nuclear weapons program in North Korea (Seth, 2011). Overall, it can be suggested that despite the long-standing political conflicts and enmity between the two Korean nation-states, both ROK and DPRK were built on the common ideology of ‘Korean ethnic nationalism’ that strengthened the Korean people’s sense of resolve against the foreign power and their ‘identityforming organizing principle of everyday life’ (Tröhler et  al., 2022; Billig, 1995, 2017). Accordingly, it is important to understand the longue durée and ideational contexts that shaped modern Korean ethnic nationalism, which will be considered in the next section.

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 137

Korean ethno-nationalist internationalism and Weltanschauung Social Darwinism and internationalism in the age of nationalism

In the surge of nationalism at the turn of the last century, ‘social Darwinism’, using Spencer’s phrase ‘survival of the fittest’, was given nationalist and racist associations. It was banded about ‘to justify or illustrate all sorts of contradictory social and political stances, including nationalism, militarism, imperialism, free trade, individualism, socialism, and even pacifism’ (Himmelfarb, 1959, p. 407; cited in Hodgson & Knudsen, 2010, p. 16). Social Darwinism as the dominant world view (Weltanschauung) was accepted by many Korean intellectuals to make sense of the world and structure the reality—the sudden fall of Joseon [the Korean Confucian state] and the fate of the modern Korea nation under colonial conditions. Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) illustrated the possibility that a non-Western, non-white power can successfully challenge Western imperialism and gave a great impetus to nationalistic movements throughout Asia and also led to the rationalization of Japanese imperialism. As the European colonization of Asia and Africa undermined the principles established in the Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 and reconfirmed in the Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 (Brubaker, 1996), the rise of modern nationalism in Asia and Africa became an integral principle for national independence and decolonial movements especially after the principles of ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ proclaimed by both Lenin and Woodrow Wilson in 1914 and 1919, respectively (Kim  & Bamberger, 2021a, p. 515). Along with nationalism as a global ideology in the nineteenth century, various transnational ideologies such as pan-Europeanism, pan-Asianism, and later pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism were also rising (Duara, 1997, p.  1033; Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). Internationalism is described as the ideology of international ‘bonding’, and its ideological point of departure is the existing society of nations (Holbraad, 2003). There are many different forms of ‘nationalism’ such as ethnic, cultural, multicultural, trans-border, and religious (Campbell, 2015, p. 485), and of internationalism such as liberal internationalism and socialist internationalism. The paradox is that in Korea, ethnic nationalism was not only compatible but also often overlapped with ‘ethnic internationalism’ (Kim & Bamberger, 2021a)—especially among the Korean nationalist elites who actively engaged in independence movements both in and outside Korea, many of whom were then Christian, socialist, or anarchist (Tikhonov, 2010). When the ethnic-nationalist interpretations of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination failed to materialize, a number of anti-colonial activists in Asia began to emphasize the need for solidarity by drawing on what

138  Terri Kim

they perceived as traditional and shared ‘Asian’ values (Neuhaus, 2017). The central trope of pan-Asian nationalism was commonality and solidarity in the face of alien intrusion and domination. However, that did not inhibit its utility in rationalizing a new form of domination according to the social Darwinist world view. Japan then as the first industrialized country in the non-Western world justified its imperialist desire to colonize its neighboring countries in East Asia and promulgated the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ [大東亜共栄圏] to justify its military aggression in East Asia in the 1930s through the end of World War II (Duus, 1996; Kim & Bamberger, 2021a, p. 517). Korean elites in the early twentieth century were imbued with the ideas of ‘self-determinism’ and ‘pan-nationalism’ against imperialism, and some were also sympathetic to ‘pan-Asianism’: for example, Yun Ch’iho (1865–1945) who was a distinguished Korean Christian nationalist intellectual; diplomat, educator, journalist, patriot, and Christian statesman. Yun envisioned the emancipation and enlightenment of Korean people through Christianity and modern education (especially vocational education) for a new nation-building [nation-state building] (Yun, 2001). Nationalism espouses the idea that nations should have self-determination/ governance: that is the right of people to self-determination as proclaimed by both Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, respectively. However, it is important to understand both Wilson and Lenin’s motives behind the doctrine of ‘selfdetermination’. While Lenin’s idea of self-determination was directly serving workers’ revolution and socialist national liberation movements around the world, it can be suggested that Wilson’s idea was the wartime strategy and diplomacy to create a space for the United States in the imperial games after the WWI (Lynch, 2002).6 Yun Ch’iho understood the international power relations of the given epoch and warned fellow compatriots that Wilson’s intended audience were those affected by the Great War, and thus Korea and other nations unaffected by the war would not be considered (Yun, 2001; Kim, M., 2018; Suh, 2017). He did not join the group of 33 Korean cultural and religious leaders (16 Christian, 15 Cheondokyo, and 2 Buddhist leaders) who drew up a Korean ‘Proclamation of Independence’ proclaimed on the First of March 1919. Overall, the seemingly conflicting ideas of anticolonial nationalism and supranational connectedness of countries and people were characteristic of the interwar period in Asia (Neuhaus, 2017; Kim & Bamberger, 2021a, p. 517). Many Korean ethnic nationalists, who had been actively anti-colonial in the 1910s and 20s, eventually accepted the colonial realities and collaborated with the Japanese imperial agenda in the name of the ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ in the 1930s and 40s. Many leading Korean nationalist intellectuals’ complicity, especially during the second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Pacific War (1941–1945), was based on a social Darwinist view of the world (Tikhonov, 2010).

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 139

Messianic visions of Korean ethnic nationalism and internationalism

Koreans regarded their national identity as being immutable or primordial through an imagined conception of ‘pure Korean blood’ and thought of themselves as belonging to a ‘unitary nation that was ethnically homogeneous and racially unique’ (Shin, et  al., 1999, p.  469). Such an exclusionary version of Korean ethnic nationalism developed in the early twentieth century as a reaction to Japanese colonialism which aimed to annihilate Korean culture and identity and absorb the Korean people into a greater Japan as second-class citizenship. All Koreans, regardless of class distinction, underwent the colonial process of being Otherised. ‘The Japanese colonial term, Chösenjin (Koreans) was a bureaucratic, essentializing, and derogatory classification applicable to all Koreans’ (Shin & Robinson, 1999, p. 14). Shin Chae-ho (1880–1936), a leading nationalist, historian, independence activist, and anarchist, believed that Korea’s independence would not come with a political revolution but rather a revolution from the united people. He presented the Korean history as one of the ethnic nation [minjoksa], claiming a ‘single pure bloodline’ traceable all the way back to Dangun, the mythical founder of the first Korean state established in 2333 bc. He asserted that Koreans were descendants of Dangun Joseon (Gojoseon) that merged with Buyo of Manchuria to form the Goguryeo people (one of the three kingdoms (37 bc to 668 ad) in Korea). This original blend, Shin Chae-ho contended, remained the ethnic or racial core of the Korean nation. With this, a nation was also not defined by territorial boundaries but by an organic body formed out of the spirit of people descended through a single pure bloodline that would last even after losing political sovereignty (Shin, G-W., 2006). In 1923, Shin Chae-ho drafted the ‘Declaration for Korean Revolution’ and in 1926, joined the Eastern Anarchist Association. Among this, Shin also worked on rediscovering Korea’s ethnic roots which also spread into Manchuria. He endeavored in tandem to correct Japanese historical distortions and continued his work in instilling ethnic national pride into the Korean people (Shin, G-W., 2006).7 Inspired by Shin Chae-ho’s work, Dr Paul D. Choy (1896–1973), a prominent medical scholar and historian who was educated internationally and was the first Korean M.D. in Medical Jurisprudence and the first President of Severance Medical College after independence (1945–48), devoted himself for 30 years (over the colonial and post-colonial periods) to the study of Korean national history and the ethnic origins of the Korean people. He published his magnum opus on this history and received a D.Litt. at Yonsei University as well as having published other books in English and Japanese—for example on Korean Christian mission history (Lee, et al., 2004; Kim & Bamberger, 2021b). Overall, it can be claimed that modern Korean ethnic nationalism and internationalism were inextricably entwined, in large part born of a strong desire to regain Korea’s sovereignty, and shaped and strengthened during the colonial period.

140  Terri Kim

After independence, Christianity was adapted to the new state ideology in both South and North Korea. In the Republic of Korea (ROK), Christianity was combined with ‘Hongik Ingan’ (the founding spirit of the first Korean state, Gojoseon) and modern liberal democracy, but gradually with the notion of ‘ethnocentric internationalism’ as South Korea has been striving to be recognized with its fast achievements in both education and economic development. In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Christianity was overlaid by a secular messianic ideology of the despotic pseudo-communist state, blended in the revived Confucian style of hereditary leadership and extended family-like social relations with strong autarkic ‘ethnocentric nationalism’. Ideational contexts

(i) Hongik Ingan: Hongik Ingan idea (‘widely benefits the whole community of human beings’) is the founding spirit of the first Korean Kingdom (Gojoseon). Gojoseon was the first Korean nation—founded in 2333 bc by Dangun Wanggeom, the offspring of the son of the celestial being Hwanung who came down from heaven to Korea and a female bear transformed into a woman. The myth explains the tribal interactions of a previous period, reflecting a belief in animism and totemism (Kim, I-W., 1999). The foundation myth of Korea entails the concept of a chosen people, a holy land, and the ideal of humanitarianism (Choy, 1969, pp.  82–83; Kim, I-W., 2000). Hongik Ingan idea is cosmopolitical and does not conflict with any religious ideology, advocating universal and philanthropic values of humanism for collective prosperity. The Hongik Ingan idea has been the core value of modern Korean nationalism. The Korean nationalists envisioned the potential of Korea to become an ideal nation-state based on the Hongik Ingan ethos. Hongik Ingan was the founding ethos of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai (1919–1945) and the core principle of national education in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) through the promulgation of the Education Laws in 1949. (ii) Yushin order (1972–79) in ROK: Yushin [Revitalization Reform] was President Park Chung-hee’s patriotic discourse of ‘modernizing the nation-state’, cultural nationalism, an underlying form of state-propagated South Korean ethnic nationalism. Park Chung-hee also used the ethos of the Donghak Revolution to justify political programs—particularly the state’s core policy of ‘ethnic nationalistic democracy’. This policy served as an attempt to establish an indigenous form of democracy that would justify the state’s claim to absolute power over the nation in terms of Korea’s unique social and historical situation. Park thus asserted that ‘ethnic nationalistic democracy’ was a form of ‘indigenous democracy’ that could not be measured by political theories developed in the West (Bell, 2004, p. 130).

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 141

(iii) Juche (and the personality cult of Kim Il-sung) in DPRK: In North Korea, Judeo-Christianity was enmeshed in a second secular messianic ideology of the despotic communist state. Northern Korea used to be one of the Asian strongholds of Protestant Christianity. The outbreak of a massive revival in Pyongyang in 1907 for its Pentecostal characteristics had strong syncretistic overtones that drew from Korean shamanist religion (Lee, 2001). Pyongyang then became the epicenter of Korean Christian evangelism and got Westernized more quickly than other parts of Korea (Kim, 2017). The parents of Kim Il-sung, the founder and first leader of DPRK, were known to be also devout Christians. His grandfather on his mother’s side was a Presbyterian pastor, and his father was preparing to be a missionary (Lee, 2001). Despite the gospel-centered roots of Pyongyang and Kim Il-sung’s Christian family background, political ideologies and Cold War geopolitics led to the split of the Korean nation. The founding leader of North Korea, Kim Il-sung (1912–1994), and his son and successor, Kim Jong-il (1941–2011), consolidated Juche sasang [주체사상; 主體思想; ‘self reliance’ ideology], meaning ‘political independence, economic self-sufficiency, and military self-reliance in defense’ (Myers, 2015) and the cult of personality around the founder of North Korea. The North Korean people’s veneration of Kim Il-sung and his family lineage resembles fanatical religious worship. Juche sasang is the official state ideology and doctrine of North Korea. Its essence is the absolute political, economic, and military sovereignty of the nation-state. Juche sasang incorporates the historical materialist ideas of Marxism–Leninism but has become an ethnocentric, ultranationalist politico-religious cult, blending religious elements of worshipping God (USCIRF, November 2005). Juche is not only the political ideology but also the full-fledged religion in North Korea to worship Kim Il-sung as God (replacing Christian God) and sustain a revived Confucian style of authoritarian monarchy. Hence, the Kim dynasty in DPRK is much more than just an authoritarian political regime. There are 450,000 ‘Kim Il-sung Revolutionary Research Centres’, where all North Koreans are required to attend at least weekly sessions for instruction, inspiration, and self-criticism. Heterodoxy and dissent are repressed quickly and efficiently, with punishment meted out to three generations of the dissident's family (USCIRF, 2005, p. 9). Many observers (e.g. Brian Myers) argue that there is no real ideological system in Juche sasang and that it is just a cover for whatever the Great Leader wants to do in North Korea (Munhwa Ilbo, 2014, December 19).

Conclusion The analysis of Korea offered in this chapter illustrated the role of Christianity linked with indigenous beliefs and political ideologies and modern education

142  Terri Kim

in shaping one version of modern ethnic nationalism. The mix created a messianic vision for nation-building. The historical experience was hard, turbulent, and complex with multiple ‘transitologies’ (Cowen, 2000). Korea moved from being a Confucian ideology-based bureaucratic nation state (until 1897) to a modern ethnic nation state but soon lost territorial sovereignty to Japan (in 1905). It became a stateless nation as a Japanese colony (1910–1945) until the end of World War II. After liberation from Japan, Korea was divided into two and occupied by the United States and USSR and became two separate independent nation-states, ROK and DPRK in 1948, followed by the Korean War (1950–1953), which ended in a ceasefire (an Armistice Agreement) rather than a Peace Treaty. Despite all this, Korean ethno-national identity has been fundamental in defining Korea as one nation in two states, with two different messianic visions of a unified Korean nation-state for the future. The Judeo-Christian idea of ‘a chosen people’ and messianic saviorism was adapted to the indigenous Korean belief system such as Donghak (later Cheondokyo). This was deliberate and can be seen in the writings of Korean ethnonationalist thinkers: for example, Shin Chae-ho and Ham Sok-Hon whose Korean History Seen through a Will (Ham, 1934, 1965, 2003) and Queen of Suffering: A Spiritual History of Korea (Ham, 1985) produced Korean historiography combining Oriental and Christian thinking. After independence, Christianity was also adapted to fit to the new state ideology, liberal democracy, and educational principle, Hongik Ingan, in South Korea and Juche sasang in North Korea. Despite the contrasting political ideologies and confrontation between the two Koreas, Hongik Ingan and Juche are both inculcating a Korean ethno-national consciousness. There is also the question of race in the case of North Korea’s Juche sasang. The Marxist tradition calls all races to unite in throwing off the chains of oppression, whereas North Korea’s state ideology, Juche sasang, emphasizes the purity and superiority of North Koreans. Myers (2015) believes that North Korea’s emphasis on race places it at the wrong end of the ideological spectrum to the Marxist-Leninist tradition. The conventional political division between left and right becomes meaningless in Korean politics as Shin (2006) explains, ‘nationalism became a key resource in the politics of postwar Korea, both North and South, despite contrasting political ideologies and incorporation into competing world systems (communist and capitalist)’ (p. 24). Overall, Korean ethnic nationalism has been the most forceful ideological ‘discourse’ in the two Koreas. It became ‘banal nationalism’ (Billig, 1995). In the course of nation-building and the relationship between the state and education, ROK, the ethnocentric ‘Developmental State’ in the south and DPRK, the (pseudo-communist) monarchical ethnocentric state in the north have demonstrated some common features, which include strong government, tight bureaucratic structure, hierarchical order of social relations, a high level of educational aspiration and attainment within the centralized schooling

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 143

system, networked social structure, emphasis on diligence, thrift, cooperation, and loyalty to one’s group/organization. Such common characteristics can be attributed to the legacy of Confucianism and colonialism. The modern schooling system in Korea has been highly centralized since the colonial period, carefully designed to meet the state’s projects such as mass socialization into the prevailing values of the predominant regime, unifying society, producing well-trained labor for industrial development, and regime continuity (Kim, 2009). The Korean identity as ‘one ethnic nation’ has been solid, and its desire for reunification has remained strong, especially among the older generations preceding Generation Z (those born after 1995)8 in South Korea. Ranking 10th among the world’s largest economic powers as of 2022, South Korea is famous for its spectacular rise from being one of the poorest countries in the world to a developed, high-income country in just one generation.9 Korean modernity and modernization processes have been inseparable from the Korean experiences (sufferings) of colonialism, the Cold-War ideology, and national partition. Protestantism and Christian private education then played an intrinsic role in forming and shaping modern Korean ethnic nationalism and internationalism during the colonial period and in founding the two Korean nationstates as new ‘Republics’. Modern Korean ethnic nationalism has been a unifying force against external threats, a spur to ethno-nationalist inter-state competitions, and a source of contemporary revisionist historiography. While going through multiple transitologies, two different messianic visions of Korean ethnocentric nationalism and internationalism have emerged, residing in two ideologically contrasting states, DPRK and ROK, and being reproduced as ‘national literacies’ (Tröhler, 2020) by their respective state-controlled education systems.

Notes 1 This article was written when I was an academic visitor at St Antony’s College, Oxford. I  would like to express my gratitude to Professor Roger Goodman, the Warden of St Antony’s College and Professor of Modern Japanese Studies, University of Oxford, for his support and encouragement of my research. 2 According to Korean mythology and folklore, as recounted in the thirteenth-century Samguk Yusa [Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms] compiled by a patriotic Buddhist monk, Il Yeon, during or after the Mongol invasion. 3 Cowen (2000) conceptualizes ‘transitologies’ as ‘the more or less simultaneous collapse and reconstruction’—within a short span of time (occurring in 10 years or less)— ‘of (a) state apparatuses; (b) social and economic stratification systems; and (c) political visions of the future; in which (d) education is given a major symbolic and reconstructionist role in these social processes of destroying the past and redefining the future.’ (p. 388). ‘Transitologies reveal new “educational codings,” that is, the compression of political and economic power into educational forms’ (p. 399). 4 Social Darwinism was popularized in the writings of the nineteenth-century social thinker Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), who coined the phrase ‘the survival of the fittest’ (Tikhonov, 2010).

144  Terri Kim 5 Severance Medical College was the first modern hospital and medical school founded in 1895 by Dr Horace Newton Allen, a physician and the first Protestant missionary arriving in Korea in 1894. It was initially named as Gwanghyewon; renamed Jejungwon soon afterwards in 1895, and then renamed Severance, taking after the American donor, Louis Severance in 1904 (Kim, 2001/2018). 6 It was during Wilson’s presidency that the United States conducted military interventions in several Latin American countries, forced Nicaragua to sign unequal treaties, and invaded Haiti. 7 See also: VANK, n.d. http://peacemaker.prkorea.com/shinchaeho/. 8 According to the recent poll (Korea Times, 5 January  2020: www.koreatimes.co.kr/ www/nation/2021/04/113_281397.html), however, the younger generation in South Korea is less supportive of unification and feels less affinity for North Koreans despite a common ethnic identity. The survey results show that one in four South Korean students think unification with NK to be unnecessary. Campbell (2015) also suggests a new type of South Korean nationalism evolving among young people. 9 In the 1950s, Korea used to be compared with Ghana for the level of poverty. In 2021, South Korea GDP per capita was $34,758, and the IMF forecasts that Korea will outpace Japan in terms of per-capita purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2023 (IMF: https:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2018&locations=KR-GHJP&start=2018&view=bar); (KBS World, 11-08-2019: https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/ news_view.htm?Seq_Code=147336).

References An, J. (2020). Making democracy compatible with mission: James Earnest fisher as a missionary and US information officer in Korea, 1919–1948. Korea Journal, 60(4), 115–142. http://dx.doi.org/10.25024/kj.2020.60.4.115 Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Bell, K. (2004). Cheondogyo and the Donghak revolution: The (un)making of a religion. Korea Journal, 44(2), 123–148. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. Billig, M. (2017). Banal nationalism and the imagining of politics. In M. Skey & M. Antonisch (Eds.), Everyday nationhood: Theorising culture, identity and belonging after banal nationalism (pp. 307–322). Palgrave Macmillan. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed. Cambridge University Press. Campbell, E. (2015). The end of ethnic nationalism? Changing conceptions of national identity and belonging among young South Koreans. Nation and Nationalism, 21(3), 483– 502. https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12120 Choi, Hyaeweol. (2009). Gender and mission encounters in Korea: New women, old ways. University of California Press, GAIA Books, Global, Area, and International Archive. https:// escholarship.org/uc/item/0q65z7q9 Choy, D. (1969). The ancient history of Korean peoples. Dongkuk Munwhasa Publishing Company. Chung, Kiyul. (2007). The Donghak concept of god/heaven: Religion and social transformation. Peter Lang. Connor, W. (1994). Ethnonationalism: The quest for understanding. Princeton University Press. Cowen, R. (2000). Comparing futures or comparing pasts? Comparative Education, 36(3), 333–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/713656619

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 145 Duara, P. (1997). Transnationalism and the predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900– 1945. The American Historical Review, 102(4), 1030–1051. https://doi.org/10.1086/ ahr/102.4.1030 Duus, P. (1996). Imperialism without colonies: The vision of a greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere. Diplomacy & Statecraft, 7(1), 54–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592299608405994 Eckert, C., Lee, K-B., Lew, Y-I., Robinson, M., & Wagner, E. W. (1990). Korea old and new: A history. Ilchokak Publisher (published for the Korea Institute, Harvard University). Fields, D. P. (2017). Syngman Rhee: Socialist. Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) Working Paper Series #82. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Fields, D. P. (2019). Foreign friends: Syngman Rhee, American exceptionalism, and the division of Korea. The University Press of Kentucky. Finch, A. (2009). The pursuit of martyrdom in the catholic church in Korea before 1866. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 60(1), 95–118. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022046907002448 Fisher, J. E. (1928). Democracy and mission education in Korea, Contributions to Education, No. 306. Columbia University. https://archive.org/details/fisher_democracyandmissioneducation inkorea_no306_1928/page/ii/mode/2up Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Blackwell. Ham, Sok-Hon (1934, 1965, 2003). 뜻으로 본 한국 역사 [Korean History Seen through a Will], Hangil-sa. Ham, Sok-Hon. (1985). Queen of sufferings, A  spiritual history of Korea. Friends World Committee for Consultation. Scanned and edited by Tom Coyner. https://archive. md/20130124102638/http://www2.gol.com/users/quakers/queen_of_suffering.htm Hara, Takemichi. (1998). Korea, China, and Western Barbarians: Diplomacy in early nineteenth-century Korea. Modern Asian Studies, 32(2), 389–430. www.jstor.org/ stable/313003 Hodgson, G.,  & Knudsen, T. (2010). Darwin’s conjectures: The search for general principles of social and economic evolution. The University of Chicago Press. Holbraad, C. (2003). Internationalism and nationalism in European political thought. Palgrave and MacMillan. Hulbert, H. (1906). The passing of Korea. Doubleday, Page and Company. https:// en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_passing_of_Korea Hutchinson, J., & Smith, A. (1994). Nationalism. Oxford University Press. Jeong, E. K. (2019). A  study of the Korean nationalistic thought movement in the late Joseon Period. In H. Babacan & A. Temizer (Eds.), Academic studies in social, human and administrative sciences (pp. 297–316). IVPE. Kallander, G. L. (2013). Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak heterodoxy and early modern Korea. University of Hawaii Press. Kim, In-Whoe. (1999). Korean education in the 21st century and the educational concept of Hongik in’gan. Korean Studies Quarterly, 22(1), 27–56. www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/artic leDetail?nodeId=NODE01159660 Kim, In-Whoe. (2000). Korean education in the 21st century and the humanitarian educational idea. Korean Social Science Journal, XXVII(1), 57–76. Korean Social Science Research Council and Korean National Commission for UNESCO. Kim, In-Whoe. (2015, March 18). 30 years of Yonhi Humanities (1915–1945): Spirits of humanities and its ethnic national meanings, Yonsei faculty of humanities centenary lecture (pp. 1–25). Yonsei University.

146  Terri Kim Kim, M. (2018). The trouble with Christian Publishing: Yun Ch’iho (1865–1945) and the complexities of cultural nationalism in Colonial Korea. Journal of Korean Religions, 9(2), 139–172. www.jstor.org/stable/26597917 Kim, R. (2017, April  25). The Forgotten American Missionaries of Pyongyang. Atlas Obscura. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pyongyang-missionaries-north-korea Kim, S. C. (2018, April  26). Protestant Christianity in Modern Korea. Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Asian History. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.301 Kim, T. (2000). South Korea, chapter 15. In D. Coulby, R. Cowen, & C. Jones (Eds.), The world yearbook of education 2000: Education in times of transition (pp. 181–191). Kogan Page. Kim, T. (2001/2018). Forming the academic profession in East Asia. Routledge. Kim, T. (2009). Confucianism, modernities and knowledge: China, South Korea, and Japan (Chapter 55). In R. Cowen & A. Kazamias (Eds.), The international handbook of comparative education (pp. 857–872). Springer. Kim, T. (2011). Globalization and higher education in South Korea—towards ethnocentric internationalization or global commercialization of higher education? In R. King, S. Marginson, & R. Naidoo (Eds.), Handbook of globalization and higher education (pp. 286–305). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. Kim, T., & Bamberger, A. (2021a). Diaspora, ethnic internationalism, and higher education: The Korean and Jewish cases of internationalisation as a stateless nation in the early 20th century. British Journal of Educational Studies (BJES), 69(5), 513–535. www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/00071005.2021.1929827 Kim, T., & Bamberger, A. (2021b). CGHE working paper #73 ‘Diaspora, ethnic internationalism and higher education internationalization: The Korean and Jewish cases as stateless nations in the early 20th century’. https://sitemaps.researchcghe.org/publications/working-paper/ diaspora-ethnic-internationalism-and-higher-education-internationalization-thekorean-and-jewish-cases-as-stateless-nations-in-the-early-20th-century/ Lee, G. S., Yang, J. P., & Yeo, I. S. (2004). Paul D. Choy: A life for learning. Uisahak, 13(2), 284–296. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15726758/ Lee, Y-H. (2001). Korean Pentecost: The great revival of 1907. Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, 4(1), 73–83. www.academia.edu/63684004/Young_Hoon_Lee_Korean_ Pentecost_The_Great_Revival_of_1907_pp_73_83_ Lee, Y. (2007). 교육사 연구에서 담론적 분석의 의미와 활용: 선교사 자료 『The Korea Mission Field』 (1905–1941)의 독법을 중심으로, History of Korean Education, 29(1), 155–186. doi:10.15704/kjhe.29.1.200704.155 Lee, Youngho. (2014, March). Donghak and Protestantism: The narrative of conflict and communication [동학과 개신교, 그 갈등과 소통의 이야기]. 기독교사상 [Christian Theory] Special Issue: The 120th Anniversary of Donghak Revolution, Christianity speaks to Donghak. www. clsk.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=gisang_special&wr_id=819&main_visual_page=gisang Lynch, A. (2002). Woodrow Wilson and the principle of ‘national self-determination’: A reconsideration. International Studies, 28(2), 419–436. www.jstor.org/stable/20097800 Munhwa Ilbo. (2014, December 19). Juche Sasang is pseudo-ideology for international exhibition (in Korean). www.munhwa.com/news/view.html?no=2014121901033030000002 Myers, B. R. (2015). North Korea’s Juche Myth. Sthele Press. Neuhaus, D-A. (2017). “Awakening Asia”: Korean student activists in Japan, The Asia Kunglun, and Asian solidarity, 1910–1923. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 6(2), 608–638. https://doi.org/10.1353/ach.2017.0021 Noland, M. (2004). Famine and reform in North Korea. Asian Economic Papers, 3(2), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1162/1535351044193411

Korean ethnic nationalism and modern education 147 The Report of the Korea Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to the annual meeting held at Pyeng Yang. (1909). Fukuin printing. https://findit.library.yale. edu/bookreader/BookReaderDemo/index.html?oid=11361536&page=4#page/2/ mode/1up Ryan, S. (1997). Nationalism and ethnic conflict. In B. White, R. Little, & M. Smith (Eds.), Issues in world politics (pp. 157–178). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25639-6_8 Salmon, A. (2014). Modern Korea: All that matters. John Murray Learning. Schmid, A. (2010). Two Americans in Seoul, evaluating an oriental empire, 1905–1910. Korean Histories, 2(2), 7–23. https://web.archive.org/web/20141107045333/www.korean histories.org/files/Volume_2_2/KH2_2_Schmid_Two_Americans.pdf Seth, M. (2011). North Korea’s 1990s famine in historical perspective. Education about Asia: Online archives, association for Asian studies. www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/ archives/north-koreas-1990s-famine-in-historical-perspective/ Shin, B-R. (2008). The decision process of the trusteeship in Korea, 1945–1946: Focusing on the change of U.S. Ideas. Pacific Focus: Inha Journal of International Studies, XIX(1), 169–211. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1976-5118.2004.tb00306.x Shin, G-W. (2006, August 2). Korea's ethnic nationalism is a source of both pride and prejudice, according to Gi-Wook Shin. Stanford Shorenstein APARC News. https://aparc.fsi. stanford.edu/news/koreas_ethnic_nationalism_is_a_source_of_both_pride_and_prejudice_according_to_giwook_shin_20060802 Shin, G-W., Freda, J., & Yi, G. (1999). The politics of ethnic nationalism in divided Korea. Nations and Nationalism, 5(4), 465–484. doi:10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00465.x Shin, G-W., & Robinson, M. (Eds.). (1999). Colonial modernity in Korea, Harvard East Asian monographs, 184, Harvard-Hallym series on Korean Studies. The Harvard University Asia Center/Distributed by Harvard University Press. Smith, A. (2009). Ethno-symbolism and nationalism: A cultural approach. Routledge. Suh, C. (2017). What Yun Ch’i-ho knew: U.S.-Japan relations and imperial race making in Korea and the American South, 1904–1919. The Journal of American History, 104(1), 68–96. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax005 Tikhonov, V. (2010). Social darwinism and nationalism in Korea: The beginnings (1880s–1910s): “Survival” as an ideology of Korean modernity. Brill. Tröhler, D. (2011). Languages of education: Protestant legacies, national identities, and global aspirations. Routledge. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. https://doi.org/10.1080/0 0220272.2020.1786727 Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nation-building. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7–33). Routledge. Tröhler, D., Piattoeva, N., & Pinar, W. F. (Eds.). (2022). World yearbook of education 2022: Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism. Routledge. U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). (2005, November). Thank you father Kim Il Sung: Eyewitness accounts of severe violations of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion in North Korea. www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/Thank%20You%20 Father%20Kim%20Il%20Sung%20-%20Nov2005.pdf VANK. (n.d.). ‘Shin Chae-ho: A  man who worked to reinstall national pride in Korea’: Shin Chae-ho—the unsung heroes who fought for independence! prkorea.com. http:// peacemaker.prkorea.com/shinchaeho/

148  Terri Kim Wells, K. M. (1990). New god, new nation: Protestants and self-reconstruction nationalism in Korea 1896–1937. University of Hawaii Press. Yonsei University. (2015). 연세대학교백년사 [One hundred years of Yonsei university history]. Yonsei University Press. Yoo, W. (2016) American missionaries, Korean protestants, and the changing shape of world Christianity, 1884–1965. Routledge. Young, B. R. (2015, June  12). North Korea’s unlikely alliance with German environmentalists. NK News. www.nknews.org/2015/06/north-koreas-unlikely-alliance-withgerman-environmentalists/ Yun, Ch’iho. (2001). Diary of Yun Ch’iho 1916–1945 (Kim Sang Tae, Ed.). Yerksa Bipyung Sa.

Chapter 7

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

This volume features an investigation into a particular blind spot that runs throughout much of the humanities and social sciences: What is the relationship between such socio-political phenomena as nationalism, identity-building, and loyalty formation, and the formal curriculum mandated by the state? As Tröhler writes in the introductory chapter (this volume), education researchers rarely make a distinction ‘between nation, state, nation-state, or country either.’ Referencing Andy Green’s (1990) classic in comparative education, Tröhler observes that: ‘ “Nation” is mentioned again and again, but it is either a synonym for the state or it is simply taken for granted.’ It seems that education researchers are often beset by a problem common across many disciplines wherein ‘national drawers’, often presumed to be ‘countries’ or proxies for countries, are regarded as the appropriate focal point for study, investigation, and comparison (Venken, 2021; Tröhler 2020). However, despite all the best efforts of those pursuing the Westphalian ideal of a nation-state where identities and institutions manage to be effectively aligned within a particular territory, the notion of a ‘nation’ neither cannot nor should not be presumed synonymous for either state or country. One need only press an individual from England, Scotland, or Wales, and they will immediately declare their particular nation of origin to be a country when it, in technical fact, is not. Regardless of formal ‘country’ status, there is nevertheless no denying that English identity is not the same as either Scottish or Welsh identity, and presuming them synonymous ignores the important differences in narratives, symbols, norms, values, languages, and other pieces of identity critical to the study and understanding of nationalism as a socio-political phenomenon. Furthermore, as Savage (2021) and others underscore (Engel  & Frizzell, 2015; Wallner et al., 2020), there is a tendency in the education literature to take the ‘nation’ as an homogenous unit, focusing on national-level policies and practices that are presumed to guide country-level education systems. This predilection has the unfortunate consequence of sidelining complex arrangements at work within countries, where the implementation of country-wide mandates is likely to demonstrate significant variation as local leaders tailor general policies to particular contexts. For countries that are formally federal, where DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-8

150  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

powers are divided between central and subnational governments, gaps and differentiations are even more likely to exist. Most federations allocate significant authority over education to the subnational governments, and this autonomy and authority could translate into meaningful variations in the configuration of programs and practices across the jurisdictions. The potential for variation takes on heightened significance, moreover, in multinational federations, if schools provide a means for governments to propagate distinctive collective identities and further internal self-determination from the federation as a whole. Inspired by the constructivist approach to nation-building, this chapter features an investigation of the Grade 10 English-language and Frenchlanguage history curricula used in the two most populous Canadian provinces, Ontario and Québec. A polynational federation, where provinces hold exclusive jurisdiction over elementary and secondary education, Canada offers an ideal focus for this study. Our qualitative examination of the curriculum documents addresses three lines of inquiry. First, we ‘test’ a core supposition of the constructivist approach to nationalism and nation-building. Given that constructivists maintain that the state plays an important role in the formation of certain kinds of ‘national’ people (Billig, 1995; Brubaker, 1996; Elgenius, 2011; Goode  & Stroup, 2015; Österman  & Robinson, 2002), we anticipate that important differences will distinguish the Ontario and Québec curricula. Second, our analysis of the curricula will provide insight into the respective ‘national’ images cultivated by these two provinces nested within the broader Canadian federation. Third and finally, our investigation offers the opportunity to explore similarities and differences in the ‘national’ images and narratives advanced even within each case. For reasons we outline in detail later in the chapter, we foresee there will be greater variation across the English language and French language curricula in Ontario than in Québec. A few caveats are needed prior to delving into the substance of our work. First, we acknowledge that this is an imperfect comparison due to two key structural differences in the curricula. Grade 10 Canadian history is not a requirement for all students to take in Ontario, whereas Grade 10 QuébecCanadian history is mandatory for all. Furthermore, the time periods covered in the courses vary dramatically. Ontario’s singular course surveys Canadian history since World War I (Ontario 2018a, 2018b). Québec’s program, in the meantime, features two courses where ‘Secondary III’ spans the origins of human habitation in the territory that became known as Canada up to 1840, and ‘Secondary IV’ focuses on the 1840s to present day. As we discuss later in the chapter, this variation is suggestive of important differences in the prioritization of distinctive ‘nation-building’ processes by the two provinces. Second, we also undertake this investigation recognizing that the mandated curriculum is only one form of content provided in the classroom. We are not, for example, examining the state-approved textbooks or additional materials deployed by school boards and individual classroom teachers. Instead, we zero in specifically on the state-produced and mandated curricula to gain insight into the

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 151

ways in which these formal documents may advance particular images of identity and nationhood embedded in the texts, in the structure of the respective documents, the pedagogical directives that also may be included and the specific examples, key events, and individuals that are highlighted within. Finally, this piece focuses exclusively on the practices of settler governments in Canada and, thus, does not address the important work by Indigenous communities to (re)gain control over their own education systems throughout the country (Carr-Stewart, 2019). This work by Indigenous communities is particularly significant in the context of nationalism studies because these communities exist under fundamentally different paradigms of nationhood and identity than those at work throughout the rest of settler-colonial Canada. Future work on these newer initiatives by other scholars will invariably enrich our understanding of the complexities of nationalism, nation-building, and education. Our chapter advances as follows. The first section lays out the theoretical groundwork informing our study. The second section provides an (efficient) overview of the Canadian case, highlighting its complexities and idiosyncrasies that render it a particularly appealing focus for this investigation. The third and fourth sections constitute the empirical heart of this work, wherein we present our findings from the respective document analysis, based on a qualitative analysis and comparison of the state-produced curriculum documentation in both provinces. The concluding section offers a discussion of our findings, exposing the ways in which these two cases support the constructivist approach to nationalism and nation-building while also drawing out important contrasts and commonalities between the two cases and the concomitant insights we gain from better understanding the ways in which each provincial government crafts its respective ‘national narrative’ through history curricula.

Section One: Theoretical Groundwork The study of nationalism and nation-building has witnessed marked transformations in the social sciences. Eloquently reviewed by Tröhler and Maricic’s chapter (2023 [first chapter in this volume]), approaches to the phenomena range from those who see nations as primordial entities to others who see it as the ‘natural’ result of our modern existence. While these approaches dominated through the opening half of the twentieth century, more recent works by such scholars as Billig (1995) and Brubaker (1996) have advanced poignant critiques. According to these critiques, earlier understandings of nationalism and nation-building overlook and marginalize the importance of ethnic identities and the ways in which they can emerge, transform, and persist. Furthermore, the modernization approach elevates expectations of homogenization through national state structures and processes of isomorphism associated with diffusion and globalization, which is anticipated to culminate in the gradual yet unrelenting erosion of differences across communities. However, despite all these forces purported to encourage homogenization, distinctive identities persist

152  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

as evidenced by the continued existence of thousands of national and ethnic minority communities around the globe. Many studies of nationalism focus on the growth of the modern state, examining how macro-structural institutions and processes, such as industrial capitalism, evolved and interacted to produce standardized forms of national culture. As Fox and Van Ginderachter (2018, p. 546) astutely note, however: ‘These mostly macro-structural approaches have sought to explain how nations are made; they have less to say about how people are made national.’ To account for the persistence and significance of different national identities while identifying the mechanisms that help shape and influence the people themselves, a highly promising thread has emerged from the constructivist work of Billig’s (1995) banal nationalism known as ‘everyday nationalism.’ Everyday nationalism works to correct the weakness of examining macro-structural processes, and our focus on the education arena and curriculum specifically has the potential to provide compelling evidence of the forces of everyday nationalism at work. National identity is a complex phenomenon. So seemingly tangible and real, with often terrifying implications, it is also largely constructed through human actions and interactions, symbols, and language, constantly—yet slowly— evolving and transforming. ‘Nationhood’ conjures up an image of people who share a language, with (somewhat) similar understandings and interpretations of the past, an articulation of imagined present-day ‘good citizens’, with (perhaps) a hint of future thinking for the lives to be lived in that community on the horizon. The creation of ‘imagined [national] communities’ (Anderson, 1983) began with the spread of the written word, thus fostering the use of a common language, following the invention of the press, but these narratives have been propagated with a great help from formal schooling, long regarded as the main instrument deployed to produce citizens loyal to the state (Paglayan, 2022). Through curricular choices, schools may provide a vector through which ‘national’ narratives may be (re)produced and communicated. Similar to many materials created or sanctioned by state authorities, curriculum is a social construction, replete with cultural artifacts, offering a source of collective memory and (partial) autobiographies of the imagined ‘nation-state’ (Repoussi & Tutiaux-Guillon, 2010). It thus becomes important in this context to examine curricula to unpack the national narratives they convey and to shed light on the groups whose memory they enhance and perpetuate—as well as those they omit, or distort. Canada offers an ideal opportunity to uncover concrete evidence of everyday nationalism at work for three reasons. First and foremost, it is, in its historical development, an institutionalized form and lived practice, a multinational country with contested and divided loyalties that have mutated and transformed over time. Robust, intricate, and diverse societies of Indigenous peoples have called this land home since time immemorial. Then, in the 1600s, European colonists began establishing permanent settlements. After several wars between colonial powers, the ‘incomplete conquest’ (Russell, 2017) of the Indigenous

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 153

peoples and French Canadians by the British led to the foundation of the settler-colonial country known as Canada in 1867. Canada is also a country of relative ‘newcomers’ where, as of 2020, approximately 8 million immigrants with permanent residence lived, constituting 21.5% of the total Canadian population (Statista Research Department, 2021). ‘Identity’ thus is an extremely complex phenomenon in the country. Second, Canada has a remarkable idiosyncrasy specific to the education arena. Powers and responsibilities over key policy areas are constitutionally divided between the federal government (based in Ottawa) and the respective provincial governments in the ten capitals. Like other federations, education was entrusted to the ‘sub-national’ governments; unlike other federations, such as the United States, Germany, and Australia, the Government of Canada never established a central body with any sort of comprehensive authority. This is a power that provincial leaders have guarded and exercised that predates ‘confederation’ in 1867. Consequently, if the presumptions of the constructivist approach to nation-building and nationalism are accurate, we should uncover important differences in the subject matter mandated by both provinces in their history curriculum. Finally, and captured by the specific provinces we are studying here, identities and loyalties may be split both between and within the provinces themselves. The two largest provinces in the country, Ontario and Québec, reflect the manifestation of the English–French divide across Canada while also holding the largest within province ‘minority language’ communities. Québec remains a peculiar entity within Canada as it is the sole province where the majority of the population speaks French. It also has a long-standing nationalist tradition; provincial governments twice—in 1980 and 1995—have held referenda seeking a mandate for Québec to secede from the Canadian federation. However, it also hosts an Anglophone minority of about 900,000, constituting 13.7% of the provincial population (Statistics Canada, 2019). Meanwhile, Ontario, admittedly an overwhelmingly Anglophone province, is home to 650,000 Francophones, representing 4.1% of the provincial population (Statistics Canada, 2019). Franco-Ontarians and Anglo-Quebecers have their own unique and distinctive identities, histories, and traditions that are contested and politicized in both provinces. Focusing squarely on the formal state-produced and mandated curricular documents for the respective courses allows us to not only identify similarities and differences across the two provinces, but also reveal potential similarities and differences within the cases themselves.

Section Two: Canada, in Brief A federation where power is constitutionally divided between the Government of Canada, known as the federal government, and the 10 provinces, many regard Canada as one of the most decentralized countries in the world (Lecours, 2019). Provinces exercise considerable power, and education is an

154  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

area where such autonomy is immediately apparent. We open with a sketch of the broad brushstrokes of the contemporary education arena before providing some historical background to the Canadian case pertinent to our investigation. In contrast to virtually all other countries—federal or unitary—the Government of Canada exerts little direct control in the educational affairs of its citizens. There is no ‘national’ department of education, there are no formal countrywide standards in elementary and secondary education, and the Government of Canada plays an extremely limited role in education and only oversees the instruction of very specific groups in the population. First, it is responsible for the schooling of certain Indigenous children who live ‘on reserves’, defined as ‘land that has been set aside (not apart) by the government for the use and benefit of an Indian band’ (Indian Act 1985). The federal government is supposed to provide the funding for students enrolled in and attending an eligible elementary or secondary program. Second, the federal government is responsible for providing schooling for the children of serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces who live on bases in Canada and abroad. Third, due to specifications in the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Constitution Act, 1982, the Government of Canada must protect the rights of specific religious minority schools and the rights of minority English and French language communities throughout the country. Protections, however, do not mean asserting clear and substantive curricular choices and directives—these are generally left to the discretion of the provinces. Consequently, even with these specific populations, the direct role of the federal government in the elementary and secondary education systems of the country is scant at best. It is the governments of the 10 southern provinces and the 3 northern territories1 that maintain power and authority over elementary and secondary education. As a result, there are 13 systems operating in parallel to one another without central direction, oversight, or mandated coordination. Despite their autonomy, all 13 are organized somewhat similarly in terms of governance, finance, and administration (Wallner, 2014). Each system is directed by a ministry (or department) of education, led by a minister of the government who is supported by professional public servants. Most systems also have school boards, elected by local populations, but these bodies have witnessed their relevance and authority diminish over the past 30 years as ministries of education have centralized power. Most significant here is the fact that the ministries set the curriculum for each system. To understand the evolution of this configuration, some discussion of Canadian history is required. The territory of what is now known as Canada was originally inhabited by societies of Indigenous peoples that ‘came into being as Peoples in longstanding and intricate relation with these continents and the other life forms here’ (Tallbear, 2019, p. 24). Then, in the 1500s, Europeans set their sights on the North American continent and began to occupy the land, establishing settler-colonial societies whereupon both the French and the British contested for dominance.

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 155

Battles between the French and British, each supported by Indigenous allies and local (French-speaking) Canadien2 and Acadian populations, were fought as the competing colonial sides worked to consolidate control over key territory. In 1763, Britain secured victory in the Seven Years War with the signature of the Treaty of Paris—eventually becoming the dominant colonial power in the world. In the end, Britain achieved an incomplete ‘Conquest’ of Canada, claiming everything north of Florida. However, the French populations remained, with some even allowed to return after having been violently deported overseas in the Great Upheaval, from 1755 to 1758. After a period where Catholics were not allowed to hold public office unless they renounced their religion and Common law was imposed to all the colonies, the King loosened restrictions on French–Canadians’ participation in public life in the midst of the American revolution, in order to preserve their loyalty to the Crown. Civil law was reinstated, and Catholics were once again allowed to hold public office. French was also recognized as a language of the legislature. After thousands of loyalists retreated to the colonies following the end of the War of Independence, in 1791, the then-called province of Québec was divided in two: Upper Canada (later Ontario) and Lower Canada (later Québec). They would each have their respective legislative assemblies, under the auspices of a British governor. Upper Canada would reinstate the Common law system and function solely in English. However, neither of these legislatures would have responsible government, which would lead to the Rebellions of 1837–38 and, eventually, to the Act of Union of 1840. This Act united Upper and Lower Canada under a single government, with 42 seats for each of the provinces (despite Lower Canada being more populous at this point in time). The use of French was abolished in the public service, and French–Canadian institutions related to education and civil law suspended. In the next decade and a half, some of these laws were abolished, setting the path for the 1867 Confederation. Focusing specifically on the education sector, when Canada was founded in 1867, it was a time when the idea of state-led mass elementary education had captured the minds of European leaders and the colonial off-shoots of the ‘New World’ (Venken, 2021). In 1867, the four colonies of what was then known as British North America joined forces under the British North America Act (later renamed the Constitution Act, 1867). During the negotiations that preceded the final configuration, early listings of federal powers included the authority to enforce uniformity in education (Lupal, 1970). Representatives from the negotiating colonies nevertheless contested the assertion of federal control in the field. All of the colonies already had statutes and arrangements at work dedicated to the provision of schooling for their residents. As such, there was no appetite for a common system unilaterally imposed by the newly forged federal authority which was to be based in Ottawa. Furthermore, because the union to form Canada involved two distinct ‘national’ identities of English and French, and the leaders of those French-speaking and English-speaking

156  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

communities recognized the particular cultural significance that control over education afforded, provincial control over education was of special importance and not to be conceded (Wallner, 2014). As noted earlier, nationalism and identity are complex phenomena in Canada. Within settler-colonial Canada, there are multiple ‘national’ identities that co-exist within the overall Canadian framework—each with alternative understandings and narratives of Canada’s formation and evolution. During the opening half of the twentieth century, three competing narratives of Confederation emerged: one new nation under the guise of the British Empire, helmed by a strong central government based in Ottawa; two founding nations—the French and the English; and a compact of equal provinces (Krikorian et  al., 2017). Taken up by various scholars and political elites, these alternative interpretations have shaped the respective views many hold in regard to the legitimacy of the various governments of Canada and the powers they should exercise. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a newer national narrative based on multiculturalism took hold, popularized throughout English-speaking Canada as Québec developed its own interculturalism policy with a strong focus on preserving French as the common public language. Then, with the patriation of the constitution and the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, visions of an individualistic and rights-based form of national identity also emerged in public discourse (Rocher  & Smith, 2003). Finally, to quote Indigenous scholar John Borrows (2010, p. 6): ‘Indigenous laws are often ignored, diminished, or denied as being relevant or authoritative. .  .  . This has led to important queries about the sources of Canada’s law, as well as its cultural commitments, institutional receptiveness, and interpretive competency.’ The continent’s original inhabitants have their own understandings and traditions that contribute to alternative collective aspirations that have long been ignored throughout the majority of settler-colonial Canada. Together, the overall message is that Canadian exhibit marked ambivalence to the idea of national identity, with poignant and opposing positions in regard to key figures, shared meanings, and common stories. With this in hand, we now turn to the empirical heart of this chapter and begin with Ontario.

Section Three—Ontario Located upstream from the critical St  Lawrence River, Ontario is Canada’s second largest province geographically and the most populous province demographically, encompassing a territory larger than France and Spain combined. With a population of 13.5 million inhabitants, about two in five Canadians call Ontario home. English is the official language of the province, but there are also multiple French-speaking communities which are guaranteed the right to educate their children in French and who benefit from 26 ‘designated regions’ where they have access to provincial services in their mother tongue as per the French-language Services Act. Ontario is also the preferred destination for

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 157

newcomers to the country, with approximately 40% of the annual migrants to Canada choosing to settle in the province. As of 2020–2021, 2,025,258 students attended schools in Ontario. In total, there are four publicly funded school systems that adhere to the provincially mandated curriculum: the English public system and the English Catholic system, and the French public system and the French Catholic system. While the Catholic systems integrate specific religious courses and practices into their schools, they nevertheless must use the provincially mandated courses in such areas as history and civics and even those pertaining to sexual education in order to remain compliant with ministry directives. Consequently, there are no specialized or distinctive documents for the Catholic school boards in Ontario. However, there are separate English-language and French-language curricular documents in Grade 10 History, which provides us the opportunity to carry out a within-case comparison to potentially gain further evidence of everyday nationalism at work. Grounded on the Enlightenment foundation of disciplinary thinking within the ‘interdisciplinary nature of social studies’ (OEC 13), Ontario’s curriculum bundles courses together according to age-range and subject content. The materials for Grades 9 and 10 Canadian and World Studies therefore include academic and applied courses3 in geography, history, and civics. To gain an appreciation for the similarities and differences between the English and French language document, we examined the preliminary introductions, overviews of the program, assessment and evaluation of student achievement, overarching considerations for program planning in Canadian and World Studies, the more specific introductions to the history course, and the prescribed content for the ‘Canadian History since World War I, Grade 10 Academic’ course. In total, this material covered 82 pages of text in English and 90 pages of text in French. We use the following designations to specify the pages’ references throughout this chapter: Ontario English curriculum—OEC page and Ontario French curriculum—OFC page. Throughout our analysis, unless stated explicitly, all references to both documents are direct translations wherein the meaning is consistent across English and French. We open with an analysis of insights into the narratives, facts, symbols, storytelling, values, and norms that transcend both documents before outlining the differences that distinguish them. The course itself covers Canadian history since World War I, broken down into four temporal periods: 1914–1929, 1929–1945, 1945–1982, and 1982 to ‘the present’. This periodization thus tracks with the general Eurocentric presentation of the twentieth century focusing on the wars and interwar period followed by the more Canadian-centric emphasis with 1982 as an important ‘break-point’ due to the patriation of the constitution and the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in that year. Within each period, materials are parceled into a series of themes. In English they are social, economic, and political context; communities, conflict and cooperation; and identity, citizenship, and heritage. In French, the themes are social, economic, and political context; communities, conflict, and cooperation; and identity,

158  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

citizenship, and heritage of ‘Canadiens et francophones de l’Ontario.’ Each theme further breaks down into sub-themes presented first as specific expectations supported by a series of probative questions designed to encourage reflection upon pertinent facts, events, figures, and developments. As such, we immediately find evidence of everyday nationalism at work in the construction of the Ontario curriculum and its distinctive configuration according to the alternative languages and identities coexisting within the province. One anchoring image is the idea of students as ‘global citizens’ who live within a democratic state committed to diversity. For example (OEC 9 / OFC 11): Citizenship education is an important facet of students’ overall education . . . students are given opportunities to learn about what it means to be a responsible, active citizen in the community of the classroom and the diverse communities to which they belong within and outside the school. It is important for students to understand that they belong to many communities and that, ultimately, they are all citizens of the global community’ (authors’ emphasis). According to the Citizenship Education Framework, which is purported to guide the curriculum, Ontario students are to develop an understanding of the various institutions that affect their lives, with specific reference to democracy, self-determination, rules and law, institutions, power and authority, security, and systems (OEC 10/OFC 12). The commitment to diversity manifests in a variety of forms. First, the curriculum explicitly acknowledges the diversity of the students themselves reinforcing the importance or primacy of the individual within the state: The curriculum recognizes that the needs of learners are diverse, and helps all learners develop the knowledge, skills, and perspectives they need to be informed, productive, caring, responsible, healthy and active citizens in their own communities and in the world. (OEC 3) Second, the curriculum prioritizes the importance of perspectives to cultivate students’ capacities to valuing a diversity of ideas. A preliminary section of the curriculum reads: ‘Students learn that Canada has many stories and that each one is significant and requires thoughtful consideration’ (OEC 11 / OFC 13). Third, the curriculum calls upon students to be open to diversity when it states that mastering the curriculum requires ‘a willingness to try new activities, explore new ideas, keep an open mind, collaborate with peers and follow safety practices both during field studies and in the classroom’ (OEC 16 / OFC 19). Third, diversity manifests in terms of recognizing groups of people wherein the detailed description of the course reads: ‘This course explores social, economic, and political developments and events and their impact on the lives of different individuals, groups, and communities, including First Nations, Métis, and Inuit

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 159

individuals and communities, in Canada since 1914’ (OEC 107 / OFC 123). Fourth and finally, the Ontario documents reiterate and reinforce the image of Canada as a multicultural country with an explicit and institutionalized commitment to the official policy of multiculturalism. A striking feature of the Ontario curriculum is that it focuses largely on ‘Canada’ as a whole, rather than an explicit focus on the province itself. Our word search revealed that ‘Canada-Canadian’ appears 236 times in the document while ‘Ontario’ only appears 121 times. Meanwhile, the word ‘Ontarian’— which would denote or suggest a distinct identity from ‘Canadian’ (which appears 205 times)—appears only once in the entire document, on page 50, in a rather banal section on the importance of financial literacy in a global economy: ‘For all these reasons, financial literacy is an essential component of the education of Ontario students—one that can help ensure that Ontarians will continue to prosper in the future’ (OEC 50). Arguably of greatest significance here is the fact that while many Canadian Prime Ministers are named explicitly in the document, no Premiers of the province are named. Together, this exposes a particular narrative pattern in the province whereupon students are encouraged to forge an attachment to ‘Canada’ as the legitimate and appropriate bedrock for a ‘national’ identity. Like any history curriculum, the Ontario document encourages students to learn about Canada’s triumphs, again promoting loyalty to the ‘Canadian’ as opposed to an ‘Ontarian’ state. The sample questions of section C3, for example, read (OEC 118): What criteria might you use to assess the importance of the NFB (National Film Board) to Canadian heritage? Why is there controversy around the contribution of Emily Carr to identities in Canada? What impact did the Hudson’ Bay Company have on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit culture during this period? The document, however, is not an example of uncritical propaganda for the Canadian state. Students are required to learn about numerous transgressions and atrocities committed within the country including such practices as forced sterilization policies and eugenics, illegal internments and land repossessions, explicit state-sanctioned racism through the Canadian Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, in addition to a particular focus on the injustices committed against Indigenous peoples throughout every period under study. The English and French language curricula thus acknowledge ‘transgressions’ of the Canadian state, but these largely focus on the country as a whole and on the Government of Canada against particular peoples. Through these choices and narrative constructions, the Ontario curriculum thus reinforces the message that Ontario students are ‘Canadians’ while sidelining the knowledge and understanding of the relations between the Government of Ontario and those living within the province. As will become clear later in the chapter, and further evidence of

160  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

everyday nationalism at work, this is in marked contrast to the curriculum at work in Québec. Originally developed in 2013, the curriculum was revised in 2018, ‘in collaboration with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit educators, community members and organizations. The revision was undertaken in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s calls to action numbers 62 and 63’ (OEC 3/OFC 3). Representing a (very) preliminary step towards the decolonization of curriculum in the province, the updated version includes more materials on such things as ‘the historical and contemporary impact of colonialism, the Indian Act, the residential school system, treaties, and systemic racism on Indigenous individuals and communities in Canada’ (OEC 11/OFC 13–14). The revised curriculum is also intended to strengthen ‘learning connected with Indigenous perspectives, cultures, histories, and contemporary realities, including those related to the residential school system and treaties’ (OEC 15/OFC 18). The Ontario curriculum is replete with sections dedicated exclusively to Indigenous peoples. For example section C1.4 (OEC 117)/section B1.1 (OFC 154) reads: Describe the main causes of some key political developments and/or government policies that affected Indigenous peoples in Canada during this period (e.g., amendments to the Indian Act; the continuing operation of residential schools; the Dominion Franchise Act, 1934; the Ewing Commission, 1934–36; provincial Sexual Sterilization Acts; the creation of the Newfoundland Rangers; the Métis Population Betterment Act, 1938; the beginning of the federal government’s use of “Eskimo” identification tags), and assess their impact on First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities. The preponderance of the sections dedicated to Indigenous peoples, however, is overwhelmingly negative. To be sure, this is reflective of the legacy of horrific injustices committed by settlers against the Indigenous peoples of this land. The emphasis nevertheless falls largely on the actions of the Government of Canada as opposed to addressing the ways in which the Government of Ontario has navigated its own relations with Indigenous peoples in the province. What is more, Indigenous peoples are portrayed exclusively as being subjects of the state and rarely as agents of their own histories. Such messaging reinforces an image of Indigenous peoples as dependents instead of political actors with their own identities and autonomy. Turning now to our analysis of the French-language document, according to the Ministry of Education: ‘Students in French-language schools learn from the same Ontario curriculum as their counterparts in the English-language school system. The only difference is that students in French-language schools learn the curriculum in French, and in a French cultural setting’ (Ministry of Education, 2022, p. n.p.). However, as we anticipated based on the theory of

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 161

everyday nationalism, situating the two documents side-by-side, substantive differences appear. First, the association of language as a critical marker of ‘identity’ is apparent throughout the French document. It opens with a full three pages dedicated exclusively to articulating the importance of French-language schooling, the significance of the French language and francophone identity, and the affirmation of French culture. Teachers are given particular directives to adopt a cultural approach to teaching (OFC 5), which includes drawing upon French references and examples to ‘stimuler la démarche identitaire de chaque élève en tant que francophone’ (OFC 5). Similarly, in the diagram on citizenship education that appears in both languages, the French language document includes the following statement: ‘Mettre en valeur l’espace francophone’ (OFC 12). Comparatively, the absence of any attention to ‘language’ as an identity marker in the English document is telling. It reflects the hegemonic dominance and subsequent implicit presumption of the universality of English as the prevailing language in Ontario and thus does not require any specific designation or protection as a legitimate language in the province. Second, in contrast to the pan-Canadian universalistic notion of citizenship advanced in the English document, the French document encourages students to think about their specific French-speaking identity in the province and in the country. The opening to the course reads: ‘Son étude s’étend aux activités de coopération et aux conflits qui se sont produits au Canada et en Ontario français’ (OFC 123). As we noted earlier, the third theme of each period under study includes specific reference to the Francophones of Ontario, where no such designation appears in the English document. This attention to the specific French-speaking identity may have its roots in an Ontario policy, enacted in 2004, known as the Aménagement linguistique: A  Policy for Ontario’s French Language Schools and Francophone Community (Ontario, 2004). Starting from the premise that ‘A language thrives when people use it in daily communication and when it permeates the space in which they live and build their communities’, the policy sets out to enable Ontario’s French-language schools to ‘optimize the transmission of the French language and culture among young people, to help them reach their full potential in school and society, and to breathe new life into the francophone community’ (Ontario, 2004, p. 3). Consequently, it appears that the provincial government acknowledges the distinctive FrancoOntarian identity that co-exists within the broader province of Ontario and wider country that is Canada. Third, entirely distinct sections emerge in the French language document, including such inquiries and objectives as: ‘Quels moyens sont utilisés partout en Ontario pour lutter contre le Règlement 17 ?’ (OFC 131); ‘Quelles actions concrètes témoignent de la détermination du sénateur Gustave Lacasse à défendre les droits des francophones en Ontario ? (OFC 135)’, and ‘décrire l’évolution de la politique des gouvernements fédéral et ontarien à l’égard de la minorité canadienne-française au pays et en Ontario à partir des années 1960

162  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

(OFC 136).’ Furthermore, whereas the substantive content covered in the first two periods of the course is relatively aligned in both English and French, greater divergences appear in the latter two periods covered. This dovetails with the concerted efforts of Franco-Ontarians to combat linguistic inequalities, intolerances, and (re)build their own identity in the province (Normand, 2016). As a result, and herein demonstrating greater similarity with the curriculum of Québec, the French language document advances an alternative national narrative, filled with specific historical examples crafting a distinct set of stories and identity separate both within Ontario specifically and Canada more broadly for Franco-Ontarians. The implication of this is that students attending French-language schools learn about injustices committed by Canada and the province against their community but that students attending English language schools learn nothing (at least according to the materials provided explicitly by the state) about this history. As a result, there is an explicit othering of both communities, which generates ambiguity while encouraging ignorance in the English-speaking sector of their own history.

Section Four: Québec Québec is Canada’s largest province geographically, covering 595,402 km2 of territory, and the second most populous province after Ontario with 8.6 million inhabitants (Statistique Québec, 2021). It is also the third province where newcomers to Canada choose to settle the most, behind Ontario and British Columbia, making it one of the most ethnically diverse parts of the country. Québec entered Confederation as the only province in Canada where the majority not only was (and still is) French-speaking, but also where both French and English were recognized as official languages for legislative and judicial purposes. Protection for denominational schools since Confederation also meant that Protestant English-language schools have existed in the province without interruption. Through a constitutional amendment, Québec eliminated its denominational (Catholic and Protestant) schools in 1997 and replaced them with secular French and English-language school boards. Anglo-Quebecers also have access to an extensive network of English-language colleges and three universities throughout the province. Despite being the numerical minority in the province, this community has enjoyed a level of protection and institutional completeness that has been the envy of Francophone minorities in the rest of the country. In the 2019 school year, 964,110 students attended public primary and secondary schools in the province (Statistics Canada, 2021). Approximately 110,000 students are enrolled in private schools in the province—an anomaly in the Canadian federation. As Québec is one of the only provinces to subsidize its private schools, the tuition for such schools is much lower than elsewhere in the country (including Ontario), which makes this option attainable—and attractive—to a wider array of families. Due to such extensive public funding,

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 163

and significant in this context of our research, both public and private schools must adhere to the government curriculum. The Québec history curriculum has long been a subject of political and intellectual debates, as demonstrated by the sheer number of government-led consultations in recent decades on the question. We need to go as far back as the 1960s with the Commission royale d’enquête sur l’enseignement dans la province de Québec, more commonly known as the Parent Commission (1961–1966), to retrace the beginnings of this collective discussion. This commission led to the creation of a provincial Ministry of Education and to the standardization of the curriculum throughout all schools (curriculum development was until then the purview of each of some 1,500 school boards). Regarding the history curriculum in particular, the Parent commission suggested that its teaching should be professionalized in order to be more representative of the scientific discipline and less about the propagation of a single national narrative (Déry, 2018). The idea that the teaching of a national history should be closely linked with the formation of citizens also stems from discussions that took place first during the Parent commission (Éthier et  al., 2013). Yet, decades later, the tension between these two opposite poles is still apparent. When the present curriculum’s ancestor, the 2007 Histoire et éducation à la citoyenneté, was unveiled (Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, 2007), it was heavily criticized for ‘erasing the national narrative and the memorial role of history’ (Beauchemin & Fahmy-Eid, 2014, p. 4). This led to widespread demands—from the historical discipline and from the public at large—for a review of the history curriculum that would openly seek to promote national history. By contrast, the 2017 curriculum is noted in the literature for its more overtly militant and nationalist stance in particular. On Moreau and Smith’s (2019, p. 57) telling, this new curriculum is also stepping away from a multicultural narrative that sought to give ‘an equitable space to Indigenous peoples, cultural communities and anglophones’ and its replacement by ‘a re-centering of contents around a narrative whose intelligibility rests on the national framework . . . putting in evidence the ‘national duality” ’. This tendency to review the curriculum periodically since its coming into existence and to oscillate between more or less ostentatiously nationalist narratives has followed broader political trends in Québec where governments have alternated for decades between nationalist-sovereigntist and federalist parties—a pattern that is complete absent in Ontario. Let us now turn to a more in-depth examination of the contents of the 2017 curriculum. In contrast to Ontario, there is a single history curriculum for both French and English language schools in Québec, so no cross-linguistic comparison will be made in this case. According to Déry’s (2018) analysis, the program’s aims show a bit of a paradox. While the announced role of the students should be, among others, to ‘deepen and call into question their understanding of Québec and Canadian history’ (Ministère de l’éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017, p. 9) through deliberative aptitudes and critical thinking, the structure

164  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

of the program actually leaves very little space for such reinterpretation by the learners, rather relying on memorization (Boutonnet, 2017, p. 74). Accordingly, from its first paragraphs, the curriculum is very clear about its aim: to foster a sense of identity in the learners through the study of the Québec nation’s evolution in time (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017, p. 5). Some of the distinctive features of the Québec and Canada History curriculum are first, that the curriculum spans two school years (during Secondary 3 and 4, the equivalent of Grades 10 and 11), and, second, that it begins with the arrival of Indigenous peoples in North America. The curriculum is divided into several chronological periods. In the first year, the periods covered begin with origins (1500) to 1608 (the Indigenous experience to the foundation of the colony of Québec); 1608 to 1760 (the French colonial regime); 1760 to 1791 (the British conquest); and 1791 to 1840 (the rise of French-Canadian nationalism, ending with the Patriot Uprising and the Act of Union) (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017, p. 24). In the second year of the curriculum, the periodization spans from 1840 to 1896 (the formation of the Canadian federation), 1896 to 1945 (nationalism and autonomy in Canada), 1945 to 1980 (the Quiet Revolution), and 1980 to today (sovereignty and other societal choices) (ibid.: 46). We, therefore, see that despite the curriculum beginning with a discussion of the presence of Indigenous peoples in North America at the onset of colonization, this consideration quickly gives way to a chronology that is completely centered on European settlers’ activity on the territory, similar to what we found in Ontario. According to the document, this periodization has the explicit goal of shedding light on the singular evolution of Québec society in the broader Canadian, North American, and world context (ibid.: 20). When Indigenous peoples are mentioned in later periods of the curriculum, it is often in the context of policies to which they are subjected by the government (both provincial and federal), rather than as political actors in their own right. Worse, impacts of colonial policies are sometimes stated as matter of fact, without any acknowledgement that they were the result of government decisions. Indigenous peoples are therefore not portrayed as being active participants in Québec society but subjects of (and sometimes collateral damage to) a society to which they don’t belong. These excerpts are telling (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017): Alors que se développe la colonie, certaines populations autochtones se fragilisent, notamment en proie aux épidémies et aux guerres. (29) À la suite de la sédentarisation, le taux d’accroissement naturel est aussi en hausse chez les Autochtones. Leur culture s’effrite toutefois. Entre autres maux, la fréquentation obligatoire des pensionnats, dont l’existence est vouée à la propagation de la culture judéo-chrétienne et à l’assimilation des

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 165

Autochtones au reste de la population canadienne, contribue à accélérer le déclin de certaines langues autochtones et à fragiliser le tissu social dans plusieurs communautés. (58) Pour plusieurs populations autochtones, les conditions de vie dans les communautés, les villages inuits et les villes sont peu favorables: la population s’accroît, mais elle est en proie à d’importants problèmes sociaux; et les taux de scolarité et d’emploi sont peu élevés. (65) According to Kativik Corporation, a para-governmental organization representing the Inuit in Northern Québec, the new History of Québec and Canada curriculum is unacceptable. Not only does it offer too little Aboriginal content, but it was crafted out of a consultation process that repeats a historical pattern of oppression, which continues to suppress the Inuit voice. (Kativik Corporation, 2017) The rest of the periodization follows a European-centric view of history, with such elements as the Constitution Act, the Act of Union, the Second World War and the ‘constitutional episode’ (marked with the first Québec referendum on secession) being used as bookends to mark the beginning and the end of important periods in Québec history. The contents of the program are very “inward”-looking in that it focuses on provincial politics and identity more than it does on Canadian or even world events. A word search reveals that the terms associated with “Canad*” (Canada, Canadien, Canadienne, etc.) appear a total of 254 times, and the terms associated with “Québ*” (Québec, Québécois, Québécoise, etc.) appear 313 times. In terms of political figures, Québécois-elected representatives are overrepresented in the curriculum: seven premiers throughout history are mentioned (Mercier, Godbout, Duplessis, Sauvé, Lesage, Bourassa, and Lévesque), whereas only four Canadian prime ministers (Macdonald, Laurier, Trudeau Sr, and Mulroney) make an appearance. Its explicit goal is to produce Québec citizens who are aware of their identity and who share a common collective memory and vision of the world (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017, p.  7). But what is this vision and this collective memory? Who belongs to the Québécois nation, and who falls outside of its boundaries? Despite the stated intention of the curriculum to offer “un espace de discussion sur la mémoire, l’identité et la diversité” (ibid.: 5), said diversity is not reflected particularly well in the material to be studied. A word search in the 75-page document is quite revealing: the terms “multiculturalisme,” “interculturalisme”, “Noir” (Black), “Musulman”

166  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

(Muslim), “Islam”, and “Judaïsme/Juif/Juive” (Jewish) are completely absent from the curriculum. This is in contrast to “Catholique” which appears 27 times and “Protestant” which appears 3 times. The term “ethnique” appears only once, in the context of an explanation of the Constitution Act of 1791 which divided the Province of Québec into Upper and Lower Canada: “L’Acte constitutionnel conduit à une division territoriale, juridique, ethnique et linguistique de la province” (ibid.: 39). This appears to be a step backwards in the representation of cultural and religious diversity in Québec’s history curriculum. For example Hirsch and McAndrew (2016) had noted that the 2004 history curriculum had made great strides compared to its predecessor in terms of highlighting the Jewish community’s contribution to Québec’s religious heritage. Altidor (2021) has, for her part, examined the contents of the textbooks used alongside the new curriculum regarding the space allowed to discuss the Black community and has concluded that: l’histoire des Noirs au Canada et au Québec tend à renvoyer aux groupes majoritaires une image de soi positive et valorisante, les éléments incriminants de cette histoire (ex.: esclavagisme, colonialisme, racisme) étant gommés du récit historique et du patrimoine mémoriel. S’agissant de l’histoire des Noirs, les omissions, les silences et les minimisations constituent autant de procédés discursifs qui contribuent, dans ces manuels, à renforcer des rapports symboliques de domination. (Altidor, 2021, p. xiv) Next, the term “immigra*” (immigration, immigrant) appears seven times in the document, in the context of three different discussions: the establishment of immigrants from the British Isles (mostly Ireland) in Lower Canada in the pre-Confederation era (Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur, 2017, p. 39), the arrival of waves of immigrants in Western Canada postConfederation, (ibid.: 52), and the establishment of newcomers to Québec in the post-Second World War era. The following passage is prescient: Les nouveaux arrivants, dont l’origine est de plus en plus diversifiée, s’installent majoritairement au cœur de la métropole, alors que plusieurs francophones vont peupler sa banlieue . . . plusieurs immigrants adoptent la langue anglaise, essentiellement pour des motifs socioéconomiques. (ibid.: 58) In the context of a community whose national identity is defined principally by its language, French, this discussion of the presence and contribution of immigrants to contemporary Québec society could easily be read as an attempt at othering them or at putting them in the out-group. In sum, it appears the national identity conveyed by the curriculum is that of the (white, francophone, of Catholic descent) majority, with very little to no space afforded

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 167

to discussing the input of other ethnocultural, linguistic, and religious groups existing in Québec society. This is a stark contrast to what we’ve witnessed in both the English and French Ontario curricula, where diversity is ostentatiously bolstered. The document is also replete with references to nationalism—the term “national*” comes up close to 50 times. Discussions of French-Canadian and Québec nationalism are often framed in the context of national duality, that is a struggle against British, then English Canadian nationalism. The document highlights attempts by colonial powers to assimilate or oppress the “Canadiens” which will feed their nationalism and their quest for autonomy, first following the Conquest (ibid.: 34), then in the context of the Act of Union of 1840 (ibid.: 40), and later in the post-Confederation era (ibid.: 47) such as during the conscription crisis (ibid.: 52). This narrative will then be applied to the conservative nationalist regime of Maurice Duplessis, marked by a weak provincial state, to the transition towards the Révolution tranquille and the rise of a far more interventionist welfare state in Québec. The election of the first sovereigntist government of the Parti québécois in 1976, the radicalization of a nationalist fringe group (the Front de libération du Québec), the adoption of Bill 101 making French the official language of the province, the 1980 referendum on secession, the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords, and the 1995 referendum are all highlighted as being significant moments in the chronology. In sum, the space dedicated to these events shows the importance granted to Québec’s nationalism and struggle for political autonomy in the building of the provincial narrative, and this is communicated quite forcefully in the latest iteration of the history curriculum. This is also a contrast to Ontario’s English-language curriculum, where nationalism is far more understated, even banalized.

Section Five: Discussion and Conclusion Situating the curricula of the two provinces side by side reveals a series of important findings. To start, our analysis has generated strong evidence in support of the constructivist approach to nationalism and everyday nationalism at work. We have revealed the ways in which a state uses history curriculum strategically to forge particular identities, encourage specific loyalties, and develop tailored narratives that simultaneously inculcate and refract moral values and behaviors held to be desirable among citizens. As anticipated, marked differences distinguish the respective narratives of Ontario and Québec. Ontario’s narrative centers on Canada with little about Ontario specifically, particularly in the English-language document. Québec’s narrative is expressly dedicated to advancing a particular national narrative about the history of the province and country, the Québécois as a nation, and an overall inward focus to the subject matter. It is no coincidence, for example, that 1980, which was the year when the first referendum on secession was held in Québec, was chosen

168  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard

as the year to mark the beginning of the last chronological period in Québec’ curriculum, rather than 1982 and the patriation of the Canadian constitution as was chosen in Ontario’s. What is more, and further supportive of a constructivist approach, important differences are revealed within the province of Ontario itself between the English-language and French-language documents. Ontario’s English-language document emphasizes a ‘Canadian’ identity with no mention of language and culture at all, nor of the existence of a national minority community within the boundaries of its own province. Meanwhile, Ontario’s French-language document is replete with: references to French identity, language, and culture; normative obligations on members of the Franco-Ontarian community to know and understand their distinctive identity and history; and a ‘national narrative’ emphasizing the transgressions committed against the Franco-Ontarian community by the province and the Government of Canada—events about which the English-speaking majority never get to learn, thus creating a gap in how each community perceives each other within the same province. Interestingly, as a population, Canadians express multiple affiliations to alternative political communities. The 2020 Survey of Canadians study found that when faced with ‘the Moreno question’ (Moreno, 2006), which measures shared loyalties between different levels of government in federal and quasifederal entities, three in four Canadians define themselves as both ‘Canadian’ and as a person from a specific province or territory, compared to one in four who define themselves exclusively as a ‘Canadian’ or as a person from a specific province. Quebec is one of only two provinces where residents are more likely to identify with their province, than with Canada. Ontario, in the meantime, stands out as the ‘only province where a majority of residents define themselves as a Canadian only or first’ (Environics Institute, 2020, p. 1). These patterns of identification, moreover, are not a recent phenomenon but have been documented over generations of studies and investigations. Our analysis of the history curriculum offers the identification of a mechanism of ‘everyday nationalism’ at work, which may contribute to these contrasting identification patterns expressed across these two populations. Our research also uncovered a marked divergence between Ontario and Québec in terms of the politicization of the curriculum itself. While heated debates have raged for decades in Québec over the content and framing of Québec and Canadian history as a taught subject, there is no evidence of anything even remotely comparable in Ontario. Policies and practices such as school board amalgamations, annual mandatory assessments, and the context of sexual education have been politicized in Ontario (Hutchison Grondin, 2015; Farmer et al., 2019)—but never the history curriculum itself. This is perhaps reflective of the fact that the Ontario document, particularly in English, is almost antiseptic in its formulation and is not structured as a clear chronological narrative with specific facts, events, and figures to memorize. Even the choice by Ontario to study Canadian history since World War I—as if the time before

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 169

‘Canada’ emerged among other ‘nation-states’ does not matter—is denotative of this. As a result, Anglophone students in Ontario have little opportunity to learn and understand the tumultuous (and contested) events that led to the establishment of the country as it is currently known. The Ontario documents in both languages, moreover, rarely mention partisan politics or refer to specific administration, particularly at the provincial level. The same cannot be said about Quebec’s curriculum. The difference in the attention and critical analyses of Québec’s curriculum therefore speaks about the contested nature of nationalism and the politics of identity formation in that province. Finally, one of the biggest—and arguably most unfortunate—parallel across the Ontario and Québec curricula is found in the respective engagement with Indigenous peoples and their histories in Canada. While the Québec curriculum does start with an acknowledgement and study of the arrival and traditional ways of life of Indigenous peoples in North America, the curriculum quickly turns these inhabitants into secondary characters in the narrative, to the profit of the settlers’ activities on the land. Moreover, both curricula only address how the policies of the state have (largely negatively) impacted Indigenous peoples rather than portraying them as agents of their own right within the state. This is why future research must examine the ways in which Indigenous peoples are reclaiming authority over education and crafting distinct curricula that capture their ontologically and epistemologically different understandings of such concepts as ‘nationhood’, ‘sovereignty’, and relations among peoples and the lands within which they live. As Kincheloe writes (2006, pp. 181/182): The study of indigeneity and indigenous ways of being highlights tacit Western assumptions about the nature and construction of selfhood . . . Ridiculed by Europeans as primitive, the indigenous ways of being were often destroyed by the colonial conquerors—not only the military ones but the political, religious, and educational variety as well. Learning about and better understanding indigenous systems of meaning and being would also serve to break the chokehold that Western, Eurocentric, modernist thinking has maintained in the traditional work on nationalism, nation-building, and identity formation. As Canadians as people, and Canadian history as a discipline, are finally beginning to take stock of, and to question, the colonial nature of our institutions, these inquiries should also permeate into the national narratives examined and reproduced in our school curricula.

Notes 1 Whereas the 10 provinces have exercised power over education according to the terms of the Constitution Act, 1867, the 3 northern territories only gained such control through processes of devolution from the federal government, which began in the 1990s.

170  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard 2 The term ‘Canadien/ne’ was commonly used to identify French settlers in North America from the seventeenth century until the first official use of the term in 1791 when the province of Québec was broken into ‘Upper Canada’ and ‘Lower Canada’. This is what is referred to here. 3 In 1999, in an effort to ‘de-stream’ high school in Ontario, the province introduced ‘Applied’ and ‘Academic’ high school courses where the main difference is in the approach to learning, where Applied courses focus more on hands-on activity and ‘real world’ examples while Academic courses focus on abstract reasoning to teach subjects.

References Altidor, D. (2021). La représentation des Noirs dans le système éducatif: Le cas des manuels d’histoire et éducation à la citoyenneté dans l’enseignement secondaire au Québec (Ph.D. thesis in sociology, unpublished). Université du Québec à Montréal. Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Beauchemin, J., & Fahmy-Eid, N. (2014). Le sens de l’histoire. Pour une réforme du programme d’histoire et éducation à la citoyenneté de 3e et 4e secondaire. Gouvernement du Québec. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. SAGE. Borrows, J. (2010). Canada’s indigenous constitution. University of Toronto Press. Boutonnet, V. (2017). Une analyse du contenu proposé par le nouveau programme d’histoire. In M-A. Éthier, V. Boutonnet, S. Demers, & D. Lefrançois (Eds.), Quel sens pour l’histoire? Analyse et critique du nouveau programme d’histoire du Québec et du Canada (pp. 61–79). M Éditeur. Brubaker, R. (1996). Nationalism reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the new Europe. Cambridge University Press. Carr-Stewart, S. (Ed.). (2019). Knowing the past, facing the future: Indigenous education in Canada. UBC Press. Déry, C. (2018). Le curriculum québécois d’histoire: Un programme tout en incohérences. Active History. Retrieved May 25, 2022, from https://activehistory.ca/2018/06/ quebec-history-curriculum/ Elgenius, G. (2011). Symbols of nations and nationalism: Celebrating nationhood. Palgrave Macmillan. Engel, L., & Frizzell, M. (2015). Competitive comparison and PISA bragging rights: Subnational uses of the OECD’s PISA in Canada and the US. Discourse. Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(5), 665–682. Environics Institute for Survey Research. (2020). 2020 survey of Canadians: Report 3 – identity, values and language. https://cwf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-10-5-confedsurvey3part1-final.pdf Éthier, M.-A., Cardin, J.-F., & Lefrançois, D. (2013). Cris et chuchotements: la citoyenneté au cœur de l’enseignement de l’histoire au Québec. Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation, 25(2). https://doi.org/10.32316/hse/rhe.v25i2.4311 Farmer, E., Fleming, N., Black, A., & Dumont, T. (2019). Where are we in terms of sexual health education? An Ontario perspective. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, 41(6), 835–837. Fox, J. E., & Van Ginderachter, M. (2018). Introduction: Everyday nationalism’s evidence problem. Nations and Nationalism, 24(3), 546–552.

Nation-building and curriculum in Canada 171 Goode, J. P.,  & Stroup, D. (2015). Everyday nationalism: Constructivism for the masses. Social Science Quarterly, 96(3), 717–739. Green, A. (1990). Education and state formation: The rise of education systems in England, France, and the USA. Palgrave Macmillan. Hirsch, S., & McAndrew, M. (2016). L’enseignement de l’histoire des communautés juives au Québec: le traitement curriculaire et les besoins des enseignants. In S. Hirsch, M. McAndrew, G. Audet, & J. Ipgrave (Eds.), Judaïsme et éducation: enjeux et défis pédagogiques (pp. 9–24). Presses de l'Université Laval. Hutchison Grondin, M. K. P. (2015). More than plumbing: The history of sexual education in Ontario, 1960–1979 (Ph.D. thesis in history, unpublished). University of Western Ontario. Kativik Corporation. (2017). The new history of Québec and Canada curriculum is unacceptable. Retrieved May  28, 2022, from www.kativik.qc.ca/en/the-new-history-of-quebec-andcanada-curriculum-is-unacceptable/ Kincheloe, J. (2006). Critical ontology and indigenous ways of being: Forging a postcolonial curriculum. In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial imaginations (pp. 181–202). University of Toronto Press. Krikorian, J. D., Cameron, D. R., Martel, M., McDougall, A. W., & Vipond, R. C. (2017). Roads to confederation: The making of Canada, 1867, Vol. 2. Toronto. Lecours, A. (2019). Dynamic de/centralization in Canada, 1867–2010. Publius: The Journal on Federalism, 49(1), 57–83. Lupal, M. R. (1970). Educational crisis in the new dominion to 1917. In J. Donald Wilson et al. (Eds.), Canadian education: A history (pp. 266–289). Prentice Hall. Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. (2007). Histoire et éducation à la citoyenneté. Gouvernement du Québec. Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur. (2017). Histoire du Québec et du Canada. Gouvernement du Québec. Ministry of Education, Ontario. (2022). French-language education in Ontario. Retrieved May 5, 2022, from www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/amenagement/ Moreau, D., & Smith, J. (2019). L’enseignement de l’histoire nationale au Québec à travers ses recommandations curriculaires: une analyse lexicométrique. Revue des sciences de l’éducation, 45(2), 50–77. Moreno, L. (2006). Scotland, Catalonia, Europeanisation and the Moreno question. Scottish Affairs, 54(1), 1–21. Normand, M. (2016). Mobilisation linguistique en Ontario français: entre action et rémanence. Revue Nouvel-Ontario, 41, 273–309. Ontario. (2004). Aménagement linguistique: A policy for Ontario’s francophone schools and francophone community. Queen’s Printer. Retrieved May 30, 2022, from www.edu.gov.on.ca/ eng/document/policy/linguistique/policyguide.pdf Ontario. (2018a). Le curriculum de l’Ontario 9e et 10e année: Études canadiennes et mondiales. The Queen’s Printer. Retrieved June 1, 2022, from www.edu.gov.on.ca/fre/curriculum/ secondary/canworld910curr2018fr.pdf Ontario. (2018b). The Ontario curriculum grades 9 and 10: Canadian and world studies. The Queen’s Printer. Retrieved June  1, 2022, from www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/ secondary/canworld910curr2018.pdf Österman, M.,  & Robinson, D. (2002). Educating democrats or autocrats? The regimeconditional effect of education on support for democracy. Political Studies. Online First. 1–23.

172  Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard Paglayan, A. (2022). Education or indoctrination? The violent origins of public school systems in an era of state-building. American Political Science Review (Online first). Repoussi, M.,  & Tutiaux-Guillon, N. (2010, Spring). New trends in history textbook research: Issues and methodologies towards a school historiography. Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, 2(1), 154–170. Rocher, F., & Smith, M. (2003). The four dimensions of Canadian federalism. In New trends in Canadian federalism (2nd ed., pp. 21–44). Broadview Press. Russell, P.  (2017). Canada’s odyssey: A  country based on incomplete conquests. University of Toronto Press. Savage, G. (2021). The quest for revolution in Australian schooling policy. Routledge. Statista Research Department. (2021). Immigration in Canada: Statistics and facts. Retrieved May 10, 2022, from www.statista.com/topics/2917/immigration-in-canada/#dossierKeyfigures Statistics Canada. (2019).  Statistics on official languages in Canada. www.canada.ca/en/ canadian-heritage/services/official-languages-bilingualism/publications/statistics.html Statistics Canada. (2021). Number of students in regular programs for youth, public elementary and secondary schools, by grade and sex. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/ tv.action?pid=3710000701 Statistique Québec. (2021). Population du Québec: important ralentissement de la croissance en 2020, mais une reprise s’amorce en 2021. https://statistique.quebec.ca/fr/communique/ population-du-quebec-important-ralentissement-croissance-2020-mais-reprise-en-2021 Tallbear, K. (2019). Caretaking relations, not American dreaming. Kalfou, 6(1), 24–41. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nationbuilding. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7–33). Routledge. Venken, M. (2021). Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland schooling in interwar Europe. Berghahn. Wallner, J. (2014). Learning to school: Federalism and public schooling in Canada. University of Toronto Press. Wallner, J., Savage, G., Hartong, S.,  & Engel, L. (2020). Laboratories, coproducers, and venues: Roles played by subnational governments in standards-based reforms in four federations. Comparative Education Review, 64(2), 249–268.

Chapter 8

Primers as a nation’s self-portrait The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

Introduction In the 1920s and 30s, the Baltic ethnic communities1 took institutional forms, that is the nation-states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, whose existence was terminated with the Soviet occupation in 1940, were established. This inter-war period is enshrined in collective memory as the heyday of the three nations, when ethnic identities that had been cultivated privately until then gained official status in the public space. The “flaggings” of ethnic community were combined with the “flaggings” of nationhood, to use Billig’s (1995/2014) terms. Ethnic identities became framed, standardized, and prepared for transmission to future generations through state institutions, including schooling. Tröhler and Maricic (2023) have raised the question of how national identities are built through education, and how schools create national loyalties and identities. Hence, what instruments do schools use to encode national belonging for future generations and to teach them to practice it? We addressed these broad and fundamental questions to one object, namely to the primer, which can be regarded as the cornerstone of schooling. As noted by several scholars, textbooks, especially the primer and the first reader, not only teach reading and writing but also purposefully shape children’s worldview and canon of values and institutionalize and standardize national identity, making it tangible through images and texts (Cohen, 2004, p. 91; Grever & Van der Viles, 2017, p. 288; Tröhler, 2020, p. 11). Knowing the pride of the Baltic peoples in the creation of their nation-states, we assumed in our case studies of Latvia and Lithuania that the “flaggings” of the country in primers would play a significant, even central, role for “anchoring” nationhood among the young future citizens. This expectation was especially true for the primers published under authoritarian and ultra-nationalist policies in 1926 and 1936, respectively. However, as we shall see further, these hypotheses were not validated in this way. National identity in EU legislation (Consolidated . . ., 2012) is used almost synonymously with “state,” also incorporating and (mostly) assimilating national minorities. Smith (2009) argues that a nation, and therefore a national identity, can exist without a nation-state, as is the case with Kurds, Sikhs, Tamils, etc. DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-9

174  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

(42). The case of Lithuanians and Latvians, on the other hand, reveals the titular nation’s choice to protect the boundaries of its ethnie vis-à-vis other ethnic communities within the nation-state. Just as the Baltic ethnies kept their identity while being part of Russia and experiencing German and Polish domination, they also remained enclosed within their nation-states, avoiding the incorporation of other fellow citizens. In 1920, 72.6% of Latvians lived in Latvia, and in 1923, 83.9% of Lithuanians lived in Lithuania. The largest minorities in Latvia were Russians (5.7%), Jews (4.9%), Belarusians (4.1%), and Germans (3.6%); in Lithuania, we find Jews (7.6%), Poles (3.2%), and Russians (2.5%) (Latvijas . . ., 1922, p. 4; Lietuvos gyventojai . . ., 1923). From the legal viewpoint, the representatives of all ethnies were citizens of Latvia and Lithuania with equal rights, who lived within the impermeable, policed state borders, engaged in public rituals and used the state symbols created by the titular nation. Lithuanian citizens (85.7%) were also united by their religious affiliation to the Catholic church. Thus, at the nation-state level, Latvia and Lithuania can speak of a common national identity. However, one level “below,” the Baltic nations dissolved into their own ethnic spaces and continued to exist as relatively closed ethnic communities of Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, Jews, etc., with their own language, symbols, clothing, music, myths, memories, traditions, personal names, and, most importantly, with their own schools in the language of the respective ethnic community. The public space was dominated by “the culture of the dominant historic ethnie” (Smith, 2009, p. 55), but in the private space, ethnic communities continued to live their own lives. Consequently, in the 1920s and 1930s, none of the Baltic states established a convincing, single, undifferentiated unity of the nation as in the case of long-established and longlegitimized, “large” and “self-confident” Western states. During the period of authoritarian rule in all three Baltic states, a “united nation” was an important agenda item, but further development of this plan was interrupted by World War II.

Becoming Latvian. Becoming Lithuanian: Historical Background By 1918, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians were the three ethnic communities that inhabited the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Unlike Latvians and Estonians, Lithuanians had their own experience of a superstate, albeit centuries earlier. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in its golden age in the fifteenth century, had been the largest state in Europe, including territories of the former Kievan Rus’ and what is now Lithuania, Belarus, and parts of Ukraine, Latvia, Russia, Poland, and Moldova. Lithuania’s greatness faded away at the end of the eighteenth century, when, like other territories of the modern Baltic States, it continued its existence as part of Tsarist Russia.

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 175

From the middle of the nineteenth century, Baltic people experienced an upsurge of nationalist sentiments typical of Europe at that time. Educated Latvians and Lithuanians no longer shied away from mentioning in public their origins in the lower social classes, which they considered indigenous, and began to manifest their belonging to particular ethnic network within the symbolic boundaries of the Baltic lands. As Jaffrelot (2003) maintains, it is the intellectuals who play a major role in national movements, being their “agents,” who can and know how to propagate people’s unity, raising it to the level of ideology. A legendary example is the student Krišjānis Valdemārs (or Christian Woldemar in Germanized version) at the University of Tartu (Dorpat) who, in the mid1850s, put the inscription “Latvian” on the door of his room, which clearly defined his stand on the issue of Latvian identity (Ābols, 2003, pp. 101–102). The formation of the ethnic intellectual strata, in turn, led to increasingly bold and vociferous demands by Latvians and Lithuanians to strengthen their political positions vis-à-vis Tsarist Russian officials and, in the case of Latvians, also vis-à-vis the German-landed nobility. The idea of Latvia and Lithuania as independent nation-states came into effect after World War I. Latvia and Lithuania were founded as liberal parliamentary democracies after the collapse of the Russian empire in 1918, but state building and international recognition came only when the battles against foreign forces and, in the case of Latvia local Bolsheviks, had been won. The nation-state with its institutions became a framing where the primordial “flaggings” of ethnic identity made people feel united with the past and the present and could be legalized and developed. Exactly as it is described by Smith (2009), these nation-states were formed on the bases of dominant ethnies (44). Traditional symbols of ethnic identity such as festivals, songs, and folk costumes were complemented by symbols of the nation-state, such as flag, anthem, coat of arms, national heroes, and memorial sites, as well as, in the case of Latvia, the capital city. In the case of Lithuania, however, the question of the capital city remained unresolved throughout the inter-war period, as in October  1920, Poland annexed Vilnius, the historic and modern-day capital of Lithuania, and the surrounding area. Accordingly, Lithuania’s secondlargest city, Kaunas, was designated the temporary capital of the state, and this remained unchanged throughout the inter-war period. The new states created “the officially sanctioned version of the nation” (Silova, 2019, p.  11), and, vice versa, the ethnic communities were “organised by the state”, “normalised”, and had thus become “politicised” (Tröhler, 2020, pp. 8, 10–11). Ethnic, and now national, identity was the only unifying basis for Latvians, while Lithuanians were also consolidated by their common faith—Catholicism. The census shows that 85.7% of the population in Lithuania in 1923 were Catholic, while in Latvia 57.3% of the population in 1920 were Protestant, 23.5% Catholic, and 8.7% Orthodox (Latvijas . . ., 1922; Lietuvos gyventojai . . ., 1923). Hence, in Lithuania, unlike Latvia, two stable cornerstones were laid in the foundations of nationhood even before

176  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

the establishment of the nation state, namely the common, glorious past of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Catholic religion. The next important foundation of nation-building was compulsory education, where, in turn, Latvia mobilized its citizens faster than Lithuania. Tröhler’s (2020) conviction that “the nation state, depending on loyal citizens, is deeply educationalized” (10) is well illustrated by the example of Latvians and Lithuanians. Immediately after the foundation of the states in 1919, compulsory education (preschool or homeschooling, basic school, and supplementary school) was introduced in Latvia for children from 6 to 16 years of age. In reality, the number of pupils in primary schools increased only gradually over time, but the result was successful—in 1930, Latvia had only 13.6% illiterates, which, according to a League of Nations report, ranked Latvia among the most educated European nations (Staris & Ūsiņš, 2000, pp. 17–18). In Lithuania, too, the education of citizens was a concern, but the process was slower: in 1922, the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania adopted the Law on Primary Schools, which provided for obligatory 4-year education for all the children of school age (7–14  years). However, universally obligatory education was implemented only in 1930, and the first primary schools of the second degree (6 classes) started to appear in 1936. In 1930–32, Lithuania had still 32.7% illiterates (Staris & Ūsiņš, 2000, p. 18). It can be said that institutionalized state education of citizens in Latvia and Lithuania reached its targets in the 1930s. For the first time, Latvians and Lithuanians could receive education at all levels in their first languages, which were declared the official national languages.2 The language used in education was subject to standardization, thus investing in a “common milieu” (Calhoun, 2016, p.  13; Cohen, 2004, p.  99). Other elements of ethnic and national culture were also practiced at school, such as rituals, myths, and symbols, which permeated cultural learning across subjects related to the homeland: history and geography and, as already mentioned, especially language and literature (Lacombe, 1997). The democratic period in Lithuania did not last long—the military coup d'état took place on 17 December 1926 and resulted in the replacement of the democratically elected government by a regime led by Antanas Smetona, representing the Lithuanian Nationalist Union. The transition to authoritarianism in Latvia followed a similar scenario, when after 15 May 1934 coup-d'état, led by then Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis and supported by army and militarized groups of Aizsargi (Home Guards), the Parliament was dissolved, political parties were banned, and Ulmanis became a dictator. National protectionism characterized the policies of both dictator-presidents, that is the state set the protection of the titular nation as its primary duty (Plakans, 2011, pp. 323, 326). Nationhood “flaggings” flooded the public space, but, at the end of the 1930s, populist nationalism was becoming a routine wrapped in propaganda slogans issued by the government. National feelings were rekindled by the Soviet occupation in June 1940 and the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union. But that is another story.

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 177

Questioning Primers About the Nationhood: Research Methodology Textbooks systematize knowledge about what a nation is, how a nation lives as a specific community, how it was formed, and how it develops in a specific time and space. The first textbooks that pave the way for further school knowledge are the primer and the first reader. The primer “generate not just literacies but national literacies” (Tröhler & Maricic, 2023, p. 33); in other words, through the primer the nation is taught, and a model of practicing national identity is discovered and passed on to the next generations (Cohen, 2004, p. 91). The primer, with its simple and clear texts in the mother tongue and images that are present even in the most modest primers, makes national identity tangible or, as Skey (2017) claims, “materialises the nation” (3). Thus, not only giving an idea of the current general order of existence, but also, as Billig (1995/2014) suggests, adding “what we should be like” to “who ‘we’ are” (103). It can be said that the idealized self-portrait of the nation is “painted” in primers and passed on to the descendants. The development of primers in Latvia and Lithuania after World War I was a great challenge, at both official and unofficial levels: what values should be passed on to be transmitted to the next generation, which would grew up in an independent nation-state, in a different society, completely unknown to previous generations? Two paths were chosen for the first post-war primers: the first was to republish the books already in circulation before 1918, and the second was to write or compile new primers, which was usually done by teachers. The sources of our study are 16 primers, 8 each from Latvia3 and Lithuania.4 The first group of primers consists of those published in 1918, 1920, 1921, and 1923. The Lithuanian primer of 1918 and the Latvian primer of 1920 were published when the war of independence against the Bolsheviks, the Bermontians, and against Poland was still being waged in the territory of both countries. Therefore, the development of the books was obviously influenced by editions published before the establishment of the nation-state. The second group of primers was published at a time that can be described as a period of relative stability in everyday life in a democratic state. These are the Latvian primers of 1928, 1933, and the Lithuanian primer of 1925. One of the Latvian primers was published in 1934, at the time of the coup d'état of Ulmanis, on 15 May.5 The third group contains primers published in an authoritarian nation-state. These are the Lithuanian primers published in 1927, 1928, 1933 and Latvian primers published in 1936. Our study analyzed 943 pages of the primers, 284 pages of the Latvian text, and 659 pages of the Lithuanian text.6 In our study, quantitative indicators will be used only to support the qualitative content analysis. For the analysis of the nation's self-portrait in the primers, we used a qualitative content analysis categorization matrix, a structure in which data are coded according to pre-established categories. The matrix categories could be defined based on a theory, model, or literature review. In this case, we built the

178  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

categories following Cohen's (2004) and Smith (2009) classical components of a nation: (1) land and nation state iconography; (2) ethnic and national traditions; (3) common ancestry, common past, present, and future; (4) national language and literature; and (5) religion. Only the passages that corresponded to the categories defined in the matrix were selected from the primers. The categorization (coding) of the qualitative data was done by labelling the text and image segments with descriptive words or category names according to Billig, Skey, Smith, and Tröhler’s research on nation markers or “flaggings.” This led to nine categories, the sub-categories of which were in turn defined in the research process by re-reading the primers several times. The texts and images of the primers were categorized using the following labels: (1) landscape; (2) nature (plants and animals); (3) symbols (indications of belonging to a particular ethnic community and country); (4) traditions and rituals (routinised daily activities, festivals); (5) references to history; (6) objects of the present (habitat, occupation, “we” and “others,” clothing, food); (7) references to a common future; (8) language (people’s names, folklore, literature); and (9) religious symbols and rituals (God, religious texts, church, cross, pastor). It should be mentioned right away that we found no relevant segments in one of the categories, namely “references to a common future.” The material collected in each category varied in volume, and we selected the most widely represented narratives, consistent with the focus of this study. In the following seven subsections, we will analyze the landscape and nature as ethno-scape; the relationship between “sameness” and “otherness,” the self-visualization of community; the incorporation of religion into community rituals, folklore as a bridge between ethnic and national identities, and the presentation of the nation state in the primers.

Representation of National “Wes” in Latvian and Lithuanian Primers Setting the scene: A homestead in a beautiful natural landscape

Latvian and Lithuanian life takes place in an iconographic rural landscape—the books are illustrated with images of a dirt road, river, or stream winding through

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 179

groves of trees, forests, and hills. There is a farm on the hills and fields on the side. Latvia and Lithuania are located by the Baltic Sea, so the sea is also part of the landscape but is less common in the primers than the depictions of the countryside and forests. “Intimate landscape of the homeland” becomes part of the community, and the community becomes part of the environment, creating a “territorialisation of memories and attachments” (Smith, 2009, p. 50), a self-definition within the symbolic boundaries of “one’s” land. Trees and plants, domestic animals, and beasts naturally play an important role in the “design” of the countryside. Nature is stripped down to its smallest details. The primers list all the trees typical of Latvia and Lithuania, most often represented by spruce, oak, lime, and the most characteristic of Lithuania, the birch. Roses, lilies, and peonies, so popular among Latvians and Lithuanians, bloom in the backyard gardens. The root and fruit gardens have apple, gooseberry, and currant bushes and vegetables such as onions, beetroot, cucumbers, and carrots. There are also pets—cats and dogs, horses in the stable and cows, pigs, chickens and roosters, turkeys, and geese in the barn. It is safe to say that the entire Latvian and Lithuanian rural household is reflected in the primers, and thus they reflect reality: according to the national census in Latvia in 1922 and in Lithuania in 1923, 78.0% of the population lived in rural areas and small towns (population under 2000) in Latvia and 85.1% in Lithuania. The main occupation of the population was farming (Latvijas . . ., 1922; Lietuvos gyventojai . . ., 1923). The farm is built into the very landscape and seems to merge with it physically and spiritually, creating “ethno-scape” as suggested by Smith (2009). We were really struck by the variety of characters from the forest and the countryside in the primers. Twelve different forest animals are introduced, the most popular being the wolf, the fox, the bear, the hare, and the hedgehog. The primers also feature bees, butterflies, mosquitoes, ants, snails, and frogs. However, birds represent living nature the most: the Latvian primers list around 30 species, the most numerous being the skylark, the magpie, the starling, and the hawk. Admittedly, some of the bird names we could not even recognize in our own languages. All these creatures of nature are the embodiment of human qualities, forming a society from which to learn the virtues and wisdom of life: for example the little mouse helps the big bear out of a trap; the goats are stubborn and, without giving way to each other, both fall into the water; the fox, through trickery, gets the fish. In addition, all living creatures are also at work, doing the typical tasks of farmers: sowing, ploughing, reaping, and baking bread. Each has its own occupation and character, just like humans. Latvian and Lithuanian folklore has created a gallery of anthropomorphic characters, which we will discuss later in the chapter. We . . .

The wonderful nature and rural households could be found anywhere else in Northern Europe, but the ground is turning into homeland through the countless “banal flaggings” (Billig, 1995/2014, p.  154). Hence, the general

180  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

landscape becomes the Latvian and the Lithuanian place marked by countless “flaggings” of ethnicity on the pages of primers. The clearly visible and perceptible “flaggings” are the place names marking the land and now the country. Here is the first significant difference between the Latvian and Lithuanian primers. Only one of the Latvian primers mentions the word “Latvia,” and you still have to be able to spot it: the primer of 1936 shows a school classroom with a map on the blackboard with the inscription “Latvia” (ABC . . ., 1936, p. 18). None of the primers includes the word “Latvians.” A  complex subtext is, however, contained in the text of the primer of 1923: “One daughter sings in Riga, the other sings in Rezekne. They both sing the same song. Are they daughters of the same mother?” (Svenne, 1923, p.  78). It can only be deciphered by knowing the political context of the time and understanding the language of Latvian folklore: Riga is the center of the country, but Rezekne is situated in the peripheral region of Latvia—Latgale, a long-lasting part of the Russian Empire and therefore most exposed to Russification. Hence, the primer emphasizes that Latgale is also a Latvian territory and (perhaps) belongs to Latvia, to the land that is traditionally portrayed as a woman—a mother. This text, laden with complex symbols, raises a question for further research, namely how the texts of the primers were explained to their target audience—children. Lithuanians, on the other hand, confidently call their country by its first name: “Lithuania” is mentioned 44 times in the primers, and “Lithuanians” is mentioned 17 times. Typical Lithuanian towns and settlements are named as well, the primer of 1921 for instance mentions 41 Lithuanian places. Thus, almost every primer portrays Vilnius, which was annexed by Poland but still was considered to be the capital, as well as Kaunas, the actual capital of the 1920s and 1930s. As early as 1920, the primer says “Our homeland is Lithuania. The most famous places in Lithuania are Vilnius, Kaunas (. . .)” (Runeikis, 1920, p. 13). The primer of 1933 even more clearly defines the belonging and attitude towards Lithuania: “We live in Lithuania. Our parents and our parents’ parents lived here. Therefore, Lithuania is our Fatherland. People love their Fatherland. And we love our Lithuania” (Jakučionis, 1933, p. 61). It is significant that this text uses both the first person “we” and “our” and the third person “people,” thus emphasizing that “we” are included in a larger community of people who love their “fatherland” and have lived there for generations, thus making the country “our” Lithuania. However, the context suggests that it is about the land, not the state. Such references to a personified “own land,” expressed by first-person pronouns, are found incomparably less frequently in Latvian primers than in Lithuanian texts: the Latvian primer mentions “our land” once, but Lithuanians use the creative “we” much more frequently, and it is as if Lithuania is communicated by a child: the primers speak about “our homeland”, “our fatherland”, “our nation”, “our people”, “our country”, and “our rivers.”

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 181

We attributed the marked difference in the personalization of land to the history of Lithuania, which, unlike Latvia, has many stories about the glory of the Grand Duchy’s era. For example the text of the primer says: “Lithuania was a large and honorable country. It was ruled by the famous Lithuanian dukes Mindaugas, Gediminas, Algirdas, Kęstutis and Vytautas” (Runeikis, 1920, p. 13). Heroes of the past “furnish examples of heroism and collective sacrifice” (Smith, 2009, p. 47). Latvia, in contrast, has never had its own state before, so scenes of the past are rare in the primers and without specific heroes. A spearwielding soldier on horseback is an indication of the legends of free Baltic tribes in the territory of Latvia before the German Crusader invasion in the thirteenth century (Svenne, 1923, p. 72). Lithuanian primers more reveal, and Latvian primers less reveal one of Smith’s (2009) ethnic identity “flaggings”—a shared belief in resistance and danger which “explain and justify the powerful sense of common collective fate” (47). In the case of Latvia, the common fate of the ethnie was reflected more in folklore than in traditional historical narrative. . . . and others

The idyllically portrayed Latvian and Lithuanian community, judging by the primers, cannot be called inclusive. This position is in line with a more critical definition of national identity, which describes identity as a subjective sense of belonging that creates security, continuity, and a confidence in uniqueness, emphasizing “who ‘we’ are and who others are not” (Cohen, 2004, pp.  88, 91; Calhoun, 2016, pp. 12, 14, Tröhler, 2020, pp. 13, 14). The “others” are excluded from the Latvian and Lithuanian space—there are hardly any references in the primers to the existence of other ethnic communities living next to the titular-nations, although both countries are multicultural, especially Latvia. For all major ethnic groups in both Latvia and Lithuania, compulsory education was offered in the pupil's mother tongue (Salnītis & Skujenieks, 1938, p. 2; Zulumskyte, 2009, p. 309). This supposedly favorable educational policy created a paradoxical situation, that is the educational space divided by the schools of different languages became an obstacle to communication and, consequently, to mutual acknowledgment and understanding. This is also recognized by researchers today, considering that well-intended recognition and promotion of multiculturalism lead to the establishment of the hierarchy of national minorities and lay stress on differences (see Steiner-Khamsi, 2003). Thus, the only neighbors “visible” in the Latvian texts are the Gypsies, mentioned in the four primers with quite a dose of negativity. From the perspective of hard-working peasants, for whom labor at their farm is the highlight of life and the measure of all human virtue, the Gypsies are incomprehensible, exotic community, and they are depicted as cunning and lazy: “The Gypsy will work when the wolf steams and flaps itself with birchtwigs” (Svenne, 1923, p. 77). The Lithuanian primer also mentions and even

182  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

impartially depicts a Gypsy once, while the Jews are mentioned twice in the primer of 1925 describing them as cunning and unreliable traders (Trinkūnas, 1925, p. 206). The question “flagging which nation?” raised by Skey (2017, p. 10) is clearly answered in the Latvian and Lithuanian primers: the primers are centered on the titular-nation, excluding other ethnic groups and making them “invisible” or even threatening. The treatment of “others,” as portrayed in the primers, is at odds with reality, where the consolidation of the nation was an important task set by the government of the nation-states (Lacombe, 1997), especially in the era of authoritarianism—consolidation with the titular-nation at the center, of course. The Latvian pastoral world is in the middle of nowhere, and there are only scant references to the existence of “foreign lands” in primers of 1920s. The placement of Latvia and Lithuania in a global context is the other major difference between the two countries’ primers. The Lithuanian world is certainly wider. The primers of 1920 and 1921 even provide a lesson in geography: they contain the names of ten countries with their cities and mention Latvia twice. Africa is probably the most popular among other continents, due to its rich and exotic nature, which provides material for comparison with the motherland. It is evident that the window to foreign countries is most often opened in the publications of the 1920s, while in the mid-1930s, Latvia and Lithuania were inward-looking and closed in their own world. This may be explained by the recent World War I, when the geography of major political events took a prominent place in mass media, reaching also the home and the school. Another explanation may be linked to Lithuania’s convincing self-identification and self-territorialization as described earlier, which allows to identify also the territories of other nations—at least in the pre-authoritarian period. Visualization of “our” nation

Judging by the primers, Latvians and Lithuanians live in a beautiful rural landscape, on a farm, doing the typical daily chores—ploughing the land, tending the animals, cooking, weaving and sewing, and cradling the children. The division of labor is typical of a patriarchal community: men work outside the home, most often in the fields, while women take care of the farm and children at home. Next to their working parents, the children play, pick mushrooms and berries in summer, ride sledges, and build snowmen in winter. In summer, they are obliged to herd cattle and ride horses, which means spending their days and sometimes their nights at nature. In keeping with the simple rural life, they eat food that belongs to the “everyday practices of nationhood” (Skey, 2017, p. 9), and which is both listed and depicted in the books. Childhood on the farm is portrayed as officially de-institutionalized. School is mentioned in only two Latvian and four Lithuanian primers, although primary education was compulsory in both countries. Lithuanian primers have

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 183

several longer texts, emphasizing the benefits and necessity of school attendance, and point out that a good child is that one who tries to learn well: “Education is light and freedom” (Sakalauskas-Vanagėlis, 1927, p.  46). However, even in the Lithuanian primers, the texts about schooling make up only a small proportion of the whole volume. Perhaps the role of school has been marginalized because children are given a certain independence there, if only temporarily freeing them from the watchful eyes of neighbors and the ever-present “soft power” of community. At the same time, primers reveal that the everyday life on the farm was institutionalized in other, special ways, namely with certain rituals or successive events related to the care of the land and the farm, providing food, and the changing of the seasons. These common rituals show the reader the synchronization, unity, and process of shared experience of the community; rituals are the means by which “collective beliefs and ideals are simultaneously generated, experienced, and affirmed as real by the community” (Bell, 1992, p. 20). One of the rituals that are typical of Latvian and Lithuanian childhood is going mushroom picking and picking wild berries—bilberries, raspberries, and cranberries. The process of bread making—sowing, reaping, grinding, baking—is equally ritualized. If the everyday life on the farm is a ritualization of the material world, then holidays add a “spiritual” dimension to it, that is Easter and Christmas are associated with the traditions of finding a Christmas tree in the forest; carrying it home; and decorating it with candles, apples, nuts, and sweets (ABC . . ., 1936, p. 14). At Easter, colored eggs are brought to the table, an old tradition in both Latvia and Lithuania, associated with the return of spring and the hope for a fruitful, good year. It is safe to say that the primers portrayed childhood as joyful “place” among supportive and caring community. Children, on the other hand, were expected to join in the rituals as a sign of socially acceptable behavior and therefore trustworthiness. Additionally, in the routinised daily and festive activities, reader of every generation could recognize his or her own experience, making the primer familiar and comfortable, as well as evoking feelings of childhoods. The people in the primers are dressed modestly—the women often wear folk costumes or their stylized version, such as a white blouse, apron, and villaine/woollen shawl decorated with Latvian and Lithuanian folk ornaments. The folk clothing and ornaments send a clear message to the reader: the story of the primers is exactly about Latvian and Lithuanian life. The women's clothing is often this bit of “flagging” that signals, in the relatively impersonal environment of the primer, that the story being told is a Latvian or Lithuanian one. Here, we can agree with Lacombe (1997) that “(. . .) illustrations suggest that the books were not just designed to be Latvian, but also to look Latvian” (318). The problem of social inequality, which was undeniable in the real world with the devastated economy after World War I and the economic crises of the early 1930s, is almost excluded from the cohesive, ritualized life of the community. Accordingly, stories about the poor are just as absent from the primers

184  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

as those about the lifestyles of the wealthy. Ethnic community is almost socially inclusive. Just beautifully dressed people in the urban environment can be seen as evidence of the existence of a wealthy class. For example the Latvian primer of 1933—a year before the authoritarian turnover in Latvia—shows a family of townspeople, a mother, father, and young daughter, wearing coats decorated with fur and beautiful boots (Dorbe, 1933, p. 9). This stylish family, without any ethnic markings, is the complete opposite of those living in the countryside, sending a message to the reader that life in the city is different, modern, and “more refined.” The Lithuanian primer depicts, a year after the authoritarian turnover in Lithuania, a town as follows: “In the cities, people have electric or gas light” (Sakalauskas-Vanagėlis, 1927, p.  77), as well as bookshop and a hospital are situated there. Some primers mention the telephone, the camera, a car, and a train. However, all these urban objects are “exotic,” similar to the lions and elephants reproduced in some texts, not a typical part of everyday folk life. The urban space depicted in the primers is nationally “silent”; there are no indications that exactly Latvians or Lithuanians live in the cities. City is an anonymous and strange public space unlike private and familiar life on the farm. It is safe to say that the countryside, not the urban environment, is the place where genuine ethnic community characteristics are practiced and maintained (Lacombe, 1997, p. 320). “Thank God for the sound of the old woods . . .”

The representation of religion in the primers is—after the “we” and the “others”— the third major difference between the Latvian and Lithuanian texts in constructing the respective nation(-states). As already mentioned, the religious affiliation of the Latvian population, predominantly Lutheran, is rather diverse, while in Lithuania, Catholicism is generally monolithically practiced. The Lithuanian prayers in the primers could be a source for a separate study on identity, as they reflect the whole life of the community in miniature, showing what is important and what is to be safeguarded. Lithuanians give thanks and pray for the harvest, not only for a “good year,” for their parents, for their father’s homestead, but also for the whole land, its “old nation,” and its rulers: “Thank God for (.  .  .) the green of spring, for the clear mornings, for the fragrance of the flower garden, for the dew's fall, for the sound of the old woods and for the honour of heroes” (Trinkūnas, 1925, p. 114); “O Heavenly Father! (.  .  .) Bless our land, our old nation; may Lithuania rejoice over us; may the fields of the Fatherland be ever green” (Sakalauskas-Vanagėlis, 1927, p. 87); “God save Lithuania from famine, war, plague and other terrible disasters. Inspire in all the inhabitants and rulers of the country a sense of justice, a spirit of peace, a love of virtue” (Mažiems vaikams . . ., 1928, p. 48). These three small prayer fragments actually encode the entire Lithuanian sense of life: nature, which provides beauty, joy, and livelihood, and people, who should live

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 185

peaceful, just, and virtuous lives, treating their homeland and country with respect. In religious texts, the presence of the state is clearly visible. Daily prayers at home and at school, as well as church attendance are among the rituals that the whole family practices and that grandparents teach their children— “young and old go to church,” according to Lithuanian primers (Trinkūnas, 1925, p. 32). The Lithuanians have confidently added the Christian religion to the rituals and symbols of the ethnic community. In Latvia, however, religion is given a modest place in daily and festive events. God exists, but he is, in the Latvian sense, less institutionalized and ultimately a benevolent partner in everyday work of the individuals. When the farmer is ploughing the fields, he addresses God by saying, “Well, dear God! I have done my work, now do your work!” Hence, God is invited to send sunshine and rain, so that a bountiful harvest follows in the autumn, for which “the farmer gives thanks to God” (ABC . . ., 1936, p. 32). The Protestant-inspired deal is successful, and the message is clear: if man works hard, God will help him. It is the presence of religion that makes the only difference we have found between Latvian primers published in a democratic state and those published under authoritarian rule. The two primers published in 1936 contain texts praying, praising, and thanking God and depict the church (ABC . . ., 1936, pp. 3, 17, 24, 31, 32; Saulītis, 1936, pp. 22, 23, 28). Just as in the Lithuanian primers, religious texts are found both at the beginning of the primers and later in the book. The explanation for this is obvious, namely that one God and one Leader is an important message for a citizen of an authoritarian state to absorb. More generally, “religious beliefs and rituals act as mold preserving the sense of common origins and ancestry” (Smith, 2009, p. 48), which is, of course, important for unifying the nation. “Roots fixed in the past.” Language of folklore

The idyllic image of rural life in the primers is presented mainly through folklore, much less frequently in excerpts from literary works, while quotations from foreign literature can be considered an exception. Of the 284 pages of Latvian primers, 105 pages, or 36.9%, contain folk songs, games, fairy tales, proverbs, or riddles. Of the 659 pages of the Lithuanian primers, 151 are devoted to the same folklore forms, that is 22.9%. The difference in the amount of folklore texts displays the discrepancy when comparing the content of the Latvian and Lithuanian primers. However, we do not consider this difference to be significant, since the “skeleton” of reading texts in both countries is made up of folklore—texts written in simple vernacular language and rhythmic, short poems, which are thus a rewarding source for reading material. Alongside the learning of the mother tongue, the “world order” accumulated by the ethnic community over the centuries is also accessed in this way. Folklore, as the “flagging” of Latvian and Lithuanian ethnicity, is very important in our story, so let us briefly describe Latvian and Lithuanian folklore as a

186  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

unique collection in the world cultural heritage (Abols, 2003, p. 103), which today is included in the UNESCO files. The first Latvian and Lithuanian folklore texts date back to the sixteenth century, but the forms of folklore used in the twentieth century came mainly from the mid-nineteenth century, when, under the influence of the national intelligentsia movement, a vivid interest in folklore—its collection, compilation, and publication—was stirred among Latvians and Lithuanians. By 1937, 1,286,216 items of folklore had been sent to the Latvian Folklore Repository— tales and fables, riddles, proverbs, folk songs, beliefs, place names, etc. (Salnītis & Skujenieks, 1938, p. 161). The collection of Lithuanian folklore was more complicated due to the occupation of Vilnius in the 1920s and 1930s. However, even under such conditions, the Vilnius-based Lithuanian Science Society collected about 72,000 of folklore items. The Lithuanian Folklore Archive, which was established in Kaunas in the 1930s, stored around 471,000 works of folklore (Žarskienė, 2016, p. 18; Žarskienė & Nakienė, 2010, p. 186). Thus, more than half a million of folklore items had been collected by 1940 in Lithuania. Collecting, studying, and systematizing folklore in state-supported institutions are examples of how “to authenticate the nation by employing history” (Smith, 2009, p. 48). A distinctive feature of Latvian and Lithuanian oral folklore is the large number of “small-form” compositions (proverbs, riddles, beliefs, anecdotes, folk song quatrains), accompanied by longer texts such as fairy tales and fables. Folklore characters are set in a rural environment, reflecting people’s daily life—work, festivals, the change of seasons in nature, birth, baptism, weddings, funerals. It is safe to say that every situation in human life made its way into a folklore text (see Kestere & Rubene, p. 2011). Folklore may contain the moral norms of the Christian faith, but, unlike religious writings, folklore does not speak in clear, direct language—“thou shalt not  . . .” In the case of Latvians, researchers say that the Christian commandments seemed too “dry,” which is why folklore texts were more popular (Štāls, 1935), as their language is figurative, rich in personifications, symbols, and similes, and the form of expression is multi-layered. As other folk texts (Kukuškin & Soljarenko, 2000, p. 242), Latvian and Lithuanian folklore fuses the empirical, rational layer with the imaginative and mystical, that is it communicates life lessons through natural images, which require a special skill to perceive and understand. The study of folklore instils a strong code of ethnicity in the child, where the rational and irrational worlds are intertwined, and which is difficult to explain to “others” who do not know the nuances of the Latvian and Lithuanian languages. It is not surprising that the acquisition of the mother tongue in primer begins with folklore, investing in the “inculcation” of the ethnic community alongside language skills. The telling story is about a girl whose skills are tested by a teacher asking if she knows a poem by heart. The girl recites a folk song. “When I finished, the teacher patted me. “That’s good, that's right!”” (Svenne, 1923, p. 81).

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 187

“Roots fixed in the past” serves an important ideological purpose: by providing people with a shared past, a shared identity is developed (Van Alphen & Carretero, 2015, pp. 512–530; Kreegipuu & Lauk, 2007, p. 42; Jaffrelot, 2003, p. 10; Cohen, 2004). Considering the idea of the perception of the past as the construction of identity, it should be said that for Latvians and Lithuanians, this function of shared history is fulfilled by folklore. This was especially important for Latvians who, unlike Lithuanians, do not have so convincing ancient hero stories. For both peoples, folklore created links with the past and present, connecting generations and people’s lives in the present, creating memory-based relationships and memory-based communities (see Kattago, 2009). Poor “tool kit” of nationhood

The national flag as a material symbol of the nation is of utmost importance in the visualization of nationhood. The flag is defined as the “primary example of banal nationalism,” which is taught already at school (Billig, 1995/2014, p. 51; Skey, 2017, pp. 2, 11). However, the flag is mentioned exactly once in each of the Latvian and Lithuanian primers: the Latvian primer of 1933 shows a picture of birds gathered at the Song Festival with the Latvian national red–white–red flag flying over their heads (Dorbe, 1933, p. 18). The text does not devote a single word to the flag. The Lithuanian primer of 1933, on the other hand, introduces the national flag in detail, both in the picture and in the text: “Our flag. (.  .  .) The sign of our nationhood—the tricolour flag! Yellow on top, green on the inside, and red underneath” (Jakučionis, 1933, p. 62). These two examples again show a typical difference—Lithuanians, unlike Latvians, present themselves as a nation whose symbol is “our” flag. Since singing plays an important role in the Latvian and Lithuanian way of life, the national anthem is certainly one of the most important symbols of the national “spirit.” Both the Latvian and Lithuanian anthems predate the founding of the nation state—in Latvia, it is the song God Bless Latvia, which was composed in 1873, and Lithuania, Our Homeland was created in 1898. The national anthem is not mentioned at all in Latvian primers, nor is any patriotic poem dedicated to Latvia quoted, although Latvians were never short of such texts, especially during the authoritarian regime of the 1930s. The Lithuanian primers refer to the anthem once in 1921, as well as contain several patriotic poems, such as Lithuanians we are born and Where is our Homeland (Runeikis, 1920, pp. 20, 30). It can’t be called “a lot.” Skey writes that “the capital city forms the 'tool kit' of nationhood” (Skey, 2017, p.  8). The toponym Riga is mentioned in Latvian primers, but not once is Riga named the capital of Latvia. The only picture of Riga shows the city skyline, which has been a feature of the city for centuries and is therefore unlikely to be associated with the presentation of Riga as the capital city. Likewise, Kaunas is mentioned several times in Lithuanian primers, but not once as the capital.

188  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

The national monetary unit Lats appears in one Latvian primer without an explanation in the text (Ivans, 1934, p. 5). National Day is not mentioned in either the Latvian or Lithuanian primers. The lack of national symbols is even noted by contemporaries, and, in the Lithuanian press, some voices blamed the authors of school textbooks for the insufficiently national content and “lack [of] interesting and heroic examples selected from the life of our country and nation” (Malinauskas, 1933, p. 221). As can be seen from this representative list, the traditional symbols of the nation-state are only modestly represented in the primers. Moreover, they are mentioned in the primers before the period of authoritarian rule, that is before the time when nationalism had begun its triumphal march in both countries. This leads to the conclusion that at the beginning of schooling, “flaggings” of ethnicity dominated in the literacy of nationhood. The “real” national and patriotic education began in the later years of schooling, when the textbooks did not lack national state symbols, hero-worship, and quotes of political leader’s speeches (see Lacombe, 1997).

Conclusion In our study, we analyzed one of the instruments that encode national belonging at the beginning of the schooling as a state institution, namely the primer. Although there is much in common in the portrayal of Latvians and Lithuanians in the primers with regard to nation-building, as well as in their historical fate, our research also reveals a significant difference—Lithuanians emphasize their national identity, their belonging to Lithuania, and Lithuania’s belonging to them more strongly, more tangibly than Latvians do. This is revealed and explained by four significant differences between Latvian and Lithuanian primers: 1) Lithuanian space is marked by precisely named place names—the names of their land and cities. Lithuania has become a “hardened space” in Smith’s terms (2009, p. 50); it is explicitly defined in the primers as “our,” Lithuanian, territory; 2) the Lithuanian past is based on the historical facts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which invests common achievements, sacrifices, and common ancestors-heroes in the fund of community symbols, thus legitimizing a common destiny of the nation; 3) Catholicism, intertwined with the “flagging” of nationhood, expands the base of the national community, its unity, attracting other ethnies more than Latvia; 4) Lithuania is placed in a broader global context, and the existence of other countries alongside Lithuania is acknowledged. This is probably related to Lithuania’s convincing territorialization, which allows to identify and see also the territories of other nations and to differentiate the world by the borders of nations. We will formulate in six theses the common traces in how the Latvian and Lithuanian primers taught nationhood and national identity.: 1) The ideal space for a nation is the countryside, not the city, because it is in the countryside where the “real” community way of life is preserved

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 189

2)

3)

4)

5)

and practiced. It is good and right because it has been tested over many generations and is therefore safe. Before becoming a citizen of a country, a child must become part of an ethnic community, meeting its moral standards. The ethnic community is not only a mechanism of support but also of “normalization” and control, and its “soft power” exists alongside the functions of the nation-state. The land is more important than the state because it has existed and exists. Life on a farm in the midst of nature depicts childhood as a transitional period between an irrational spiritual world, in which images of nature operate, and reality, merely outlining the institutionalised environment of the state, but mostly leaving it beyond childhood. The iconographic, intimate landscape and nature—“ethno-scape” of the homeland represented in the primers installs associations with childhood and encodes the life-long “symbolic power of the homeland” (Cohen, 2004, p.  97, Smith, 2009, p. 50). The mother tongue must be learned from folklore, because ethnic and national codes are transformed simultaneously through both language and folklore. Latvian and Lithuanian folklore contains the community’s way of life, key values, and lessons. Institutionalizing folklore elevates the symbols of ethnic community to the level of the national canon, “employs history,” and legitimizes its dissemination, including in education. The moral model created by folklore is timeless and all-power-safe, which is why folklore has been a rewarding material for primers in various political contexts (see Kestere & Kalke, 2020). A ritualized life is understandable and safe. The child depicted in the primers is a participant in the rituals of the family, the ethnic community, and, in the Lithuanian case, religion. The primer teaches: if you work hard, learn to celebrate folk festivals, know folklore, honor God, you will find yourself in the ideal, socially equal, and obviously utopian world conjured by the primer, where everyday rituals create harmony in human communication and in the relationship with nature. Rituals and symbols unite the community and teach a sense of “we,” socially acceptable behavior. In reality, the rituals and symbols of the nation-state were incorporated into Latvian and Lithuanian traditions, taking their place alongside the “flaggings” of ethnic identity; however, nationhood was not dominant in the primers. Ethnic community and religion provide (for then) sufficient childhood supervision. Even under authoritarian regimes, the world of childhood is separated in the primers and protected from explicit, tangible incorporation into the state. Embodying the child in the image of a national citizen is still in the future as a task for the years of schooling to come. This fact characterizes the authoritarian regimes of Latvia and Lithuania as less indoctrinating than the Nazi and Communist regimes of 1930s Germany and the USSR, where from the very first day of school, the primers served as a tool of state propaganda.7

190  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene

6) The “others” live beyond the borders of the country and are invisible in “our” land. The world of “others” is alien, incomprehensible, and unfriendly. The common past and its heroes teach us to be ready to unite in defense of our country against “otherness.” Although in reality, other ethnic communities lived alongside Latvians and Lithuanians, they were not traceable in the self-portrait of the nation drawn by the primers. Our hypothesis that in the teaching of nationhood at the beginning of schooling, in the primers, the country’s “flaggings” will occupy an important, even central place, was not confirmed. The image of the Latvian and Lithuanian ethnie in the context of “one’s own” land turned out to be dominant vis-à-vis the image of the citizen of the country. “Flaggings” of ethnicity were set before the state, functioned during the state, guiding Latvian and Lithuanian lives, and were not forgotten under the Nazi and Soviet regimes when the nation-states were lost. The short existence of the state made self-regulated ethnicity a much more stable and reliable value than nationhood forbidden to practice under foreign powers.

Notes 1 Latvians and Lithuanians referred to themselves with the same word in both languages— tauta, which corresponds to the Volk in German. Since ethnie in Anthony D. Smith’s (2009) description corresponds more to the definition of Latvian and Lithuanian Volk, for clarity of reading, we will use two concepts in this study, that is 1) “ethnic community/ethnie” for Latvian and Lithuanian Volk and 2) “nation” for Volk of Latvia and Lithuania, meaning all Völker/ethnic communities living on the territory of both countries. 2 Although both languages belong to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, Latvians and Lithuanians cannot communicate with each other in their first languages. 3 Visjaunākā ābece ar bildēm pušķota [The most up-to-date primer, adorned with pictures] (1920). 5th improved edition. J. Kļaviņa apgādībā; Bilžu ābece rātniem bērniem [A picture primer for well-mannered children] (1921). Dzintars; Svenne, S. (Comp.) (1923). Mazā ābece un pirmā lasāmā grāmata mājai un skolai [The little primer and the first reader for home and school]. Kultūras Balss; Ābols, Fr. (1928). Ābece mājas bērniem [Primer for home children]. J. Roze; Dorbe, H. (1933). Ābece mājas mācībai [Primer for home schooling]. A. Jessens; Ivans, A. (Comp.) (1934). Ābece [Primer]. Dūnis; ABC. Es jau mācos ābeci [ABC. I’m already learning the primer] (1936) (2nd improved ed.). L. P. Vītola apgādībā; Saulītis, J. (1936). Gaiļa ābece [The primer of the rooster]. J. Roze. 4 Matijošaitis-Esmaitis, S. (1918). Sakalėlis. Elementorius su skaitymėliais. [The Little Falcon. Primer with Texts for Reading]. Kultūros ir švietimo sekcija; Runeikis, A. (1920). Mano knygelė. Pagreitintas skaitymo ir rašymo mokslas. [My Little Book. Accelerated Learning to Read and Write.] Šviesa; Mašiotas P. (1921). Ašakaičio abėcėlė [The Alphabet of Ashakaitis]. A. Petronio knygynas; Trinkūnas, J. (1925). Spindulėlis: Elementorius. [The Little Ray. Primer]. “Kultūros” B-vė; Sakalauskas-Vanagėlis, K. (1927). Aušrelė. Skaitymo ir rašymo mokslas (Elementorius). Part I. [The Little Dawn. Learning to Read and to Write]. “Aušros” knygynas; Murka, J. (1927). Vaikų darbymečiui. Elementorius. [For the Children’s Workday. Primer]. Titnagas; Mažiems vaikams naminis elementorius arba ABC su poteriais, katekizmu ir ministrentūra pradžiai namie mokintis [The Primer for Little Children to Learn

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 191 at Home or the ABC with Prayers, Cathecism]. (1928). Knygynas “Lietuva”; Jakučionis, A. (1933). Kelias į šviesą. Elementorius. 23-iasis leidimas. [The Path to the Light. Primer. 23th improved edition]. “Varpo” spaustuvė. 5 Unfortunately, we have not been able to identify the exact month of publication of this book, but it can be assumed that it was used during the transition period, when school practices were reorganized according to the requirements of the authoritarian regime. 6 The significant difference in the number of pages is attributable to the content of the Lithuanian primers, where rudimentary reading and writing skills are further developed through extensive literary texts. For instance the volume of the Lithuanian primer published in 1925 amounted to 256 pages, which places this primer also in the “first readers” category. 7 For example Niedersachsen-Fibel. Eine deutsche Fibel (Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg: Velag Georg Westtermann, 1935) is replete with Nazi flags, Nazi symbols and rituals, and marching Nazi soldiers. Even the Christmas tree is decorated with a swastika (p. 40). Afanasyev’s, P. O. primer Cjitay, pishi, scjitay. Bukvarj [Let’s read, write, count. Primer] (Gosudarstvennoje izdatelstvo, 1930) published in Moscow depicts children decorating their classrooms with national holiday slogans and portraits of national leaders; the booklet features a picture of the national coat of arms and other Soviet symbols and children marching in demonstrations carrying national flags and national holiday slogans.

References ABC. Es jau mācos ābeci [ABC. I'm already learning ABC]. (1936) (2nd improved ed.). L. P. Vītola apgādībā. Ābols, F. (1928). Ābece mājas bērniem [Primer for home children]. J. Roze. Ābols, G. (2003). Contribution of history to Latvian identity. Nacionālais apgāds. Bell, C. (1992). Ritual theory, ritual practice. Oxford University Press. Billig, M. (1995/2014). Banal nationalism. Sage. Bilžu ābece rātniem bērniem [A picture primer for well-mannered children]. (1921). Dzintars. Calhoun, C. (2016). The importance of imaged communities—and benedict Anderson. Annual Review, 1, 11–16. Cohen, E. H. (2004). Components and symbols of ethnic identity: A case study in informal education and identity formation in Diaspora. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 53(1), 87–112. Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union, Article 4(2) (2012). Official Journal of the European Union. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX %3A12012M%2FTXT Dorbe, H. (1933). Ābece mājas mācībai [Primer for home schooling]. A. Jessens. Grever, M., & Van der Viles, T. (2017). Why national narratives are perpetuated: A literature review on new insights from history textbook research. London Review of Education, 15(2), 286–301. Ivans, A. (Comp.). (1934). Ābece [Primer]. Dūnis. Jaffrelot, C. (2003). For a theory of nationalism. Questions de Recherche/Research Questions, 10, 1–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2290897 Jakučionis, A. (1933). Kelias į šviesą. Elementorius. 23-iasis leidimas. [The path to the light. Primer. 23th improved edition]. ‘Varpo’ spaustuvė. Kattago, S. (2009). Agreeing to disagree on the legacies of recent history. Memory, pluralism and Europe after 1989. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(3), 1–21. doi:10.1177/1368431009337352

192  Iveta Kestere and Irena Stonkuviene Kestere, I., & Kalke, B. (2020). Learning national identity outside the nation-state: The story of Latvian primers (mid-1940s—mid-1970s). In L. Daniela (Ed.), Human, technologies and quality of education (pp. 33–50). University of Latvia Press. Kestere, I.,  & Rubene, Z. (2011). Volkskundliche Überlieferungen und Volkserziehung. Beispiele aus der lettischen Kultur. In C. Gerdenitsch & J. Hopfner (Hrsg./Eds.), Erziehung und Bildung in ländlichen Regionen-Rural Education (pp. 201–217). Peter Lang. Kreegipuu, T., & Lauk, L. (2007). The 1940 Soviet Coup-d’État in the Estonian communist press: Constructing history of reshape collective memory. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 4(4), 42–64. Kukuškin, V. S., & Soljarenko, L. D. (2000). Etnopedagogika i etnopsiholoģija [Etnopedagogy and etnopsichology]. Feniks. Lacombe, G. (1997). Nationalism and education in Latvia, 1918–1940. Journal of Baltic Studies, 28(4), 309–338. Latvijas statistiskā gada grāmata. 1921 [Statistical Yearbook of Latvia. 1921]. (1922). Valsts statistiskā prāvalde. Lietuvos gyventojai: pirmojo 1923  m. rugsėjo 17 d. visuotinio gyventojų surašymo duomenys. [The population of Lithuania: The data of the first census of population on 17 September 1923]. (1923). Lietuvos Respublikos Centrinis Statistikos Biuras. Malinauskas, I. (1933). Tautiškumo klausimas mūsų mokyklose ir vadovėliuose [The issue of nationality in our schools and textboks]. Židinys, 10, 319–322. Mašiotas, P. (1921). Ašakaičio abėcėlė [The primer of Ashakaitis]. A. Petronio knygynas. Matijošaitis – Esmaitis, S. (1918). Sakalėlis. Elementorius su skaitymėliais. [The little falcon. Primer with texts for reading]. Kultūros ir švietimo sekcija. Mažiems vaikams naminis elementorius arba ABC su poteriais, katekizmu ir ministrentūra pradžiai namie mokintis [The primer for little children to learn at home or the ABC with prayers, Cathecism]. (1928). Knygynas ‘Lietuva.’ Murka, J. (1927). Vaikų darbymečiui. Elementorius. [For the children's workday. Primer]. Titnagas. Plakans, A. (2011). A concise history of the Baltic states. Cambridge University Press. Runeikis, A. (1920). Mano knygelė. Pagreitintas skaitymo ir rašymo mokslas. [My little book. Accelerated learning to read and write.] Šviesa. Sakalauskas-Vanagėlis, K. (1927). Aušrelė. Skaitymo ir rašymo mokslas (Elementorius). Part I. [The little dawn. Learning to read and to write]. ‘Aušros’ knygynas. Salnītis, V., & Skujenieks, M. (1938). Latvijas kultūras statistika, 1918–1937 [Latvian culture statistic, 1918–1937]. Valsts Statistikas pārvalde. Saulītis, J. (1936). Gaiļa ābece [The primer of the rooster]. J. Roze. Silova, I. (2019). Lessons in everyday nationhood: Childhood memories of ‘breaching’ the nation. Children’s Geographies, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.16184440 Skey, M. (2017). ‘Mindless markers of the nation’: The routine flagging of nationhood across the visual environment. Sociology, 51(2), 274–289. Smith, A. D. (2009). Ethno-symbolism and nationalism. Routledge. Štāls, M. (1935). Audzināšanas mācība [Lessons in education]. Valters un Rapa. Staris, A., & Ūsiņš, V. (2000). Izglītības un pedagoģijas zinātnes attīstība Latvijas pirmās brīvvalsts laikā [Development of education and pedagogical science during the first independent Latvian state]. Zinātne. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2003). Cultural recognition or social redistribution: Predicaments of minority education. In Y. Iram  & H. Wahrman (Eds.), Education of minorities and peace education in pluralistic societies (pp. 15–28). Praeger.

The case of Latvia and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s 193 Svenne, S. (Comp.). (1923). Mazā ābece un pirmā lasāmā grāmata mājai un skolai [The little primer and the first reader for home and school]. Kultūras Balss. Trinkūnas, J. (1925). Spindulėlis: Elementorius [The little ray. Primer]. ‘Kultūros’ B-vė. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 1–16. doi:10.1080/00220272.2020.1786727 Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nationbuilding. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7-33). Routledge. Van Alphen, F., & Carretero, M. (2015). The construction of the relation between national past and present in the appropriation of historical master narratives. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 49(3), 512–530. Visjaunākā ābece ar bildēm pušķota. Piektā pārlabotā druka [The most up-to-date primer, adorned with pictures. Fifth improved edition]. (1920). J. Kļaviņa apgādībā. Žarskienė, R. (2016). Nuo Lietuvių mokslo draugijos iki Lietuvių tautosakos rankraštyno: LMD tautosakos rankraščių ir garso įrašų kolekcijos [From the Lithuanian science society to the Lithuanian folklore archive’s database: The LSS folklore manuscript and audio collections]. Liaudies kultūra [Folk culture], 6, 14–26. Žarskienė, R., & Nakienė, A. (2010). Lietuvių tautosakos rankraštynas: kaupimas, sisteminimas, skaitmeninimas [Lithuanian folklore archives: Storage, systematization and digitalization]. Res humanitariae, 7, 183–197. Zulumskyte, A. (2009). Primary schools. In A. Krūze, I. Ķestere, V. Sirk, & Tijūneliene (Eds.), History of education and pedagogical thought in the Baltic countries up to 1940: An overview (pp. 308–310). RaKa.

Chapter 9

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene Insights from (post) Soviet early literacy textbooks Dilraba Anayatova, Ketevan Chachkhiani, Setrag Hovsepian, Iveta Silova, and Keti Tsotniashvili 1

Childhood has been historically placed at the heart of nation-building projects, linking the futures of children to the changing visions of geopolitical, economic, and social orders (Silova et al., 2018; Cannella & Viruru, 2004; Millei & Imre, 2016; Stephens, 1995). Given their close association, the meanings of childhood and nation have been often conflated in public narratives and academic discourses, across space and time. Writing about the Soviet nation-building processes, for example, Kirschenbaum (2001) observed how party leaders and adults more broadly tended to confuse “the ‘real’ children who had to be fed, clothed, and educated [with] the metaphorical children who stood as icons of the revolution’s future” (p. 2). In other geopolitical contexts, childhood has been similarly invoked as “an index, a signifier of ‘civilization’ and ‘modernity’ ” and as a “key arena in which to instill such civilization” (Burman, 2008, p. 77). Noting a reverse association, Kelen and Sundmark (2013) illustrate how nation-states have been typically portrayed not simply in terms of “Fatherlands and Mother tongues” but rather as future visions “in the guise of a loved child, hope’s torch bearer, a chosen one destined for glory” (p.  4). Such conflated meanings of childhood and nation point simultaneously to the complexity of the relationship, its roots in modernity/coloniality, and its entangled and coevolving nature. But what happens to the relationship between childhood and nation when the very future it represents becomes threatened by the human-induced climate crisis in the context of the Anthropocene? Describing the current geological epoch in which human activities have caused irreversible damage to the planet’s ecosystems, the Anthropocene “spells the actually possible death of nations, in all their human, cultural and historical components” (Conversi, 2020a, p. 627). Given its explicit association with the age of scientific revolution (Greenfeld, 1992, 2013), industrialization (Gellner, 1983), and the Enlightenment more broadly (Conversi, 2012; Hobsbawm, 1990),2 nationalism has played a central role in the rise of the Anthropocene (see Hau, 2022). Whether or not there is a direct causal relationship, nationalism has been a driving force behind competition and conflict among nation-states over land and resources, leading to DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-10

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 195

“the death of nature” (Merchant, 1980) and altering all life on Earth along the way (see also Edwards, 2022; Margulies, 2021; Jansson, 2018; see also Silova, 2021). By reproducing the logic of exceptionalism, nationalism has been used to justify exploitative relations that feed into the collective illusions of superiority and invulnerability of some nations over others, and of humans over other species and land. Despite its claims of rescuing nations (and future generations of children), nationalism has thus contributed to and perhaps even “accelerated their rapid demise” (Conversi, 2020a, p. 629). In this process, the relationship between ‘nation’ and ‘childhood’ has been destabilized too, bringing the futures it represents to a dead end. Although the concept of Anthropocene has recently gained attention of scholars across many disciplines (from atmospheric science and geology to environmental humanities and sustainability studies), it has remained “virtually untouched” in nationalism studies (Conversi, 2020a, p. 625). Likewise, it is largely missing in the discussions about the role of education in the process of the (re)production of nationalism and of nation-building. Whether approached from the primordial, modernist, ethno-symbolic, constructivist, or functionalist perspectives (see Tröhler and Maricic, 2023 [first chapter in this book]), the Anthropocene has been a persisting blind spot in both nationalism studies and related education research. Aiming to make this blind spot visible, our chapter explores ways in which the narratives of childhood and nation have been implicated in the crisis of the Anthropocene and discusses how the relationship between the two could be mobilized—and perhaps reconfigured—to make sense of and respond to the life-changing dynamics of the Anthropocene. Using a decolonial, interdisciplinary approach, we examine the changing relationship between childhood and nation in the context of post-Soviet transformations in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia, where nation-building and rebuilding have been in flux since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. From environmental movements in Latvia and anti-nuclear protests in Kazakhstan (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) to color revolutions in Armenia (2018 Velvet Revolution) and Georgia (2003 Rose Revolution), post-Soviet transformations have interrupted the modernity’s narratives of Soviet futurebuilding. Although these narratives seem to have been replaced by Western versions of modernist future in a form of (neo)liberal reforms across many contexts, post-Soviet transformations have also created the space for reconfiguring the relationship between childhood and nation in new and sometimes unexpected ways (Silova, 2018; Silova et al., 2014). Our goal is to explore what these newly emerging (re)configurations entail for the futures of childhood and nation(-state)—as well as human existence and re-existence more broadly—in the Anthropocene. Focusing on post-Soviet education transformations, this chapter examines shifts in visual and text narratives in early literacy textbooks published in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan (Uyghur), and Latvia during the Soviet (1940s–1990s) and post-Soviet periods (1990s to now). While most scholarship on childhood

196  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

and nation has predominantly focused on the explicit teaching of the “nation” in the official curriculum (e.g., lessons in national literature, history, and civics) or political socialization through extracurricular activities (e.g. political youth organizations), this chapter focuses on how children are socialized into becoming “national” subjects through mundane, ordinary practices of learning their ABCs. Early literacy textbooks can be easily overlooked as apolitical and therefore inconsequential; yet, we argue that they are critical in constructing particular discourses about childhood and nation—what we call “literacies of childhood” (Mead & Silova, 2013)—delineating who the child is and should be, and positing how childhood is conceptualized in relationship to nation—their homeland. More specifically, we examine how certain “literacies” of childhood represented in the Soviet textbooks rupture, flowing with relative stability in the post-Soviet period and becoming rearticulated in the post-Soviet texts.

Literacies of childhood in the Anthropocene: nation, culture, and nature Central to our analysis of post-Soviet childhood and nation projects is the concept of “literacies of childhood”—“a set of discursive constructions that define what it means to be a child, creating normative boundaries of how children conceive the realm of possible actions for themselves and others” (Mead & Silova, 2013, p. 199). Speaking broadly, literacies of childhood reflect the dominant systems of reason that discursively construct particular notions of nation and childhood, thus engendering—or closing down—possible futures. In the context of this research, literacies of childhood entail learning “the conduct of conduct” (Foucault, 1991)—that is, the mundane and everyday ways through which children are expected to learn their place in and relationship with the nation(-state). In young children’s lives, such everyday nationalism may operate through ordinary objects (such as picture books, toys, or food), appear in everyday activities (such as learning alphabet, playing, or drawing), or become embedded in common spaces (such as natural landscapes, playgrounds, or parks). Here, the concept of “banal” or “everyday nationhood” (Billig, 1995) maybe helpful to bring into focus not only explicit teaching of national identities but also a way of learning the nation that is more implicit, perhaps even unnoticed because it operates as “an unselfconscious disposition” and foreshadows our ordinary actions, thoughts, and emotions as we become “national” subjects (Fox, 2018; see also Billig, 1995). Our analysis centers on the examination of several interrelated dimensions of the “literacies of childhood,” which illuminate the discursive construction of nation, childhood, and the child-as-future subject within the relatively stable field of the literacy textbooks. In particular, we explore how the child is located in particular nation(al) space through four closely interdependent dimensions of the “literacies of childhood”, including (1) the national/natural landscapes, or the interior, natural/geologic character of the national space; (2) boundaries/

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 197

borders, the established, contested, or desired cartographic/political limits of the national space; (3) cultural symbols; and (4) the mythology of the homeland. While these dimensions of national literacies may not be exhaustive, they constitute key conceptual anchors, which are interwoven in complex ways forming the relationship between childhood and nation through which possible futures may be envisioned, projected, and enacted. First, the early literacy textbooks locate children in natural landscapes, emphasizing particular (national) geographic and natural features. Images of landscapes illustrate not only the ways people relate or interact with nature but also how people lead their lives on a day-to-day basis (Silova et al., 2014). These interactions with nature provide insights about the meanings and cultural values people attach with these natural landscapes. Mountains, rivers, and other natural and geologic characteristics are often defined as belonging to the nation and emphasizing a sense of national uniqueness. We have also examined whether landscapes and land resources are discussed in terms of “resource nationalism,” “green nationalism,” or other forms of nationalism that define the relationship between people and place. For example, “resource nationalism” refers to rhetoric that is mobilized to underwrite the quest for control over territorial resources and/or justify the extraction from the “soil-rooted resources” in the name of (national) development (Conversi, 2020a). By contrast, “green nationalism” or “eco-nationalism” may be invoked to signal a more interdependent relationship between people and nature (Margulies, 2021; Conversi & Posocco, 2022). Altogether, landscapes reveal the way people see themselves through their imagined relationship with nature and how various groups shape and organize their social and cultural life. A second major theme focuses on the borders or boundaries of the nationstate, tracing the contours of the national space. Borders, both real and imagined, “have deep symbolic, cultural, historical, and religious meanings for social communities” (Silova et  al., 2014, p.  107). Borders are used to define who belongs in and outside of the nation. At times, national belonging associations may fall outside or beyond the official lines of the nation due to unresolved historical and political conflicts. These conflicts create contested spaces that push the limits of the nation-state as memories of the past hold onto associations of the cultural and historical symbolism outside the official borders. As Newman and Paasi (1998) explain, “borders are not necessarily static categories located between the states, but rather social, political, and discursive constructs” (p. 187). In our analysis, we consider how these border (and bordering) constructs have been used to define relationships between “us” and “them,” “inside” and “outside,” “native” and “foreign,” and “human” and “non-human.” Third, we analyze how early literacy textbooks introduce children to the nation(-state) through more explicit “lessons” about cultural symbols. Alongside analyzing illustrations, we examine texts that draw on cultural myths and symbols to present “the iconography of nationhood, part of the shared set of ideas and memories and feelings which bind a people together” (Meinig, 1979,

198  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

p. 164). This type of nationalism could be described as “visual nationalism,” a materialized form of promoting nationalist ideals using representations of national symbols in diverse yet subtle ways—such as flags, national costumes, and products—to emphasize the elements of the national or cosmopolitan identity (see Dumtrica, 2019). Importantly, we also examine how different symbols are invoked to divide or unite people around other future visions—whether nationalism/cosmopolitanism, socialism/capitalism, globalism/localism, or other “-isms”—with the goal of producing or reproducing a nation-state. In particular, we examine what cultural symbols are passed on from generation to generation through folklore, religious institutions, languages, food, and more; what new symbols are introduced during the post-Soviet transformations; and how these symbols are imbued with significant political and cultural meanings as visual representations of national or cosmopolitan identity. Finally, the idea of homeland serves as a “receptacle of a collectively shared consciousness” (Nogué & Vicente, 2004, p. 119), weaving together all three dimensions of literacies of childhood, including landscapes, borders, and cultural symbols. As Nogué and Vicente (2004) note, homeland is often “venerated and honored above all the other symbols in the nationalist hierarchy as the symbol par excellence of collective identity and national identification” (p. 119). The idea of homeland is viewed as a “powerful geographic mediator of sociopolitical behavior” (Kaiser, 2017, p. 5), as well as sociospatial consciousness (Newman & Paasi, 1998). Bonding people and places, homeland makes visible how the nation defines itself across geographical and cultural boundaries. Homeland also creates an “irrevocable association between a people and a particular territory, a rightful possession from one’s forefathers through the generations” that has always been and will always be (Wilson, 1998, p.  36; Silova et al., 2014). In short, descriptions of homeland explain who belongs to a particular nation, and who it belongs to. Methodologically, this chapter examines the changing “literacies of childhood” through the visual and discourse analysis of 41 early literacy textbooks published in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia since the 1940s (see the Appendix for a complete list of texts). These texts provide a unique material for studying the changing conceptions of childhood, including wide-ranging and illustrative compositions of a child’s life and world. For the purposes of this study, we specifically selected texts that were granted approval by respective ministries of education in each country. In this respect, these texts present an authoritative source of knowledge, or “official knowledge” (Apple, 2001), offering insight of “official knowledge” and how societies perceive and project themselves nationally and globally. Methodologically, rather than employing quantitative analysis, we draw on deeply contextualized qualitative analysis of the ideas articulated in texts and illustrations, making inferences into what particular texts and images intend to communicate to their readers and how the readers are intended to experience the text (Mead & Silova, 2013). The goal is to examine how multiple, interrelated discourses about childhood contribute

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 199

to the spatial and temporal socialization of children throughout different historical periods—Soviet and post-Soviet—irrevocably tying childhood and nature in space and time.

Literacies of (post)Soviet childhood: (Un)making and (re)making modernity’s progress Browsing through the opening pages of early literacy textbooks, we notice a somewhat ambiguous and evocative rendering of both a “beginning” and an envisioned future, not only suggestive of the beginning of a child’s schooling or literacy, but also indicating a much more profound relationship between the future life of the child and nation. What kind of “beginning,” and what kind of future do these textbooks envision? In the analytical vignettes that follow, we provide a window into our analyses of the textbooks, focusing on the different dimensions of literacies of childhood—landscapes, borders, cultural symbols, and homeland—and noting flows and ruptures across time and space. Landscapes and nature

Early literacy textbooks are saturated with images of landscapes that locate children in particular (national) spaces. In the Soviet textbooks, the emphasis is on the vast landscapes of the Soviet Union, which is described as not only beautiful and bountiful, but also highly modern and developed. For example, one Soviet textbook (Goretskiy et al., 1987) introduces children to “their native country” of the USSR, which is described as a “beautiful country” with many “fields, forests, seas and rivers.” It is a land where “new factories are being built  . . . tractors are tilting the fields  . . .  trains and cars are zooming by  . . . ships are navigating the seas . . .” (p. 77). Pages after pages foreground landscapes of Soviet modernization and urbanization, featuring images of smokestacks and lumberyards, factories and apartment blocks, spaceships and collective farms. Nature, land, and vegetation are primarily described in terms of their beauty and bounty, portraying the Soviet land both as the national pride and resource to be used for the benefit of the peoples of the Soviet nations. From Armenia and Georgia to Latvia and Kazakhstan, Soviet textbooks describe the vastness of nature and the abundance of natural resources across the territories of the Soviet Union, suggesting that children belong to these territories as much as these territories (and the resources that they hold) belong to children. For example, Soviet textbooks include multiple stories and images of enthusiastic children observing construction sites and hydroelectric stations, visiting factories and railway stations, or working on collective farms (“kolkhoz” and “sovkhoz”) to harvest potatoes (in Latvia), grapes (in Armenia and Georgia), or wheat (in Kazakhstan). Consistently, textbooks portray children admiring Soviet modernity’s power to alter and harness nature for its human purposes. In a Soviet Georgian

200  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Figure 9.1a  Children within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Latvia Richard spent the summer on the collective farm. His uncle Gerhard often said, “Wow! The collective farm has an amazing machinery! Rural work is now mechanized. Cows do not need to be milked by hand—it is done by machines. Fields do not need to be turned by horses—it is done by different machines and technologies. That’s why the collective farm even has its own machine workshop.   Once Richard and his uncle went to the forest. The boys thought that the trees would be cut by a handsaw and then lifted into the truck by the foresters. No! There was a machine saw, log pullers, and log lifters. Technology! (Ņesterovs & Osmanis, 1984, p. 98)

textbook (Botsvadze  & Burjanadze, 1957a), for example, children learn that natural landscapes need to be carefully controlled to increase their value for humans. One text describes Georgian swamps as “nests for infections,” thus offering a clear rationale for why swamps should be eradicated and instead replaced by wheatfields and fruit gardens that would produce bountiful harvests for the people. Similarly, a Soviet Latvian textbook teaches children about the “wonders” of machine technology in cultivating the land, while simultaneously offering lessons about the mastery of machine over nature (see Figure 9.1a–c).

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 201

Figure 9.1b Children within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Armenia (Der-Krikorian, 1987/1990, p. 25)

Across the Soviet textbooks, the value of human “progress” is emphasized through modernization by establishing a hierarchical culture over nature relationship. This technique closely resembles approaches used by other settlercolonizers globally who have exploited the land for the benefit of human “progress” and development (Kimmerer, 2013). By “homogenizing the world’s body into resources,” nature becomes recast as “the raw material of culture,” which is then “appropriated, preserved, enslaved, exalted, or otherwise made flexible for disposal by culture in the logic of capitalist colonialism” (p. 592)— and we would add in the logic of Soviet imperialism as modernity’s other version. Despite the emphasis of modernization and urbanization efforts, the Soviet textbooks also include images of rural landscapes, which seem to coexist sideby-side with modern, urban landscapes. Rurality conveys various meanings in the Soviet modernization context. On the one hand, it is a space containing natural resources to control. On the other hand, it is a symbol of a more primal connection between people and nature. For example, some Soviet textbooks (e.g., Latvian) portray rurality as a symbol of national belonging and a space that nurtures an intimate connection to nature among young readers. In Latvian Soviet textbooks, rural landscapes are described as “the most beautiful places in Latvia—where an untouched nature thrives and where, by extension, the heart of the Latvian nation is preserved” (Silova, 2018, 2019, p. 454). In some images, children are located within these rural landscapes, picking mushrooms in the forest, walking by the seaside, hiking in mountains, or playing in the

202

Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Figure 9.1c Childr en within the Soviet modernization landscapes in Georgia (Botsvadze & Burjanadze, 1957a, p. 8)

meadow. In some Soviet textbooks, nature itself appears to be animated as children smile at the winking sun, communicate with flowers, or listen to the stories told by the wind. The post-Soviet textbooks mark an abrupt shift in how natural landscapes are portrayed in relation to children and the nation (Figure 9.2b, Figure 9.2c). Compared to Soviet texts, images of industry and urban settings all but vanish in the post-Soviet textbooks. Instead, representations of the landscapes across texts become overwhelmingly pre-modern and rural. More often than not, these post-Soviet texts explicitly make the point of locating bountiful and beautiful nature within the country, the national homeland. They are referring to not just any “green hills” (or colorful flowers or blue lakes or vast steppes or majestic mountains) but rather, they are the green hills of Latvia, the blue skies of Georgia, the vast steppes of Kazakhstan, and the majestic mountains of Armenia (Figure 9.2a). These detailed descriptions of natural landscapes signal a move away from “resource nationalism” toward the relationship between humans and nature that is based on respect and reverence toward nature, echoing naturebased spiritualities and perhaps even pre-modern and even “pagan” practices.

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene

203

Figure 9.2a Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Armenia (Kyourkjian  & Der-Krikorian, 2018, pp. 2–3)

While foregrounding the beauty of rural (national) landscapes and more interdependent relationships between humans and nature, some post-Soviet textbooks tend to revert back to “resource nationalism.” For example, Kazakh (Uygur) textbooks describe the national land as being “huge and rich with barley, rice, corn, wheat, cotton and beets,” as well as “rich with natural resources including coal, oil, gas, steel and uranium” that could benefit national development (Yelakhunova et  al., 2008, p.  78). In Armenian textbooks, stories about a pink stone “duf/tuf ” are presented in ways that emphasize its national uniqueness and its Armenian national “brand,” which is known worldwide for its use in the construction of buildings, including many buildings in the capital of Armenian referred to as “the pink city” after the color of the stone (Der-Krikorian, 1980, p. 73). In other words, post-Soviet narratives tend to entangle in the modern (neoliberal) narratives that position nature and its

204

Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Figure 9.2b Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Georgia (Chelidze et al., 2018, p. 16)

resources as “profitable, commodifiable” objects of the nation (Tlostanova, 2021, p. 18). This is especially visible in Kazakhstan, which is portrayed as rich in gas, oil, and coal, but considerably less prominent in countries with least natural resources. Borders and boundaries

Border zones and boundaries constitute one of the major forms of conceptualizing the national space, showing how people locate themselves within national landscapes in relation to others and reveal powerful images of “us” and “them”, “inside” and “outside”, as well as “native” and “foreign” (Silova et al., 2014). Although emerging from the common Soviet education space, post-Soviet textbooks differ significantly in how they describe the boundaries of the nation-states. For example, Latvian textbooks are very precise about the borders of the country, containing images of the maps or connect-the-dots pictures that delineate the contours of the nation-state. In particular, textbooks

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 205

Figure 9.2c Children within post-Soviet national landscapes in Latvia (Paegle, 1997, p. 115)

explicitly discuss Latvia’s independence from the Soviet Union and emphasize its full autonomy, as a country. One of the texts reads: The globe has lands and seas, states and nations. Our state is Latvia. The state is a land that has its own borders, its own laws, its own leaders, its own army that protects its residents, its own flag, its own money. (Dirnena et al., 2003, p. 70) Although the Armenian textbooks do not contain many cartographic images, they still convey the idea of strong borders through various texts and images. Moreover, these delineations go beyond the de facto borders and include the territories from the far past or the disputed ones as a result of more recent histories. For example, one of the textbooks includes a map of Armenia incorporating a disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh (Gyulumiryan, 2003, p. 73), while other textbooks tell stories about the ancient capital of Armenia Erebuni, accompanied by an image of the fortress from the Urartian Kingdom, a place where Armenia claims its history of ethnogenesis (Sargsyan, 2010/2018,

206  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

p.  83). The same textbook shows a boy sitting on the bank of the river in Van, formerly an Armenian province in the Ottoman Empire and a part of Greater/Western Armenia, but now located within the national borders of Turkey (Sargsyan, 2010/2018, p. 89). Similarly, Mount Ararat, which is located outside of the current borders of the Armenian nation-state, is often portrayed as being a part of Armenia. Similar to Armenia, Georgia also has contested territories and boundaries— Abkhazia and Samachablo. However, the textbooks included in our study neither mention these disputed territories nor include the cartographic maps of Georgia and its current de facto and de jure borders. The Soviet textbooks contain some content referring to the greater history of Georgia with its extended territories in the Caucasus region. One of the poems locates the Georgian child within the landscape that may extend beyond the borders of Georgia and embrace the broader Caucasus region: “I am a little Georgian, the son of the Caucasus mountains” (Ramishvili, 1989, p. 111). A poem about a famous fifth-century Georgian king, Vakhtang Gorgasali, also makes a reference to the greater past and Georgia’s extended borders by mentioning the Mountain Ialbuzi, now known as Elbrus, located in Russia (Gordeladze & Chkhenkeli, 2018, p. 94). Similarly, Kazakh and Uyghur Soviet and post-Soviet textbooks often refer to Mount Alatau, a part of the Northern Tian Shan mountain system, which draws a border between China and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) but is portrayed as being a part of Kazakh and Uyghur identities. Implicit in the discussion of what lies within national borders is that there must be outside, separating “us” from “others” (Mead & Silova, 2013). Early literacy textbooks frequently use texts and illustrations to teach belonging and allegiance to their own nation-state. For example, a Soviet Georgian textbook (Botsvadze & Burjanadze, 1957b) introduces a story about a scientist Mitchurin, who, despite not being sufficiently recognized in his country, turned down the offer made by his American colleagues to move to the United States to advance his scientific inventions and economic prosperity. Decades later (during the Perestroika period), the same overriding loyalty to one’s own country is communicated through a Georgian poem “I am a little Georgian,” where the main character proudly declares that he would prefer to die in his homeland rather than live happily in another country (Ramishvili, 1989). The idea that national borders must be protected is central to the Soviet early literacy textbooks, spilling over into the post-Soviet context. For example, a Soviet Georgian textbook tells us about a Soviet soldier—“as strong as a rock”—who protects our beautiful motherland and helps win all the battles (Botsvadze & Burjanadze, 1957b). In the post-Soviet texts, enemies make a special category of “others,” presenting an open threat to a part of the homeland’s territory, which is perhaps most visible in the Armenian textbooks where the word “enemy” appears most frequently compared to other countries. However,

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 207

most textbooks do not directly specify who these enemies are by purposefully leaving it vague. Along with the construction of the “enemy” (whether explicitly identified as an enemy or not), textbooks also invoke the narratives of danger, which are used to build or maintain contemporary national identity. As one of the discursive strategies, textbooks place an emphasis on the military aspects and defense. For example, a textbook from Kazakhstan tells a story of the army that diligently protects the national space, guarding the nation’s peace with advanced technologies and equipment, while simultaneously cultivating pride and respect among the younger generation (Yelakhunova & Shamiyeva, 1997). Similarly, an Armenian textbook tells a story of a little boy Vahan, whose grandfather sacrificed his life to defend the borders of Armenia and whose father is also guarding the border (see Kyourkjian & Der-Krikorian, 2006b, p. 45). To remind of the past (national) threats, the text also includes a picture of students paying respect to the genocide memorial. Georgian textbooks similarly draw attention to the dangers posed by enemies and emphasize the need to protect borders by bringing in heroic stories from the past of Georgian kings and queens who bravely led their armies to defeat enemies and protect the country. According to the early literacy textbooks, threats to national borders and territorial integrity emanate primarily from external enemies and rival nations, implying that these threats could be addressed by strengthening and protecting the nation’s borders. Although nature, natural landscapes, and resources are used as some of the core elements of national identities across the post-Soviet region, the degradation of nature and the overuse of national resources are neither presented as a threat nor perceived as a risk to the nation’s future—at least not in school textbooks. Today, local responses to the environmental catastrophe are largely limited to a few political parties organized around “green nationalism” (e.g., green parties in Latvia), nongovernmental organizations (e.g., Caucasus Environmental Knowledge Portal and Defenders of Rionis Mtsvelebi in Georgia), or expressed in literature and art (e.g., Kazakh novels by Abdi-Jamil Nurpeisov who writes about “Soviet developmental madness” that culminated with the ecosystem collapse of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan). Textbooks, however, remain silent about the human-induced climate crisis—an internal and “largely self-inflicted hazard derived from unsustainable aspirations and lifestyles” (Conversi, 2020b, p. 52)—instead (re)producing the Soviet logic of “resource nationalism” that justifies the exploitation of natural resources and requires strengthening borders rather than transcending them. Cultural symbols as visible nationalism

Early literacy textbooks invoke cultural symbols as visible markers of national identity to cultivate children’s belonging to a particular national place and locate them within the national borders. Among some of the most visible forms of nationalism are traditional costumes and attire. Although the Soviet

208  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

textbooks foregrounded pioneers wearing Soviet school uniforms accompanied by a red scarf as a sign of being a Soviet citizen—with rare images of children dressed in national systems to symbolize the “friendship of people”—the post-Soviet textbooks almost exclusively portray children wearing national folk costumes in different settings, from sitting at their desks in school classrooms to picking grapes in family gardens and playing in nature. Across the Soviet space, the “friendship of people” celebrated a homeland of multiculturalism and promoted neighborly brotherhood across the different Soviet republics and nonaligned countries. Interestingly, the symbol of multicultural friendship was absent in the Soviet Armenian and Georgian textbooks. In Soviet Armenia, images of Soviet “friendship of people” were only present in the textbooks used by non-Armenians living in Soviet Armenia (Figure 9.3a). This suggests that local/ethnic nationalism was permissible within the USSR as long as the allegiance to the Soviet ‘motherland’ was demonstrated in other ways. Importantly, references to multiculturalism and “friendship of people” all but disappear in the post-Soviet texts, which tend to portray nation-states and their citizens in more ethnically homogenous ways. For example, although Georgians are not the only ethnic group in Georgia, all characters of the stories and poems are ethnic Georgians with common Georgian names. Similarly, Armenian and Latvian textbooks bring forward Armenian and Latvian girls and boys wearing traditional national costumes with no (or rare) mention of other ethnic

Figure 9.3a “Friendship of people” as reflected in national folk costumes. Soviet Armenian textbook for non-Armenian children (Ghalatyan et  al., 1989, pp. 4–5)

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 209

Figure 9.3b “Friendship of people” as reflected in national folk costumes. Soviet Latvian textbook for Latvian children (Ņesterovs & Osmanis, 1984, p. 100)

groups (Figure 9.3b). Kazakhstan is perhaps an exception in its effort to build a more multicultural national identity in the post-Soviet period. Occupying a central role in early literacy textbooks, the national language is often used to reinforce a monocultural and monolingual identity, while simultaneously illustrating a perfect correspondence between people and places. More often than not, references to native language are made to reinforce a vision of a monoethnic and homogeneous society. For example, Latvian textbooks teach that “Latvians speak Latvian. Latvians live in Latvia” (Cimdina et al., 1993, p. 88). Similarly, Georgian textbooks clearly state that their language is Georgian, and Tbilisi is the capital. In Armenian textbooks, children learn that being an Armenian means to be able to speak Armenian as a mother tongue: “I am Armenian and my mother tongue is Armenian” (Der-Krikorian, 2003, p. 57; Der-Krikorian, 1990, p. 80, 1989, p. 107). Such texts are usually followed by further readings that emphasize how much children “love” their native language or compare languages to “the sweetness of a mother” (Gyulumiryan, 2003, p. 93; Ghalatyan et al., 1986, p. 62; Der-Krikorian, 1989, p. 107, 1990, p. 80; Sargsyan, 2010/2018, p. 144). To further extend the lessons about the correspondence of national languages, identities, and nation-states, an

210  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Armenian textbook asks children to answer the following questions, “Armenians speak Armenian, what language do French people, Chinese, Georgians, Russians speak?” (Gyulumiryan, 2003, p.  93). The texts thus reinforce the nation-state “formula in which language is naturally mapped onto the pairing of people and place in a one-to-one-to-one correspondence” (Silova et  al., 2014, p. 204). Nationalism is taught in a variety of ways, using both explicit and implicit messages. For example, most post-Soviet textbooks open with the display of the official symbols of the nation such as flags, coats of arms, and in some cases images of the President (e.g., Kazakhstan). In particular, flags are present in early literacy textbooks across all four countries as one of the main symbols of the nation, which should be known by school children of any age. In the Armenian and Georgian textbooks, for example, flags appear next to the alphabet letters and used to teach reading and, more indirectly, to teach about the nation. Flags also appear in some of the most ordinary (and perhaps unexpected) places as in the image of a young child wearing a T-shirt with the Armenian flag on it (Der Krikorian, 2010/2018, p. 28) or hanging from buildings in the background of city images as an expression of “banal” but yet visible nationalism. Textbooks also teach the nation in more implicit ways through the use of cultural symbols that may not necessarily appear as national symbols if viewed by outsiders. While learning to read and write the letters of the alphabet, children learn symbols that represent the nation in more mundane ways, ranging from (national) pottery to (national) vegetation and food. For example, textbooks mention “national” fruits (e.g., pomegranate in Armenia, grapes in Georgia, and apples in Kazakhstan) as well as “national” dishes (e.g., Georgian “churchkelas,” Kazakh “manty,” or Uughur “laghman”). Both Georgian and Armenian textbooks frequently feature marans or barrels for storing wine. Decorated with fruits such as grapes and pomegranates, marans and wine-making more generally represent religious and kinship identity. Family gatherings and even local festivals are often centered around harvesting pomegranates, grapes, and other fruits as a traditional way of spending time together. For example, a Georgian textbook portrays a vintage (grape harvesting) day as a national celebration, which is accompanied by such traditional practices as making churchkhela (national sweets) made from grape juice or performing folk dances in the national dresses (Figure  9.4a). Importantly, wine and grapes represent the rootedness of Armenians and Georgians to their native land and ancestors (Figure 9.4b). A return to the villages or rural countryside represents a symbolic shift from the city center (Yerevan or Tbilisi) to rural villages as a metaphorical return to the primordial, sacred places where ancestral traditions and cultures are still maintained. While browsing the textbooks, the nation seems to be always lurking in the background, not immediately visible but consistently there. For example, the images of churches and crosses frequently appear in the Armenian and

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 211

Figure 9.4a Wine-making and other national traditions in Georgia (Chelidze et al., 2018, p. 16)

Figure 9.4b Wine-making and other national traditions in Armenia (Kyourkjian & Der-Krikorian, 2006a/2018a, p. 77)

212  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Georgian textbooks, reflecting a long history of Christianity in these countries and its role in the national identity building. However, Christianity is not explicitly taught in early literacy textbooks. Rather, it is portrayed as the very fabric of society that constitutes the meaning of what it means to be Armenian or Georgian. For example, when children learn about the movement of the sun throughout the day (e.g., morning, day, afternoon, and night), they read a text called “The Sun,” which is accompanied by an illustration of four churches (see Der-Krikorian, 1973, p.  76). In each picture, the same church appears in a different light—first illuminated by the rising sun in the morning, then standing in the blue daylight and shifting into the yellow colors of the afternoon sky, and, finally, disappearing into the night sky. In Latvian textbooks, “pagan” symbols often appear in the background of texts and illustrations to signal a strong culture of nature-based spirituality that has survived decades of the Soviet occupation and has been central to the nurturing of Latvian national identity. Here, the relationship among nation, religion, and spirituality is taught implicitly, while the explicit lessons may focus on the reading skills or understanding of the sun’s movement. In short, early literacy textbooks use various cultural symbols to teach nation and nationalism through explicit lessons about the national borders, flags, and heroes, as well as more implicit messages about what it means to be a national subject. As Billig (1995) argues, these more implicit lessons about nation and nationalism—the so-called “banal nationalism” that operates offthe-radar—form the unspoken order of the nation-building projects, foreshadowing ordinary actions, thoughts, and emotions as children become “national” subjects. Homeland

The idea of homeland serves as a “receptacle” of a collectively shared consciousness, which is taught through a combination of various dimensions of childhood literacies, weaving together knowledge(s) about national landscapes, geopolitical borders, and cultural symbols. Narratives about “homeland” invoke a cognitive and affective awareness of children about their homeland (Piaget & Weil, 1951). Homeland is not just a geopolitical territory. Rather, it conveys the symbolic content tied to “a myth of origin” (Giddens, 1985, p. 261), shared historical memories, common ancestry, culture, natural landscapes, and more. While the Soviet textbooks discussed “homeland” in relation to the USSR and its shared modern history,3 they also mention the ancestors of the native origin, especially the ones associated with cultural and educational progress. For example, the Soviet textbooks in Armenia, Georgia, and Kazakhstan introduce children to famous national educators who created the first literacy textbooks or created the national alphabets. Thus, the Soviet textbooks made space for the cultural elements such as native languages and alphabets as important symbols of national identity. The images

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 213

also depict famous writers of each country who contributed to the awakening of national sentiments through their work. However, Soviet textbooks do not contain information about national heroes and ancestors from pre-Soviet history. In fact, the pre-Soviet past is often presented in a way that discredits and undermines it, positioning the Soviet Union as the savior. A Soviet Georgian textbook, for example, tells about peasants and workers in the pre-Soviet time who lived in hardship and explains how the King was only caring about the rich. The textbook further states that under the leadership of Lenin, the October Revolution led to “workers defeating the oppressors and creating a happy life” (Botsvadze & Burjanadze, 1957a, p. 65). A poem in the Armenian textbook also describes how Stalin made people’s life happy and allowed them to become educated, skillful, and flawless citizens of the Soviet state (Chougurian & Hayrapetyan, 1948, p. 72). In contrast to the Soviet textbooks, the post-Soviet texts discuss homeland tracing its origins to ancient ancestors and primordial past. As noted by Suny (2001), “[n]ational identity construction has most powerfully been about a single, unitary identity, not a multiplicity of self-understandings, embedded in a long history and attached to a specific territory” (p. 895). It is especially attractive for many post-Soviet societies aiming to reclaim the “glory of the past” in order to rebuild the national identity and create an emotional attachment to a homeland. Interestingly, the national historical heroes are frequently portrayed through the poetic description of their heroism and strength. Children usually study those short poems by heart, which stay in their memories forever, and the phrases from those poems become national patriotic mantras. The Georgian post-Soviet textbooks (Gordeladze  & Chkhenkeli, 2018) portray the strongest kings of Georgia, such as Vakhtang Gorgasali (fifth century) and King Tamar (twelfth century). The texts describe how these kings protected and empowered the country. Georgian textbooks also include short poems dedicated to the heroism and strength of Georgian kings, making a reference to a homeland’s territorial belonging (Figure  9.5a). Similarly, the Armenian post-Soviet textbook (Kyourkjian & Der-Krikorian, 2018a/2006a, p.  102; Figure  9.5b) talks about Hayk Nahabet, the most famous hero of Armenia who fought against Persians. For his heroic acts, Armenia was named as the land of Hayk, symbolizing the long-standing ancestral connection in Armenian history. The short poem next to the image tells about the ancestral belonging to homeland, which is connected to the present days and the eternal future of the nation. In a Kazakh Uygur textbook, an Uygur hero Sadir Palvan is honored for his contributions in the fight for the independence of the Uyghur people (Yelakhunova et al., 2012). His heroic life is narrated through an Uyghur beloved poem, describing him as an enemy’s prisoner who managed to break free and portraying him as a superior warrior over all enemies (Figure 9.5c). By bringing into spotlight ancestors who sacrificed their lives to protect their homeland, the post-Soviet textbooks use them as symbols of patriotism and examples for children to follow in order to become the “true sons

214

Dilraba Anayatova et al.

Figure 9.5a National heroes and ancestors in post-Soviet textbooks: Georgian King Vakhtang “King Vakhtang was loved by god, He heard bells ringing from sky, He stepped on the Elbrus, Giant mountains started bending.” (Gogebashvili, 2019, p. 94)

Figure 9.5b National heroes and ancestors in post-Soviet textbooks: Armenian Hero Hayk Nahabet “My father is Armenian. My grandfather is Armenian. My grandfather’s grandfather is Armenian. Our nation was named after Hayk Nahabet. Armenians lived in old-old days, Live now and will live eternally.” (Kyourkjian & Der-Krikorian, 2018, p. 102)

Figure 9.5c National heroes and ancestors in post-Soviet textbooks: Kazakh Uyghur Hero Sadir “My name is Sadir (fearful), I was called that when I was 15. When I was a child, Enemy’s prison became my home, I broke free riding a horse. Went everywhere from stone to stone. If enemy shoots, they hit the stone. If Sadir shoots, he hits enemy’s head.” (Yelakhunova et al., 2012, p. 88)

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 215

of the homeland.” In particular, a text from a Georgian textbook (Ramishvili, 1989) describes how a mother encourages her children to love their homeland to the fullest, to take care of their homeland, and not to hesitate if they need to shed blood to protect it. Armenian textbooks, too, portray ancient heroes, including those who fought against the Ottoman Empire, encouraging children to learn about the heroes, to study well, and to become heroes like them (Sargsyan, 2018). While Georgian, Armenian, and Kazakh textbooks demonstrate the power and glory of the nation by portraying the national heroes, kings, and warriors, Latvian textbooks rarely include heroic male figures in the context of nationbuilding. In a rare exception, one textbook (Paegle, 1997) tells a story about a newborn baby whose parents are contemplating possible baby names: “To a small, small, small boy, we will give a big, big name! We will call him Viesturs. This is what in ancient times we called men who became powerful defenders of our land” (pp. 50–51). Far more common to Latvian textbooks are images of “pagan” Gods and Goddesses who serve as the protectors of the Latvian land and the Earth more broadly. In post-Soviet Latvian textbooks, folklore texts and illustrations frequently feature the Goddess of the Sun (Saule), the Goddess of Fate (Laima), as well as Mother Winter, Spring, Summer, or Wind. For example, the pagan Goddess of the Sun—the most important Latvian deity who determines the well-being and regeneration of all life on earth—appears in all textbooks, smiling at the children from behind the clouds and factories, the forests, and apartment block buildings, as if reminding them of the mystery and beauty of nature beyond modern (national) culture (Silova, 2019). Similarly, many textbooks feature the Goddess of Fate (Laima) who lives on earth and is closely involved in human life. Children read poems and stories about the Goddess Laima who makes final decisions on an individual's fate and is closely related with mothers and childbirth (see images below). In Armenian and Latvian textbooks, Mother Autumn greets children and shares the bounty of harvest with them. In all these texts and images, female deities carry extraordinary power that (re)defines nation and nationalism in new ways. Interestingly, while Armenian and Kazakh stories primarily define national patriotism in terms of protecting the nation’s sovereignty from the enemies, they also contain stories of strength and power that redefine national patriotism in more interdependent ways. In a Kazakh textbook, for example, children read a story “Who is the strongest?” (Auelbaev, 2012, pp. 132–134). The main characters of the story—muz (iceberg), kun (sun), bult (cloud), tyshkan (steppe mouse), kumyrska (aunt), koshakan (lamb), kaskyr (wolf), jusan (sagebrush), and mergen (hunter)—argue about who is the most powerful (Auelbaev, 2012). The story concludes that everyone has their own strength and has a role to play in the lives of others. Here, natural forces are described to have powers similar to those of a human. The story echoes the religious beliefs of Tengrism, a form of indigenous faith that has historically existed in nomadic Central Asian Turkic and Mongolian cultures,4 emphasizing nature-based spiritualities that have roots in shamanism and animism (see Palandjian et al., 2018).

216  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

More broadly, nature-centered spiritualties emphasize a harmonious interdependence of human species and nature—both animate and inanimate—implying a nonhierarchical and balanced coexistence on earth and a transcendence of perceived boundaries between space and time, animals and humans, women and men, self and other. One story in a Kazakh textbook explicitly explains the principles of interdependence through a dialogue between the plants who question each other’s appearance in a competition for deciding who is the most beautiful. At the end, the sun decides that each plant is beautiful in its own way. The Kazakh story concludes with a strong message that questions the value of competitiveness and hierarchy: “It is similar to nations. There is no bad nation. Everyone is equal, all are valuable to Mother Nature” (Bogatyreva et al., 2017, p. 127). These stories highlight the beauty and power of nature, where everyone—people, animals, and plants—are equal in the eyes of Mother Earth. Inadvertently, these stories destabilize the power hierarchies inherent in modern nation-states in terms of gender, geopolitics, and nature/culture relationships, thus opening opportunities to reconfigure relationships between nation and childhood. Whether teaching patriotism through the messages of national independence (associated with the protection and strengthening of borders) or interdependence (associated with transcending borders), school textbooks teach children to love their homeland and to study well in order to “to be useful for the homeland” and “to make the homeland happy.” More often than not, however, the narratives about homeland are flooded with the “nationalist mythology” from the past, transmitting patriotic sentiments to protect the homeland from external enemies and threats, while fueling modernization of a nation-state. Meanwhile, the narratives about caring for nature and protecting the environment remain largely overlooked, as the relationship between childhood and nation remains anchored in the paradigm of modernity and its matrix of coloniality that justifies exploitation of people and resources. In such a relationship, the threat of climate crisis remains largely invisible behind the dominant narratives of patriotic nationalism.

Conclusions: toward (re)configuring childhood and nation in the Anthropocene Focusing on the continuities and ruptures in the Soviet and post-Soviet constructions of childhood and nation, our analysis has identified some important shifts in how the teaching of national literacies (Tröhler, 2020) has been approached within the relatively stable field of the early literacy textbooks in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia. While losing the association with the Soviet empire and reorienting the child within the newly defined borders and landscapes of the independent nation-states, the post-Soviet early literacy textbooks surprisingly appear to elide the Western (neo)liberal discourses—such as “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” “cosmopolitanism,” or “globalism”— often thought to be inevitably entering the post-Soviet education space (see also Mead & Silova, 2013). Instead, the early literacy textbooks we analyzed

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene 217

emphasize the narratives of rootedness, transforming the land into a homeland “through the bodies and blood of the ancestors” (Schwartz, 2006, p. 18). In this process, the post-Soviet textbooks clearly contribute to (re)producing the idealized sociopolitical alchemy of our time—the nation-state (Sparke, 2005; Silova et al., 2014). Not only do children learn about the sovereignty of their nation-states, but they also learn that nation-states are defined by their clearly demarcated borders, which need to be protected at all costs to ensure the future continuity and prosperity of nations. While departing from the Soviet constructions of nationhood in many ways, the post-Soviet textbooks nevertheless borrow more from their Soviet predecessors’ future visions than one would have guessed. From the Soviet to the post-Soviet, the emphasis on “resource nationalism” remains strong, claiming natural resources as national and justifying resource extraction (and destruction) for the benefit of national development. In this process, nation-building projects have placed childhood on a trajectory toward patriotic citizenship in terms of protecting the national resources and ultimately contributing to economic development and growth in the name of the homeland. Childhood and nation thus remain deeply anchored in modernity’s rhetoric—the only difference being a shift from the socialist version of modernity to a capitalist, (neo) liberal one—positioning childhood (and nation) on a linear trajectory toward infinite national growth and development. Now articulated through Western versions of the modernist future, (neo)liberal reforms across many post-Soviet contexts have all contributed to shaping the relationship between childhood and nation in ways that promise prosperous and happy futures that must be defended against the external threats, while remaining blind to the impending environmental catastrophe that emanate from within. Perhaps what we are witnessing now is, in the words of Tlostanova (2021), the process of defuturing or “the beginning of the end of neoliberalism as the only remaining model of modernity, or perhaps, an ultimate discrediting of the project of modernity as such” (p. 15). Importantly, our analysis has brought into focus some alternative, often contradictory narratives that challenge the modern notion of the nation-state and offer glimpses of possible future worlds. While foregrounding the metaphors of “rootedness” that bind people and places, early literacy textbooks often trace the national roots so far back in history that the nation-states all but disappear from view. Instead, the textbooks introduce narratives that echo ancient, landbased spiritualities (such as animism and Tengrism), thus (re)defining the relationship among nature, land, and child in more interdependent ways. Far from being uniform and predictable, these counternarratives draw on both modern and premodern imaginaries that reach back to indigenous traditions and offer more complex symbolic representations of childhood and nation, thus challenging modernity’s dominant rhetoric. While these countercurrents may not be distinctly visible, we argue that it is important to bring them into focus in order to further complicate our understandings of postsocialist transformations, challenge modernity’s evolutionary (and extractive) aspects of social change,

218  Dilraba Anayatova et al.

and make visible conceptual “openings” in rethinking the complex relationship between childhood and nation in the Anthropocene. Concerned for the survival of future worlds, our research suggests that such rethinking must begin by delinking from the dominant politics of knowledge, being, and perception in order to (re)configure the relationship between childhood and nation in ways that would ensure collective re-existence in the context of the Anthropocene. From the perspective of decolonial scholars, re-existence is “a praxis of the otherwise” (Walsh & Mignolo, 2018, p. 18). It is a way of resisting and creatively (re)articulating the logic of modernity/coloniality at a time when all other “-isms” (whether nationalism and cosmopolitanism, conservatism and radicalism, socialism and capitalism, localism and globalism) are becoming increasingly meaningless. As Tlostanova (2021) explains, Re-existence is far from a primordialist call to return to some essentialised and constructed authenticity . . . it is a way to relive the main elements of erased and distorted value systems while necessarily taking into account the temporal lag and experiences of struggle and opposition, compromises and losses that have taken place. In other words, re-existence is not mere repetition; it is also variation in which there is not only always a stable core but also a necessary creative element of difference, and hence of dynamics and change, a development of the native tradition in dialogue and in argument with modernity. It is an enrichment of our perspective, a constant balancing on the verge—neither here nor there or simultaneously here, there, and elsewhere. (Tlostanova, 2021, p. 22) We suggest that such re-existence entails an urgency for the (re)configuring of the relationship between childhood and nation not only in terms of academic knowledge production, but also as “a praxis of otherwise” that must begin as early as learning to read, learning to think, and learning to be.

Appendix: list of early literacy textbooks analyzed for this research

Armenian textbooks Barnakyan, L. A. (1986). Aybenaran (for non-Armenian schools—2nd grade). Loys Publishers. Chougurian, A., & Hayrapetyan, A. (1948). Aybenaran. Haybedaran. Der-Krikorian, A. (1971, 1973). Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Der-Krikorian, A. (1980). Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Der-Krikorian, A. (1987, 1990). Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Der-Krikorian, A. (1988, 1989). Arevik Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Der-Krikorian, A. (2003, 2010, 2018). Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Der-Krikorian, A., & Vartanyan, A. (1979, 1980). Aybenaran. Loys Publishers. Dikranian, S. (1991). Badgerazard Aybenaran. Mshagouydee Haygagan Font. Ghalatyan, S. P., Gyulumiryan, J. H., & Barnakyan, L. (1989). Aybenaran (for non-Armenian schools—2nd grade), Colorful Printing House. Gyulumiryan, J. (2003). Zankag Aybenaran. Datev Gitakrdakan Hamaleer. Kyourkjian, A., Der-Krikorian, L. (2006a, 2018a). Aybenaran. Edit Print. Kyourkjian, A., & Der-Krikorian, L. (2006b). Aybenaran. Edit Print. Sargsyan, V. A. (2010, 2018). Aybenaran. Manmar. Vartanyan, A., & Barnakyan, L. (1980). Aybenaran (for non-Armenian schools—2nd grade), Loys Publishers.

Georgian textbooks Botsvadze, N., & Burjanadze, K. (1957a). Dedaena: Part 1 (based on I. Gogebashvili). State Publishing House. Botsvadze, N., & Burjanadze, K. (1957b). Dedaena: Part 2 (based on I. Gogebashvili). State Publishing House. Chelidze, L., Khachvani, N.,  & Sakhechidze, N. (2018). Georgian language and literature. AIMC Publishing. Gogebashvili, I. (2019). Dedaena. Ministry of Education and Science. Gordeladze, N.,  & Chkhenkeli, G. (2018). Dedaena (Based on I. Gogebashvili). Sulakauri Publishing. Kuprava, N., Nazirishvili, D., Popkhadze, M.,  & Khaziuri, M. (2018). Mother language. Diogene. Ramishvili, V. (1978). Dedaena (based on I. Gogebashvili). Ganatleba Publishing.

220  Dilraba Anayatova et al. Ramishvili, V. (1989). Dedaena: Part 1 (based on I. Gogebashvili). Ganatleba Publishing. Rodonaia, V., Mirianashvili, M., Vashakidze, L., & Topadze, K. (2018). Georgian language 1. Saqmatsne Publishers.

Kazakhstan textbooks Auelbaev, S., Nauryzbaeva, A., Yzguttynova, R., & Kulazhanova, А. (2012). Alipe. Atamura Publishing. Auelbaev, S., Nauryzbaeva, A., Yzguttynova, R.,  & Tazhimbetova, S. (2012). Ana Tyly. Atamura Publishing. Bogatyreva, E., Buchina, R., Ostrouhova, N., Regel, N., & Truhanova, O. (2017). Obuchenie gramote [Literacy studies], Part 2. 1st grade. Almatykitap Publishing. Goretskiy, V., Kiryushkin, V.,  & Shanko, A. (1987). Bukvar. Prosveshenie Publishing. Retrieved from https://back-in-ussr.com/2014/05/sovetskiy-bukvar-pervyy-nashuchebnik.html Pavlenko, K., & Abenova, T. (1999). Bukvar. Atamura Publishing. Shamiyeva, A., & Khasanov, K. (Eds.). (1947, 1949, 1950, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963). Alippe. Kazakh SSR Curriculum and Pedagogy Publishing. Shamiyeva, A.,  & Tokayev, S. (1968, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1988). Alippe. Mektep Publishing. Yelakhunova, B., & Shamiyeva, A. (1988, 1997). Alippe. Mektep Publishing. Yelakhunova, B., & Yelayev, T. (1997, 1999, 2001). Alippe. Rauan Publishing. Yelakhunova, B., Yelayev, T., Alimov, M., & Sulaymanova, S. (1997, 2008, 2012). Alippe. Atamura Publishing.

Latvian textbooks Cimdiņa, R., Lanka, A., & Krustkalna, L. (1993). Riti Raiti, Valodiņa [Run Smoothly, Language]. Zvaigzne. Dirnēna, V., Dubova, A., Irbe, I., Ivana, Z., Mazjāne, J., Miruškina, I., & Urbanoviča, D. (2003). Ar Gudru Ziņu: Eksperementala macibu gramata . . . 1. Klasei: Iepazīšanās. RaKa. Karule, A. (1992). Lasama gramata 1. klasei (pecabeces posms) [A reading book for the first grade: The post-ABC stage]. Zveigne. Karule, A., & Kauce, A. (1980). Ābece: Eksperimentāli Mācību Uzdevumi Sagatavošanas Klasēm [ABC: Experimental learning exercises for kindergarten]. LPSR Izglītības ministrija. KLKI. (2016). Latviešu Ābece Sešgadniekiem [Latvian ABC for Six-year-olds]. Kustība par Latvisku Kultūru Izglītībā. Lubāniete, Z., Bērzāja, L., Ramša, A., & Vuškalne, L. (1965, also 1966–1969 editions). Ābece 1. Klasei [ABC for the 1st grade]. Liesma. Ņesterovs, O., & Osmanis, J. (1984, 1975, 1980, 1984). Ābece [ABC]. Zvaigzne. Paegle, D. Z. (1997). Vards: Lasama gramata un ievadijums valodas maciba 1. Klasei. Zvaigzne.

Notes 1 Authors are listed in alphabetical order. 2 Whether or not there is a direct causal relationship, nationalism is arguably at the heart of the many crises in the modern world, including the climate crisis (Hau, 2022; Duara,

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene  221 2021; Conversi, 2020a, 2020b). For over two centuries, the nation-state has been “the most powerful social construct for directing the collective activities of human beings,” producing the most stunning examples of collective achievements (such as the moon landing or the invention of the Internet) and tragedies (such as repeated genocides, armed conflicts, and wars) (Deese, 2019, p. 17). 3 Soviet Armenian and Kazakh (Uyghur) textbooks use the Soviet Army, creating a common and unified perception of homeland and equating the Soviet and native nationalisms. The texts from both countries underline the greatness of the Soviet army where people from different ethnicities come from different parts of the Soviet states and stand together for protecting the common Soviet homeland (Vartanyan & Barnakyan, 1986, pp. 88, 90; Yelakhunova & Shamiyeva, 1988, p. 84). The Armenian textbook also uses Soviet heroes such as Lenin and Baghramyan (Marshal of the Soviet Union of Armenian origin) in the context of describing the two main streets in the capital city of Armenia (Ghalatyan et al., 1987, p. 123). Putting the Soviet Marshal of Armenian origin next to Lenin raises the sentiment of converging Armenian and Soviet nationalisms. 4 The followers of Tengrism worship the powerful forces of the sky, sun, earth, water, and fire, and the faith incorporates shamanism and animism, reflecting animated nature and plants as a central feature of this belief. Known as both a poly- and monotheistic religion, Tengrism recognizes a plurality of divine beings, including female deities and spirits (for more, see Palandjian et al., 2018).

References Apple, M. (2001). The state and the politics of knowledge. Routledge Falmer. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. Burman, E. (2008). Developments: Child, image, nation. Routledge. Cannella, G. S., & Viruru, R. (2004). Childhood and postcolonization: Power, education, and contemporary practice. Routledge. Conversi, D. (2012). Modernism and nationalism. Journal of Political Ideologies, 17(1), 13–34. Conversi, D. (2020a). The ultimate challenge: Nationalism and climate change. Nationalities Papers, 48(4), 625–636. Conversi, D. (2020b). The future of nationalism in a transnational world. In S. Stone, R. Dennis, & P. Rizova (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to race, ethnicity, and nationalism (pp. 43–59). Wiley-Blackwell. Conversi, D., & Posocco, L. (2022). Which nationalism for the anthropocene? A comparative study of exemplary green nation-states. Frontiers in Political Science, 36. Deese, R. S. (2019). Climate change and the future of democracy. Springer. Duara, P. (2021). The Ernest Gellner nationalism lecture: Nationalism and the crises of global modernity. Nations and Nationalism, 27(3), 610–622. Dumitrica, D. (2019). The ideological work of the daily visual representations of nations. Nations and Nationalism, 25(3), 910–934. Edwards, B. (2022). Rethinking exceptionalism in an age of plague: An introduction. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 137(1), 9–18. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds. and Trans.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (R. Braidotti, Trans., pp.  87–104). University of Chicago Press. Fox, J. E. (2018). Banal nationalism in everyday life. Nations and Nationalism, 24(4), 862–866. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press. Giddens, A. (1985). Nation-state and violence. University of California Press.

222  Dilraba Anayatova et al. Greenfeld, L. (1992). Nationalism: Five roads to modernity. Harvard University Press. Greenfeld, L. (2013). Mind, modernity, madness. The impact of culture on human experience. Harvard University Press. Hau, M. F. (2022). From local concerns to global challenges: Continuity and change in substate “green nationalism.” Frontiers in Political Science, 3. doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.764939 Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth and reality. Cambridge University Press. Jansson, D. (2018). Deadly exceptionalisms, or, would you rather be crushed by a moral superpower or a military superpower? Political Geography, 64, 83–91. Kaiser, R. J. (2017). The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton University Press. Kelen, C., & Sundmark, B. (2013). First things—introduction. The Nation in Children’s Literature: Nations of Childhood, 1–8. Kimmerer, R. (2013). Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions. Kirschenbaum, L. A. (2001). Small comrades: Revolutionizing childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917– 1932. RoutledgeFalmer. Margulies, M. (2021). Eco-nationalism: A historical evaluation of nationalist praxes in environmentalist and ecologist movements. Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, 23, 22–29. Mead, M. A., & Silova, I. (2013). Literacies of (post) socialist childhood: Alternative readings of socialist upbringings and neoliberal futures. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 11(2), 194–222. Meinig, D. W. (1979). The beholding eye: Ten versions of the same scene. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays, 33. Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature: Women, ecology, and the scientific revolution. Harper & Row. Millei, Z.,  & Imre, R. (Eds.). (2016). Childhood and nation: Interdisciplinary engagements. Springer. Newman, D., & Paasi, A. (1998). Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: Boundary narratives in political geography. Progress in Human Geography, 22(2), 186–207. Nogué, J., & Vicente, J. (2004). Landscape and national identity in Catalonia. Political Geography, 23(2), 113–132. Palandjian, G., Silova, I., Mun, O.,  & Zholdoshalieva, R. (2018). Nation and gender in post-socialist education transformations: Comparing early literacy textbooks in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Latvia. In M. Chankseliani & I. Silova (Eds.), Comparing postsocialist transformations: Education in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union. Symposium (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education). Piaget, J., & Weil, A. M. (1951). The development in children of the idea of the homeland and of relations with other countries. International Social Science Bulletin, 3(3), 561–578. Schwartz, K. (2006). Nature and national identity after communism: Globalizing the ethnoscape. Pittsburgh University Press. Silova, I. (2018). Comparing post-socialist transformations: Dead ends, new pathways, and unexpected openings. In M. Chankseliani & I. Silova (Eds.), Comparing post-socialist transformations: Education in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union. Symposium (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education). Silova, I. (2019). Towards a Wonderland of comparative education. Comparative Education, 55(4), 444–472.

Literacies of childhood and nation in the Anthropocene  223 Silova, I. (2021). Facing the Anthropocene: Comparative education as sympoiesis. Comparative Education Review, 65(4), 587–616. Silova, I., Piattoeva, N., & Millei, Z. (2018). Childhood and schooling in (post) socialist societies. In Memories of everyday life. Houndmill. Silova, I., Yaqub, M. M., Mun, O., & Palandjian, G. (2014). Pedagogies of Space:(re) imagining nation and childhood in post-Soviet states. Global Studies of Childhood, 4(3), 195–209. Smith, A. D. (1998). Nationalism and modernism. Routledge. Sparke, M. (2005). In the space of theory: Postfoundational geographies of the nation-state. University of Minnesota Press. Stephens, S. (1995). Children and the politics of culture (Vol. 11). Princeton University Press. Suny, R. G. (2001). Constructing primordialism: Old histories for new nations. The Journal of Modern History, 73(4), 862–896. Tlostanova, M. (2021). Beyond conservatism and radicalism? A decolonial glimpse into the post-truth world. In Africa’s radicalisms and conservatisms (pp. 11–30). Brill. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nationbuilding. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7–33). Routledge. Walsh, K., & Mignolo, W. (2018). On decoloniality. DW Mignolo, & EC Walsh, On Decoloniality Concepts, Analysis, Praxis, 304. Wilson, A. (1998). National history and identity in Ukraine and Belarus. In G. Smith, V. Law, A. Wilson, A. Bohr, & E. Allworth (Eds.), Nation-building in the post-Soviet Borderlands. The politics of national identities (pp. 23–47). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 10

Reform histories and changing educational conceptions of the nation and nationalism in Norwegian and Swedish curricula (1900–2020) Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén Introduction At the turn of the twentieth century, state authorities in both Norway and Sweden launched various school reform initiatives to modernize education for the masses. In these efforts, conceptions of the nation served as one point of departure for authorizing what to teach and learn in schools and classrooms. Since national constitutions, laws, and ordinances were sparse in their descriptions of school content, national curricula become crucial segments in nationbuilding processes. Thus, it is interesting to analyze conceptualizations of “the nation” and “nationalism” in these documents and the historical conditions and transitions that created these conceptualizations. In this chapter, we explore the discursive formations of nationalism that resulted from political, cultural, and social processes in the two Nordic countries. The study addresses how the various constitutional histories of Norway and Sweden allowed for educational reasoning that legitimized public schooling during the twentieth century. A core purpose of national curricula is to connect everyday practices in schools to the outside world, and thereby create a mutual relationship among the school, the state, and the nation (Acosta, 2021). Moreover, state authorities expect curricula to guide planning and teaching on a daily basis through the use of symbols and assumptions (Billig, 1995). By tracing the history of these relationships, we explore how nation-states have aimed to produce and reproduce themselves through social conditions and educational processes. The chapter also contains a comparative study. In present-day educational systems, nationalist worldviews serve as identity-generating markers of social belonging, which are, in turn, discursively reproduced through institutions, strategies, and practices (Tröhler, 2020). Core institutions in modern democracies are the national constitutions and associated conditions that protect democratic values and principles. We understand the democratic construction of nations in accordance with Tröhler’s (2015, p. 23) conception of constitutional histories. Tröhler (2016a) writes that constitutional histories of nation-states DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-11

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula  225

differ by embracing various modes or modalities of thinking, talking, and writing. Such modalities are, for example, embedded in the conception of republicanism that paved the way for educational reforms in the central and southern parts of Europe during the nineteenth century. In other countries like Prussia, and in Scandinavian countries, reform makers contested these modalities from a protestant-denominational point of view. In this context, both Lutheranism and Calvinism legitimized the fabric of public schooling by offering various modes of thinking about schools and the world outside their walls. Against this backdrop, we may distinguish between various modes of thought that generated different types of constitutions in both nation-states and schooling traditions. Of course, the broad political ideologies that resulted in various constitutional histories are of significance in understanding why citizenship become a flagship of French republicanism while simultaneously being downplayed in liberal-constitutional welfare states such as those in the Nordic region of Europe. In the field of public schooling, state regulations and associated curricula enabled the different enactments of constitutional rules—even among French-speaking regions. Therefore, constitutional principles for tying the state, the school, and the nation together differed according to various mindsets. According to Tröhler (2016a, p. 284), historians have failed to grasp the significance of national curricula in this respect—in particular, the mechanisms through which state authorities were able to forward norms and expectations for how to educate young students as national citizens have gone understudied. Building on this background, we explore whether, and if so, how, curricula in Sweden and Norway articulated various histories of the nation during the twentieth century, and how educational conceptions of the nation can enlighten histories about states and their constitutions. Against this historical backdrop, we address following research questions: 1. How did state-authorized curricula articulate educational conceptions of the nation during the twentieth century? 2. Which notable similarities and differences are found between Swedish and Norwegian curricula? 3. How can educational conceptions of the nation enlighten national histories about states and their constitutions? We have structured the chapter into three parts. The first part provides a brief overview of the constitutional histories of Norway and Sweden. This part ends with a claim that welfare historians have more or less overlooked public schooling in their efforts to understand how nation-states reproduced themselves both socially and educationally. Thereafter follows a comparative–historical analysis of curriculum documents that reflect various reform ambitions of the two states and their interest in coordinating teaching practices through public schooling. To accomplish a systematic comparison, we focused on the empirical part of two school subjects: mother tongue and history. The reason for choosing these

226  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

subjects is that they are present in all curricula that the states of interest developed across the time periods we are studying. The two subjects also represent two content areas that are very likely to contain educational conceptualizations of the nation and of nationalism. We have structured this empirical part into three subsections in line with the three important periods we have highlighted: first ca. 1900 to 1940; second ca. 1950 to 1980; and lastly, ca. 1985 to 2020. Each of the subsections summarizes key similarities and differences between Swedish and the Norwegian curricula. In the last and third part, we synthesize our findings. Here, we discuss how educational conceptions built into descriptions of school subjects help in interpreting how a nation-state recreates itself inside the intersection of political reform work and educational practices. Against this backdrop, we argue that the invention of national curricula has facilitated opportunities for both political and civil doings—both by providing authoritative text segments that formally tie public schooling to the nation, and as a practical guide for developing the nation by conceptualizing how best to educate present and the future citizens.

The constitutional order of Norwegian and Swedish nation-states National constitution histories

The Norwegian constitution of 1814 is one of the first national constitutions in Europe. It came into being when the king of Denmark and Norway ceded Norway to the king of Sweden through the Treaty of Kiel in January 1814. The constitution turned into a representative agreement between the state and its people, sanctioned by the right to vote, granted not only to state officials and the bourgeoisie, but also to all owners and tenants of taxable farms, regardless of their size (Tønnesson & Sivesind, 2016). Although the negotiations for the 1814 constitution were conducted between the Swedish king and representatives from Norway’s newly established assembly, resulting in a revised constitution the same year (Lovdata, 2022a), the national constitution is considered to have created a nation-state while remaining in a union with Sweden that ended in 1905. Also, Norwegian school laws and national curricula were different from those in Sweden during the nineteenth century, albeit main revisions had to be endorsed by the Swedish king. As Tröhler (2015) emphasizes, state authorities formally enabled this constitutional order by the rule of the law and by all material aspects of significance, such as “decisions about the form of government, division of powers, participation of the people in the legislative, executive, and judicial systems, and of the range of further individual liberties” (p. 285). Interestingly, the formulation of Norway’s constitution did not begin with a philosophic–legal declaration on a series of rights, as was the case with the US and French Revolutions (Tønnesson, 2001). Rather, the Norwegian Constitution prescribed norms and rules

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula  227

for organizing the Norwegian kingdom into a representative democracy that made civil servants important mediators between the King, the state, and the nation. Human rights were inscribed in the last section of the document, protecting individual rights against the state’s overriding authority. Individual rights were thereby conceptualized in this constitution through the formulation of positive provisions that reflected conscious thought about the way laws should be enacted without limiting the freedom of the people. This was according to Sejersted (2011, p. 7) related to the demand for social integration through calls for equality, warranted by a radical bourgeois that was stronger in Norway than in Sweden. Notwithstanding, the national constitution was peacefully enacted in both nations through a form of socialism, limited by a liberal rights-based protection of the individual. This peaceful strategy characterizes both Norway and Sweden’s national histories—both of which share a common historical heritage stemming from the reformation (p. 32). In Sweden, the first national constitution was ratified in 1809, 5 years ahead of Norway (Sveriges Riksdag, 2022a). According to Sejersted (2011), the new constitution in Sweden replaced an absolute monarchy with a so-called “aristocratic constitutionalism” that molded the founders and privileged groups into a conservative historical force throughout the century. This made the constitutional history of Sweden more paternalistic than that of Norway, similar to the historical mindsets present in the British Islands. Thus, the groundwork of reform in Sweden was not radicalized by their political spirit, like that of Norway, which had no aristocracy to defend paternalist–liberal modes of thought (Knudsen & Rothstein, 1994). Moreover, the break of continuity in Sweden happened at the beginning of the twentieth century after industrialization manifested the overall goals of the nation. At that point, Sweden had established a national heavy-industry sector, and the nation-state was already competing in an international market. According to Sejersted (2011, p. 11), also the bank system was important in nourishing such industries—for which universities provided technical expertise that would later result in national capitalistic institutions. In contrast, Norway had built up democratic procedures and “national” democratic norms to legitimize social power with a belief in political institutions before industrialization took place. Protestant movements encouraged this loyalty (Stenius, 2010). Due to the lack of a social hierarchy structured by an aristocratic elite, a democratic petite bourgeoisie (Sejersted, 2011) paved the way for public institutions to control Norwegian business interests, in contrast to Swedish industries. Against this backdrop, Sejersted (2010) writes: “Norway was democratized before it was industrialized, while the opposite was the case in Sweden” (p. 11). Notably, the new Swedish constitution in 1974 included paragraphs about education (Sveriges Riksdag, 2022b). Similar text segments did not appear within the Norwegian constitution before 2014 (Lovdata, 2022b). Thus,

228  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

formalized rules and expectations towards reforming society and conditions to develop a nation-state varied between the two countries, with fewer constitutional rules for education for the Norwegian part. In both cases, the moments of societal transition towards democratization that evolved as a parallel move in conjunction with increased nationalization could possibly build on alternative sets of values and self-descriptions that were inscribed not only in formal constitutions, but also in the conditional segments that helped establish the constitution in the public consciousness. Based on these constitutional–historical differences, we may expect the national curricula to reflect various national identities and conceptions of belonging in the two countries.

Changing educational conceptions of the nation through public schooling In this part, we will focus on how the nation and nationalism have been conceptualized by national curricula from ca. 1900 until the first decades of the 2000s in Norway and Sweden. As mentioned, the analysis will concentrate on two school subjects: mother tongues and history. In order to clarify changes over time, we have structured our comparative analysis into periods. For each period, we provide some contextual information about the way the two nationstates governed their educational systems, where the national curricula served as cultural segments for creating a constitutional order to everyday practices. As stated earlier, our study compares national curricula between two countries and across time periods in which the state authorities of both countries launched multiple reforms in the public school system. Table 10.1 provides an overview of the most prominent primary and comprehensive curricula during the study period, written to facilitate comprehensive reforms of elementary schooling. Nationalism and independence in Sweden and Norway ca. 1900–1940

The turn of the twentieth century marked a break from the influence of the Church on primary education in Norway. Following the School Act of 1889, the church handed over the responsibility of schooling to public representatives in municipal school boards (Lov, 1889). Apart from the subject of Christianity, still taught in schools, curricula were secularized. The state’s power to sanction municipalities with regard to the preparation and planning of school curricula was limited (Dokka, 1988; Gundem, 1993a, 1993b). Even state school directors, who had supervisory functions in various regions of Norway, on behalf of the state, had no formal responsibility to engage directly with local school activities (Dokka, 1988, p. 75). However, since the local school boards were in the need of support in learning how to follow established guidelines, they asked school directors to develop curricula in collaboration with teachers,

Table 10.1 Overview of national curricula for public schooling in Norway and Sweden (1900–2020) Nor wa y 1922 * 1925 * 1939 *

1960 * 1971 1974 *

1985 1987 * 1993 * 1997 * 2006 * 2020

Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education Pr ovisional (Kirk e - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1985, M85) Curriculum f or compulsor y school (Kirke - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1987, M87) T he general par t of the national curriculum f or compr ehensiv e education (Kirk e - utdannings- og forskningsdepar tementet , 1993, L93) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Kirk e utdannings- og f orskningsdepar tementet , 1997, L97) Curriculum f or basic education (K unnskapsdepar tementet , 2006, LK06) Curriculum f or basic education (K unnskapsdepar tementet , 2020, LK20)

1900 1919 *

1955 1962 * 1969 * 1980 *

1994 * 1994 * 2011 *

Curriculum f or primar y education (K ungl. Maj., 1900, N1900) Curriculum f or primar y education (K ungl. Maj., 1919/20, U1919)

Curriculum f or primar y education (Sk olö v erst yrelsen, 1955, U1955) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Sk olö v erst yrelsen, 1962, Lgr 62) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Sk olö v erst yrelsen, 1969, Lgr 69) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Sk olö v erst yrelsen, 1980, Lgr 80)

T he general par t of the national curriculum f or comprehensive education (Skolverket , 1994a , Lpo 94) S yllabuses of the 1994 national curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Skolv erk et , 1994b, S yllabuses , Lpo 94) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Sk olv erk et , 2011, Lgr 11)

Note: Primary education consisted of 5 to 7 years of schooling and comprehensive education extended schooling to 9 or 10 years, consisting of both primary and lower secondary education. Basic education in this case means a 3- or 4-year extension of the comprehensive level, including upper secondary education and training, equal to a total of 13  years. * Indicates curricula we have systematically examined. The reference list includes the original titles.

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula  229

1939 *

Curricula f or primar y education in the rural distric ts (Kirk e - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1922, N22) Curricula f or primar y education in the urban distric ts (Kirk e - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1925, N25) Curricula f or primar y education in the rural distric ts (Kirke - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1939b, N39) Curricula f or primar y education in the urban distric ts (Kirke - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1939a , N39) Curriculum f or the lo w er secondar y education (Forsøk srådet f or sk olev erk et . 1960, L60) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education Pro visional (Kirk e - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1972, M71) Curriculum f or comprehensiv e education (Kirk e - og under visningsdepar tementet , 1974, M74)

Sweden

230  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

who themselves were free to make their own plans under the maxims of folkgoverned schools. As a result, curriculum guidelines drafted at the turn of the twentieth century in Norway reflected both academic knowledge of civil servants and the pedagogical and subject-specific knowledge of teachers. The period of around 1900–1919 is usually seen as an important turning point in the history of general education in Sweden. The Church's power over both the content and organization of school curricula decreased even more radically than it did in Norway. The 1918 decision on augmented opportunities for the peasantry in providing secondary education and the new 1919 primary curriculum were important events. The Committee for Primary Education (Folkundervisningskommittén) that the national government appointed in 1906 authored the 1919 curriculum (Styret for Norges lærerlag et al., 1931). Englund (1986/2005) argues that it was through these reforms that the Swedish education system was adapted to “(1) a capitalist business community, and (2) a democracy with universal suffrage” (p. 186). Notably, with the 1919 curriculum, the denominational status of Christian teaching was removed, and Luther's small catechism would instead be read as an expression of “Luther's conception of the chapters of Christianity” (Bruce, 1940, p. 441). In Norway, Christianity continued to be taught as a subject, intended to aid in raising children in accordance with the strictures and structures of protestant–evangelical faith. In this school subject, priests of the state church oversaw teaching practices until the end of the 1960s. Even though we see a movement in both countries towards a more unified and comprehensive school system, school provisions for the national population differed. In Sweden, the Folkskolan (primary education, mainly peasantry) differed from the Realskolan (upper primary and lower secondary) which were mainly attended by the children of nobility, who were often home-schooled in their first years (Gabrielsen & Schwippert, 2017; Rovde, 2012). In Norway, a unified school system emerged in the 1920s with different curricula for urban and rural primary schooling (Sivesind & Karseth, 2019). The first two curricula were written by civil servants (primary curriculum of 1922 and 1925), while a commission authored the next two curricula (the urban and the rural primary curriculum of 1939) that became the main symbol of pedagogical reform in the early twentieth century, inspired by modern child psychology (Jarning, 1998). The 1919 and 1922 primary curricula in Sweden and Norway meant a radical change in prescriptions of subject matter content. One significant new feature was the inclusion of subject standards in terms of clearly specified objectives (mål) for every subject (cf. developments of standards in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, Gamson et al., 2019). These objectives marked an increased ambition regarding what to teach and what to learn in primary schooling, which also allowed for an extension of compulsory schooling by establishing a secondary age level. Overall, the first decades of the twentieth century marked an increased emphasis on Sweden’s national setting, visible in most/all subjects, as

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula  231

compared to previous curricula (Hultén, 2008; cf. Tingsten, 1969). Englund has characterized the nature of the 1919 curriculum as “The student should be trained to become a working-class citizen by developing a desire to work, honesty, sense of responsibility and patriotism” (Englund, 2005, p.  259). Compared to earlier Swedish curricula, the 1919 primary curriculum put more emphasis on practical content that teachers should adapt to the needs and developmental stages of children (Hultén, 2008; Styret for Norges lærerlag et al., 1931). Like the Swedish curriculum of 1919, the Norwegian 1922 curriculum emphasized the significance of pupils’ independent work. This meant including student exercises, student experiments, and other work tasks in classroom teaching. These elements were furthered strengthened with the 1939 curricula that were developed by a state-appointed commission in collaboration with teachers, teacher unions, and others. The reform process of this commission contributed a renewed concept of content knowledge to the context of centralized curriculum planning. It reflected ideas about progressive schooling and activities in combination with rational ideas about how to reach higher levels of achievement. The process also blended a functional orientation of schooling with a socio-liberal view on content (Dale, 2005; Helsvig, 2005). Curriculum makers introduced child-centered and progressive ideas in the national curricula in both Sweden and Norway during the first half of the twentieth century, not least in the subjects of mother tongues and those that would orient students to their neighborhood and to the world at large. Moreover, Hembygdsundervisning (home geography) was introduced as a new school subject in the 1919 primary curriculum in Sweden (Larsson, 2022). The subject also appears in the Norwegian curricula from late nineteenth century and into established plans for rural and urban schooling in 1922 and 1925 (as Hembygdskunnskap). The subject was going to be taught during the first 3  years of primary school in both countries and was expected to form the basis for several subjects in subsequent grades, especially social science and geography, but also those of history, drawing, and sloyd (wood carving). The subject and its philosophy originated from the German Heimat—the idea of locating the love for the nation in love for one’s hometown and the safeguarding of local traditions, the existence of which were threatened by modernization (Fransson, 2001; Larsson, 2022). The local or homeland movement (hembygdsrörelse) was strong in Sweden during the first decades of the twentieth century. Heimat was also loaded with a cultural- and class-unifying role in Sweden. As Englund (2005) has shown, there was a strong emphasis on consensus building and the importance of social cohesion, which downplayed cultural tensions so that class differences could be preserved. This purpose was probably more pronounced in Sweden, where estates (stand/stånd) were sustained as a structural feature of the political system legitimized by the national constitution. Cultural differences also existed in Norway, but here a centralized bureaucracy of civil servants was in a position to build a social order based on meritocratic principles

232  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

that legitimized top-bottom-up governance (Sivesind, 2008, 2021), making educators powerful professionals in curriculum-making processes. Regarding the educational construction of the nation and of nationalism in language and history syllabi during this period, we see a strong emphasis on nationalism in Swedish curricula, clearly more pronounced than what had been the case in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Hultén, 2008). In the Swedish syllabus, the national perspective is clearly expressed in the objectives of the 1919 primary curriculum in teaching children the “importance and value of the mother tongue” (Kungl. Maj., 1919, U1919, p. 29) and stressing knowledge of Swedish literature. Looking more specifically at the content, mastery of the language is the main focus—namely, the mastering of language rules and some formal genres (protocols, contracts, job applications, etc.). In later school years, this could be seen in shorter essays about predetermined topics—for example those about local businesses, hembygdens arbetsliv, in year 7 (p. 32). The conception of the nation in the Swedish syllabus is thus limited to a purely national setting, without mention of an external world outside the nation. It is also, to some extent, anchored in the local setting, thus indicating that the nation is built on local knowledge and practice. The Swedish history syllabus had a stronger foundation in the local setting compared to the syllabus of the Swedish mother tongue, largely due to the fact that history is integrated into the subject hembygdsundervisning (home geography) for the first 3 school years. However, history did not play a central role in that subject, and the only mention of locally relevant historical content during the first 3 years is the description of local historical memorials (Kungl. Maj., 1919, U1919, p. 70). For years 4 to 7, when history becomes a subject on its own, the objective was to “lay the foundation for healthy patriotism and good community spirit” (p. 100). The Nordic theme is strong, and the history syllabus mentions the different Nordic unions that Sweden belonged to, highlighting the time when Sweden was a great power. In years 6 and 7, the curriculum included some selected international history, such as Greek and Roman history and knowledge about the French Revolution. In addition, the curriculum content covers the Christianization of Sweden and other Nordic countries. The objectives of Norwegian language syllabi in the N22 primary curriculum are more overtly formal, lacking a similar nationalist emphasis present in the Swedish 1919 syllabus. There is no similar effort to stress the importance and value of the nation and nationalism; it is just stressed that children should learn to read two national languages, to write correctly, and to speak clearly. Notable is the separation of two national written languages—New Norwegian and Bokmål—that resulted from the Dano-Norwegian language conflict some decades earlier, which in itself serves as a national symbol, embraced by the N22 plan. Of note, when compared to the Swedish syllabus of 1919, the Norwegian syllabus was more attentive to the individual student, who was encouraged to learn independently and seek knowledge through books.

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 233

Also, history in the 1922 curriculum for rural schools was fairly neutral in its objectives and content when it came to nationalist preferences. As with the Swedish history syllabus, the subject of home geography contained descriptions of teaching content in history for the first 3 years. However, in contrast to the Swedish history syllabus, which had an almost exclusive focus on the nation, the Norwegian syllabus summarized the historical development of Norway as a nation in its international context. A core purpose of the syllabus was to enlighten students about the way the nation had been formed and Christianized and about its many struggles and wars for independence, primarily in relation to Denmark and Sweden. Interestingly, both the Norwegian 1922 and 1939 syllabi highlighted both national history and world history as relevant content. The latter plan also emphasized the importance of learning to collaborate and live together with other people in peace (N39, p. 78), which without a shred of doubt put the historical events of the Second World War into perspective. Thus, a national–democratic orientation towards schooling may well contest the aggressive nationalist type, a view emphasized by Tröhler (2020). Regarding the conceptualization of the nation and of nationalism during this period, there are notable differences between the curricula of the two countries. The nationalist emphasis is stronger in the Swedish curriculum, while almost non-existent in the Norwegian 1922 curriculum. Although the 1939 curriculum in Norway emphasizes the fatherland and national languages, they present national themes as they exist relative to an external world. While the Norwegian curriculum tells the story of a country’s formation through struggle, Christianization, and democratization, Sweden is treated more or less as a given entity in history, sometimes in union with others. The birth of the Nordic model of education ca. 1950–1980

The period from 1950 to 1980 is marked by major comprehensive educational reforms in both countries, similar to contemporary educational reforms in other parts of Europe (Levin, 1978). Due to its neutrality, post-war Sweden saw a strong economy, not as marked by World War II as most other countries. In Sweden, the period ca. 1950–1980 was a time of major state-regulated reforms in both primary and secondary education. The Swedish state strengthened its control over education, as the legislation regulating education grew drastically, culminating in the 1970s, when most educational activities at these levels were state controlled (Rothstein, 1986). This was in contrast to reforms in Norway, where local influence remained strong due to national reforms that sought to provide teachers an autonomous role in school development processes. The main rationale behind the reforms in Nordic countries during post-war decades was to unify the school system so that social differences could be evened out (Richardson, 1983). It was during this time that OECD was coined and spread the idea of the “Nordic model” that advocated a particular

234  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

ideal of welfare democracy that enabled particular forms of integration through comprehensive schooling that valued equality, justice, and a social approach to individualism (Telhaug et al., 2006; Tröhler, 2023). In the interwar years, international actors considered the Swedish system to be a lighthouse for others. Of importance, Sweden established the Bureau of School Experimentation in 1946, which through different kinds of data demonstrated empirical progress achieved through policy-making processes. Norwegian school authorities founded the National Council for Innovation in Norway in 1954, which, like the Swedish Bureau of School Experimentation, laid the empirical foundation for developing a 9-year compulsory school (Sirevåg, 1966).The National Council for Innovation built on parliamentary decisions and recommendations in their work and coordinated and reported on local school development projects that the state funded from 1954 until 1985. From a staff of 8 persons in 1954, the council, including its secretary, grew to 50 persons by 1980. Thirty of these individuals were professionals in school matters (Riksarkivet, 2008). The organization’s mandate was to test new school models and methods of instruction and to support local schools and districts with structural reforms that included new curriculum guidelines. Thus, school reform in Norway was a national project based on empirical experiments from the mid-1950s; however, Sweden led the trend. Due to Sweden’s strong economy, its school reform was, for a long time, considered more robust than that of its neighbors. For this reason, researchers and others claimed that Swedish education reforms were 10–20  years ahead of the reforms happening in Norway and Finland. Thus, there are examples of Norway borrowing policy from Sweden in national curriculum development (Gundem, 1990, pp. 125–126). One key challenge of the development of 9-year comprehensive schooling in Norway and Sweden was deciding what to include in a national curriculum that was to be taught in every classroom at the compulsory level of education—for example how to balance vocational and academic training in the lower secondary parts of 9-year comprehensive schools. This was not an easy task, as it required compromises. The 1962 national curriculum in Sweden, Lgr 62, was the first curriculum designed for the 9-year comprehensive school. The national aspects were downplayed in the 1962 Swedish syllabus, as compared to that of 1919. Also notable is the introduction of Danish and Norwegian (as part of the Nordic linguistic community), as well as some study of the literature from these two countries, as part of learning Swedish. The 1960 curriculum in Norway did the same, including readings in Danish and Swedish in the subject of the Norwegian mother tongue. The Norwegian curriculum also emphasized the personal dimensions of schooling. By highlighting students’ capabilities and interests rather than their personal needs, teachers were expected to organize the students into differentiated tracks, so that everyone could develop and learn (which was also the case in the Swedish 1962 curriculum). The curriculum also prescribed the school as an organization, surrounded by a larger society.

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 235

So-called “general education” (allmennutdanning) was, according to the curriculum, intended to prepare students to become democratic citizens in their adult life and also to act as citizens in the present. The citation given here introduces this topic: Students in the nine-year school will eventually have social and political duties and rights as adult citizens. What the school can do to prepare for active citizenship, is first and foremost to give all students as good information as possible about the local, national, and international communities they belong to, institutions, organizations and functions, and knowledge of how society, institutions and organizations have emerged. . . . At the same time, the school must offer opportunities to participate in discussions, in chairing meetings of various kinds, and in making decisions. (L60, pp. 14–15) Interestingly, every student was also going to be represented through participation in a school board with their peers. This board had the full responsibility for devising and enacting agenda-setting policies and decision-making processes to influence overall judgements and decisions by the school principal, the teachers, and other adults. A core aim was to develop well-being, a good atmosphere, and positive attitudes towards the school (Forsøksrådet, 1960, L60, pp. 25–26). A school board was also a new feature in the 1962 Swedish curriculum (the Swedish student union SECO was formed in 1952). Both the Swedish and Norwegian curricula put an emphasis on cultivation and qualifications. The formal uses of Swedish and Norwegian are at the forefront of the curricula, learning how to speak, read, and write correctly in different situations and in different genres, from everyday situations to formal ones. Thus, language as a means of educating citizens stands in the forefront. At the same time, the more personal sides of language are starting to be visible in curricula content in both Swedish and Norwegian. In the mother tongue subject, objectives included learning to write personal letters and how to make language useful for personal development. The importance of understanding different dialects is stressed in Norwegian, thus indicating a stronger local anchor when compared to the Swedish curriculum. A neutral and, to a large extent, absent national perspective permeates the 1962 Swedish syllabus. Englund (2005) emphasized how the curriculum formed citizens’ modes of thought as rational–scientific during this period, as exemplified by this objective: “create an interest for the mother tongue” (Skolöverstyrelsen, 1962, Lgr 62, p. 125). In contrast, the Norwegian syllabi from the 1960s and the final formal curriculum for the 9-year school (M74) include the objective “learn to love the mother tongue” (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1974, M74, p. 98). The curricula presented lists of the canonical literature of great Norwegian poets and authors from the mid-nineteenth century, thus making the history of the nation even more important in Norway.

236  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

Similar to the Swedish syllabus, the nation is significantly downplayed in the Swedish 1962 history syllabus. Sweden is not specifically mentioned in the objectives of the history syllabus; instead, the Nordic theme appears in its place. Moreover, besides using the local setting as the basis of conceptualizing the nation, the Swedish curriculum took a regional setting into account, creating a Nordic theme within the curriculum. Apart from the Nordic theme, some limited elements of Western history outside Europe were included in the Swedish history syllabus of 1962. In the 1969 Swedish history syllabus, a neutral stand towards challenges facing the world community is clearly stressed, visible in the following objective: Emphasis should be placed on such phenomena, which in particular have contributed to the creation of the conditions, problems, and antagonism that prevail in the world today. (Skolöverstyrelsen, 1962, Lgr 69, p. 184) Along these lines, the neutrality of Sweden shines through, refusing to take sides in a world that had been divided into eastern and Western blocks, instead aiming to objectively portray these conflicts in order to better understand them (regarding this period, see Englund, 2005). A Nordic orientation is evident in the Norwegian history syllabus from 1960. Here, the word “national” is accompanied by “international” when political institutions are mentioned within the objectives of the history syllabi. Additionally, and in line with the 1922 primary curriculum, the Norwegian history syllabus detailed objectives about becoming nationally independent, highlighting key intellectuals and figures in Norwegian history who enabled the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905. A related topic was instruction on the politics of great powers and national liberation in the post-war period as well as Norway's current disposition in the world economy. Also, a cultivation of national heritage was stressed, to be both learned and further developed. For the 1960 Norwegian curriculum, history is an important feature in the lives of Norwegian people through the ages in terms of economic, social, cultural, and political development. For the first school years, the older story should be covered through instruction that inspires students’ feelings and imaginative lives. Older students are expected to gain knowledge of important events and prominent personalities in Nordic and world histories. An even more radical approach to cultivation is included in the Norwegian curriculum from 1974, where the teacher could adjust the plan to better take each child and the local community into consideration. Thus, home geography emphasized the place where the student lives, contextualized by content that widens the student’s perspective. For the first and second grade, key words guided teachers in teaching a highly comprehensive scope and view: the international labor movement, the ideas of equality and brotherhood between all people, workers' songs, the fatherland, the flag, the royal house, songs, migrant

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 237

Sami, children in other countries, the home in older times, folk tales, and stories that relate to the place where the child lives (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1974, M74, pp.  172–173). For higher grades, the following excerpt demonstrates an orientation towards past and present cultures, within and outside Norway: The teaching of history has the task of informing students about the way people lived and worked in earlier times, in our own country, in our cultural circle, and in more distant cultures. These lessons will arouse and develop interest in people who have lived before us and in previous cultural forms. In the curriculum, students will encounter spiritual values created by previous generations. (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1974, M74, p. 176) Compared to the Swedish 1962 history syllabus, the Norwegian syllabus was more outward-looking, stressing more clearly both globalization and internationalization. Students were considered capable of solving problems in their local neighborhood as well as in the global world. These aspects were more pronounced in the 1969 Swedish curriculum, indicating that this time was transformative in terms of the internationalization of both countries. To conclude, during this period, curricula opened the school to the outside world in both countries, and the Nordic theme was significantly strengthened, compared to the previous period. Democratic values were not only something to be taught in these new comprehensive 9-year schools, but also enacted, most notably through student school boards, which were specified in the curricula of both nations. The disappearance of the nationalist theme from the Swedish curricula is notable, especially in contrast to the Norwegian curricula, where the national theme was somewhat strengthened. Culturally anchored individual nationalism ca. 1985–2020

The period of 1985–2020 was marked by shifts in educational policy in both countries in terms of economic thinking built into reform strategies, emphasizing individual choice and the introduction of new means and methods to set and evaluate standards in terms of educational objectives and outcomes (Verger et al., 2019; Hultén et al., 2023). Especially in Sweden, these changes began to challenge the welfare model of the previous period, as the privatization of education increased social differences and segregation. Although the period is marked by the state taking firmer control over the school system by school inspection, national testing, standard setting, and increased regulation, it starts out by decentralizing ambitions in Sweden. Similar reform strategies characterized the Norwegian system, where a detailed curriculum for each grade was replaced by a curriculum that detailed only age-based periods from 3 to 4 years in the 1980s. Local school development,

238  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

teamwork, and collegial assessments were introduced to implement management by objectives at the municipal level. In Norway, the 1987 comprehensive curriculum made new demands on teachers, as it required every school to base their local curriculum on national goals that for the first time were compulsory for all primary schools, a mix of centralized and decentralized reform strategies that were enacted simultaneously (Sivesind, 1993). The governance strategy “management by objectives” appears in both Swedish and Norwegian reform policy, as new public management came to influence educational policy in both countries (Verger et al., 2019). Management by objectives generated new ways of arranging educational practices that served as a foundation for developing an outcome-based accountability system (Lundahl et al., 2017; Hultén 2019; Hultén et  al., 2023). In Norway, the Norwegian curricula from the mid- and late-1980s (M85 and M87) serve as prime examples of this governance approach. These changes to curriculum structure are also seen in Sweden, where the 1962 national curriculum is the most detailed, slowly decreasing from 1969, through 1980 and to the wholly objective-oriented 1994 national curriculum in Sweden, which did not specify any content at all. During this period, there is a further move to integrate all students independent of their background, needs, and interests into common schooling in both Norway and Sweden. Another difference is a move from presenting integrated subject curricula, most notably the O-fag/Orienteringsämnen that thematically covered the social sciences and the sciences in grades 1–6 during the previous period. In Sweden, the 1994 curriculum once again starts to differentiate between social sciences and science, and a similar trend is visible in the 1997 curriculum in Norway. Home geography is absent as a subject in both countries during this period, thus decreasing the focus on local context (perhaps more so in the Swedish curricula, as we will show). A new compulsory subject, Teknik, was introduced in Sweden (from 1980, see Hultén, 2013), similar to a new subject on practical, social, and cultural work (PSK) in the Norwegian curriculum, the latter having the intention of ensuring that the school emphasizes practical applications in the local school environment (M87). In Norway, the curricula become even more outward-looking by emphasizing a national foundation for how to understand and live in the modern world, as had been already declared in the Norwegian curricula from the 1970s (M74). The curriculum directed attention to Norwegian, Nordic, and European history, however, its emphasis was now on helping students understand how living conditions are changing across time and place. In the Swedish curricula of 1994 and 2011, the international arena became more visible when compared to the previous period. Interestingly, cultural heritage (kulturarv), a new but peripheral concept in the 1980 national curriculum in Sweden, played an important role in the 1994 reform. The cultural values that were to be transmitted through public schooling were going to be characterized by “Christian tradition and Western humanism” (Skolverket, 1994a,

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 239

Lpo 94, p. 5). Both cultural differences and the idea of a shared cultural identity were clearly stated in the new objectives for the Swedish subject, one which may be considered highly paradoxical: Language and culture are inextricably linked. Our roots and our cultural identity are found in the language. Language reflects differences between people, their personality, background, gender, interests, etc. (Skolverket, 1994b, Syllabuses, Lpo 94, p. 47) Thus, the role of language in identity formation was stressed, which had not been the case in the curricula of 1919 and 1962, which had emphasized the role of language in becoming a citizen (i.e. mastering the demands of society and work). Indeed, the 1994 curriculum presented Swedish to be of almost generic importance: With the help of language, students acquire new concepts. They learn to see context, think logically, critically examine, and evaluate. Their ability to reflect upon and understand the world around them grows. (Skolverket, 1994b, Syllabuses, Lpo 94, p. 47) Here, the curriculum conceptualized language as both a tool for identity formation and a key for being able to understand other cultures, both those inside and outside the nation. Although the national and the Nordic perspectives are stressed in the Swedish subject, the impression remains that these points are somewhat downplayed in the 1994 national curriculum as compared to the 1962 national curriculum. A global citizen seems therefore to be anchored in a national cultural heritage. Cultural heritage also became a central concept in Norway in the 1993 general parts of the curriculum (L93) and in the comprehensive parts of the national curriculum in 1997 (L97). Both pursued an interest in Christian and humanistic values, an expression that during the 1980s turned out to be a political compromise in handling various religious and humanistic interests in an increasing heterogeneous population. In the 1987 reform, the migration issue became visible in the various syllabi within the comprehensive framework, adjusted to various groups of students who had a formal right to receive education in their mother tongues (including Sami students). This curriculum offered an alternative subject to Christianity that replaced content in this subject with knowledge on various life views, philosophy, and ethics. Similar content was present in Sweden in the same period, despite not having been specified in the curriculum (under the name Livskunskap, see Löf, 2011). These subjects were part of an international movement in moral education (Landahl, 2015). In the 1993 general parts of the national curriculum in Norway, both common knowledge and the development of a shared implicit mindset are emphasized to enable students, teachers, and other actors to communicate across

240  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

cultural boundaries, to develop new ideas, and to solve problems. This way of being “gebildet” is considered to be a common platform for sustaining a democratic society and empowering its citizens (L93, p. 40). Regarding a common cultural heritage, the general part of the curriculum declares that the individual’s identity develops by socialization into patterns of behaving, norms, and forms of expression (L93, p. 21). In the 1993 general part of the curriculum, one may discern a sound interest in sustaining and developing a common culture. The idea of focusing the curriculum on national culture was to conceptualize present and future features of the society, which we interpret as reflecting a new international order for emphasizing nationalism. Within this perspective, the global knowledge society did not demand converging trends towards a global world culture, but rather encouraged constructions of nationalization to encompass a pluralistic global order of society (Karseth & Sivesind, 2010). In the 1997 Norwegian curriculum (L97), subjects were concretized by objectives, content descriptions, and illustrations. Art images symbolized a Christian and humanistic cultural heritage. The subject-specific part of the curriculum focused on present futures, which signaled that the school was going to be a cultural site that facilitated Bildung through common schooling. As stated in the mother tongue curriculum, “Norwegian is a Bildung subject” (L97, p.  111). Although most of the themes point to intertwined connections between the global and the national, the Norwegian curriculum was still strongly anchored in the local: “The span can be large, from Nirvana to Åsgard and from Waterloo to Kardemomme village” (L97, p. 111). The curriculum also considered the concept of language to be in constant flux, as people do not speak the same throughout life. Thus, the 1997 curriculum in Norway put forward a rather complex concept of common cultural heritage. A similar trend was seen in Sweden. In the Swedish 2011 curriculum, the homogenic concept of cultural heritages is broken up, and in its place, a nation-state as a conglomerate of cultures emerges. Notably, national minority cultures were also mentioned in the Swedish national curriculum of 2011. Regarding the more detailed parts of the syllabus, it is notable that Sweden was not distinguished from the Nordic or the international, but the three often appear together, as in “Sweden, Nordic countries, and the rest of the world” (Skolverket 2011, Lgr 11, p. 225). This indicates a rather fluid conception of nationalism. The importance of identity and culture is also seen in the Swedish history syllabus. As mentioned, home geography disappeared as a school subject in the 1980 national curriculum. It had played its role as a separate and central foundation for the nation. However, this does not mean that the local vanishes, but instead, as the horizon of the comprehensive school expanded, the balance shifted, and the national became more centered. As in the case of the Swedish curriculum, the generic aspects of language served not only as the basis for identity, cultural understanding, creativity, and aesthetics, but also as a central tool for learning. This learning aspect is strengthened in the 2006 reform that

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 241

expanded the text concept of the mother tongue subject, stressing the multimodality of communication. In this curriculum, both the nation and the outside world are taken into consideration, as are evolving changes in a past– future perspective; however, this now occurs in tandem with a strengthened focus on language as a system and on text cultures that envision international perspectives. Contemporary changes confirm that various forms of literacy are centered in national curriculum policies in both Norway and Sweden. Although evidencebased policies had advocated content-free curricula, there was now a new trend to support reforms that aimed at enculturing the population in society building. Interestingly, a content-back-in approach was advocated for by international organizations, national school authorities, and local school boards. They consider public schooling to provide core solutions to social problems (Tröhler, 2016b). During the 1990s in Sweden and Norway, axiological rationales legitimized curricular constructions of the nation and of nationalism that built on both Christian and humanistic values. Curricula declare these values as means of identity building in the upbringing of present and future citizens. Despite potentially being in conflict with each other, shared values are expected to generalize cultural commonness beyond individual and institutional boundaries. While the importance of language for learning and thinking is more pronounced in the Swedish curricula, the fluidity and multimodality of text cultures widen the prospects of the Norwegian curriculum. Here, school authorities expect cultural literacy to prepare students for life as a citizen. Finally, an increased alignment between the national and the local makes curricula even more central intermediaries between the state, the school, and the nation. Without a nation-state, globalization will not allow for local peculiarities, an argument stressed in the preparation of the Norwegian curriculum from 1994 as well as by researchers as being critical to an institutionalist worldculture approach. Conclusively, globalization does not necessarily reduce the significance of nationalism, but has rather the opposite effect.

Concluding discussion Since Nordic nation-states have been the core sites of large-scale school reforms throughout the last century, there are good reasons for enquiring into historical transitions that nationalized education in these contexts. A core question of this chapter has been how educational constructions of the nation within these documents enlighten national histories about states and their constitutions. In this chapter, we have compared state-authorized curricula with respect to educational conceptions of nations and of nationalism that articulate how to nurture national identities and belongings, as well as how best to encourage students to be and become active citizens. In these curricula, the nation or nationalism has, albeit differently, included the recognition of both local and global worldviews.

242  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

National curricula engage educators and students in acknowledging national histories and heritages that provide a legacy for cultural belonging. We have demonstrated how curricula, through changing modes of thought, have urged cultural and social processes to unify the school and society into a collective arrangement under the auspices of the state. Constitutional histories and educational conceptualizations of the nation and of nationalism have served as lenses enabling comparisons of similarities and variations between two nationstates’ self-descriptions that are affiliated in interesting ways. Because of the cultural homogeneity that has characterized Norwegian and Swedish populations over centuries, we expect to find similarities between the countries. Due to the Kings’ introduction of Lutheran Christianity in sixteenth century, the states’ adoption of these denominations in their constitutions during the nineteenth century, and the shared commitment and loyalty of populations towards this affiliation, cultural and social conditions prepared the ground for unified school systems in both countries during the twentieth century. Moreover, these unified school systems required comprehensive curricula that the states began to develop at the turn of the twentieth century. Due to similar systems and histories, emulations of each other’s curricula were also evident during this process (Gundem, 1989). However, despite the formal union between Sweden and Norway from 1814 to 1905 and the cultural homogeneity between the two populations, the history of Swedish and Norwegian national curricula differs in several respects. We have concentrated on the history and mother tongue syllabi and their constructions of the nation, keeping in mind what Hovland (2016, p. 31) terms “a horizon of political expectations” and narratives of the nation. In the first period, ca. 1900–1940, there are noticeable variations between the curricula. The Swedish curriculum places a greater focus on nationalism than the 1922 Norwegian curriculum, which barely mentions the nation at all. The universal approach that characterizes how the Norwegian curriculum presents subject matter content can be interpreted as an expression of Protestantism that valued enlightenment within various subject areas and as well as nourishment of and opportunities for individual growth. Late secularization of the subject of Christianity is evident in Norway (1969) compared to Sweden (1919), and the subject of history in the Norwegian curriculum describes the saga of the country's origin, both via conflicts and via Christianization. In the Swedish curricula, similar self-descriptions are left out. Instead, the Swedish curriculum represents its own history as a more or less set foundation. This should be interpreted against the backdrop of the various historical contexts and transitions that formed the two countries. Not least, the political struggles of Norway for independence from Sweden and Denmark, which concluded in 1905, is one obvious explanation for the varying self-descriptions. This issue is both political, in the sake of creating a nation by educating future citizens, and educational by enlightening various populations about the struggle for independence. Thus, the history curricula envision political–historical processes as

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 243

discursively constructed by inscribed knowledge (Ozkirimli, 2017) and illustrate how educational reforms strive to rebuild the country by placing emphasis on national histories. Another explanation for the observed differences can be related to the rise of educational ideas and their establishments as cultural trajectories in two countries, which developed before the national assemblies adopted their constitutions. Although Lutheran Protestantism influenced the two countries’ pedagogical systems, one may think of educational ideas as being received and interpreted differently in local schooling contexts. Moreover, despite the union that lasted from 1815 until 1905, various constitutions made Norwegian and Swedish governments highly autonomous in decisions in school reforms during the nineteenth century. The fact that civil service played various roles in building a state administration and a school system can also serve as an explanation as to why the two countries developed various curriculum reforms that acknowledged national themes differently during the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, major international surveys have altered external expectations towards schools during the last period, ca. 1985–2020. With new instrumentation and strategies for school governance, experts increasingly use specific words and expressions to conceptualize education and thereby the nation (cf. Hultén et al., 2023). Issues are raised as to what a curriculum means for each student and what it can do for a larger population that lives within or outside a specific territory, yet belongs to one or several cultural spaces that are signified by new conceptions of nation-states. Furthermore, it leads to a discussion as to how the traditional curricula we have studied now function as intermediaries between the state, the school, and society, and the role international standards and frameworks play in the development and change of policy, schools, and ways of teaching. Our study supports earlier interpretations suggesting that Nordic countries adopt international trends differently (Sivesind & Wahlström, 2016), yet our major conclusion regarding the last period is that the conceptualizations of the nation converge. While international trends were first considered applied in highly de-nationalized contexts (Sundberg  & Wahlström, 2012), contemporary insights confirm that without a nation-state, globalization will not be able to account for regional differences, a point that was especially emphasized in the development of the Norwegian curriculum starting in 1994. In conclusion, globalization seems to increase nationalization rather than decreasing it. In both cases, national curricula helped in establishing an institutional link among the state, the school, and the surrounding environment. This layer, discursively nourished through cultural and social processes that engaged civil servants, teachers, students, and parents, bridged political reform work and educational practices in schools or rather generated a semantic repertoire of concepts that served to connect politics and practice. Therefore, national curricula must be considered to be a cornerstone of nation-building processes in both Norway and Sweden.

244  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén

Tröhler and Maricic argue that historians and sociologists have overlooked the role that curricula represent in nation-building processes (see Chapter  1 [Tröhler & Maricic, 2023]). Modes of reasoning in national curricula are not included in theorizing about knowledge regimes (Slagstad, 2004) or in history of the Nordic welfare states (Sejersted, 2011). In cases where education and schooling are mentioned, researchers focus on how literacy served to unite national populations (Stenius, 2010). Others see language and learning as objects of socialization processes where people assimilate and dissimilate standardized cultures within alliances between governments and organizations (Wimmer, 2018). However, few recognize national histories as socially and culturally reconstructed by educators who have formulated new modes of reasoning about the nation and about nationalism, expressed through curricula reforms and the fact that ordinary teachers and principals, together with laymen and academics, have contributed to powerful conceptions on how to build and renew the construct of the nation and of nationalism as a liberal– democratic project. Thus, a major advantage of comparing national curricula across time and space is deeper insights into the reasons why simultaneously produced educational constructs of the nation and of nationalism in two respective states, Norway and Sweden, differ. We argue that comparisons of how two nationstates reformed their educational systems within their respective contexts help in understanding the way national constitutions and state regulations provide various social and cultural opportunities for political and civil undertakings during the twentieth century. As this historical review has demonstrated, students are currently considered to be active citizens within their learning environment and part of a larger culture that over the years has increased in complexity. The formation of the nation and of nationalism as a discourse comes to terms with new forms of heterogeneity, both by articulating global and international perspectives and by allowing for a new temporal order in which national past–futures set the agenda for what to teach and how to learn. Through this, curricula conceptualize how to develop the nation by educating both present and future citizens.

References Acosta, F. (2021). Nation-states, nation-building and schooling: The case of Spanish America in the long 19th century. In World yearbook of education 2022 (pp. 29–45). Routledge. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. SAGE. Bruce, N. O. (1940). Svenska folkskolans historia IV: Det svenska folkundervisningsväsendet 1900–1920. Albert Bonniers förlag. Dale, E. L. (2005). Kunnskapsregimer i pedagogikk og utdanningsvitenskap. Abstrakt forlag. Dokka, H.-J. (1988). En skole gjennom 250 år: den norske allmueskole, folkeskole, grunnskole 1739–1989. NKS forlag. Englund, T. (2005). Läroplanens och skolkunskapens politiska dimension. Daidalos.

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 245 Forsøksrådet for skolverket. (1960). Læreplan for forsøk med videregående skole. Aschehoug & Co forlag. (W. Nygaard) (L60). Fransson, P. (2001). Välkommen till hembygden! Medborgarens guide till Det nya Sverige. In Ann-Katrin Hatje (Ed.), Sekelskiftets utmaningar: essäer om välfärd, utbildning och nationell identitet vid sekelskiftet 1900 (pp. 42–73). Carlssons bokförlag. Gabrielsen, E., & Schwippert, K. (2017). 12 By og land; hand i hand? I hvilken grad reflekterer de norske PIRLS-resultatene enhetsskoleprinsippet på kommunenivå? In E. Gabrielsen (Ed.), Klar framgang! Leseferdighet på 4. og 5. trinn i et femtenårsperspektiv (pp. 222–232). Universitetsforlaget. Gamson, D. A., Eckert, S. A., & Anderson, J. (2019). Standards, instructional objectives and curriculum design: A complex relationship. Phi Delta Kappan, 100(6), 8–12. Gundem, B. B. (1989). Curriculum reform and the school subject “English” in the Norwegian common school. In C. Kridel (Ed.), Curriculum history. Conference. Presentations from the society for the study of curriculum history (pp.  233–240). University Press of America. Gundem, B. B. (1990). Making of a school subject: The influence of research and practice. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 34(2), 123–141. Gundem, B. B. (1993a). Mot en ny skolevirkelighet? Læreplanen i et sentraliserings- og desentraliseringspersektiv. Ad Notam Gyldendal. Gundem, B. B. (1993b). Rise, development and changing conceptions of curriculum administration and curriculum guidelines in Norway: The national-local dilemma. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(3), 251–266. Helsvig, K. (2005). Pedagogikkens grenser: kampen om norsk pedagogikk ved Pedagogisk forskningsinstitutt 1938–1980. Abstrakt forl. Hovland, B. M. (2016). Historie som skolefag og dannelsesprosjekt 1889–1940. En historiografi ut fra folkeskolens historielærebøker (Ph.D. thesis). University of Oslo. Hultén, M. (2008). Naturens kanon. Formering och förändring av innehållet i folkskolans och grundskolans naturvetenskap 1842–2007 (Ph.D. thesis). Stockholm University. Hultén, M. (2013). Technology for all: Turning a keyword into a school subject in post-war Sweden. History of Education, 42(5), 622–637. Hultén, M. (2019). Striden om den goda skolan: Hur kunskapsfrågan enat, splittrat och förändrat svensk skola och skoldebatt. Nordic Academic Press. Hultén, M., Kristensen, J. E., & Jarning, H. (2023). From knowledge to skills and competence: Epistemic reconfiguration in Nordic basic education, 1980–2020. In D. Tröhler, B. Hörmann, S. Tveit, & I. Bostad (Eds.), The Nordic education model in context: Historical developments and current renegotiations (pp. 236–254). Routledge. Jarning, H. (1998). The populist argument: Cultural populism and the development of educational theory in Norway. Paedagogica Historica, 34(sup1), 139–161. Karseth, Berit, & Sivesind, Kirsten. (2010). Conceptualising curriculum knowledge within and beyond the national context. European Journal of Education, 45(1), 103–120. https:// doi.org/10.1111/j.1465–3435.2009.01418.x Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1922). Normalplan for landsfolkeskolen. Utarbeidet av skoledirektørene og representanter for lærerstanden. J. M. Stenersens forlag (N22). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1925). Normalplan for byfolkeskolen. Utarbeidet av skoledirektørene og representanter for lærerstanden. Kristiania J. M. Stenersens forlag (N25). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1939a). Normalplan for byfolkeskolen. Utarbeidd ved Normalplankomit\een oppnevnt av Kirke- og Undervisningsdepartementet. H. Aschehoug & Co. (N39).

246  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1939b). Normalplan for landsfolkeskolen. Utarbeidd ved Normalplankomitéen oppnevnt av Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. H. Aschehoug & Co. (N39). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1971). Mønsterplan for grunnskolen. H. Aschehoug & Co. (M72). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1974). Mønsterplan for grunnskolen. H. Aschehoug & Co. (M74). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1985). Mønsterplan for grunnskolen . H. Aschehoug & Co. (M85). Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet. (1987). Mønsterplan for grunnskolen. H. Aschehoug & Co. (M87). Knudsen, T.,  & Rothstein, B. (1994). State building in Scandinavia. Comparative Politics, 203–220. Kirke- utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet. (1993). Læreplan for grunnskole, videregående opplæring voksenopplæring. Generell del. (L93). Kirke- utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet. (1997). Læreplanverket for den 10-årige grunnskolen (L97). Nasjonalt læremiddelsenter. Kungl. Maj. (1900). Normalplan för undervisningen i folkskolor och småskolor (N1900). Norstedt. Kungl. Maj. (1919/20). Undervisningsplan för rikets folkskolor den 31 oktober 1919 (U1919). Norstedt. Kunnskapsdepartementet. (2006). Læreplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet [National curriculum for knowledge promotion in primary and secondary education and training] (LK06). Kunnskapsdepartementet. (2020). Læreplanverket for Kunnskapsløftet [National curriculum for knowledge promotion in primary and secondary education and training] (LK20). Landahl, J. (2015). Skolämnen och moralisk fostran: En komparativ studie av samhällskunskap och livskunskap. Nordic Journal of Educational History, 2(2), 27–47. Larsson, A. (2022). Skolämnet hembygdskunskap 1919–1980: Tillkomst och karriär i läroplanshistoriskt perspektiv. Nordic Journal of Educational History, 9(1), 61–83. Levin, H. M. (1978). The dilemma of comprehensive secondary school reforms in Western Europe. Comparative Education Review, 22(3), 434–451. Löf, C. (2011). Med livet på schemat: Om skolämnet livskunskap och den riskfyllda barndomen (Doctoral thesis). Lund University. Lov. (1889). Lov om Folkeskolen paa Landet.: Stockholms Slot den 26de Juni 1889. Kristiania. P.T. Mallings Boghandels Forlag. Høyskolen i Vestfold. http://www-bib.hive.no/tekster/ skolehistorie/lover/1889/side04.html Lovdata. (2022a). Kongeriget Norges Grundlov, given i Rigsforsamlingen paa Eidsvold den 17de Mai 1814 og nu, i Anledning af Norges og Sveriges Rigers Forening, nærmere bestemt i Norges overordentlige Storthing i Christiania den 4de November 1814. https://lovdata.no/dokument/ HIST/lov/1814-05-17-18141104 Lovdata. (2022b). Kongeriket Norges Grunnlov. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1814-05-17 Lundahl, C., Hultén, M.,  & Tveit, S. (2017). The power of teacher-assigned grades in outcome-based education. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 3(1), 56–66. Ozkirimli, U. (2017). Theories of nationalism: A critical introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing. Richardson, G. (1983). Drömmen om en ny skola. Idéer och realiteter i svensk skolpolitik 1945–1950. Liber. Riksarkivet. (2008). Forsøksrådet for skoleverket 1954–1984. www.arkivverket.no/arkivverket/ publikasjoner/nett/handbok-ra/inst-dep/sak/forsok.html

Reform histories in Norwegian and Swedish curricula 247 Rothstein, B. (1986). Den socialdemokratiska staten. Reformer och förvaltning inom svensk arbetsmarknads- och skolpolitik (Ph.D. thesis). Lund University. Rovde, O. (2012). “Al undervisning i folkeskolen bør lægges saa nær ind til det hjemlige som mulig”–debatten om skulen på landsbygda frå skulelovene av 1889 til skulelova av 1959. Historisk tidsskrift, 91(1), 65–92. Sejersted, F. (2011). The age of social democracy: Norway and Sweden in the twentieth century (M. B. Adams & R. Daly, Eds.). Princeton University Press. Sirevåg, T. (1966). Ten years of Norwegian school experimentation. International Review of Education, 12(1), 1–15. Sivesind, K. (2008). Reformulating reform. Curriculum history revisited (Doctoral thesis). The Universitetet i Oslo. Sivesind, K. (2021). Historical trajectories of the contract-school model in Norway. In Daniel Tröhler, Weili Zhao (Eds.), Asian-European encounters on 21st-century competence-based curriculum reforms. Cultural views on globalization and localization (pp. 57–84). Springer. Sivesind, K., & Karseth, B. (2019). An officially endorsed national curriculum: Institutional boundaries and ideational concerns. Curriculum Perspectives, 39(2), 193–197. Sivesind, K., & Wahlström, N. (2016). Curriculum on the European policy agenda: Global transitions and learning outcomes from transnational and national points of view. European Educational Research Journal, 15(3), 1–9. Sivesind, Kirsten. (1993). Målstyring – sentralisering eller desentralisering? Norsk Pedagogisk Tidskrift, 2, 69–82. Skolöverstyrelsen. (1955). Undervisningsplan för rikets folkskolor den 22 januari 1955 (U1955). Norstedt. Skolöverstyrelsen. (1962). Läroplan för grundskolan 1962 (Lgr 62). Skolöverstyrelsen. Skolöverstyrelsen. (1969). Läroplan för grundskolan 1969 (Lgr 69). Allmän del. Liber. Skolöverstyrelsen. (1980). Läroplan för grundskolan 1980 (Lgr 80). Allmän del. Liber. Skolverket. (1994a). Läroplan för grundskolan 1994 (Lpo 94). Utbildningsdepartementet. Skolverket. (1994b). Kursplaner för grundskolan (Syllabuses, Lpo 94). Utbildningsdepartementet. Skolverket. (2011). Läroplan för grundskolan 2011 (Lgr 11). Skolverket. Slagstad, R. (2004, May 77). Shifting knowledge regimes: The metamorphoses of Norwegian reformism. Thesis Eleven, 65–83. Stenius, H. (2010). Nordic associational life in a European and an inter-Nordic perspective. Nomos. Styret for Norges lærerlag, Centralstyrelsen for Sveriges Almãnna Folksskollärarforening, & Hovedsstyrelsen for Danmarks lærerforening. (1931). Skolevesenet i ti land: en oversikt. Svenska Tryckeriaktiebolaget. https://doi.org/oai:nb.bibsys.no:999611006644702202’ Sundberg, D., & Wahlström, N. (20f12). Standards-based curricula in a denationalised conception of education: The case of Sweden. European Education Research Journal, 11(3). Sveriges Riksdag. (2022a). Sweriges rikes ständers beslut, gjordt och samtyckt i Stockholm den 10 maji 1809. https://weburn.kb.se/riks/metadata/97/21799197.html Sveriges Riksdag. (2022b). Kungörelse (1974:152) om beslutad ny regeringsform. www.r iksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/ kungorelse-1974152-om-beslutad-ny-regeringsform_sfs-1974-152 Telhaug, A. O., Asbjørn Mediås, O., & Aasen, P. (2006). The Nordic model in education: Education as part of the political system in the last 50 years. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 245–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313830600743274 Tingsten, H. (1969). Gud och fosterlandet: studier i hundra års skolpropaganda. P. A. Norstedt & söners förlag.

248  Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén Tønnesson, J.,  & Sivesind, K. (2016). The rhetoric of the Norwegian constitution day: A topos analysis of young Norwegian students’ May 17 speeches, 2011 and 2012. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 60(2), 201–218. Tønnesson, K. (2001). The Norwegian constitution of 17 May 1814—international influences and models. 21(1), 175–186. Retrieved April  2, 2012, from www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/02606755.2001.9522127 Tröhler, D. (2015). The medicalization of current educational research and its effects on education policy and school reforms. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(5), 749–764. Tröhler, D. (2016a). Curriculum history or the educational construction of Europe in the long nineteen-century. European Educational Research Journal, 5(3). Tröhler, D. (2016b). Educationalization of social problems and the educationalization of the modern world. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (pp. 698–703). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_8-1 Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(5), 620–635. doi:10.1080/00220272.2 020.1786727 Tröhler, D. (2023). Introduction: The Nordic education model. Trajectories, configurations. In D. Tröhler, B. Höhrmann, S. Tveit, & I. Bostad (Eds.), The Nordic education model in context. Historical developments and current renegotiations. Routledge. Tröhler, D., & Maricic, V. (2023). Education and the nation: Educational knowledge in the dominant theories of nationalism. In D. Tröhler (Ed.), Education, curriculum and nationbuilding. Contributions of comparative education to the understanding of nations and nationalism (pp. 7–33). Routledge. Verger, A., Fontdevila, C., & Parcerisa, L. (2019). Reforming governance through policy instruments. How and to what extent standards, tests and accountability in education spread worldwide. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation building: Why some countries come together while others fall apart. Princeton University Press.

Chapter 11

Concluding chapter Education, nationalism, and internationalism: gap-filling and gap-creating Michael Billig

This edited book makes an important argument about the role of educational processes in the creation of nation-states across the world and, consequently, in the diffusion of nationalist identities and nationalist ideologies. This focus on making a specific argument about a specific topic distinguishes Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building from most edited books in the social sciences. The typical edited volume is a collection of papers that are loosely connected. Many edited volumes are based on the proceedings of small-scale conferences where the contributors deliver their own take on a topic. In media studies, for instance, an edited book might be based on studies about a specific, well-known TV program, with contributors representing different theoretical approaches or concentrating on different aspects of the program. In this regard, edited books can be a bit haphazard, lacking a clear theoretical view that might constitute a breakthrough for understanding the topic in question. By contrast, Education, Curriculum and Nation-Building is something much rarer and more valuable: an edited volume with tightly connected, empirical papers that are designed to fit together in order to make an overall theoretical gain that could not have been made by any of the contributors on their own. Daniel Tröhler has sought to establish beyond doubt the connection between educational policy and the building of modern nation-states. He has not done this by making his point within a detailed case study of a specific country. His aim is altogether more ambitious and theoretically important. He seeks to show how educational policy is related to state-building across the globe. In fact, Tröhler as an expert on nationalism recognizes that nationalism has not merely led to a world divided into separate states, but that nationalism is an ideology that is itself globally universalized (Tröhler, 2022). As such, globalization and nationalism are deeply entangled; one cannot be understood without the other, so that it is important to acknowledge both the national nature of globalism and the global nature of nationalism (Billig, in press). For this present book, Tröhler has recruited experts on different countries from around the world, as well as experts on the different phases in the histories of modern nation-states. His basic argument about education and nationalism needs global conformation; it could not be satisfactorily sustained in relation to DOI: 10.4324/9781003315988-12

250  Michael Billig

a specific country or even a specific continent. Therefore, Tröhler has gathered a range of experts to collaborate on a volume which is more than the sum of its individual chapters. In fact, Tröhler himself has not contributed a chapter that investigates the effects of nationalism on the educational curricula of a specific nation-state. His substantive chapter achieves something more basic to his whole project: he established the theoretical and empirical need for the concerted case histories that form the bulk of the book. In so doing, he persuasively establishes the need for the book itself, with his early chapter setting up the book’s raison d’être. In this early chapter, Tröhler, together with Veronika Maricic, takes for his object of analysis some of the main works about the nature of nationalism and how they treat, or do not treat, the role of education in the creation and maintenance of nation-states. They take a sample of books, choosing them carefully to represent the main theoretical perspectives of nationalism. Tröhler and Maricic comment that none of these works have been written by an expert in educational studies: there are plenty of sociologists, historians, political scientists, and so on. Of course, there are many other disciplinary absences. None of the books that Tröhler and Maricic select have been written by an expert in theoretical physics or avian migration. However, these are insignificant absences, and Tröhler and Maricic argue that the absence of specialists in education is very much a significant absence. Tröhler and Maricic make their point by demonstrating that the main theoretical works on nationalism all assume that educational processes were involved in creating the new citizenry of the new nation-states. Schools had to teach their pupils how to become national citizens. Some theoretical approaches might have stressed this basic point more than others, but the differences were not stark, for the various different theories all share the assumption that schools were established to transmit nationalism. However, as Tröhler and Maricic argue, the assumption has remained just an assumption. The authors of the books that they analyze do not seek to confirm the assumption by looking directly at the processes of education in the new nation-states: it is as if the assumption were so theoretically obvious that it does not required to be confirmed. The problem will not be resolved merely by reversing the absence of educational experts contributing to theories of nationalism. This is because the problem is not of itself a disciplinary one but cuts much deeper. Tröhler (2020) has pointed out that those educational researchers who look at national curricula consistently overlook the amount of banal, everyday nationalism that such curricula contain. Educational researchers tend to assume optimistically that education provides a universal, rational perspective, rather than a biased national one. Consequently, there is, according to Tröhler, a “large underestimation of nationalism in education and curriculum research” (2020, p. 4). Thus, the ways that educational researchers presently examine curricula also contain their own significant absences.

Concluding chapter 251

As the author of one of the books that Tröhler and Maricic examine, I can report that their chapter does not make for comfortable reading. I  imagine that I am not the only author, whose work they survey, and who, on reading Tröhler’s and Maricic’s chapter, says to themselves: “How on earth did I fail to notice that? How could the gap be so obvious that it escaped my attention?” It is much more fun to point out the gaps in other people’s work than have one’s own publically exposed. And that’s how it is with academic work. We think we are sophisticated observers, but when we notice one thing, then we then often fail to notice another. We can all fall prey to what Thorstein Veblen (1914) many years ago called “trained incapacity”: our training teaches us to look in a single direction, thus overlooking all the things that lie in a different theoretical direction. Perhaps those who imagine that they have trained themselves to notice things which others have systematically overlooked are particularly prone to a sort of incapacity that could be termed self-trained incapacity. Several years ago, John Swales, a linguist with a deep interest in education, wrote Genre Analysis (1990), which has become a classic book about academic writing. Swales viewed academic genres as shared, recognizable forms of strategic writing within academic texts. A  number of other linguists, also with educational interests, have taken up and developed Swales’ basic ideas of academic genres (see, e.g., the excellent work of Hyland, 2009; Biber & Conrad, 2009). Swales applied the idea of academic genres to research papers, which in the sciences and social sciences typically contain conventional divisions such as ‘introduction’, ‘method’, and ‘results’ (Swales, 2004). Each section has its own rhetorical purpose, and the skilled academic writer will take care that they strategically fulfil the conventional demands that journal editors make for these conventional sections Why Swales’ ideas about genres are relevant here is because of the purposes of an introductory section. According to Swales, academic writers should use their introductions to argue that there is an identifiable gap in the knowledge of a particular topic. It is insufficient merely to identify such a gap, but the academic writer needs to argue persuasively that the gap should be filled. For example, if an expert in nationalism claimed that no one has examined the relations between nationalism and avian migration, that on its own would not justify a research project that investigates whether there might be a connection. The author has to argue for the theoretical or empirical importance of seeking to find such a connection, which others have overlooked. Bearing in mind Swales’ idea of an academic genre, we can see how Tröhler’s and Maricic’s empirical chapter, which follows Tröhler’s actual introduction, provides a powerful justification for the book. There is a gap in the field of nationalism studies; and the gap is not a minor one. In fact, it is a surprising gap that everyone assumes to have been filled, but no one has previously bothered to do the hard work of describing the gap, proving its existence, and then seeking to fill it. Rarely do edited volumes in the social sciences have such a

252  Michael Billig

rhetorically powerful introduction, even if the editor does not formally call his gap-identifying introduction an introduction.

Objects of analysis The identification of gaps is not confined to Tröhler’s early chapter, as if gapmaking needs only to be done once. The subsequent chapters also contain their own research genres; they have their introductions, conclusions, empirical sections, and so on. Each section will have its own strategic purposes. The introductory sections, even if they do not actually bear the title “Introduction,” are rhetorically designed to say what the chapter is proposing to look at and to justify why this topic needs to be investigated. For instance, the authors may be identifying gaps in existing knowledge by claiming that no one has looked in detail at the educational curricula of these countries between these dates. Typically, the authors use their conclusions to claim that their investigations have filled, or at least part-filled, the gap identified in the introduction, as well as contributing to filling the bigger gap that the editor identified. The gap-identifying in the chapters’ opening sections sometimes is implicit, rather than explicit. For example, in the chapter that follows Tröhler’s and Maricic’s substantive analysis of nationalism texts, Nicole Gotling, Veronika Maricic, and Lukas Boser Hofmann describe their object of analysis in their opening section: the chapter is looking at the national heroes in school history textbooks in three different nations, Switzerland, Denmark, and Scotland. They say that they are investigating how the textbooks present William Tell for Switzerland, Niels Ebbesen for Denmark, and William Wallace for Scotland. In the opening section, the authors point out that each of these national heroes is depicted as a small David who opposes and defeats a powerful Goliath. The way that the authors present their topic implies, but does not explicitly state, that no one else has examined how textbooks have presented this type of national hero for these three nations. As if to justify the originality of their research, but in a way that avoids explicit boasting, the authors ask two rhetorical questions: Who were those “Goliaths,” and why is it worthwhile to analyze their stories? The fact that they ask the “worthwhile” question implies that previous researchers have not probed this matter. They are presenting their chapter as engaging in original research as part of a wider project and, thus, accomplishing a worthwhile piece of specific gap-filling. The point of the chapter is cashed out in the final section which is entitled “Discussion”—a familiar name for a concluding research genre, in which we can expect authors to present the main gains of their study, possibly indicating what further research remains to be done. Here, the authors refer back to Tröhler’s and Maricic’s big, gap-identifying chapter, saying which of the types of nationalist theory that they describe is best equipped to understand what they have found. According to the authors, their chapter is a perfect illustration of the “ethno-symbolic” approach.

Concluding chapter 253

The stories about the David heroes are more than stories about individuals, who happen to prevail over more powerful opponents, but these are national “salvation stories.” The authors demonstrate how these national myths, including the William Tell story which is not based on an actual historical figure, are presented in history textbooks. As such, the authors show the importance of timeless myths in creating a shared form of national literacy. Historically, the religious mythology of these tales is transformed into national mythology. The authors take up the question that they posed in the introduction: why the importance of Goliath? A Goliath-type figure is necessary for a modern nation to present themselves as being faced with powerful national enemies—“us” requires “them,” especially for small nations. However powerful their opponents might appear to be, the story of the national David shows that they can be overcome. This early empirical chapter sets a pattern for subsequent chapters in terms of the objects to be analyzed and the modes of conducting the analysis. Other chapters also look at textbooks, while some look at curricula or legislation that prescribe what national schooling should teach the nation’s pupils. Not all the chapters examine educational texts. In a very interesting investigation, Rebekka Horlacher, Sébastien A. Alix, and Lukas Boser Hofmann look at educational surveys conducted in Switzerland, France, and Scotland between 1798 and 1833. These surveys gathered information on the state of school buildings, what was being taught in schools, the rates of literacy, and so on. The state’s authorities were collecting statistical data about education, for they recognized the important role of education in creating a literate and loyal citizenry. In fact, the links between the new science of statistics and the new nationstates run deep. Most nation-states set up censuses and legislated that births, deaths, and marriages should be officially registered. In this way, the authorities gathered information about their citizenry in ways which were not possible previously. The historical links between statistics and the nation-state are illustrated by the origin of the word “statistics.” The new sort of data that states began to gather systematically in the early nineteenth century became known as “statistics” or the state’s mathematics about the state of its own citizenry (Blauw, 2020; Hacking, 1982, 2006). Chapter 3 is the only chapter that touches upon the connections between statistics and nationalism. There, clearly, is much more work that could be done in this direction both historically and related to contemporary politics (Billig, 2021). Most of the empirical chapters in the present volume concentrate on discovering and interpreting nationalist themes within official national academic texts. In common with the chapter written by Gotling and her collaborators, as well as the chapter on national statistics by Horlacher and her collaborators, most of the chapters involve cross-national comparisons, rather than focusing on the educational texts and practices of a single nation. For example Chapter 4 compares Austria and Slovenia, Chapter 5 Argentina and Mexico, Chapter 8 Latvia and Lithuania, and so on.

254  Michael Billig

Some of the authors make comparison between different nations at different times. For example, in chapter 9, the team of authors examine and compare literacy textbooks in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia during the Soviet period and in post-Soviet times. Kirsten Sivesind and Magnus Hultén in Chapter 10 take a long historical look at the differences and similarities in the development of curricula in close neighbors Norway and Sweden. Even when the investigators appear to concentrate on a single nation, important national comparisons are still possible. In Chapter 6, Terri Kim seems at first sight to confine herself to a single context: the creation of Korean nationalism, emphasizing the role of education, including the role of Christian religious education. However, this is not a single context because Kim takes a long historical perspective. Not only does she examine Korean nationalism in the two Korean nation-states of North and South Korea, but she also makes historical comparisons with the period when Korea was colonized by Japan and the colonial power sought to foster the loyalty of Koreans to the Japanese Emperor. In this way, rich comparisons are possible. It is the same in Chapter 7, written by Jennifer Wallner and Stéphanie Chouinard, which ostensibly appears to focus on the single nation of Canada and therefore seems to avoid trans-national comparisons. But here, as elsewhere, there are nations within nation-states, and the authors compare nation-building in the curricula of the largely Anglophone province of Ontario, with the curricula of the largely Francophone Quebec. The comparisons are fascinating, indicating differences between nations that seem to have their own nationstate and those, like many French speakers in Canada, or Scots in the United Kingdom, who feel a degree of estrangement from the nation-state in which they live. As Chapter 2 showed, in the Scottish mythology of William Wallace, the national Goliath does not reside in a different nation-state but represents the nation-state to which Scotland officially belongs and from which Scottish nationalists seek to escape. Comparisons reveal patterns of similarities and differences between nationstates. Even near neighbors who share cultural and political histories can diverge in their educational policies. Whatever comparisons the researchers make, they always seem to be able to find some differences. For example, Chapter 10 compares the educational curricula of Norway and Sweden over time from the start of the twentieth century to the present. Both states sought to build national curricula, but, during each time period, there were differences in the ways that they did this. In the early years of the twentieth century, religious teaching seems to have declined in Sweden but not in Norway. In the middle period, the history syllabuses in Norway were more outward looking, stressing both globalization and internationalism to a greater extent than in Sweden. In more recent times, according to the authors, Swedish curricula seem to depict the nation as a conglomerate of cultures more than the Norwegian curricula do.

Concluding chapter 255

It is the same when the curricula or textbooks of other near neighbors are compared. Always some differences emerge. Thus, after the fall of the Russian empire, both Latvia and Lithuania built national curricula based on their respective languages, often using very similar depictions in their textbooks, but the Lithuanian books were more outwardly religious than the Latvian. The authors of Chapter 8 generally concentrate on the similarities of the national symbols in the early reading books of the four post-Soviet states that they study. These include the visual depiction of traditional rural dwellers living in similar rural landscapes, as well as similar implicit references to the nation and its borders. Nevertheless, there are some differences. For example, Armenian textbooks refer to “enemies” beyond boundary more than textbooks of the other three countries. It is hardly surprising that researchers can find differences if they look for them, for nation-states are constellations of differences and similarities. Each nation-state claims to be unique, occupying a unique part of the globe and possessing a unique history. Yet, on the other hand, each nation-state is similar to other nation-states, with its own flag, anthem, and proclaiming its own uniqueness. What the empirical chapters suggest is that this pattern of uniqueness and similarity is reflected in national curricula and textbooks. The nations seek to instill national identity and what the authors of Chapter 5 call “national knowledges,” but there are different identities and national knowledge to be instilled—“our national heroes” and not “theirs.” The notion of “national knowledges” is similar to “national literacies” which Tröhler (2020) uses when he argues that the content of this national knowledge and the resulting sense of national identity differ from nation to nation. The empirical chapters in the present volume go further by seeking to provide detailed evidence of this and by showing that the educational ways of instilling this content can also differ from nation to nation. If researchers look for fine detailed differences between the educational practices of different nations, they should be able to find some, even if the differences are occurring within broadly similar wider historical and cultural processes. After all, histories never exactly repeat themselves, even if they are occurring in parallel rather than sequentially. As the chapters in this book demonstrate, a nation’s history in official school textbooks will be presented in ways that are designed to foster a sense of uniqueness. One cannot expect the details of this history to be repeated exactly, even in a neighbor just across a national boundary, where another history and another sense of uniqueness are being diffused in schools. Overall, national-states may have become globally universalized, as Tröhler (2022) argues, but part of what has become universalized is a commitment to fostering a sense of national uniqueness. The citizenry and their teachers will always be able to point to some unique features of the national history; and, likewise, researchers too can point to unique features, including the history of that history within educational texts. After all, nation-states are all different, but similar; and they are all similar, but different.

256  Michael Billig

Creating new gaps: nationalism and internationalism Filling a gap is rarely a completed academic process that comes to a standstill once the specific gap has been filled. We might think that in the present case, once a sufficient number of national textbooks and curricula have been examined for their nationalist content, there is little need to continue filling a gap that is diminishing in size. Certainly, gaps in the present gap-filling can be identified. The sample contains no representative nations from Africa, nor any island nations, such as Australia, Iceland, Malta, and Madagascar. These are not the only gaps that can be easily identified. The authors have concentrated on small- to medium-sized nation-states such as Switzerland, Mexico, and even Scotland: the last named is small in terms of population and not even a nation-state (at least, yet). There are, however, no micro-states: no Tuvalus or Lichtensteins, which might face economic difficulties if they wished to produce their own textbooks for their own micro-market of school children. Nor are there nation-states with massive populations, such as Russia, China, India, and the United States. Tröhler (2020) has provided an interesting example from the United States. He has looked at an American community based at the end of a peninsular close to the Canadian border. The members of the community prefer their children to travel a comparatively long distance each day in order to attend an American school, rather than attend the nearest school which is just across the national boundary in Canada. The community wants its children to learn American ways of thinking, rather than Canadian ones, despite the considerable inconvenience. Tröhler’s example of the remote American community is highly suggestive, and it also emphasizes the absence of examining the national dimensions of US curricula across the country in mainstream communities far from any national boundary. Perhaps geographical vastness, combined with large ethnically distinct areas, leads to rather different representations of nationhood in the national curricula and textbooks. Perhaps it does not. We do not know at present, because there still are gaps to be filled and questions to be asked. The present collection, it is to be hoped, will not be the last word on the subject that it has identified so convincingly. There is a further consideration. Genuine academic advances create new gaps in knowledge, rather than merely fill existing gaps. No theory in the social sciences can ever be complete, as William James (1890) recognized. He wrote that psychological theories mutilate “the fullness” of reality (p. 332), because theories always simplify what is complex in practice. According to James, when we theorize about reality, we concentrate on one essential aspect and overlook other aspects. That means that there is always more to find out and more to day. In short, we advance understanding by constructing new gaps that will need to be filled (see Billig, 2019, for a detailed discussion of this issue and the general limitations of theory in the social and psychological sciences).

Concluding chapter 257

So, we should be looking at the gaps which the present volume has created, not merely at those it might have successfully filled or left unfilled at present. If we cannot point to new gaps that need to be filled, then it would be fair to say that the contribution of the present volume is a limited one. Two significant gaps will be identified. The first relates to the globalization of nation-states and nationalism. There is a gap in specifically looking to see how nationalism and internationalism might be dealt with in national textbooks and curricula. The second gap relates to the limitations of investigating educational practice by examining official documents and textbooks. It can be argued that the process of globalization is historically entwined with the rise of the nation-state. Andreas Wimmer (2012) has provided some revealing figures about the global dominance of the nation-state. In 1900, only 40% of the world’s habitable land mass comprised independent nation-states: much of the rest was composed of territories ruled by national empires. By 2000, independent nation-states constituted almost 100% of the world’s land mass (Wimmer, 2012). Thus, in present times, the world has become a world of nation-states, as nationhood has triumphed over other forms of political organization. If nationalism includes the beliefs, symbols, and social practices that ensure the reproduction of existing nation-states, rather than just being the ideology that leads to the creation of new nation-states, then nationalism can be seen to be a globally widespread ideology (Billig, 1995, 2017, 2023; Wimmer, 2018). Why this is worth mentioning is because the same time period, which Wimmer sees as leading to the world of nation-states, is also seen by other social scientists, including sociologists, political geographers, and economists, as leading to the spread of globalization (e.g., Irwin, 2020; James, 2018; Martin, 2018; Robertson, 1992; Robertson & White, 2007; van Bergeijk, 2019). In the 1990s, many social theorists, such as Ulrich Beck in his famous book Risk society (1986/1992), felt that the world was moving from being a world of separated nation-states to being an interconnected world in which nationalism and nation-states would wither away (see Chernilo, 2020, for a critical discussion of this outlook). The era of globalization has not sequentially followed the era of nationalism, as Beck supposed, but the growth of globalization has in historical terms accompanied the growth of independent nation-states. This cannot be pure coincidence. Rather than being conflicting and opposing processes, as many social theorists assumed in the 1990s, these two world-wide, mega-processes are entangled together (Billig, 2023). The assumptions of nationalism, as has been mentioned, have become globalized. Some social theorists have assumed that these assumptions lie at the basis of much social theorizing: according to them, the image of the nation-state has provided the basic image of society. This is what has become known as “methodological nationalism” (Beck, 2016; Beck & Willms, 2003; Wimmer  & Schiller, 2002). On the other hand, a form of “methodological

258  Michael Billig

nationalism” can be detected in the standard methodologies for assessing globalization (Billig, 2023). Many economists and other social scientists assess the level and rate of globalization in terms of the proportion of the trade that crosses national boundaries: The greater the proportion, the greater the processes of economic globalization. This methodological entanglement cuts deeply. The World Trade Organization (WTO), to take a notable example, publishes an annual review of world trade. The 2021 edition, like previous editions, summarizes its basic methodology. It defines “general trade” as “all types of inward and outward movement of goods through a country or territory.” It states that “goods” include all merchandise adding to, or subtracting from, “the stock of material resources of a country or territory by entering (imports) or leaving (exports) the country’s economic territory” (WTO, 2021, Chapter IV, p. 42). These definitions, on which the calculation of economic globalization is often based, take for granted a world composed of bounded nation-states and/or territories. Similarly, the estimation of Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) is impossible without countries or territories for whom the gross product is domestic. As such, the calculation of economic globalization and GDP is impossible without assuming the existence of the world of nation-states (Billig, 2023). What, one might ask, has this to do with the creation of gaps by the contributors to the present volume? The answer is quite simple. Most of the contributors, but not all, tend to focus their investigative aim on looking at the depiction of the nation within the texts that they are studying. If it is accepted that globalization and nationalism are deeply entangled both methodologically and historically, then the next step would be to investigate how educational texts, such as curricula and textbooks, entangle the values of nationalism and internationalism. Some chapters already make a start on this. For example, Chapter 7 discusses how the Ontario curriculum gives more emphasis on the pupils being global citizens than does the Francophone curriculum in Quebec. In Chapter 6, Kim specifically looks at what she calls “Korean ethno-nationalist internationalism,” covering topics such as Messianic visions of Korean ethnic nationalism and internationalism. The next step might not be a comparison of the emphases given to nationalism or internationalism that can be found in the curricula or textbooks of different nations or provinces in the same nation. It might be to analyze in detail how specific educational texts handle what might be thought to be contradictory, but entangled themes: for example, how to be simultaneously both national and global citizens. To do this in any detail might involve close linguistic, rhetorical, and ideological analyses of texts, because the entanglement might itself have to be disentangled. For example, the textbooks and curricula might handle the entangled themes casually and banally without the reader’s attention being specifically drawn to the underlying ideological complexity of what seems to be little more than common sense. To illustrate this, we might take an example that is discussed in

Concluding chapter 259

Chapter 10. It is taken from a Lithuanian primer, published in 1933 for use in elementary schools: We live in Lithuania. Our parents and our parents’ parents lived here. Therefore, Lithuania is our Fatherland. People love their Fatherland. And we love our Lithuania. The language is simple—involving basically short statements, which are presented as being factual, such as “we live in Lithuania.” It is the sort of language that some linguists have called “paratactic.” Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, in their great work The New Rhetoric (1969), contrasted paratactic language, which is often composed of apparently separate factual statements, with argumentative, “hypotactic” language, where statements are joined together to construct an argument (see also Billig & Marinho, in press; Lanham, 2003). The quoted passage, for all its simple language, linguistically has hypotatic features. The statements “Our parents and our parents’ parents lived here” followed by “Therefore, Lithuania is our Fatherland” are hypotactically linked with the word “therefore,” indicating that the first of the two sentences is serving the second by providing a justification for what is being presented as a conclusion. The last two sentences of the quoted extract are implicitly, rather than explicitly, connected argumentatively. In this context, “And” functions like “Therefore”: it is as if the writer had written “People love their Fatherland; therefore, we love our Lithuania.” The general statement “People love their Fatherland” is presented as if it were describing a natural fact that is true of people in general. If all people love their fatherland, then naturally “we love our Lithuania.” There is an implicit moral message. We should conform to what is a fact of nature: we should love out Lithuania. In this way, a depicted world of people loving their fatherlands provides a reason why we in Lithuania should love our fatherland. The statements do more than depict a world of nations in which people naturally love their fatherlands. The image of such a natural world creates space for those who are outsiders whether “here” or beyond the Fatherland. Those whose parents and grandparents come from elsewhere but live “here” are not properly “us.” Note that the general statement does not specifically state that all people love their fatherland, but “people” love their fatherland. In the wider world of fatherlands, anyone who does not love their fatherland is being unnatural and is threatening the reasons why we should love our fatherland. Thus, compacted into these few simply phrased statements, which seem to tell the school pupils who they are, there is more than an image of “us.” There is an image of a whole world of people and their fatherlands. The nationalist statements about “us” in “our” fatherland are justified by claims about others and their fatherlands. Moreover, these simple statements point toward, but do not spell out, assumptions about “our” possible enemies: who live here but are not really Lithuanian or who live elsewhere but transgress the natural

260  Michael Billig

order by not loving their fatherland or worse still, by not having a fatherland to love. In the simple image of natural harmony between people and their fatherlands, there are possible unnatural others both “here” and “there” in the wider world. These others threaten the natural order of things. Such themes are entangled with the apparently clear statements about “us” and “our” love for “our” fatherland.

Nationalism and educational practice The studies in this volume have created another gap that deserves to be filled. This gap is easier to point out than the entanglement of nationalism and internationalism. The chapters have investigated nationalism within educational practice, and they have done this by analyzing curricula, textbooks, and policies. Some of the chapters have used discursive techniques that analyze the details of language used in official documents. Some have traced historical, rather than linguistic, patterns. All have contributed to understanding the links between educational policies and creating national citizenship around the world. Some, as has been mentioned, have discussed the potential contradictions between nationalism and internationalism. Nevertheless, in making this contribution, the researchers have overlooked something important, thereby creating a further gap while going a long way to filling an existing one. We still do not know how, in practice, nationalism, internationalism, and their entanglement actually occur in schools. We should not assume that official policy documents are directly translated into the nation’s classrooms without addition or subtraction. Teachers, even if they are trying to follow official curricula, or using prescribed textbooks, must speak to their pupils, answer their questions, and generally translate the curricula and textbooks into their own words. In each of the nation’s classrooms, something unique—something unforeseen in the official documents—will be occurring. We have yet to discover how exactly the beliefs, contradictions, and questions are handled in practical interactions between pupils and teachers. Because the authors have concentrated on successfully fulfilling their particular remit, they may have overlooked what they are not doing. Occasionally, the authors seem to imply that they were filling the new gaps that they have imaginatively created. For example, Chapter 2 is entitled: “ ‘The divine fire . . . burns within them.’ National Davids and Goliaths in Swiss, Danish, and Scottish School Lessons.” It is an excellent title for an excellent chapter, apart from two words: “school lessons.” The authors do not study any actual school lessons. However, their chapter points toward the next research step: to analyze how teachers in these three nations might actually talk about the national mythology and how their pupils might respond in these lessons. In the opening part of Chapter 4, the authors write that they will be examining legal frameworks, curricula, textbooks, and everyday life in schools within Austria and the Slovenian regions of Yugoslavia. Certainly they fulfil their

Concluding chapter 261

promise to examine legal frameworks, curricula, and textbooks, but everyday life in schools slips through their hands. Their chapter contains a section entitled “Everyday school life.” Nevertheless, this section is largely devoted to showing which national holidays were celebrated within schools, together with official directives about how schools should mark these special days. The section also looks at examination questions and how exams might have included nationalistic topics. However, exams and special national days are not everyday events within schools: more accurately, they are yearly, not daily, events. The everyday seems to have gone missing: The authors may have creatively constructed this gap in their thoughtful chapter, but they have overlooked that they have not investigated everyday school life. Filling this gap may require different methodologies than those used to create the gap. When looking at teaching that occurred in the past, investigators have to rely on documents because they cannot observe lessons directly. Official documents might seem the most convenient source, but, in addition, researchers might also try to collect unofficial reminiscences of teachers and pupils. In the present collection of investigations, the voices of pupils are virtually absent: it is as if pupils are assumed to absorb the official curriculum dutifully. If investigators are to look at the processes of education in the present day, they need not rely on official, or unofficial, documents. There are other research strategies that they could use. Researchers could, for instances, try to discover the gaps between official curricula and what actually happens in the classroom. To do this, they would need to observe and analyze in detail what goes on in schools. In particular, they would have to pay special attention to the ways teachers and pupils talk about the nation and the international world of nation-states and how they seek to manage possible contradictions between the two themes and values. Above all, the voices of the pupils should be heard, for their voices are silenced within textbooks and official curricula. To do this would require using methods that the contributors to the present volume have not used. Jon Fox (2017), who has done much to advance the study of everyday nationalism, has argued that if researchers want to observe how everyday nationalism works, then they need to take a bottom-up, rather than top-down, approach. This means that they should observe everyday life directly rather than accepting either top-down theories or official descriptions of everyday life. In particular, Fox recommends the methods of anthropology, as well as the observational and conversation analytic methods that many discursive psychologists employ (see also, Hearn & Antonsich, 2018; Fox & van Ginderachter, 2018; on discursive psychology and its methods, see Tileagă & Stokoe, 2016). Perhaps, we can look forward to the insights that will be gained when educational researchers use these sorts of methods to explore the subtleties of nationalism and internationalism, especially as they are voiced within classroom interactions. Discursive subtlety is to be expected because most people seem to have values that pull in different directions. Those who have studied cosmopolitanism and nationalism report that most respondents are not pure

262  Michael Billig

cosmopolitans or pure nationalists but have both cosmopolitan and nationalist views whose reasonableness they take for granted (e.g., Arnett, 2002: Bayram, 2019; Skey, 2012) “Anthem,” a song composed by the singer-songwriter, Leonard Cohen, has in its chorus the poetic insight that “there is a crack in everything” and “that’s how the light gets in.” We might rewrite Cohen’s words and apply them to the more mundane, and certainly unpoetic, issue that no academic theory is ever complete. We could say: “There is a gap in every theory.” The editor and his contributors, in filling some theoretical gaps, have created further gaps in our knowledge of education and nationalism. This is not to criticize them, but to recognize that’s how the light gets in.

References Arnett, J. J. (2002). Psychology of globalization. American Psychologist, 57(10), 774–783. Bayram, A. B. (2019). Nationalist cosmopolitanism: The psychology of cosmopolitanism, national identity, and going to war for the country. Nations and Nationalism, 25(3), 757–781. Beck, U. (1986/1992). Risk society. Sage. Beck, U. (2016). Varieties of second modernity and the cosmopolitan vision. Theory, Culture & Society, 33(7–8), 257–270. Beck, U., & Willms, J. (2003). Conversations with Ulrich Beck. Polity Press. Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2009). Register, genre, and style. Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Sage. Billig, M. (2017). Banal nationalism and the imagining of politics. In M. Skey & M. Antonsich (Eds.), Everyday nationhood (pp. 307–321). Palgrave Macmillan. Billig, M. (2019). More, examples, less theory. Cambridge University Press. Billig, M. (2021). Uses of precise numbers and semi-magical round numbers in political discourse about Covid-19: Examples from the government of the United Kingdom. Discourse & Society, 32(5), 542–558. Billig, M. (in press). The national nature of globalization and the global nature of nationalism: Historically and methodologically entangled. Theory and Psychology. Billig, M., & Marinho, C. (in press). Preventing the political manipulation of COVID-19 statistics: The importance of going beyond diplomatic language. Language in Society. Blauw, S. (2020). The number bias. Sceptre. Chernilo, D. (2020). Beyond the nation? Or back to it? Current trends in the sociology of nations and nationalism. Sociology, 54(6), 1072–1087. Fox, J. E. (2017). The edges of the nation: A research agenda for uncovering the taken-forgranted foundations of everyday nationhood. Nations and Nationalism, 23, 26–47. Fox, J. E., & van Ginderachter, M. (2018). Introduction: Everyday nationalism’s evidence problem. Nations and Nationalism, 24, 546–623. Hacking, I. (1982). Biopower and the avalanche of printed numbers. Humanities in Society, 5, 279–295. Hacking, I. (2006). The emergence of probability. Cambridge University Press. Hearn, J., & Antonsich, M. (2018). Theoretical and methodological considerations for the study of banal and everyday nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 24, 594–605. Hyland, K. (2009). Academic discourse. Continuum.

Concluding chapter 263 Irwin, D. A. (2020, April 23). The pandemic adds momentum to the deglobalization trend. Pieterson Institute for International Economics. James, H. (2018). Deglobalization: The rise of disembedded unilateralism. Annual Review of Financial Economics, 10, 219–237. James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. II). Macmillan. Lanham, R. (2003). Analysing prose. Continuum. Martin, M. (2018). Keeping it real: Debunking the deglobalization myth, Brexit, and Trump: “Lessons” on integration. Journal of International Trade Law and Policy, 17, 62–68. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric. University of Notre Dame Press. Robertson, R. (1992). Globalization. Sage. Robertson, R., & White, K. E. (2007). What is globalization? In G. Ritzer (Ed.), The Blackwell companion to globalization (pp. 54–84). Blackwell. Skey, M. (2012). We need to talk about cosmopolitanism: The challenge of studying openness towards other people. Cultural Sociology, 6, 471–487. Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. (2004). Research genres. Cambridge University Press. Tileagă, C., & Stokoe, E. (Eds.). (2016). Discursive psychology. Routledge. Tröhler, D. (2020). National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds. Journal of Curriculum Studies. doi:10.1080/00220272.2020.1786727 Tröhler, D. (2022). Magical enchantments and the nation's silencing: Educational research agendas under the spell of globalization. In D. Tröhler, N. Piattovea, & W. F. Pinard (Eds.), Education, schooling and the global universalization of nationalism (pp. 1–19). Routledge. van Bergeijk, P. A. G. (2019). Deglobalisation 2.0: Trade and openness during the great depression and the great recession. Edward Elgar. Veblen, T. (1914). The instinct of workmanship and the state of the industrial arts. B. W. Huebsch. Wimmer, A. (2012). Waves of war. Cambridge University Press. Wimmer, A. (2018). Nation building. Princeton University Press. Wimmer, A.,  & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and the study of migration. European Journal of Sociology, 43, 217–240. World Trade Organization (WTO). (2021). World trade statistical review 2021. www.wto.org/ english/res_e/statis_e/wts2021_e/wts21_toc_e.htm

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Act of Union (1840), Canada 155, 164, 165 Age of Revolution (Hobsbawm) 79 Albert I (Emperor) 35 Alexander III (King of Scotland) 45, 47 Alix, Sébastien A. 253 Allen, Horace Newton 144n5 Analyses of the Statistical Account of Scotland 68 Ancient Régime 1, 56, 66, 102 Anderson, Benedict 2, 16, 31n10, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107 animism 140, 215, 217, 221n4 “Anthem” (Cohen) 262 Anthropocene: concept of 195; human-induced climate crisis in 194 – 195; literacies of childhood in 196 – 199; reconfiguring childhood and nation in 216 – 218; see also literacies of post-Soviet childhood anti-colonial nationalism 23 anti-communism, Korea 136 Argentina 119, 121; identity work 107; liberalism 108, 109; monuments of Argentine knowledge 110 – 113; national identity 106; nationalism and schooling 108 – 114; nationalist transformation 101; Primera Junta (First Assembly) 108, 110; school rituals of Argentine knowledge 113 – 114; statues of national heroes 112; see also Latin America; Mexico Argentina’s Biblioteca Pública de Buenos Aires 111 argentinidad (Argenticity), Rojas championing 111 – 112 aristocratic constitutionalism 227

Armenia: children within post-Soviet national landscapes 203; friendship of people 208; Hayk Nahabet 213, 214; literacy textbooks 198, 219, 254; national heroes and ancestors 214; post-Soviet transformation in 195; Soviet heroes 221n3; textbook for non-Armenia children 208; textbooks 205 – 206, 206 – 207, 208 – 210; Velvet Revolution (2018) 195; wine-making and national traditions 211 Army of the Andes 112 ASEN see Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) 5n1 Austria 78 – 79, 80, 94, 260; education in 79; everyday school life 92 – 94; laws and curricula 83 – 85; notion of Austrianness 84 – 85; subjects and textbooks for instruction 88 – 89 Austria-Hungary 77 Austrian Crownlands 88 Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) 115 Banal Nationalism (Billig) 21, 142, 152, 187, 196, 212 Battle of Bannockburn 48 Battle of Falkirk 45 Battle of Stirling Bridge 45, 47, 48 Beck, Ulrich 257 Bible story, David and Goliath 34, 38 – 39, 50 Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina 111

Index 265 Billig, Michael 2, 7, 105, 151, 152, 173, 177, 178, 212 Bluetooth, Harald (King of Denmark) 41, 50n2 Bodet, Jaime Torres 118 Boser Hofmann, Lukas 252, 253 Braveheart (film) 44 Breuilly, John 2, 28 British North America Act (1867), Canada 155 Brubaker, Rogers 2, 78 Bruuns, Malthe Conrad 43 Buddhism 127, 128 Bureau of School Experimentation, Sweden 234 Burns, Robert 44 Buyo of Manchuria 139 Calhoun, Craig J. 2 Calvinism 225 Canada 254; brief overview of 153 – 156; curricula for history 150 – 151; everyday nationalism 152 – 153; French Canadians 153; history 168 – 169; Indigenous peoples 152 – 153, 154 – 155, 160, 169; Lower (Québec) 155; national boundary in 256; nationalism and nation-building 150 – 151; Ontario 150, 153, 156 – 162, 167 – 168; Québec 150, 153, 162 – 167, 167 – 168; theoretical groundwork for nationalism and nation-building 151 – 153; Upper (Ontario) 155 Canadian Armed Forces 154 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) 156, 157 Canadian Chinese Immigration Act (1923) 159 ‘Canadien/ne’, term 170n2 capitalism 134, 152, 198, 218 Carr, Emily 159 Catholicism 101, 103; church 107, 113, 115, 118; Korea 127, 128; Lithuania and 175 – 176, 184 Cheondogyo (religion of the Heavenly Way) 127 childhood, literacies of in Anthropocene 196 – 199 China’s May Fourth movement 132 Chösenjin (Koreans) 139 Chosun Christian College (Yonhi College), Korea 131 – 132 Chouinard, Stéphanie 254 Choy, Paul D. 139

Christianity: education in Norway and Sweden 230; influence on Norway’s primary education 228, 230, 242; Korea 132; modern Korean nationalism and 126 – 130 Christian-Social Party (CSP) 83, 89 Cisleithania 78, 80, 83 Citizenship Education Framework, Ontario 158 civic catechism, Argentina 108 civic identity, notion of 107 climate crisis: human-induced, in Anthropocene 194 – 195; see also Anthropocene Cohen, Leonard 262 Cold War 3, 7 communities of shared knowledge 101, 105 – 106; concept of 105 – 106; Miller’s concept of 101, 105 – 106, 120 Confucianism, Korea 124, 129 Connor, Walker F. 2 ‘Conquest’ of Canada, Britain 155 conservatism 218 Constituent Assembly of Lithuania 176 Constitution Act (1791) 165, 166 Constitution Act (1867), Canada 154, 155, 169n1 Constitution Act (1982), Canada 154 Constitutio Valdemariana 42 constructivism: educationally relevant keywords 11, 12; everyday reproduction of nationality 21 – 24 constructivist, label 8 contemporary nationalism 18 cosmopolitanism 28, 111, 118, 124, 198, 216, 218, 261 Cowen, Bob 4 Csáky, Moritz 78 culture, nationalization of 78 Daoism 128 Darden, Keith 14, 31n8 David and Goliath: biblical story 34, 38 – 39, 50; depiction of national heroes 252, 253; imagery of 48 – 49; myth for use in formal education 35 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 125, 133, 136, 140 demographic engineering 71 Denmark: heroic stories 34; Niels Ebbesen versus Gert (German Count) 39 – 44 Dewey, John 133 Díaz, Porfirio 114, 115, 116

266 Index Dollfuβ, Engelbert 84, 89, 93, 94 doing nation 4 Donghak Peasant Revolution 127, 128, 140 double gestures of hope and fear, Popkewitz 71 Duplessis, Maurice 167 Dussel, Inés 108 Ebbesen, Niels 34, 35, 48, 50, 252; Denmark’s, versus Gert (German Count) 39 – 44 education: academic establishment of 1; Austria and everyday school life 92 – 94; Austrian basis of instruction 88 – 89; Austrian laws and curricula 83 – 85; birth of Nordic model of (1950–1980) 233 – 237; creation of nation-states 249, 250; key terms 12 – 13; Korea 126; moral, and Malthusian angst 69 – 71; national identities 3; nationalism and educational practice 260 – 262; ranking of keywords 12; schooling and nation-building in France 65 – 66; in Scotland 67 – 69; Slovene Yugoslavia and everyday school life 89 – 92; Slovene Yugoslavian basis of instruction 85 – 88; Slovene Yugoslavian laws and curricula 80 – 83; theories of nationalism 4; see also surveys educational knowledge: explanatory architecture of nation and nationalism 27 – 30; quantified physiognomy of 10 – 13 educationally relevant keywords 30n3; actual use of 15; ranking of 12 – 13; theoretical approaches 10 – 12, 11; understanding of uttered 13 – 15 Educational Ordinance for Korea 131 Educational Statistics of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland 66 Education and State Formation (Green) 3, 14 Edward I (English king) 35; Scotland’s Sir William Wallace versus 44 – 49 Elgenius, Gabriella 2, 22 El Maestro (magazine) 118 Elson, Ruth Miller 31n12 Encyclopédie (Diderot and D’Alembert) 71 Enlightenment 101, 104, 106, 157, 242 Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School) 117 Estonia 173, 174 ethnic 19 ethnic identity 18 – 19 ethnic internationalism 137

ethnic nationalism 20, 137; Korea 136, 142 – 143 Ethnic Origins of Nations (Smith) 18 Ethnic Phenomenon, The (van den Berghe) 28 – 29 ethnie 18; Latvia and Lithuania 174 ethno-symbolism 8; educationally relevant keywords 11, 11; interpretation of 56 – 57; Korea 126, 137 – 141; longue durée perspective of 19; modern state schools as transformation of ethnicity to nationality 18 – 21; national myths 49 Eugene of Savoy (Prince) 93 European modernity, vision of 103 everyday nationalism 152, 261 everyday nationhood, concept of 196 Facundo (Sarmiento) 108 Fatherland, Lithuania 259 – 260 Fatherland Front 85 First World War see World War I Fisher, James Earnest 132 flaggings: banal 179 – 180; Latvian and Lithuanian ethnicity 185 – 186, 190; nationhood 173, 175, 176, 178; visible and perceptible 180 folklore, Latvian and Lithuanian primers 185 – 187 Forkbeard, Sven 50n2 Fox, Jon E. 152, 261 France 56; extraordinary school inspection 57, 63 – 65; Guizot-Enquête (1833) 62 – 66, 72; July Monarchy 62 – 63; nation-building in 65 – 66 Frankopan, Fran Krsto 90 Frederick III (Emperor) 36 – 37 French Revolution 1, 57, 226, 232 friendship of people: Armenian textbook 208; Latvian textbook 209; textbooks 208 – 210 functionalism: educationally relevant keywords 11, 12; label 24; school as cog in governmental machinery of nationstate 24 – 27 functionalist, label 8 Gabo Reform 128 – 129, 130 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 112 Gellner, Ernest André 2, 95, 110, 124, 126 Generation Z 143 Genre Analysis (Swales) 251 Georgia: children within post-Soviet national landscapes 204; King Vakhtang

Index 267 214; literacy textbooks 198, 219 – 220, 254; national heroes and ancestors 214; post-Soviet textbooks 213; post-Soviet transformation in 195; Rose Revolution (2003) 195; textbooks 206, 210, 212; wine-making and national traditions 211 German National Socialist movement 84 Germanness, notions of 78 Germany, surveys and statistics 56 Gert (Gerhard) III, German Count of Holstein 39 – 44 Gert III (Count), murder of Holstein’s 35 Gessler/Grisler (bailiff), Switzerland’s William Tell versus 35 – 39 Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danish) 36 Gimpl, Florian 96n1 globalism 216, 218 globalization (thesis/theory) 3, 4, 7, 14, 28 135, 151, 237, 241, 243, 249, 254, 257, 258; national public education as victim of 27 global political idea, national identity as 108 God Bless Latvia (song) 187 Gojong (King) 126 Gojoseon, first Korean kingdom 124, 128 Google Scholar 9 Gorgasali, Vakhtang 206 Goryeo, Korea 124 Gotling, Nicole 252, 253 Government of Canada 153 – 154, 168; see also Canada grand narratives 8 Great Britain, surveys and statistics 56 Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 138 Great Upheaval (1755–1758) 155 Great War 138 Green, Andy 3, 14 green nationalism 197 Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) 258 Grundtvig, N. F. S. 42, 43 Guardians of Tradition (Elson) 31n12 Guizot, François 62 Guizot- Enquête (1833) 57, 72; extraordinary inspection 57, 62, 63 – 65, 73n2; nation-building in France and 65 – 66, 71, 72 Gukjagam, Korea 124 Habsburg Empire 78, 85, 88; collapse of 94; ethnolinguistic nationalism 83; Slovenian parts of 80 Habsburg Monarchy 77 Ham Sok-Hon 142

Handbook of Language and Social Psychology 13 Handbook of Psychology 13 Handbook of Social Psychology 13 Hangul, pure Korean 129 – 130 Hanja, Sino-Korean 129 Haydn, Joseph 92 Helvetic Republic 56, 57, 61 Helvetic Society 58 Helvetische Volksblatt (periodical) 58 Henry VII (King of England) 47 heroes 34; Davis versus their respective Goliaths 34 – 35 history-myths 121 Hitler, Adolf 84, 85 Hobsbawm, Eric 2, 16, 28, 31n10, 79 Hofer, Andreas 93 Hofmann, Lukas Boser 252, 253 homeland: Georgian textbooks 214; Kazakhstan textbooks 215 – 217; Latvian textbooks 215; post-Soviet textbooks 213; Soviet textbooks 212 – 213 Hongik Ingan idea, Korea 140 hope and fear, symbols of 71 Horlacher, Rebekka 253 Hughes, Robert E. 2 Hulbert, Homer 130 Hultén, Magnus 254 Hume, David 44 Idea of Nationalism The (Kohn) 3 Illustrated History of Switzerland (Rosier and Savary) 35 imaginary of society 1 imaginary of the soul 1 imagined communities: creation of national 152; Latin America 101 – 102 Imagined Communities (Anderson) 102, 102 – 103, 104 imperialism, Korea 126 Indian Act, Ontario 160 Indigenous peoples, Québec 164 industrial attitude 109 Industrial Revolution 7 internationalism, nationalism and 256 – 260 Inverness Society for the Education of the Poor 70 James, William 256 James IV (King of Scots) 47 Japanese Empire 125 Japan-Korea Treaty (1905) 130 Joseon: Korea 124, 126, 137; Korean Confucian state 124, 126, 137

268 Index Joseon Dynasty, King Gojong 126 Joseon Language Society 132 Joseph, Franz (Habsburg Emperor) 87 Juárez, Benito 115 Juche, North Korea 141 Juche sasang: doctrine of North Korea 141; North Korea 142; self-reliance ideology 135, 136 Judson, Pieter 77 July Monarchy, France 62 – 63 Ju Si-Gyeong 130 Kalmar Union 41 Karađorđević, Alexander 83 Kativik Corporation 165 Kazakhstan: literacy textbooks 198, 254; post-Soviet transformation in 195; textbooks 199, 203 – 204, 207, 215 – 217, 220 Keijo Imperial University 132 Kim, Terri 254 Kim Dae-Jung, South Korea 136 Kim Gu 134 Kim Il Sung, North Korea 135, 136, 141 Kim Young-sam, South Korea 135 Kohn, Hans 3 Korea: Christianity and modern nationalism 126 – 130; Confucian state in 124; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 133; emergence of two Koreas in first half of twentieth century 130 – 133; ethnic identity 144n8; ethnic nationalism 142 – 143; ethnic nationalism and internationalism 139 – 140; ethnic nationalism in two nation-states 133 – 136; ethno-nationalist internationalism 137 – 141; ethnosymbolic approach 126; ideational contexts 140 – 141; identity as ‘one ethnic nation’ 143; internationalism in age of nationalism 137 – 138; Japanese efforts in educational system 130 – 131; nationalism 125, 254; notions of 124; poverty level 144n9; private Christian education 126; Republic of Korea (ROK) 133; role of Christianity 141 – 142; Social Darwinism 137 – 138 Korea Foundation 135 Korean History Seen through a Will (Ham) 142 Korean Language Society 132 Korean mythology and folklore 143n2

Korean shamanism 128 Korean War 134, 142 Kosi, Jernej 96n1 Kristoffer II (Danish King) 41 La Restauración Nacionalistsa (Rojas) 111 – 112 Latin America: apportioning nationalism through schooling 106 – 108; education for history of nationalism 120 – 121; from imagining to sharing 104 – 106; idea of nation 107 – 108; imagined communities 101 – 102; national identity in 101, 121; nationalism and 102 – 108; nationalism and schooling Argentina 108 – 114; nationalism and schooling Mexico 114 – 119; see also Argentina; Mexico Latvia: children within post-Soviet national landscapes 205; friendship of people 209; literacy textbooks 198, 254; postSoviet transformation in 195; textbooks 199 – 201, 204 – 205, 208 – 210, 220 Latvia and Lithuania: development of primers 177; faith in 175 – 176; “flaggings” of ethnic community and nationhood 173; historical background of 174 – 176; national curricula 255; national identity in EU legislation 173 – 174; research methodology for primers about nationhood 177 – 178 Latvian and Lithuanian primers: language of folklore in 185 – 187; . . . and others 181 – 182; representation of national “we’s” in 178 – 188; “roots fixed in the past” 185 – 187; setting the scene for life 178 – 179; “thank God for the sound of the old woods . . . ” 184 – 185; “tool kit” of nationhood 187 – 188; visualization of “our” nation 182 – 184; we . . . 179 – 181 League of Nations 176 Leitch, Neil 47 liberalism, Argentina 108, 109 literacies of childhood, Anthropocene 196 – 199 literacies of post-Soviet childhood: borders and boundaries 197, 204 – 207; children within post-Soviet national landscapes 203, 204, 205; children within Soviet modernization landscapes 200, 201, 202; cultural symbols as visible nationalism 197 – 198, 207 – 210, 212; homeland 198, 212 – 217; landscapes and nature 197,

Index 269 199 – 204; reconfiguring childhood and nation in Anthropocene 216 – 218 literacy textbooks 198, 219 – 220; metaphors of rootedness 217 Lithuania 259; Catholicism and 184; Fatherland 259; see also Latvia and Lithuania; Latvian and Lithuanian primers Lithuania, Our Homeland (song) 187 Lithuanian Nationalist Union 176 London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) 5n1 Lorain Paul 65 Louis-Philippe (King of France) 63 LSE see London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Lutheran, Lutheranism, Luther Protestantism, 184, 223, 225, 230, 242, 243 Malthus, Thomas Robert 68; moral education and Malthusian angst 69 – 71 mankind, second nature of 9 Maqāmāt-uṭ-Ṭuyūr (Conference of the Birds) 36 March First Independence Movement (1919), Korea 132 Margrete (Queen) 41 Maricic, Veronika 49, 125, 151, 173, 244, 250, 251, 252 Martín, San (Father of the Nation) 112 May Revolution 112 Méndez, Justo Sierra 115 methodological nationalism 257 – 258 Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) 114 Mexico 119, 121; identity work 107; mestizo identity 117; murals of nationalism of 116 – 117; national identity 106; nationalism and schooling 114 – 119; reconsideration of identity 101; schooling Mexican nationalism 117 – 119; see also Argentina; Latin America Miller, Nicola 101, 104 – 106 modernism 8, 105; educationally relevant keywords 11, 11; mass schooling as expression and facilitator 16 – 17 modernists, contemporary nationalism 17 – 18 modernity: Argentina 110; Korea 126; nation-thinking 8 modernization 18 Moral Statistics of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland 68

multiculturalism 216 Munk, Kaj 43, 44 Nahabet, Hayk, hero of Armenia 213, 214 nation 149 – 150; assumption of 55; concept of 24; identity-forming 3; study of 2; subject matter of 1 – 2; synonym for the state 3 National Constitution 114 National Council for Innovation, Norway 234 national education, concept of 19 National Enlightenment Movement 127, 129 national identification 8 national identity 3; global political idea 108; Latvian and Lithuanian primers 188 – 190; notion of 107; phenomenon of 152; Québec 166 – 167; social psychology 21 nationalism 2, 218; apogee of 77; apportioning, through schooling 106 – 108; attempts to understand 7 – 9; Canada 150 – 151; Christianity and modern Korean 126 – 130; culturally anchored individual (Sweden and Norway) 237 – 241; educational practice and 260 – 262; educational research 2 – 3; education as victim of 28; ethnosymbolism 49; internationalism and 256 – 260; Korea 125; Latin America and 102 – 108; methodological 257 – 258; modernist school of 95; murals of Mexican 116 – 117; post-Soviet textbooks 210; schooling Argentina and 108 – 114; schooling Mexico and 114 – 119; selfdetermination 138; theoretical discussion of 4; theoretical groundwork 151 – 153 Nationalism (Greenfield) 26, 31n11 Nationalism Reframed (Brubaker) 22 nationalism research 2 Nationalities Papers (journal) 3, 5n1 Nationality, everyday reproduction of 21 – 24 nationalization of culture 78 nationalizing state, concept of 78 national knowledges 255 national literacy/literacies 4, 13, 27, 28, 49, 50, 56, 129, 143, 177, 197, 216, 253, 255 national public education 27 Nation and Its Fragments, The (Chatterjee) 23

270 Index nation and nationalism theories 9; actual use of educationally relevant keywords 15; constructivism 21 – 24; educationally relevant keywords 11; educational knowledge as putty in explanatory architecture of 27 – 30; education and everyday reproduction of nationality 21 – 24; ethno-symbolism 18 – 21; functionalism 24 – 27; mass schooling as expression and facilitator of modernity and nationalism 16 – 17; modernism 16 – 17; modern state schools as transformation of ethnicity to nationality 18 – 21; national permanence and educational practices 17 – 18; primordialism 17 – 18; qualitative analysis 10; quantified physiognomy of education knowledge in 10 – 13; quantitative analysis 10; ranking of educationally relevant keywords 12; school as a cog in governmental machinery of nationstate 24 – 27; understanding uttered educationally relevant keywords 13 – 15 nation-building 19; Canada 150 – 151; Guizot-Enquête and in France 65 – 66; statistics in 55 – 56, 71 – 73; theoretical groundwork 151 – 153 Nation Building (Wimmer) 24, 25 nationhood: concept of 169; Latvian and Lithuanian primers 188 – 190; primers as “tool kit” of 187 – 188; research methodology on primers about 177 – 178 Nations and Nationalism (Gellner) 16 nation-states: differences and similarities 255; educational policy and 249, 250; national feeling or identity 56 Nazi Germany 85, 94 neoliberalism 217 New Rhetoric, The (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca) 259 Niels Ebbesen (Bruuns) 43 Niels Ebbesen (Grundtvig) 43 Niels Ebbesen (Munk) 43, 44 Niels Ebbesen af Nørreriis eller Danmarks Befrielse (Sander) 43 Nordic countries see Norway; Sweden North Korea 135, 254; ethnic identity 144n8; Sunshine Policy 136; see also Korea Norway: birth of the Nordic model of education (1950–1980) 233 – 237; cultural heritage 239; culturally anchored

individual nationalism (1985–2020) 237 – 241; curricula in 230 – 233, 237 – 239, 242 – 244; educational curricula 254; history syllabus 236 – 237; history 225 – 226; influence of Church on primary education 228, 230, 242; languages 232; literacy in curriculum 241; modernizing education 224; mother tongues 225 – 226, 231, 240; national constitution history 226 – 228; National Council for Innovation 234; national curricula for public schooling 229; national curriculum 234 – 235; nationalism and independence in 228, 230 – 233; nation and nationalism 241, 244; research questions 225; union between Sweden and 242; see also Sweden Norwegian “Constitution Day”, Elgenius on 23 Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie 259 Old Swiss Confederacy 57 – 58 Ontario 254; Aménagement linguistique 161; Canadian and World Studies 157; Canadian history 150, 157; citizenship education 158; curriculum 159, 160, 258; Franco-Ontarians 162; Frenchlanguage Services Act 156; high school courses 170n3; Indigenous peoples 160; language 161; notion of citizenship 161; Québec and 167 – 168; school systems of 157; see also Canada Ordinance on Joseon Education, Korea 131 Orozco, José Clemente 117 Our Country’s Flora 29 Özkırımlı, Umut 2, 8, 9, 30n1 Pacific War 138 Parent Commission 163 Park Chung Hee 134 – 135, 140 Passing of Korea The (Hulbert) 130 Patriotic Crusade 113 patriotism, impact of schooling on 16 Patriot Uprising, French-Canadian nationalism 164 Peace of Westphalia 137 Peasants into Frenchmen (Weber) 79 Perelman, Chaim 259 perennial model, nationalism 7 Peter I (King) 90 Phillips, David 4

Index 271 Pillars of the Republic (Kaestle) 25 Pledge of Allegiance, U.S. schools 21 Popkewitz, Thomas S. 71 Porfiriato, Mexican government 114, 115, 116 Portugal 103 Presbyterian Church: Korea 127; Scotland 70 Primera Junta (First Assembly), Argentina 108, 110 primers as self-portrait see Latvian and Lithuanian primers primordialism: educationally relevant keywords 11, 11; national permanence and its educational practices 17 – 18 primordial model, nationalism 7 Private School Ordinance, Korea 130 Protestant Christianity 25, 127, 128 Protestant Methodist Church, Korea 127 Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (KPG) 134 psychology 1 public school system, nation-building 26 Québec 254; Canada 162 – 167; curriculum 258; Histoire et éducation à la citoyennete (2007) 163; history curriculum 163, 163 – 166; Indigenous peoples 164; language 162, 166 – 167; Ontario and 167 – 168; Québec-Canadian history 150; word search 165 – 166; see also Canada Queen of Suffering (Ham) 142 radicalism 218 Raimund, Ferdinand 93 Reformation 1 religion, Latvian and Lithuanian primers 184 – 185 Renan, Ernest 35 Republicanism 103, 106, 107; Argentina 111, 119; conception of 225; Enlightenment 106, 108; French 225; liberal 112; Mexico 114, 120 Republic of Austria 79, 88, 92 Republic of German-Austria 78, 83 Republic of Korea (ROK) 125, 133, 140 Republics of Knowledge (Miller) 104 Republic, republicanism, republican ideas, republic citizens 50n2, 58, 60, 63, 89, 103, 104, 196, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 120, 225 Resisting Occupation (Darden) 14, 31n8

resource nationalism 197, 217 Rhee, Syngman 134 Ring, Ferdinand Edvard 43 Ringer, Luise, German Green Party 135 Risk society (Beck) 257 Robert I (King of Scotland) 47 Robert the Bruce 46, 48, 51n5 Rockwell, Elsie 119 Rojas, Ricardo 111, 120 Roman Catholicism, Korea 127, 128 rootedness 217 Rosier, William 35 – 36 Rothstein Bo 14 Russo-Japanese War 137 Rütli Oath 35, 50n1 Rwanda 3 Sadir Palvan, Uyghur hero 213, 214 Samin Pilji (Hulbert) 130 Sand Shlomo 121 Sander, Levin Christian 43 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 108 Savary, Ernest 35 – 36 Schiller, Friedrich 36, 93 Schleswig Question 42 Schleswig Wars 43 school(ing): apportioning Latin American nationalism through 106 – 108; key terms 12 – 13; ranking of keywords 12 Schooling, Educational Policy and Ethnic Identity (Tomiak et al) 3 schools, “doing nation” 4 Schriber, Hans 36 Schuschnigg, Kurt 93 Scotland 56; educational statistics 57, 66 – 71; heroic stories 34; William Wallace versus Edward I (English King) 44 – 49; see also Scottish Highlands and Islands Scotorum Malleus (“Hammer of the Scots”) 45 Scott, Sir Walter 44, 45, 48 Scottish Highlands and Islands: educational statistics of 66 – 71; education in Scotland 67 – 69; moral education and Malthusian angst 69 – 71 Scottish Parliament Act (1696) 67 Second World War see World War II Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) 115, 117, 118 secularization, organization of school 19 Sejong the Great (King) 130

272 Index self-determination, Wilson’s principle of 132, 137, 138 Severance Medical College 144n5 shamanism 221n4 Shils, Edward 30n1 Shin Chae-ho 139, 142 Siekmeier, James F. 102 Sigueiros, David Alfaro 117 Silla, Korea 124 Simpson, Robert 47 Sinclair, John 68 Sino-Japanese War 128, 138 Sivesind, Kirsten 254 Sloveneness, notions of 78 Slovene Yugoslavia 80; everyday school life 89 – 92; language of instruction 82, 86, 87, 89; laws and curricula 80 – 83; organizing celebration of national holidays 91 – 92; school books 95; subjects and textbooks for instruction 85 – 88; term 96n1 Slovenization, process of 82 Smetona, Antanas 176 Smith, Anthony D. 2, 18 Social Contract, The (Rousseau) 108 social Darwinism 137, 143n4; Korea 126, 129 Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) 83, 89 Social Democrats, Austria 80 Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Hroch) 10, 16 society, conception of 1 Society for the Education of the Poor 68, 70 sociology 1 South Korea 135 – 136, 254; ethnic identity 144n8; see also Korea sovereignty, concept of 169 Soviet Army 221n3 Soviet modernization landscapes: children within 200, 201, 202; see also literacies of post-Soviet childhood Soviet textbooks 199, 201 – 203 Spain 103 Spencer, Herbert 143n4 Stapfer, Philipp Albert 57 Stapfer-Enquête 57, 64, 71; ennoblement of nation by public education 58 – 59; structure, organization and funding as means of school reform 59 – 62; surveys of schools 57 – 62 statistics 253; nationalism and 253; nationbuilding 55 – 5, 71 – 73; see also surveys

Stewart, Alexander 47 Sungkyunkwan, Korea 124 Sunshine Policy, North Korea 136 surveys: educational statistics of Scottish Highlands and Islands 66 – 71; GuizotEnquête (1833) 62 – 66; nation-building by statistics 71 – 73; Stapfer-Enquête 57 – 62; statistics in nation-building 55 – 57; Survey of Canadians 168 Swales, John 251 Sweden: birth of the Nordic model of education (1950–1980) 233 – 237; culturally anchored individual nationalism (1985–2020) 237 – 241; curricula in 230 – 233, 237 – 239, 242 – 244; educational curricula 254; history 225 – 226, 232, 236 – 237; identity and culture 240; language in identity formation 239; literacy in curriculum 241; modernizing education 224; mother tongues and history 225 – 226, 231, 232, 240; national constitution history 226 – 228; national curricula for public schooling 229; national curriculum 234 – 235; nationalism and independence in 228, 230 – 233; nation and nationalism 241, 244; research questions 225; union between Norway and 242; see also Norway Swedish Bureau of School Experimentation 234 Swiss Federal Council Numa Droz 39 Switzerland: heroic stories 34; William Tell versus Gessler 35 – 39 Symbols of Nations and Nationalism (Elgenius) 22 Tales of a Grandfather (Scott) 45 Tamar (King), Georgia 213 Tamir, Juli 2 Tell, William 34, 35, 48, 50, 252; Switzerland’s, versus Gessler 35 – 39; tales of 44 Tengrism 217, 221n4 textbooks: Armenian 219; Georgian 219 – 220; Kazakhstan 220; Latvian 220; literacy 219 – 220; national literacy 49 – 50; Soviet 199, 201 – 203 Theories of Nationalism (Özkırımlı) 9 Thiesse, Anne-Marie 7 transitologies, concept of 143n3 Treaty of Ganghwa (1876) 126

Index 273 Treaty of Kiel (1814) 226 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en Laye (1919) 83 Treaty of Versailles 137 Troch, Pieter 87 Tröhler, Daniel 49, 125, 150, 151, 173, 176, 178, 224, 225, 226, 233, 244, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 256 Tudor, Margaret 47 Tyrolean rebellion 93 Ulmanis, Kārlis 176 Underwood, H. G. 131 Union of Crowns 47 Union of Parliaments 47 United Nations 25, 125 United Nations Command (UNC) 134 United States: Canadian border and 256; revolution 226 universal education 17, 106 University of Tartu 175 USAMGIK (United States Army Military Government in Korea) 133 – 134 Uslaner, Eric M. 14 Vakhtang Gorgasali (King) 213, 214 Valdemārs, Krišjānis 175 van den Berghe, Pierre L. 17, 28 – 29 Vasconcelos, José 115, 116, 117, 120 Vidovdan Constitution 83 Virtue of Nationalism, The (Hazony) 25

visible nationalism, cultural symbols as 207 – 210, 212 von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 92 Wallace, William 34, 35, 48, 50, 252, 254; Scotland’s, versus Edward I (English King) 44 – 49 Wallace cult 44 Wallner, Jennifer 254 Wars of Independence 35; Scotland 48 Weber, Eugene 31n7, 79 When is the Nation? (Ichijo and Uzelac) 28 Why Nationalism (Tamir) 25 Wilson, Woodrow 77, 132, 137, 138, 144n6 Wimmer, Andreas 14, 257 World Trade Organization (WTO) 258 World War I 25, 78, 80, 81, 150, 182 World War II 43, 165, 233 Yi Joseon Dynasty, Korea 130 Yonhi College, Korea 131 – 132, 133 Yonsei University 133, 139 Yugoslavia 87, 92, 94, 95, 260; education in 79; Slovenian areas of 81; state ideology 78; see also Slovene Yugoslavia Yun Ch’iho 138 Yushin order, Korea 140 Zrinski, Petar 90