ABSTRACT
Description of the control of education is almost wholly conceived of in terms of nation states. Accounts of educational change are most
commonly framed in national terms. Educationalists and sociologists, like historians, have been drawn to the study of national institutions and to observing the attempts to resolve national problems. It is easier and more convenient, the material can be more readily collected and synthesized, it is politic and it has become a tradition. The nation is an important social unit and the most obvious one to study. People live in nation-states and possess national consciousness. Moreover, as Shafer suggests, ‘as practitioners of the scientific methods, scholars are bound to look for distinctions, for differences of kind, level and function; and nationality is the most significant contemporary group distinction’ (Shafer 1955: 265).
