ABSTRACT
In 1983 Ben Anderson wrote that ‘the consistent leit-motiv of the New Order governance has been the strengthening of the state qua state’ (Anderson 1990: 111). I would argue that that strengthening came about most effectively through the implementation of mass schooling. In this chapter I aim to explore the messages about the nation-state purveyed and internalized at school and the means by which this dissemination occurred. However, I also want to suggest that the process of creating national citizens in schools was, despite the homogeneous and authoritarian nature of the school system, an open-ended and potentially transforming one.
