ABSTRACT
Using longitudinal and comparative data derived from both elementary and secondary school curricula, the chapter describes empirically the important large-scale transitions in the categories of language instruction since the mid-nineteenth century. It proposes several speculations about how legitimate transnational educational ideologies and conventions came to be reflected in the organization of language instruction in national educational systems around the world. Throughout the history of education, language instruction has constituted a core element of the formal and informal socialization of young people. Long before the rise of mass education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there existed intense popular concern about, and demand for, literacy in many European countries. Partly due to the taken-for-granted character of language instruction in the modern world, the actual content of language instruction in national curricula has seldom been considered problematic in educational research, even though the content and organization of language instruction has always been subject to changing ideological currents and reforms.
