ABSTRACT
There are many ways of describing, classifying and characterizing national systems of education. Green (1990), for instance, in examining the rise and development of state educational systems in England, France, Prussia and the USA in the nineteenth century, takes account of political, economic and sociocultural factors in seeking to determine the ‘beginning of modern schooling in western capitalist societies’ (p. 4). At the end of a long and painstaking analysis of all the relevant factors, Green concludes:
major impetus for the creation of national education systems lay in the need to provide the state with trained administrators, engineers and military personnel; to spread dominant national cultures and inculcate popular ideologies of nationhood; and so to forge the political and cultural unity of burgeoning nation states and cement the ideological hegemony of their dominant classes. (Green, 1990, p. 309)
Thus, although educational developments of the nineteenth century are bound to be linked with factors such as the industrialization, urbanization and emergent political democracy of the period, Green maintains that considerations of ‘statism’—the desire to consolidate the nation state per se-deserve pride of place among the origins and foundations of contemporary education systems.
