Introduction

Historically, the education reform movement tends to be assigned to the period between the end of the 19th and the first third of the 20th century: 1880–1930, 1889–1924/1925, or 1890–1933. The industrial states in Europe first established full general schooling in the late 19th century, a process that was associated with the disciplining of society as a whole. Modern schools switched “public education from conveying knowledge within the immediate environment to the dynamic of knowledge and the related learning achievements”. The German Bund fur Schulreform, which was founded in 1908 and whose members included teachers from all types of schools, as well as school administrators, university lecturers, and interested laypersons, was interested in founding comprehensive schools and in reforming academic teacher education. In 1924, Fritz Karsen published 12 reports from experimental reform schools, most of which were state-run elementary schools.