ABSTRACT
Daniel Trohler has sought to establish beyond doubt the connection between educational policy and the building of modern nation-states. He has not done this by making his point within a detailed case study of a specific country. His aim is altogether more ambitious and theoretically important. He seeks to show how educational policy is related to state-building across the globe. Trohler and Maricic make their point by demonstrating that the main theoretical works on nationalism all assume that educational processes were involved in creating the new citizenry of the new nation-states. Schools had to teach their pupils how to become national citizens. The stories about the David heroes are more than stories about individuals, who happen to prevail over more powerful opponents, but these are national “salvation stories.” If investigators are to look at the processes of education in the present day, they need not rely on official, or unofficial, documents.
