ABSTRACT
Why do education systems develop and how and why do they expand? This is not a question most policy makers and practitioners worry about in their busy lives. But the expansion of special education and the development of inclusive education cannot be understood without understanding how whole education systems develop and consequent relationships with the economy. Although there has been limited theoretical interest in the question we know from social historians that public education systems have emerged in western countries over the past two hundred years as nation states were emerging. The role of education in state formation in East Asian countries is also increasingly studied and debates include whether and how their systems developed prior or post industrialisation (Green 2013). Those creating and running the nation states eventually appeared to agree that education should be applied to all social groups and could serve a variety of social needs. There may have been a rhetoric, especially in an emerging USA composed of migrant groups, that education could help create a more cohesive society, and by the early 2000s the maintenance of social cohesion in a rapidly globalising world had become a key policy issue (Green et al. 2006). National governments increasingly hoped that education and training and the inclusion of more young people who were previously excluded, could increase social cohesion. But that hope has always foundered on the contradiction that in western societies mass education was never oriented towards a common good, but developed from economic, social, political and religious interests, often in competition with each other. It remained cohesive for other purposes as, in some countries more than others, the hierarchical structures of education systems and the accompanying ideologies, ensured the reproduction of lower social groups.
