ABSTRACT
The role and function of an education system, and of the teachers within it, have not recently and suddenly become matters of pressing political concern. Deliberation on such issues has been accompanied-indeed has largely prompted-the formation of systems since national systems were first conceived. The key word here, indeed, is ‘national’, because it was the creation of the nation-state that largely explains the development of the education systems we know today. Thus, the majority of the older education systems around the world-such as those in Germany, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan-were initially conceived at a time when these countries were preeminently concerned with questions of state formation. This was for a number of reasons: they might still be in the process of formation, in which ties were as at least as much to the local as to the national (France, Germany, United States); they might just have gone through a revolutionary period which called into question old assumptions, and/or were still seeking a legitimacy for their rule (France, Italy); or, finally, they might have gone through a period of foreign military and cultural invasion, and needed to establish their own cultural and political legitimacy (Germany, Japan, Italy). Their primary functions then were not initially driven by concerns for social equality, of a desire to spread a love of learning, or even with the advancement of economic performance by providing a workforce with the requisite skills and attitudes to service the industries of the countries involved. Instead, as Green (1997, p. 35) argues, they were designed
…to spread the dominant cultures and inculcate popular ideologies of nationhood, to forge the political and cultural unity of the burgeoning nation-states, and to cement the ideological hegemony of their dominant classes.
