Karl A. Schleunes

Enlightenment, Reform, Reaction: The Schooling Revolution in Prussia

Of the revolutionary transformations that shaped the nineteenth-century European world, no one of them touched more directly the lives of the broad masses than did the development of the schooled society. The effecting of state-directed systems of compulsory elementary education (schooling) introduced into Europe the age of mass pedagogy. In Prussia and several of the German states where schooling began early in the century, and in France and England where it came a generation or two later, it produced changes in the structure of individual life and society that were both celebrated and feared. Even where schooling was not effected—as in Russia—the debate surrounding it was clamorous and often strident. Some believed it to be the fount of greatness, whether in politics, arms, or production. Others thought it would open the floodgates of social upheaval. Where schooling came to be effected, as well as where it was not, the questions surrounding it were at the center of political and social controversy.