Nearly every country today has universal primary education. But why did governments in the West decide to provide education to all children in the first place? In Raised to Obey, Agustina Paglayan offers an unsettling answer. The introduction of broadly accessible primary education was not mainly a response to industrialization, or fueled by democratic ideals, or even aimed at eradicating illiteracy or improving skills. It was motivated instead by elites鈥� fear of the masses鈥攁nd the desire to turn the 鈥渟avage,鈥� 鈥渦nruly,鈥� and 鈥渕orally flawed鈥� children of the lower classes into well-behaved future citizens who would obey the state and its laws.
Drawing on unparalleled evidence from two centuries of education provision in Europe and the Americas, and deploying rich data that capture the expansion of primary education and its characteristics, this sweeping book offers a political history of primary schools that is both broad and deep. Paglayan shows that governments invested in primary schools when internal threats heightened political elites鈥� anxiety around mass violence and the breakdown of social order.
av福利社 the Author
Agustina S. Paglayan is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and nonresident fellow at the Center for Global Development. Her work has been covered by The Economist, the Washington Post, Devex, NPR, and NBC.