Obedience School

• A central argument of this book is that episodes involving mass violence that contribute to an atmosphere of social unrest and political instability are likely to increase national elites’ willingness to invest in primary education in order to prevent future threats against the state… they lead elites to conclude that repression and redistributive concessions alone are insufficient to prevent social disorder.
  • –Agustina S. Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education.1 (page 108)
  In her book Raised to Obey, Agustina S. Paglayan presents the thesis that governments introduced mass education not to empower their citizens, but to control them by indoctrinating them as children. She argues that this thesis is supported by evidence concerning the timing of when states introduced mass education, the arguments that persuaded governments to provide mass education, and the training and direction that governments provided to teachers.

  By the 1800s, ruling elites were finding that conventional tools of social control, such as a national church, were not sufficient to quiet their populations. Revolutionary fervor emerged as a threat. Rulers became attracted to the theory that primary education could be used to train subjects to obey.

  Mass education is a relatively recent phenomenon. Paglayan writes,

  • While in the 1850s only one in ten children were enrolled in primary schools worldwide, by 1940 a majority of children had access to schooling, and today, almost all countries provide universal or near-universal primary education. (page 12)

  She argues that in Europe the spread of primary education preceded industrialization and democracy.

  • The leader was Prussia, which established comprehensive education regulations in 1763… while still maintaining an absolutist regime and an agrarian economy. By around 1850, a majority of children in Europe were already enrolled in primary school. (page 13)

  In the world as a whole, she summarizes data from more than one hundred countries:

  • … governments began to systematically monitor primary schools on average sixty-five years before democratization. (page 48)

  Mass education also was not closely tied to industrialization.

  • England was an industrialization leader and education laggard, whereas Prussia was the opposite…. In the early 1850s, many decades after England had begun to industrialize, less than 9 percent of English children were enrolled in primary school. (page 62)

  The United States was not a leader in primary education, either (although when enrollment began to rise, it did so rapidly). Teacher training was done by so-called Normal Schools. The first one to be established in the United States was in 1839. By that date, “there were already 264 Normal Schools throughout Europe.” (page 59)

  “Influential philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were confident that human behavior could be shaped by education.”

  Influential philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were confident that human behavior could be shaped by education. Hobbes and Rousseau, in particular, emphasized the need to train children to be obedient.

  • Hobbes argues that education is what makes man fit for society and what ensures social order…. The “instruction of the people in the essential rights of sovereignty” by the sovereign is therefore “not only his duty, but his benefit also,” because this education provides “security against the danger that may arrive to himself in his natural person from rebellion.” (page 95)

  She quotes Rousseau in his Discourse on Political Economy, writing that “there should be laws for childhood that teach obedience to others” and that, “Public education under rules prescribed by the government, and under magistrates prescribed by the sovereign is, then, one of the fundamental maxims of popular or legitimate government.”

  • Rousseau’s work illustrates the different types of education that Enlightenment philosophers envisioned for elites versus the rest…. Emile, however, is not a book about mass schooling; it focuses on the upbringing of a rich man’s son by his private tutor. The pedagogy… differs from the idea he advances in other works that the state should educate all children for the sake of cultivating obedience. (page 99)

  The Prussian model for schooling, which was admired and adopted elsewhere, was explicitly authoritarian. One of its primary theoreticians was Johann Felbiger.

  • A school manual for teachers written by Felbiger in 1768 instructs teachers that every student must memorize the following answers:
    • Q: Who is subject to the power of the ruler?
    • A: Everyone…
    • Q: From whence comes the power held by the ruler?
    • A: This power comes from God.
    • Q: Whom does God ordain?
    • A: Everyone who holds authority. Because all who exercise authority are ordained by God, subjects must be submissive, loyal, and obedient, even to a ruler not of our religion…
    • Q: What does it mean to resist authority?
    • A: To resist authority is to rebel against the divine order. (page 104)

Also in Prussia,

• … the king himself expressed the concern that if peasants learned too much, they might reject their place in society and migrate to the cities in search of better opportunities. The solution, according to his policy advisers, was to establish separate mandatory curriculums for rural and urban schools so that what children learned in rural schools would prove worthless in getting a city job—an approach that was adopted by other countries. (page 197)

Paglayan carefully reviews the historical development of state-run mass education. She claims that,

• … the main goal driving the creation of national primary education systems was to shape the moral character of the lower classes to eradicate their “barbaric,” “violent,” “anarchic” predisposition and thus prevent future episodes of mass violence. (page 123)

Because rulers saw education as a critical tool for maintaining order, they took a strong interest in how schooling should be undertaken.

• To successfully expand primary education in accordance with the state’s goals, states also needed a large number of teachers who had both the willingness and ability to implement the state’s educational agenda—an “army of teachers.” What was to be done to ensure that teachers would be loyal agents of the state inside the classroom? Here, central governments became directly involved in training aspiring teachers through state-controlled institutions often called Normal Schools, a name that alluded to their goal of normalizing or standardizing every aspect of teaching. In addition, most national laws of the nineteenth century established teacher certification requirements, including the requirement for aspiring teachers to show proof of their moral uprightness. (page 184)

For me, Paglayan’s thesis raises a number of questions.

• • Did the state-sponsored primary schools achieve their intended goal of indoctrinating the masses?
• • If so, did they achieve this goal too well? Does this explain the otherwise puzzling fact that by 1914 the masses were enthusiastic supporters and willing participants in the brutality of the First World War?
• • To what extent do ruling elites continue to control primary schools today?
• • To what ends do today’s elites try to shape schooling?
• • How significant is it that schools of education in America (the contemporary equivalent of Normal Schools) are far to the left?
• • Is state control of schooling still necessary to ensure social order?
• • What would society look like without heavy state involvement in primary schooling?

Her thesis is that government’s interest in primary schooling was to indoctrinate children to obey. Other histories of schooling tend to tell a much more benign story. If Paglayan is correct, then libertarians ought to be even more inclined to make the case for separation of school and state.

Footnotes

[1] Agustina Paglayan, Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education. Princeton University Press, 2024.