Victor Karady
Course proposal starting in the academic year 2003/2004.
The growth of knowledge. Literacy, elite education and social history (4 credits)
This is a course of comparative social history accounting for the developement and modernisation of the institutional educational provision in Europe, with special focus on Central Europe.
. Besides attending the course students will be expected
to study the mandatory readings and report on them in public discussions arranged in class
to study the relevant historical documents and the files of (mostly) statistical, anthropological or literary nature they will occasionally receive for interpretation in class
to write an original essay on a topic fixed with the Professor or on one of the chosen studies of the list of further readings, not discussed in class (10 + pages)
to prepare over the last week-end of the course a written exam paper on one or several topical questions raised in the course (to be sent by e-mail to the Professor by Monday following our last session)
Participation in the course discussions, course paper and exam paper will count equally for the final grade.
As a rule most of the 16 sessions of three academic hours each (150 minutes) will consist of
an introductory exposé by the professor on the topic of the day for which some lecture notes will be accessible to students upon their demand
the discussion of the mandatory readings
the exposé by one student on her or his personal assignment
occasionally, the interpretation in common of special documents and files and the methodological problems they raise
Programme
1. What is education ? An agency, among others, of social reproduction. Other agencies of and schemes for the reproduction of social order : families, peer groups, extra-mural organisations, inheritance systems. The technical functions of schooling are teaching, socialization and certification of competences. Its social functions include elite reproduction and legitimization, support to upwards social mobility, fragmentation and internal stratification of elites, cultural homogenization of society and assimilation of non dominant groups, professional training of service elites, certification of entitlements to elite positions, definition of cultural hierarchies, conservation of collective cultural memory.
2. Main topics and problem areas of the social history of education. Oral and written cultural traditions and the changing hierarchies of culture. The economics of educational supply : investing agencies and the resources they mobilize (Churches, States, private bodies, aristocracies, propertied or learned members of the elite). Degrees of correspondance between educational investments and levels of economic development. The cost efficiency of educational investments and the nature of educational markets, mostly dominated by the supply, rarely by the demand. Historically changing relationships between supply and demand. Social inequalities of access to schooling : the impact of class, denomination, urbanisation, gender, family size, etc. Differential uses of educational credentials following the same variables. The hierarchical structure of educational provisions and the effect of social segregation. Inclusiveness and the measurement of the global performance of educational provisions. The concept of ’educational capital’ as against economic and social capital.
3. Literacy and primary education. The educational functions of the Church from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century. The special cases of Jewish and Protestant religious literacy. Processes of nationalisation, State control and public support of primary schooling. The introduction of school obligation from the 18th (Prussia) to the 20th century (Eastern Europe). The measurement of literacy : signatures, census data, retrospective census data by age groups, etc. Comparative study of the growth of the proportion of the literate across Europe (19th-20th centuries). Literacy, size of the school network, number of teachers and classes, equipment (libraries, etc.), budgets of primary education. Examples of the social, ethnic, denominational and regional inequalities of primary schooling and literacy in various East Central European countries since the late 19th century.
4. Elite education : the late medieval origins and the development of classical secondary schooling during Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The role of initiation of monastic schools organized by the Benedictine and the Cistercian Congregations (6-12th century). Monastic schools, parish schools, cathedral schools and the establishment of the canon of classical Christian learning. The educational programmes of the Hussites and the Chech Brothers in Bohemia and the protagonists of Reformation. The Piarists and the Jesuits as competing leaders of the educational Counter-Reformation. The growth of the Jesuit network of colleges, the first international paradigm of elite schooling in the Christian world. The expulsion of the Jesuits (1773) and the beginning of State policies of ’national education’ in continental Europe.
5. Elite education : the systematisation of modern secondary schooling in the 19th century and later. Passage from Latin to national language tuition. The main Western patterns : Britain (’public’ and ’comprehensive’ schools), France (lycées of the Napoleonian ’Université’) and Prussia (classical State gymnasiums). The Prussian model in Austria-Hungary since the Ratio educationis (1777) to the Entwurf (1849). The Prussian model in Russia and in the Balkans. The modern hierarchy of secondary training in the Habsburg Empire from the Dualist period (1867) till the socialist reforms : gymnasium, Realschule, Bürgerschule, commercial and/or industrial college, Normal school. Costs, fellowships, school discipline, time allocation, social and professional entitlements of degrees and certifications of levels of schooling. .
6. The invention and development of classical universities (till the 18th century). Antecedents in the classical European antiquity and in the ’dark centuries’ of the Christian Middle Ages. The Christian-monastic, the Jewish and the Muslim tradition of higher learning before the 12th century. The organisational pattern of the first universities (Bologna, Paris, Oxbridge, etc.) : the studium generale, the nationes, the ’liberal arts’, the faculty system, the status of students and masters, pedagogical practices, academic degrees and entitlements, the exclusive authority of Aristotle. Social life and peregrinations in medieval and Renaissance universities. The growth of the network in Western Christian Europe. The cases of Prague, Cracow and Vienna, the first Central European Universities. Early instances of cultural specialisation and the proto-nationalism of advanced learning with the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren. Divisions and modernisation of the European university network during the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation (16-18th centuries).
7. National universities and higher education in the 19th and 20th century. New elite educational agencies for the nobility (like the Ritterakademies) and the reform of classical universities since the 18th century in Prussia and in other countries. Switching from Latin to national language tuition, new disciplines, new curricula, new study methods. The diversification and the nationalisation of the European university system : the impact of Halle, Göttingen and the Humboldt University in Berlin (1808) : emergence of the Prussian type modern research university pattern. The contrasting cases of the Napoleonian Université de France (1808-1810) as a State run educational bureaucracy and the survival and partial diversification of the British system of gentlemanly higher learning. Nation building, political and cultural modernization and the birth of national university networks in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Universities, polytechnics and vocational higher education. The role of Vienna Universities in the Habsburg Empire. Extension of the demand for higher education : comparative age specific data in various European countries. Investments and socially selective recruitment policies (numerus clausus) in Eastern and Central Europe before and after the First World War.
8. Nation States and their intellectual infrastructure : academies, learned societies, reading circles, opera houses, music conservatories, concert halls, museums, libraries, archives, art collections, theatres and the invention of the ’national cultural heritage’. The role of foundation of absolutist monarchies, estate owning aristocracies, regional urban elites, monastic orders and Church authorities. Western academies of arts and sciences and academic learned societies as models for Eastern Europe. Pieces of the intellectual infrastructure instrumental in the symbolic nationalisation of public space, especially learning and cultural production. The uses of ’national’ cultural institutions in the construction of nation states as symbols of political integration and cultural socialization of nation building elites. Competing institutional initiatives in Bohemia (Czech and German), in Transylvania (Hungarian and Saxon), in Galicia (Polish and Ukrainian) and elsewhere.
9. International student migrations and the cultural dominance of the West. The pre-modern pattern of ’poor’ vagrant students in Europe disappears with the nationalization of universities since the 18th century. Reemergence of a new trend of student migrations in the late 19th century. The focal role of Vienna universities for the Austrian Empire till beyond 1900. The first big wave of East-West migrations (from the 1890s till 1914) to German, Swiss, French and Belgian universities. The over-representation of Jews and women among migrant students. Differential patterns of choice of faculties, branches of study and specialisations of migrants as against local students. The orientation of student migrations, cultural bonds and loyalties as well as international relations of East European elites. Social functions of migrations for the students concerned and for host universities. The transformation of the international market for higher education from the outgoing 19th century to the Nazification of Central Europe and the Balkans (with Italy and Britain as new mass suppliers on the market).
10. The socialist and post socialist policies of education in East Central Europe. Educational reforms, expansion and the new clienteles of elite training in the Soviet Union and in the satellite States. The elimination of illiteracy and investment strategies in advanced technical, medical and scientific higher education. Data of the diversification and the growth of student populations on various educational levels with some East-West comparisons. Data on changes of the social recruitment of pupils and students. Sports, polytechnical training, sciences, Russian and the ideological formation in the socialist educational pattern. Intellectual downgrading and upgrading, pedagogical bureaucratization and political control of elite education. The transformation of the free professions into branches of publicly employed intellectual clusters. Feminisation, restratification and downward social levelling of the educated middle class brackets in the socialist regime. The new start after 1989 : shift of the stress on new technologies, business economics, law and applied sciences. The growth of educational demand and the partial privatization of elite training as exemplified in the multiplication of local and competing secondary and higher educational institutions.
11. Women’s education, secondary and higher. Primary schooling for girls was largely brought into line with that for boys in the 19th century. Higher studies for girls are a later development in the outgoing 19th century. Differential initial secondary curricula for boys and girls (without Latin). Equalization of girls’ lyceums and gymnasiums after 1920 in Estern and Central Europe following Western (French and German) patterns. Admission of women to the Medical and Arts Faculties (and their continued exclusion from Law and Theology) in the outgoing 19th century in Western and Central Europe. The social and intellectual ’over-selection’ of women students as against men in pre-socialist Central Europe. Gender specific inequalities of study choices till after 1945 in various parts of Europe. The disappearance of intellectual incapacities of women and the feminisation of some intellectual professions (like teaching and Medic ine) in the Soviet Union and the satellite States. Feminisation, social prestige and (d)evaluation of the market position of professions. The progress of coeducation. Women in various branches of scholarship and the sciences. The end of the patriarchal family and developments in the sexual division of labour in family socialisation.
12. Education, modernisation and economic development. Reflections on possible models of covariation with recourse to international comparisons of educational investment and economic growth. Case studies : stagnation of the demand for elite training in Austria-Hungary during decades after the Ausgleich (1867). Voluntarist educational expansion policies in economically backward socialist countries. Tentative analyses of economic costs and returns of the extension of literacy and the growing proportion of secondary and higher graduates. The spread of `educated illiteracy` in the most developed industrial societies, a reversal of the centuries old trend of modernisation.
13. Programmes, contents, values. The evolution of secondary school curricula during the educational modernization of Central Europe in various school types and levels of schooling. The opposition between ’long’ elite studies and short ones (not leading to higher education). Objectivations of the shifting stress on Latin, ’national’ subjects, foreign languages and Maths. Cultural canons and educational shedules by the number of hours dedicated to various disciplines and differences in grading. Political or cultural loyalties, bonds and references as expressed in the teaching of foreign or ancient languages (Latin, Greek, German, French). Contrasting hierarchies of (stress on) subjects in the Arts and Sciences in Western and Central Europe.
14. Quantitative social inequalities of education : social class specific, ethnic and denominational access differentials in Central Europe. Presentation of some basic data on global social group specific uses of secondary and higher educational institutions. Patterns of social segregation and preferential enrollment policies in the Habsburg Empire. The case of Jewish and German over-schooling in non Germanic Eastern Europe. The criticism of statistical data on educational recruitment and technicalities of the production of purely ethnicity or denomination specific evidence on participation on various levels of education. Some East West comparisons of the ’democratisation’ of the recruitment in higher education before 1945.
15. Qualitative social inequalities of education : attainment differentials, drop-out rates, age specific probabilities of graduation, duration of studies, disciplinary options, etc. Presentation of various indicators to measure qualitative inequalities by social class, denominations, ethnicity, residential background, family size, housing conditions, etc. Experimental research results on purely ethnic group specific achievement differentials in the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere. Subject specific variations of performances in gymnasiums and Realschulen in the Habsburg Empire and elsewhere. Differences in the career orientation and scholarly options of secondary school graduates by social variables and those of educational performance. Students of various faculties and branches of study in higher education by social class, ethnicity, denomination and achieved educational performance at secondary school graduation in the Habsburg Empire. The specificity of the Jewish trend of over-achievement in ’hard’ subjects and under-qualification in sports and some other secondary subjects.