Keywords
education
modernity
How to Cite
Abstract
This article constitutes a historical account of the development of modern schooling, with a prime emphasis on the epistemological changes that took place in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. While earlier historians who focused on this same period presented a benevolent account of the growth of modern schooling, I adopt a more critical view. As I demonstrate in this article, characteristics such as a fragmented disciplinary curriculum; a privileging of rational and objective knowledge codified in book form; a mechanistic view of the natural environment as detached and wholly different from human nature; and a totalizing pedagogy that controls every moment and movement of students, were all features that emerged during this time frame and became an integral part of the ethos and organization of modern schooling. With this article I hope to contribute to our understanding of how the school as an institution was carved into the modern psyche with such potency that it overshadowed most other forms of the intergenerational transmission of culture.
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