Founding Ideas of Education Policy

Abstract

In terms of founding ideas, the early European understanding of education is not bound in its origins to the notion of an education state. Hume’s (1739) Treatise on Human Nature, Rousseau’s Emile (1762a) and The Social Contract (1762b), Herder’s (1774) Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Mankind, Fichte’s (1800) political essay on The Closed Mercantilist State and his Addresses to the German Nation (1808), as well as Kant’s (1795) Project for a Perpetual Peace describe no state privilege or precedence within the realms of upbringing and education, although they do deal with the circumstances and interrelations of the state, society, and citizens. In each of these publications, education is neither a self-evident prerogative of the state nor a key element of the theory of the state. According to this early social theory of political scientists, legal scholars, and economists, society joins its members together in two ways: on the one hand, via social contract and the law as citizens (citoyen) of a state, and on the other hand, via antagonistic cooperation as market subjects (bourgeois). In this period of history, education policy guaranteeing the maintenance of political power structures, economic progress, and the wealth of the people, or the cultural integration of a multifold populace, is not seen as a necessary precondition of the state.