Do educational models impose standardization? Reading Pestalozzi historically

Resumen

In the years around 1800, European states saw themselves confronted by a new problem: in the wake of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen – a key document of the French Revolution – and its partial implementation by Napoleon, individuals were per definitionem free and equal. New notions of human freedom had not only led economic and intellectual leaders to take arms against the state (in the American colonies, against British rule; and in France, against Louis XIV). They also led populations in various states to begin defining themselves as a “society,” i.e. as collective that was distinct from the state itself. However, new definitions of society and the individual raised various questions concerning social integration. Previously, the absolutist state, which had legitimated itself through the doctrine of raison d’état, had laid claim on the allegiance of the individual through the administrative tools of policey, i.e. through complementary agendas of social assistance and control (Foucault, 1981). It is no coincidence that Policeywissenschaft (“policey science”), which had been taught since 1727 at German universities, broke down after 1800: Society wanted and needed another form of social integration than the caste system of the absolutist state.