This book will provide useful context for professionals looking at the history and philosophies of different education systems.
Education and state formation: Europe, East Asia and the USA (second edition)
Synopsis
In this second edition of his book on the origins of public education in England, France, Prussia, and the USA, Andy Green shows how education has been used as a tool for successful state formation in the past, and how that is now being applied in the developmental states of East Asia.
Green seeks to explain the very uneven development of schooling in 19th-century Europe and North America, and more specifically to explain the relative backwardness of education in England and Wales, especially in the vocational area. While human capital theories have focused on how schools and colleges supply the skills for economic growth, Green shows how the forming of citizens and national identities through education has often provided the necessary condition for both economic and social development.
He concludes that education can have direct effects on social outcomes, through raising cognitive abilities and through socialisation into particular sets of values and identities, but many of these direct effects are highly influenced by national contexts.