Do Educational Models Impose Standardization? Reading Pestalozzi Historically

Abstract

After the American Independence and the French Revolution, the European authorities were faced with the problem of how to integrate the people that were no longer “naturally” assigned to the traditional estates of the realm. Education was one of the core concepts of the new, national integration, and the actors that promised by virtue of their educational method the future, without betraying the old order fundamentally, were the celebrated men. The unmatched star of this quasi-free European education market was Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), whose teaching method was implemented in uncountable private and semi-private educational institutions in all Europe. This disseminate gives reasonable grounds to expect a comprehensive European standardization within all these Pestalozzi-schools. However, this chapter shows that beyond a rhetorical level these educational institutions hardly changed the locally anchored organizational and pedagogical arrangements. Standardization, then, turns out to be rhetorical, formal, and covers the organizational and pedagogical varieties below the easy-to reach visible structures.

* A draft of this chapter was first presented at the conference of International and National Standardization and Differentiation of Education Systems from a Historical Perspective, Monte Verit à, August 28-September 2, 2011.