The Educationalization of Social Problems Around 1800

Abstract

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi is the star of a specific cultural shift that occurred around 1800 and that can be labeled an “educational turn.” This educational turn describes a development that occurred in Northern and Western Europe as well as in the United States of America, when variously perceived problems came to be interpreted as educational problems. This phenomenon, the educationalization of social problems, became discursively established towards the end of the eighteenth century and then led to the foundation of the modern school in the context of the nation-states during the nineteenth century. Today, it continues unabated and finds expression in the framework of the World Bank, the United Nations, UNESCO, and the OECD. It is based on the premise that the central problems of the present and planning for the future are educational concerns.