Movements of the Mind Education, Emancipation and the History of Equality
Research Project
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01.08.2021
- 31.07.2027
Since the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions education has been promoted as a cure-all for the defining social and political problems of industrializing societies and modern statehood. Since the 18 th century education became a powerful twofold promise: of individual and collective emancipation and civic equality on the one hand and orderly and harmonic development and rule under rapidly changing economic, social and cultural circumstances on the other. The bottom-up and the top-down sides of the promise of education were not easily reconciled. Almost as soon as public education systems first began taking shape in 19 th century Europe and beyond, a quarrel arose over whether such institutionalized education schemes rather served emancipation or domination. Against the backdrop of this recurring controversy my project is about the intellectual and mental dimension of emancipation and equality. To this effect, I will analyze the role that the question of education played in - and in between - the workers, women's and anti-colonial and civil rights movement and how those social movements interrelated with the public education system. Positioned at the intersection of education and social movement history my project will bring the rich, but as of yet often separate historiographies in closer dialogue with each other. Furthermore, my project will also draw on and contribute to the recently emerging scholarship on the history of equality.
