Curriculum history or the educational construction of Europe in the long nineteenth century

peer reviewedAlthough it is generally acknowledged that the building of mass schooling systems must be considered in close relation to the emerging nation-states of the long 19th century, few published studies discuss the interrelation between the actual foundation of the (nation-) states and the introduction of the modern school. This article examines the role that constitutions play in the construction of national citizens as an expression of a particular cultural understanding of a political entity, and then discusses European examples, indicating how the particular constitutional construction of the citizens of European countries almost immediately triggered the need to create new school laws designed to organize the actual implementation of the constitutionally created citizens. The focus is on the specific need to ‘make’ loyal citizens by creating the symbiosis between the nation and the constitutional state and by emphasizing the cultural differences between the individual nation-states and their overall curricula. The article concludes with a formulation of research desiderata which envision a transnational curriculum history that is emancipated from both national and global research agendas, enabling a European education history that respects cultural distinctions rather than levelling them into one grand narrativ