Education and State Formation

Abstract

We have seen in the preceding discussion the difficulties that arise from attempts to link the development of education directly with changes in the economic and social structure of society. The relationship between educational forms and changes at the level of productive technique and economic skill requirements is indirect and highly mediated by other factors. Equally, the connections between educational development and the changing social conditions of labour are complex and by no means constitute a relation of direct and immediate correspondence. Neither urbanization nor the proletarianization of labour are linked, in any simple or transparent way, with the development of new forms of schooling. The difficulties facing reductionist theories of this kind are fully apparent in the problem they face in explaining uneven educational development in different countries where this bears no clear relation with the levels of development of the forces and relations of production pertaining in them.