El Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales tiene el agrado de invitar a la presentación del libro Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education (Princeton University Press, 2024) de Agustina Paglayan (University of California San Diego). La presentación estará a cargo de la autora. Germán Lodola (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) y Mariano Narodowski (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) harán comentarios. 

Abstract: Nearly every country today has universal primary education. But why did governments in the West decide to provide education to all children in the first place? In Raised to Obey, Agustina Paglayan offers an unsettling answer. The introduction of broadly accessible primary education was not mainly a response to industrialization, or fueled by democratic ideals, or even aimed at eradicating illiteracy or improving skills. It was motivated instead by elites’ fear of the masses—and the desire to turn the “savage,” “unruly,” and “morally flawed” children of the lower classes into well-behaved future citizens who would obey the state and its laws. Drawing on unparalleled evidence from two centuries of education provision in Europe and the Americas, Paglayan shows that governments invested in primary schools when internal threats heightened political elites’ anxiety around mass violence and the breakdown of social order. These disciplinary roots remain at the core of how most public schools around the world operate today. The future of education systems—and their ability to reduce poverty and inequality—hinges on coming to terms with this troubling legacy.