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Podcast: New Books in Western European Studies
Episode: Agustina Paglayan, "Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Description: How the expansion of primary education in the West emerged not from democratic ideals but from the state's desire to control its citizens.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: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education (Princeton UP, 2024), 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 wa...