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Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education

Published By Princeton University Press •
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Featuring
Agustina Paglayan
Agustina Paglayan

Professor, University of California, San Diego

We tend to think of public education as a ladder of opportunity—a system that ensures that no matter a child’s economic circumstances, they will get the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in life. But what if that’s wrong? Indeed, what if the goal is actually the opposite: to keep people docilely in their place, no matter how bad their situation?

This is what Raised to Obey, grounded in deep, original research on the timing and targeting of mass education, contends. Public education was very often created not to give children what they needed to do or be whatever they wanted but to keep people in their place.

Please join us to discuss this idea and public education.

Raised to Obey
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Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education

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.

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