National literacies, or modern education and the art of fabricating national minds

Abstract

The general thesis of this article is that ‘nation’ and ‘state’ are often understood as almost equivalent and that this understanding has led to aberrations in educational research, not only with regard to citizenship but also with regard to questions of modernity, claims of globalization, visions of a coming world culture, or even the proclamation of the end of history. The assumed equivalence expresses a particular discourse that traps reflections and research alike, and this discourse is borne by those nation-states that have profited the most from the coupling of the idea of the nation with the idea of the state―that is, foremost, England, Germany, France, and the United States. Two related shortcomings are identified: the large underestimation of nationalism in education and curriculum research and the ignorance of education in the theoretical study of nationalism. The more precise thesis of this article is that we will never understand nationalism in all its layers if we exclude education from the study of nationalism, and that we will never understand modern education if we exclude nationalism in the emergence of the modern nation-states.