Growing-Up Modern: The Western State Builds Third-World Schools

by Bruce Fuller

Overview

The modern state – First and Third Worlds alike – pushes tirelessly to expand mass education and to deepen the schools’ effect upon children. First published in 1991, Growing-Up Modern explores why, how, and with what actual effects state actors so vehemently pursue this dual political agenda.

Bruce Fuller first delves into the motivations held by politicians, education bureaucrats and civic elites as they earnestly seek to spread schooling to younger children, older adults and previously disenfranchised groups. Fuller argues that the school provides an institutional stage on which political actors signal their ideals and the coming of greater modernity; broadening membership in the polity, promising mass opportunity in the wage sector, intensifying modern (bureaucratic) forms of school management, and deepening a presumed commitment to the child’s individual development.

Fuller advances a theory of the ‘fragile state’ where Western political expectations and organisations are placed within pluralistic Third World settings, using southern Africa as an example of the dilemmas faced by the central state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415594950
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/26/2010
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: Development
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1. A Faithful Yet Rocky Romance Between State and School 2. What Drives the Expansion and Deepening of Mass Schooling? 3. Winding up Schools: The State Constructs Teachers’ Roles and Tools 4. Strong States, Strong Teachers? 5. Choice, Community and the Teaching Craft