Comparative Education and Empires

Abstract

There is a very large literature on Empires. There is a large literature on education and empires. However, there is only a small literature within comparative education on empires. Why? Given the numbers of people whose education was affected by Empires, given the stated intentions of those who created empires and imperial education systems, given the harmonies and tensions in most empires between politics and religion which played out in educational systems, and given some of the obvious differences between, say, the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Soviet Empires and their discourses and practices in education, the silence is loud. This article will, first, reflect on the ways in which changes in 'comparative education' helped to construct that silence. Second, it will trace a more recent change in comparative education which opens up the possibility to re-assess Empires as a core theme of work, not just in the 'history of education' but in comparative education. That argument is pursued fully in the third section of the article. The conclusion notes yet another change in the political positioning of comparative education as a university subject and suggests that, despite new obstacles, empires ought to be a topic in our future and not just in our past.

Concluding reflections: current issues and future directions for comparative studies in early childhood education

“…This runs the risk that national education contexts are handled as 'matters of fact' rather than 'matters of concern' (Sobe and Kowalczyk 2014), forming and informing discourses that have the power to govern and influence thinking about what is desirable and narrowing what is possible. This 'problemsolving-attitude', characterized by Cowen (2018) as the 'domestication of comparative education', has been pivotal in (re)producing normalising discourses that do not account for other ways of 'educating' and (im)posing 'values', 'comparative data', and 'facts', which may or may not be relevant to the realities of those being educated.…”

“…These articles contribute to the reflection that, as an interdisciplinary area centred on a geographical perspective of education, comparative education has evolved into several configurations rooted within diverse political agendas and various epistemological beliefs 3 (Cowen 2018). In other words, 'there is not one comparative education but several ' (ibid., 16).…”

Usos de la educación comparada en América Latina

“…En este marco, los estudios sobre policy borrowing and lending adquirieron una importancia central (Phillips & Ochs, 2004;Steiner Khamsi, 2010;Steiner Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). De esta manera, uno de los temas centrales de la disciplina, la transferencia, es vuelta a poner en consideración (Cowen, 2018b). Los estudios sobre las pruebas internacionales estandarizadas han también ocupado un lugar relevante en los últimos años dando lugar a fructíferos desarrollos conceptuales dentro de la educación comparada con el objetivo de mostrar la variedad de grises existentes entre los discursos globales y las decisiones de gobierno (véase entre otros Steiner-Khamsi, 2010; Verger, 2016; Addey & Sellar, 2018;Fischman et al, 2018).…”