Schooling the Nation: Enlightenment Education Reform

Enlightenment thinkers believed that education could shape better people and citizens, and some states began to act. Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) stressed character, curiosity and learning through play. In Prussia, Frederick II's General School Regulation of 1763 required children to attend school from about age five until they could read and write and knew the basics of religion.

Austria's General School Ordinance of 1774, drafted by the educator Johann Ignaz von Felbiger under Maria Theresa, created a system of elementary and higher schools. In France, after the Jesuits were expelled in the 1760s, writers such as Louis-René de La Chalotais called for national education run by the state rather than the church. Reality lagged behind the laws: many rural children still worked rather than attended school, and teachers were often poorly trained.

Rulers also wanted obedient subjects and soldiers, not only enlightened minds, showing that schooling served state power as well as individual improvement.