Moulding democratic citizens: democracy and education in modern European history – an introduction

ABSTRACT Politicians and intellectuals across Europe largely agree that democracies require educated citizens. However, current conflicts surrounding disinformation on social media, right-wing populism and religious fundamentalism seem to cast doubts on the democratic maturity of Western societies. At the same time, controversies exist around the thorny issue of what kind of education befits democracy and whether and how governments should intervene in the political education of their citizens. These controversies have a long and complicated history, which stands at the centre of this special issue. By both exploring how states, political parties and social movements tried to shape political identities and assessing the resulting successes, failures and contradictions of these attempts, the articles provide a unique window into the conflicted history of West European democracy. Educational programmes attempted not only to empower individuals, but also to manage, control and frame political and civic engagement. While these schemes also always entailed the promise of equality, in practice, they often identified certain social groups – such as women, the working classes or immigrants – who ostensibly lacked the moral or cognitive preconditions for democratic citizenship and therefore needed special educational attention. The individuals to be educated did not passively give in to the competing programmes of governments and political movements. Rather, they often circumvented or even openly resisted educational schemes from above that sought to change their lifestyles and political consciousness. In order to place the articles in this special issue in a wider historiographical context, this introduction illuminates the nineteenth and early twentieth-century roots of the tensions that haunted the endeavours to educate post-1945 democratic citizens.