Nations and Numbers: Elementary Mathematics Education as a Nationalizing Tool

Abstract

One of the central elements of the nation-building process in the 19th century wasthe attempt to homogenize the citizenry, i.e. to fabricate national citizens. Besidesthe military and church, schools were considered to be the main agencies capable ofachieving this national homogenization. In this paper, focusing on the education inSwitzerland and France, I argue that elementary mathematics education was alsoused for this particular purpose. I make the case that throughout the 19th centurymathematics education became a way to familiarize the people with a standardizedlanguage – a language that was supposed to help them master their specific social,cultural and political realities.Key words: mathematics education; nation building; Standard Language Ideology;state formation.

Nation-building by education statistics and data

“…Producing loyalty towards the nation-state, raising a "national feeling" or "identity" and fabricating the moral, educated subject were claims to be enforced through respective curricula, where the school subjects "geography" and "local history" played a prominent role (Winandy, 2018). These fields of knowledge, however, were not the only ones to help accomplish the task (Boser, 2020); the curriculum per se was considered a tool to educate future citizens (Tröhler, 2016;Horlacher, 2020a). However, while contemporaries repeatedly emphasized that schooling had to serve this goal, it was clear to all concerned that the existing schools could not do so properly because they were not sufficiently organized, not comprehensive and lacked suitable teaching materials.…”