Review
"Winner of the J. David Greenstone Book Prize, Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association"
"Winner of the Critics' Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association"
"Honorable Mention for the Jeffrey R. Henig Best Book Award, Education Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association"
"Phenomenal."---Alice Evans, Rocking Our Priors
"A tour de force. It takes a lot of work—and even more courage—to challenge the dominant theories in your field. . . . That’s precisely what Paglayan has done. Analyzing an astonishing array of sources from Europe and the Americas. . . . Paglayan shows that the vast majority of school systems predated democratization and industrialization, and they more commonly flourished to suppress dissent at home than to rally people against a foreign enemy."---Jonathan Zimmerman, Education Next
"Raised to Obey encourages readers to rethink conventional explanations about the origins of primary education. The book offers compelling evidence of how primary education has been utilized by the state as a tool of control. While the arguments presented by Paglayan may initially seem unsettling, she provides valuable insights that can guide the creation of more meaningful education policies in the future— insights that should not be ignored. I highly recommend Raised to Obey to anyone interested in education and state-building - it will most likely change the way you think about both things!"---Xenia Heiberg Heurlin, Weekendavisen
"A fresh perspective. . . . [Raised to Obey] has opened my eyes to how governments shape these systems and reminded me of the importance of staying critical and vigilant about educational policies. . . . While we may not be able to change the system on our own, we can still guide the younger generation around us. By teaching them to think independently and encouraging them to become active and caring members of society, we can help build a future that values growth over control."---Sekar Sedya, Sekar Writes
"Raised to Obey is now the new standard in global educational history."---Thomas Fallace, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"Deeply reseached. . . . Raised to Obey is a valuable contribution to the ongoing education policy debate in the United States and beyond. It makes clear that public schooling has, in many cases, not been created primarily to empower students, but for social control. To anyone other than the biggest paternalist, that should be concerning."---Neal McCluskey, Law and Liberty
"Bold is the scholar willing . . . to argue that the institution of mass schooling in the West was undertaken not to advance liberty and social progress, but rather to gain control over and indoctrinate unruly masses. This is the claim of Agustina Paglayan’s ambitious and important Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education."---Rita Koganzon, History of Education Quarterly
"An ambitious and compelling reinterpretation of the origins of modern education systems. . . Paglayan argues that states promoted mass schooling first and foremost to indoctrinate the masses to accept the state’s authority, and did so especially when faced with social unrest that heightened their fear of the ‘unruly’ masses. . . The work not only contributes to historiography and comparative education, but also offers analytical tools to rethink contemporary debates on the political function of schooling."---Mariano Narodowski, Comparative Education
"A creatively and carefully researched book. . . . Highly recommended."---Choice Reviews
Review
“This marvelous book addresses a central paradox in economic development: human capital is central to prosperity, but state efforts at primary schooling often have hugely disappointing payoffs. Agustina Paglayan’s resolution of the paradox is that states did not primarily intend schooling to increase worker skills. Their motivation for schooling was to indoctrinate citizens to accept the political status quo. This empirically compelling research will forever change thinking about education.”—William Easterly, author of The Tyranny of Experts
“What promoted the expansion of public primary education systems? Which states became involved in regulating them? Paglayan provides a compelling and profound answer in this pathbreaking book: state-regulated primary education systems emerged fundamentally as a state-building tool to increase the state’s capacity to forge social order through indoctrination. With the use of original data collection across the world, statistical analyses, archival evidence, and a series of carefully crafted case studies, Raised to Obey compellingly demonstrates that fear of internal conflict, crime, anarchy, and the breakdown of social order are the key factors that prompted governments to regulate and expand primary education rather than democratization, industrialization, or a desire to improve living standards. This masterful analysis is an essential book for scholars of comparative politics, education policy, and social welfare provision, and policymakers interested in understanding the long history of state-regulated primary education and what this can tell us about the nature of the education systems we have today.”—Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University
“The creation of mass education is not about economic productivity, but about state formation and social control. You will never think about human capital the same way after reading this pathbreaking and iconoclastic book.”—James A. Robinson, University of Chicago, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics
“This sweeping and impressive work forces us to rethink well-accepted ideas about the relationship of the state, democracy, and modern education. A major contribution to the study of state-building and comparative politics generally.”—Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard University
About the Author
Agustina S. Paglayan is assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and nonresident fellow at the Center for Global Development. Her work has been covered by The Economist, the Washington Post, Devex, NPR, and NBC.
