Presents a brief biography of Martin Luther, focusing on his work as a reformer of education. Discusses what is known of his childhood, his life in an Augustinian monastery, his posting of the 95 theses against the sale of indulgences and other abuses of the Catholic Church, and his call for universal compulsory schooling. (CT)

The National League of Compulsory Education Officials, beginning with its 13th annual convention in 1923 and ending with the 30th annual convention in 1940, published annual proceedings of each convention. This article includes both a topic and presenter index and a summary of the 1935 and 1941 annual conventions, based on newspaper articles, for…

This paper gives a brief overview of Jurgen Habermas's concept of communicative action, followed by an overview of an empirical study of patterns of communication between teachers and students in English post-compulsory education. The paper sketches the ideas of Habermas about the possibility of human interaction that is free from domination. It…

The Scottish "exam results crisis" of August 2000 appeared to reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the Higher Still reforms introduced the previous year. For a time the future of the reform seemed to hang in the balance. Yet Higher Still was the product of the consensus which emerged from the "Howie debates" of the early…

Educators are increasingly critical of State compulsory education laws. Argues that these regulations do little to assure that the basic goals of schooling are achieved. Commenting briefly on this thesis are Sidney P. Marland, Jr., B. Frank Brown, John Brubacher, Paul Salmon, and Juanita Jones. (Author)

Positions the school as a site through which cultural responses to material conditions are played out. Identifies responses to three waves of modernization--universal schooling, postindustrial society, and commodified electronic culture--that are accompanied by specific cultural forms such as youth culture. Suggests that these forms are sites for…

Compulsory mass schooling has its origins in social control, resulting in authoritarianism and violence against students in the form of punishment. Control, power, and authoritarianism are also linked to schools' role in fostering violent behavior among students. (Contains 44 references.) (SK)

Over the past decade, "knowledge" has become a key policy buzz-word. This is particularly evident in policy material on education, science and research, where references to the importance of building the "new" knowledge society and economy abound. This article discusses two examples of these new knowledge discourses at work in…

All over the world formal education is the responsibility of the modern state setting constitutional and legal provisions as well as executing the mechanisms of planning, administration, and control. In principle, this responsibility has not changed since the modern state emerged in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century, regardless of the…

We estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings using the changes in compulsory schooling laws for secondary schools in West German states during the period from 1948 to 1970. The German school system streams students into three separate types of secondary schools and the change in compulsory schooling laws affected students in the…

The aim of this article is to present and discuss the background to and the result of my thesis "Openness and awareness--a phenomenological study of music teaching and learning interaction", which studies music teachers in Swedish ordinary schools teaching pupils aged from 10 to 12. The aim of the study was to describe, analyse and try…

In this paper we perform text analysis on the new Cross Thematic Curriculum Framework Syllabus Design for compulsory education, which was constructed by the Hellenic Pedagogical Institute and is soon going to be applied in Greek schools. This curriculum text is treated as a policy text which introduces important changes in Greek school practice,…

This paper tests for the impact of school size, measured by number of pupils, on academic performance at age 16 controlling for exam scores 2 years earlier. Schools of more than at the most 600 pupils tend to achieve poorer public exam results in the long run and a higher proportion fail to gain any qualifications. School size affects attendance…

Peace education is a key for establishing and maintaining a consensual peace. Creating an effective peace education program involves five steps. First, a public education system must be established with compulsory attendance; all children and youth should attend so that students from the previously conflicting groups interact and have the…

There is a widely recognised national trend for girls to outperform boys at all levels of compulsory schooling. With few exceptions, however, most recent research has reported that, in relation to academic performance at university, men are proportionately over-represented at the First Class level. A number of general hypotheses have been put…