The Expansion of Primary Education, 1870-1940: Trends and Issues

Research on the expansion of mass education has been limited to the post-World War II period and mainly to Western Europe and North America. The few studies of other regions and periods have tended to rely on the case-study approach. Thus, an accurate assessment of competing theoretical explanations is partially constrained by the limited scope of empirical evidence. This article seeks to overcome this weakness by analyzing new estimates of primary enrollment rates for 126 nations and colonies from 1870 to 1940. Overall, the authors found that the expansion of primary education was more uneven, tentative, and varied during this period than in the post-World War II period. The analyses suggest that social, economic, political, and religious conditions were more important in determining the extension of mass schooling in the 1870-1940 period than in later periods.