Cries of crisis and educational reform. An analysis of the Austrian rural school-renewal movement in the mid-20th century

This paper analyses the role crises played in the debate on rural school reform in Austria, 1947/48–1965. The publications produced in this context, including the proceedings of relevant conferences and articles in teachers’ journals, form the basis of this study. They often dealt with social crises – particularly the social and cultural upheavals caused by the modernisation of rural areas – and offered better schooling as a remedy. My analysis shows that perceptions of crisis and concrete proposals for reforming rural schools were two mutually supportive strands of discourse. While the reference to the current crisis situation pointed to the social importance of education and supported demands for adequate funding, the pedagogical debate provided an arena for discussing the current situation, at the same time pointing to a possible way out through pedagogical measures. Around 1960, however, a profound socio-political paradigm shift took place that made both the earlier crisis diagnoses and the earlier reform approaches seem obsolete. The actors involved in rural school renewal took this paradigm shift on board. They abandoned most of their previous positions, but not the basic idea that pedagogy could make a decisive contribution to shaping a desirable future. My study shows how in a pedagogical debate the actors’ horizons of expectation and the underlying definition of a crisis may change against the background of actual historical developments, which should make us more cautious about the role education can play in addressing current crises.