Secondary education and the formation of elites

Abstract

The national and international historiography of education has highlighted the elitist character of secondary education, predominant from its birth to the first half of the 20th century, evidenced in the small number of schools and students enrolled, in the discretionary policies aimed at this teaching branch and in the purposes oriented towards selectivity materialized in the curriculum. As “the all-powerful middle empire” (FEBVRE, 1939 apud LUC, 2005), secondary education identified itself as a cultural strategy of the elites, which aimed at its modernization and reproduction.