Introduction: The Upper Secondary Tier and the Place of Science Therein

Abstract

Upper secondary schooling arguably predates mass basic educational provision by centuries. Until well into the nineteenth century, the sons of the European aristocracy and the wealthier mercantile class, after completing a period of home schooling by private tutors, were dispatched to schools that drilled them in all the eminently useful things a young gentleman needed to know, such as Latin and the Greek classics, in preparation for university study. In functional terms, upper secondary schooling could be regarded as having existed well before the term secondary schooling entered the educational lexicon. Mass public schooling took off in the nineteenth century with a principal view to instilling the "3 Rs" - reading, writing, and arithmetic. Until the early decades of the twentieth century, most Europeans did not progress beyond primary schooling. Then came the working-class emancipatory movements and the meritocratic notion that education is the key to success in life for anyone regardless of social class at birth, fuelling a social demand for postprimary and, subsequently, upper secondary schooling. The evolution of school systems thus has two historical starting points - one at the top and one at the bottom of what was to become the formal schooling pyramid.