Introduction

Has there ever been a more winsome protagonist than David Copperfield in the universe of coming-of-age stories? David, Charles Dickens’ own favorite child, remains plucky against tremendous adversity, sweet-tempered in the face of foul treatment, optimistic against all odds, and triumphal against the injustices of nineteenth-century Britain. The mature David recollects with pride: “I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence…whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well” (Dickens Reference Dickens1850, 574). In sharp contrast, young Conrad is the architect of his own near demise in Danish author Thomasine Gyllembourg’s Montanus the Younger (Montanus den Yngre 2019/1837). Like David, Conrad is proud of his vision and determination; however, Conrad’s arrogance, self-congratulation and disregard for society nearly derail his compelling plans for improvements in textile manufacturing technology. Life improves for Conrad when he submits to the sound judgment of his elders, who share with Conrad a deep regard for industrial progress.

Travel a century back in time and the pattern holds. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (2011/1719) ignores his father’s advice, leaves home without saying goodbye, and succeeds with entrepreneurial ingenuity in becoming wealthy beyond measure. Meanwhile, Ludvid Holberg’s Niels Klim (1845/1741) learns to suppress his immature judgments and to accept the wisdom of elders. While British novelists credit the individual’s struggle against repression for the victories of their young protagonists; Danish authors locate success in interventions that bring their young heroes back in touch with societal norms.Footnote ¹

This chapter explores how repeating cultural narratives, such as the ones found above, help us to understand how successive generations of education reform resonate with familiar assumptions about educational goals, society, class, and state. First, I consider how cultural touchstones play a role in processes of institutional continuity and change. Repeating cultural tropes in fiction influence the drivers of institutional change: the ways that new ideas about education are interpreted in different countries, the ways that interest groups imagine their preferences for education reform, and the manner in which institutional norms shape processes of negotiation over education. The repeating narratives within a country make it more likely for some types of reforms to be more easily implemented and sustained than others; reforms that align with cultural values tend to be more durable across time. But these iterative cultural tropes also shed light on the continuities within processes of institutional change: Why even at the moment of radical change, new institutions retain some familiar cultural assumptions.

Second, the chapter develops a theoretical model explaining the structure of cultural artifacts as found in literature and the transmission of these symbols and narratives from one generation to another. Cultural work transpires through the agency of cultural actors (as was discussed in Chapter 1), but the structure of national cultural tropes also plays a role in long-term processes of institutional change. At a structural level, each country has a distinctive “cultural constraint,” or a set of cultural tropes (symbols, labels, narratives, and repertoires of evaluation), that appears in the national-level aggregation of cultural products (such as literature), persists through successive epochs, and helps denizens of the country to make sense of the world (Geertz Reference Geertz1973; Swidler Reference Swidler1986; Lamont Reference Lamont2000; Alexander Reference Alexander2003). Fiction writers inherit symbols and narratives from their literary predecessors and are influenced by the core cultural assumptions of these inherited literary narratives as they write fiction addressing new social and political issues (Williams Reference Williams1963; Jameson Reference Jameson1981). In this way, literary tropes are passed down through generations. These cultural influences do not determine the outcomes of specific political struggles, as the force of cultural interpretations depends on the clash of interest group politics. As was discussed in Chapter 1, writers help to make specific cultural frames relevant when they join forces with other activists in political struggles. Yet from the bird’s eye view, clear cross-national differences in the structure of literary symbols and narratives persist collectively over the longue durée. Authors collectively renew and reproduce cultural touchstones that persist across time, differ cross-nationally and resonate with British and Danish educational trajectories.

Third, I develop an empirically quantifiable method of assessing cross-national distinctions in literary depictions of education. The raw materials for this analysis consist of corpora of national literature from 1700 to 1920 (including 562 British, and 521 Danish major fictional works). Using quantitative text analyses, I construct snippets of text around education words and calculate the frequency of words within these education snippets associated with the dimensions of education. Topic modeling and cluster analysis are used to further investigate cross-national differences.

If distinctive cultural symbols and narratives broadly resonate with diverse national paths toward education, then we would expect to find strong cross-national differences in these cultural tropes. These cross-national differences should pertain to the goals of the public education system (for the individual versus society), access and differentiation (perceptions of the working class and emphasis on skills), and mechanisms for educational oversight (views toward the state and regulation). As predicted, Danish snippets of text are more likely to include references to society, workers, skills, and state than British snippets. British snipped are more likely to include references to individuals and assessment than Danish snippets. The cross-national differences in the corpora appear to contribute to institutional change processes in education. With respect to ideas, literary references to education build in advance of reform movements, suggesting that authors helped to put issues on the public agenda. With respect to interests, literary depictions associate different qualities with the working class. With respect to institutions, literary depictions in the two countries demonstrate diverse attitudes to the state and cooperation.

This model suggests a new way of thinking about mechanisms for continuity within processes of institutional change. Cultural touchstones provide a somewhat autonomous channel for institutional continuities that is separate from the path dependencies associated with institutional and policy legacies. Unlike policy legacies that build on lessons from the past, cultural touchstones influence our mental frames each time we engage in political negotiation. Our repeated behaviors are not about remembering policy legacies but about acting according to culturally constructed norms. The cultural constraint sheds light on why people repeat their mistakes even though negative policy legacies should warn them away from a given policy option. The approach offers a measure of cultural influence that is independent from the cultural element within institutions.

Moreover, this method for evaluating the transmission of cultural depictions over centuries allows us to observe that a nation’s set of cultural symbols and narratives have a physicality that may be measured and mobilized politically (Orlikowsky and Scott 2015). Identifying cultural inspirations and processes of meaning-making are vexing to those who wish to interpret historical events correctly. Yet with this method, intangible culture is expressed in tangible cultural depictions that reveal deep cross-national differences in cultural assumptions about collective life. Literature lets us engage with the past in real time and expand our capacities for assessing historical cultural transmission (Watts Reference Watts2002). Political scientists only fleetingly use literature in their work (Yazell et al. Reference Yazell, Petersen, Marx and Fessenbecker2021), yet this analysis also suggests that literature constitutes a promising new direction in the cultural turn within political science.

The Puzzle of Institutional Continuity and Change

Despite major institutional changes in education system development, both Britain and Denmark sustained some continuity in their apparent cultural assumptions about education. In Britain, cultural themes included a commitment to individual self-development; a view that the working class was flawed by a culture of poverty; expectations of high levels of class, party, and religious conflict; and continuous battle over the role of the state versus the church and other private actors in education (Green Reference Green1990). These cultural expectations permeated successive British institutional experiments: the late development of a public primary education system (in 1870), the reliance on private voluntary church schools, and the 1902 secondary education act that effectively ended earlier experiments in vocational training.

While sharply divergent from the British path, the Danish trajectory also evidenced cultural continuities through major institutional shifts. Denmark readily accepted a central role for the state in education and created a public primary school system in 1814; however, primary education was expanded with subsidized private religious schools. Grammar schools for classical studies were established by the state in the early 1800s; yet the multi-faceted secondary education system in 1903 included multiple tracks and a post-primary course to prepare students for vocational training programs (Gjerløff and Jacobsen Reference Gjerløff and Faye Jacobsen2014). Yet throughout these shifts, Danish reformers sustained cultural views in their commitments to the strengthening of society, comparatively positive views of farmers and workers, and expectations of cooperation. Even when national policymakers satisfied activists’ demands for parental rights and the right to develop private alternatives to the state schools in the mid-nineteenth century, they created strong governing bodies with local school boards. Moreover, private schools never served more than eight percent of students and these largely disappeared by century’s end (Kålund-Jørgensen 1953–6, 481).

The puzzling endurance of cultural values through major shifts in education systems has bearing for broader questions about development, continuity, and change in historical institutional theory.Footnote ² Two historical-institutional models are particularly important to our understanding of institutional change processes. Punctuated equilibrium models describe acute, abrupt, discontinuous changes that are prompted by exogenous economic, political and social dislocation; and these dramatically transform institutions. Path-altering institutional changes often follow paradigm shifts that transform overarching political goals; choices taken at critical junctures have lock-in effects or increasing returns, and time-based sequencing matters enormously (North Reference North1990; Weir Reference Weir1992; Hall 993; Baumgartner and Jones Reference Baumgartner and Jones1993; Pierson and Skocpol Reference Pierson, Skocpol, Katznelson and Milner2002; Capoccia and Ziblatt Reference Capoccia and Ziblatt2010).

Incremental models of institutional change explore processes that transpire over time, often underlie apparent institutional stability, and entail endogenous erosion (rather than exogenous shocks) that undermine the status quo. Bottom up models of change may happen without exogenous shocks and occur as coalitions of actors convert institutions to new purposes. Processes of displacement, layering, drift, conversion, and exhaustion may lack intentional action, yet they may transform radically the status quo through evolutionary dynamics (North Reference North1990; Hacker Reference Hacker2002; Streeck and Thelen Reference Streeck and Thelen2005; Mahoney and Thelen Reference Mahoney and Thelen2010). While these models describe slightly different processes of institutional change, both incorporate a role for ideas, interests and norms for collective political engagement as drivers of institutional change.

Both punctuated equilibrium and incremental models confront puzzling aspects of institutional change processes. First is why countries differ with respect to the drivers of institutional change: the adoption of new ideas, the expression of interests and the performance of institutional rules. A second puzzling aspect concerns the variation in the scope, durability, and legitimacy of institutional innovations. A third question concerns continuity within institutional change, and this is particularly perplexing when full-scale displacement brings new institutions to diverge significantly from policy legacies so as to constitute a profound redistribution of authority (Orren and Skowronek Reference Orren, Skowronek, Lieberman, Valelly and Mettler2016).

The following section considers how cultural frames provide context for the drivers of institutional change, the endurance of institutional change processes and the persistence of continuities at moments of profound institutional dislocations.

Culture and Processes of Institutional Change

Conceptions of Culture

That cultural conceptions have some bearing on institutional design and policy choices seems instinctively true; yet, one wonders from whence these cultural values come and how they are transmitted across time periods and shifting economic, political, and social circumstances. How do we define ideational variables and demonstrate their relevance to institutional change processes (Berman Reference Berman2013)? How do we study cultural values from centuries past when empirical assessments of public opinion date back only to the twentieth century? Many agree that culture constitutes a system of meaning and suggest that durable dispositions, cognitive frames, and culturally proscribed collective identities – in addition to individualistic materialist interests – shape political preferences and action (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1993; Geertz Reference Geertz1973; Wedeen Reference Wedeen2002; Swidler Reference Swidler1986; Lamont and Thévenot Reference Lamont, Thévenot, Lamont and Thévenot2000). Yet we must understand the precise mechanisms by which cultural influences contribute to political practices.

This section surveys the ways that scholars study cultural work and I then explore the role of literature in cultural analyses. First, as we discussed in Chapter 1, some authors identify cultural agents as vessels of cultural influence. A relatively autonomous, separate stratum of cultural actors (including writers of literature) developed in Europe by the eighteenth century, constituted a social field that was separate from political and economic fields, and established its own set of rules and laws (Williams Reference Williams1963; Foucault Reference Foucault and Young1981, 58; Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1991; Znaniecki Reference Znaniecki1952, 26; Keen Reference Keen1999). Cultural actors became increasingly autonomous from power relations rooted in the political economy, and this allowed authors to serve functions associated with nation-building, legitimizing governance structures and reproducing class structures (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1991, 655; Williams Reference Williams1963). Eighteenth-century members of the state nobility increasingly derived their legitimacy from cultural capital (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1991, 655).Footnote ³ Religious actors and ideologies constituted a special group of cultural influence, particularly on social policy and educational development (van Kersbergen and Manow Reference Van Kersbergen and Manow2009; Kahl Reference Kahl2005; Petersen et al. Reference Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen2010; Grzymala-Busse Reference Grzymala-Busse2015, Reference Grzymala-Busse2023).

Second, others explore cultural values as these are embodied in institutions. Cognitive or symbolic elements (together with social practices and material resources) constitute a core component of institutions (Scott Reference Scott2001, 48–51; DiMaggio and Powell Reference DiMaggio and Powell1991; Dobbin Reference Dobbin1994). The cultural, symbolic element of institutions are crucial to the evolution of public policy regimes (Fourcade Reference Fourcade2011, 1724) and modes of cooperation in industrial relations (Martin and Swank Reference Martin and Swank2012; Morgan and Hauptmeier Reference Morgan and Hauptmeier2020). Yet the manifestation of cultural constructs in institutions does not fully meet the criteria for cultural autonomy posed by Alexander (Reference Alexander2003, 13), namely that cultural influences be observed in a medium that is separate from the political institutional manifestations of culture that one wishes to explain.

Third, culture appears as a phenomenon of everyday practice, for example, in citizens’ civic activity. Cultural practices put into place at revolutionary moments matter to the trajectories of the revolution, to the nature of status quo politics thereafter and to the authenticity of democratic regimes (Fishman Reference Fishman2019). Cultural symbols and narratives help to legitimize new forms of governance; in this regard, they contributed to the development of collective identities in the European Union (Halle Reference Halle2014; McNamara Reference McNamara2015).

Finally, a view of culture as code suggests that symbols and narratives constitute a web of social meaning and have a patterned influence on social interactions (Geertz Reference Geertz1973, 5). For example, culture as code may be observed in the structure and logic of cultural scripts in texts and other media (Sewell Reference Sewell2005, 167).

While all of these approaches have much merit in shedding light on cultural work, Alexander (Reference Alexander2003, 13–23) suggests necessary rules for the use of culture as a political variable. One must establish the relative autonomy of cultural influences or find ways to assess manifestations of culture apart from their embodiment in political policies and institutions (Guiso et al. Reference Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales2006; Spillman and Strand Reference Spillman and Strand2013, 95). It is also necessary to articulate the transmission mechanisms for cultural reproduction. A theory of cultural work should include a role for both structure (culture as systems of meaning) and agency (users of cultural practices) (Sewell Reference Sewell2005, 156–66).

Mechanism for Cultural Transmission: The Cultural Constraint

With Alexander’s warnings in mind, I develop a model for the manifestation of culture in literature in the tradition of looking at culture as code; namely, the model analyzes the coded cultural artifacts found in the symbols and narratives of fictional works that appear over time in literature. Certainly, transmission of cultural code operates through both the structure of literary code (explored in this chapter) and the agency of writers (presented in Chapter 1). Indeed, writers create cultural artifacts to have a specific impact and their target audiences interpret social and political experiences with reference to these cultural artifacts (Griswold Reference Griswold1987). But the accumulated symbols and narratives have a force that exists somewhat independently of the cultural actors who created these touchstones.

At a structural level, each country has a distinctive “cultural constraint,” or an aggregation of cultural symbols and narratives that appears in corpora of national literature and that is produced by all authors as a group. The cultural constraint is predicated on the idea that political and social actors draw from a country-specific “cultural toolkit” – which includes symbols, narratives, labels, and mental maps – to formulate strategies and to ascribe meaning to social problems (see also Swidler Reference Swidler1986, 273–6; McNamara Reference McNamara2015; Wedeen Reference Wedeen2002, 713; Idriss-Miller Reference Idriss-Miller2018; McDonnell et al. Reference McDonnell, Bail and Tavory2017; Schudson Reference Schudson1989, 160). Lamont and Thevenot (Reference Lamont, Thévenot, Lamont and Thévenot2000, 5–6) document the “repertoires of evaluation” – or cultural scripts organized around concepts such as market performance or civic solidarity – that suggest symbolic boundaries among social groups, mold our assessments about what is worthwhile, delineate positives and negatives, and help to articulate the collective good. For example, countries espouse diverse constructions of social goods and social evils (Alexander Reference Alexander2003, 6). The tool kit is heterogeneous and does not predict specific choices; yet it provides some continuity in style of action, even when goals of action change (Swidler Reference Swidler1986, 273–6).

Fiction writers act collectively as purveyors of the cultural touchstones; they inherit cultural tropes of their national literary traditions from the past and rework symbols and narratives to address current issues (Williams Reference Williams1963; Guy Reference Guy1996, 71). The national aggregation of symbols and narratives are passed down through generations, are used by cultural actors to depict social and political phenomena, and help citizens to interpret their world. We may observe not only the agency of individual writers, but also collective trends within the body of national literature, and even highly original writers draw upon the cultural touchstones of the past. As each generation redraws cultural touchstones, one finds continuity in tropes and the reiteration of master narratives over successive epochs.

The silence of the corpus is telling: What authors do not address with their works is as important as their intended ambitions for influence. Familiar touchstones inform the political unconscious, (or gap between authors’ intended goals and their subtext messages) that is unacknowledged by the text (Jameson Reference Jameson1981). For example, in The Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys portrays the insane and incarcerated first wife in Jane Eyre from the vantage point of race and gender in Victorian England and highlights the gap existing between Bronte’s intended goals and the sub-textual messages (Fessenbecker Reference Fessenbecker2016). Kipling recognizes the political power of the national corpus when writing: “The magic of Literature lies in the words, and not in any man. Witness, a thousand excellent, strenuous words can leave us quite cold or put us to sleep, whereas a bare half-hundred words breathed upon by some man in his agony, or in his exaltation, or in his idleness, ten generations ago, can still lead whole nations into and out of captivity” (Kipling Reference Kipling1928, 6).

This view of culture as code suggests that each country has its own cultural DNA or a particular assortment of symbols and narratives in its cultural toolkit and that distinctive cultural profiles resonate with perceptions of policy problems and solutions. Cultural touchstones and repertoires of evaluation are unevenly distributed across nations, and some countries are more likely than others to access certain cultural tropes (Lamont and Thevenot Reference Lamont, Thévenot, Lamont and Thévenot2000, 5–6). Nation-specific meanings – and some relative cohesion in the interpretation of core issues – provide the basis for collective political identities (Spillman and Faeges Reference Spillman, Faeges, Adams, Clemens and Shola Orloff2005, 424). We might further surmise that cross-national differences in these accumulations of cultural touchstones have deep, historical roots. Certainly, Danish author activists grounded their notions of Nordic collectivism in the Nordic myths and made claims that the Vikings had high levels of internal social solidarity, even while they engaged in predatory practices abroad (Grundtvig Reference Grundtvig1832; Oehlenschläger 1974/Reference Oehlenschläger1830; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard and Broadbridge2019). British writers were more likely to draw inspiration from Greek and Roman mythology, and more Gothic, conflict-embracing versions of myths from the north (Gross Reference Gross2008).

At least four cultural dimensions differentiate societies from one another and have bearing on political choices. Countries vary along an individualistic-collectivist fault line that matters to conceptions of society and collective social identities (Znaniecki Reference Znaniecki1952; Petersen et al. Reference Petersen, Petersen and Christiansen2010; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2004; Stråth Reference Stråth and Wegner2015; Oyserman et al. Reference Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier2002). Countries diverge in their cultural conceptions of class cleavages (Crouch Reference Crouch1993; Lamont Reference Lamont2000; Martin et al. Reference Martin, Nijhuis and Olsson2022). Symbols and narratives in novels may politicize or demobilize marginal groups; and stories of resistance become vital weapons in movement mobilization (Swidler Reference Swidler1986; Lamont and Thévenot Reference Lamont, Thévenot, Lamont and Thévenot2000; Ewick and Silbey Reference Ewick and Silbey2003). Countries vary in their notions of trust and patterns of cooperation (Rothstein Reference Rothstein2005; Tabellini Reference Tabellini2010; Putnam Reference Putnam1993; Alesina and Guiliano Reference Alesina and Giuliano2015, 914). Cultural attitudes also vary cross-nationally in attitudes toward government (Brubaker Reference Brubaker1992; Alesina and Giuliano 915) and the relationship between states and markets (Fourcade Reference Fourcade2011; Beckert and Bronk Reference Beckert2018; Griswold and Engelstad Reference Griswold and Engelstad2008).

Some caveats are in order. First, authors base their depictions of problems and solutions on other sources, besides symbols and narratives inherited from literary works. Authors certainly write about life as they know it and their depictions may reflect shifting paradigms of political philosophy, changing hegemonic interests, patterns of class conflict, religious beliefs and shifting political institutions. Dickens’ portraitures most certainly describe his childhood in the London slums. Moreover, authors’ own creative renderings of reality may realign perceptions; in particular, great artists with unique voices may create new interpretations (Schwarz Reference Schwarz1983). Cultural actors do not simply reflect national values and reproduce perfect images of life (Griswold Reference Griswold1987). Thus, Dickens chooses to emphasize certain themes, such as the mistreatment of children, in his depictions of Victorian poverty.

Second, individual authors vary and dissenting voices challenge the master narratives of their literary traditions (Gravil Reference Gravil2001, 1–3). Economic and social domains are built upon diverse logics; groups compete to assert their own logic in the formation of national identities; and canons of national literature and their cultural touchstones evolve over time (Poovey Reference Poovey1995, 15, 7). Writers construct stories that both resonate with and rework cultural tools when they write about new social problems (Poovey Reference Poovey1995; Guy Reference Guy1996, 71). The dialectic between cultural persistence and change also reflects the mobility of people, ideas and political authorities across national boundaries (Greenblatt Reference Greenblatt2010, 2). The content of pulp fiction is driven by market-strategies (Corse Reference Corse1995, 1279–81).

Third, national cultural models raise red flags. Older versions of cultural arguments relied on national values that were difficult to identify empirically, posited hazily understood causal processes, and resonated with imperialistic overtones about the superiority of American political institutions. Moreover, these theories were often tautological, giving political institutions as both cause and evidence of cross-national cultural divergence (Huntington Reference Huntington1996). Theorists often portrayed national cultural tropes as a coherent system rather than as objects of contestation and they focused in particular on the narratives of white men (Znaniecki Reference Znaniecki1952). Yet cultural invention was a subject of struggle among competing factions (Breuilly Reference Breuilly1994; Brubaker and Cooper Reference Brubaker and Cooper2000, 15).

Fourth, it is doubtful that contemporary authors continue to play such a critical role in shaping contemporary public views, when so many other sources of information compete for our attention. Literature as a conduit of symbols and narratives was particularly influential before the twentieth century, after which technological innovations ushered in other types of intellectual exchange. Moreover, while literature provides a rich source of symbols and narratives, the cultural constraint also appears in other national collections of cultural products (see Halle Reference Halle2014).

Fifth, it is important to stress that the structure of cultural artifacts does not have a causal impact on institutional development and change. As we saw in Chapter 1, many historically contingent factors contribute to policy outcomes and cultural influences interact with other political actors and structures. Quantitative evidence, however, makes it possible to verify cross-national differences in cultural depictions of political problems and demonstrate their correspondence with cross-national variations in institutional solutions. Following Falleti and Lynch’s (Reference Falleti and Lynch2009) model of context in causal processes, I suggest that the structure of cultural touchstones contributes to the context that mediates the mechanisms by which a cause has an effect. Context becomes particularly important under conditions of multicausality, context-conditionality, and endogeneity (Denk and Lehtinen Reference Denk and Lehtinen2014; Franzese Reference Franzese, Boix and Stokes2009). This is similar to how public opinion structures the effect of political parties (Busemeyer et al. Reference Busemeyer, Garritzmann and Neimanns2020). Thus, a factor may be relevant without being causal or fully accounting for the outcome (Mahoney and Goertz Reference Mahoney and Goertz2006; Martin and Chevalier Reference Martin and Chevalier2022).

Yet, despite these caveats, the cultural constraint suggests some endurance of cultural touchstones through epochs, despite individual differences, global contagion, and temporal shifts. Certainly, there is also a reciprocal impact of power relations on cultural development, because dominant interests give preference to certain cultural voices. Yet one may see a continuity in characteristics of cleavage formation – the strength of antagonisms and distance between core and peripheral groups – across time, even as the outcomes of class conflicts vary. At the sweeping bird’s eye view, the conflicting perspectives of individual writers fade away and one may observe enduring cross-national differences in the overarching structure of cultural ideas.

Researching Cultural Differences and Institutional Change

I develop a method to investigate long-term, cross-national distinctions in cultural symbols and narratives by analyzing with quantitative methods large corpora of fictional works in Britain and Denmark. Computational linguistic and machine learning techniques (in Python) allow one to test observable differences in depictions of education appearing in corpora of British and Danish novels, poems and plays between 1700 and 1920 (after which copyright laws limit access). Full text files for the Danish corpus of 521 novels, poems and plays are obtained from the Archive of Danish Literature, and an online list of major Danish literature from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries supplements the works from the archive. The Danish corpus includes virtually all literary works available online. The corpus of 562 British works is constructed from multiple online lists of authors and fiction from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries; HathiTrust provides full-text files. Choices about what to include in the British corpus are settled by choosing from the online lists. I include all entries from the list of important works from 1700 to 1920 and select at least one novel, poem or play from each author on the online lists of authors from this period. Available full-text files are often not first editions; therefore, I alter manually the dates of works to reflect their initial publication. Timing of publication is critical for establishing the sequential relationship between cultural artifacts and reform moments. Bias certainly exists in both in the initial publication of works (slanted toward upper-class male authors) and in online lists of important works, but I avoid additional bias by deferring to expert judgment about the collections. Both the quantitative and qualitative analyses include works such as Charles Kingsley’s Yeast and William Morris’ News from Nowhere that were widely read and highly influential in the nineteenth century but that are much less familiar today.

To evaluate word frequencies, I construct snippets of fifty-word texts around education words, stem the corpora and take out stop words. I then calculate within these snippets the frequencies of dictionary words (or bags of words) that pertain to a specific concept. Major concepts (e.g. government) are derived from theoretical discussion, but I must make choices about specific words included in each concept. I generate lists of words for each category by identifying the top 200 words in major novels using the HathiTrust word cloud software and coding these words into appropriate groups. These words provide the basis for my categories of society, state, class, skills, etc. I, then, add synonyms derived from online dictionary searches. I want to give both languages an opportunity to perform in each category; therefore, I study the actual performance of words within the corpora and choose words that are used during each era in order to get the most appropriate historical representation of a concept. I avoid words with multiple meanings such as “society,” which in English refers to both upper-class high society (most prevalent usage), and the community of people living in a country with shared customs, laws etc. The term “social” is used instead. Political terminology for a concept often changes over time. I control for this problem by including relevant terms from all historical periods under investigation and by including varied spelling of words (e.g. Dannemark and Danmark). Reading fiction from this era also helps in choices of historically appropriate words.

The analysis relies on both a supervised learning technique (with the Python Natural Language Tool Kit code for calculating word frequencies) and an unsupervised topic modeling technique. A supervised learning model is appropriate because the categories are specified by theory: My object is not to assess how an individual document fits into a corpus, but to assess cross-national and temporal differences among works that are presorted by country, language and time (Hopkins and King Reference Hopkins and King2010; Laver et al. Reference Laver, Benoit and Garry2003). Moreover, a supervised learning model is appropriate because I am analyzing literature rather than nonfictional essays to address a specific topic. Passages about education in fiction include many topics related to the plotline, character development, etc. that are largely extraneous to our concerns.

I supplement the supervised learning technique with unsupervised probabilistic topic modeling. Rather than beginning with keywords, this method asks the computer to identify the main topics in snippets of text surrounding a word. One specifies the number of topics in advance; the topic model algorithm allows one to infer the hidden topic structure and to compute the distribution of topics that best capture the collection of words in a document. This provides a check on the word frequencies; while the results are probabilistic (and therefore changing with every iteration), they are consistent with what I find in the word frequencies.

I also use a clustering method to evaluate the distribution of views among authors in Britain and Denmark. I calculate the term frequency/inverse document frequency (tf-idf) scores for each author. Tf-idf calculates how important a word is to a document in a corpus. I then cluster the authors based on their scores on a given list of words and use a visualization technique, BDSCAN, to demonstrate the k number for the clusters. I calculate difference of proportions tests to evaluate significant differences between countries.

Linguistic structures of English and Danish could skew the results; for example, because “the” in Danish is a suffix (“mand” becomes “manden”), nouns could have higher word frequencies in Danish than in English. I address this by removing stop words (e.g. “the”) and by observing that neither country has consistently elevated frequencies across categories. I also compare word frequencies of the British “give” and the Danish “giver” to ensure that these words track closely as expected.

It is now time to think about hypotheses to guide our study of cultural symbols and narratives. If cultural depictions set the context for both education system choices and processes of institutional change, then we should observe statistically significant cross-national differences and somewhat enduring within-country similarities in literary depictions. British and Danish authors should have diverse cultural depictions of the goals for the public system (which are also relevant to the ideas driving institutional change). They should portray class differently: This matters to the educational dimensions of access, differentiation, and pedagogy and is also relevant to the construction of interests. Authors in the two countries should offer varied depictions of state involvement and administrative oversight in education and these also inform the perceived legitimacy of rules guiding institutional change.

I do not make a causal argument, namely, that cultural values definitely cause specific choices of educational system dimensions. Rather I posit hypotheses about what one would expect to find in cultural scripts if these scripts are associated with cross-national distinctions in education system choices and with the ideas, interests, and institutional rules driving change processes in each country. An analysis of cross-national differences in cultural scripts about education allows us to rule out the null hypothesis that culture does not matter.

First, cultural symbols and narratives in literature may have bearing on the goals of the public education system and the ideas driving institutional change in education (Gonon and Deissinger Reference Gonon and Deissinger2021). If authors play a crucial role in putting education on the political agenda, authors’ references to education words should increase in both Britain and Denmark in advance of major education reforms. If different ideas about the goals of education matter to education system development, we expect to find these differences in word frequencies in snippets of text about education. British authors should make more references to individualism words than Danish authors. Danish authors should make more references to society words in depictions of education than British authors.

(H1) Denmark should have more early references to education than Britain and cultural depictions should predate major reform moments in both countries.

(H2) Frequencies of words associated with individuals should be higher in British snippets of text surrounding education words than in Danish snippets.

(H3) Frequencies of words associated with society should be higher in Danish snippets surrounding education words than in British snippets.

Unsupervised topic modeling should reinforce findings from the word frequency analyses: topics appearing in snippets of text surrounding “education,” “instruction” and “school” should suggest that education is developed to benefit the individual in Britain but society in Denmark.

(H4) Using unsupervised topic modeling, topics associated with individual self-development should appear more in British snippets surrounding “education,” “instruction” and “school” than in corresponding Danish snippets.

(H5) Using unsupervised topic modeling, topics associated with societal goals should appear more in Danish snippets surrounding “education,” “instruction” and “school” than in corresponding British snippets.

Second, cultural scripts may inform choices about education for workers and for the construction of interests driving institutional change processes. If so, we should find different depictions of labor in discussions of education by British and Danish authors. As Denmark expanded access to workers earlier than Britain, we expect to find that Danish authors would more frequently mention workers (and farmers) in discussions of education. Because Denmark created more differentiated educational tracks and varied pedagogical approaches to provide worker skills, we expect that Danish authors would be more likely to view peasants and workers as making an economic contribution to society and would more frequently refer to skills than British authors. British authors may well worry about workers’ poor living conditions but they should think less about workers’ economic merits and the need for social investments in worker skills than their Danish counterparts.

(H6) Frequencies of words associated with labor should be higher in Danish snippets of text surrounding education words than in British snippets.

(H7) Frequencies of words associated with skills should be higher in Danish snippets of text surrounding education words than in British snippets.

Moreover, if cultural depictions accentuate or diminish the cleavages among social classes, we might also expect to find cross-national differences in the distribution of authors’ views within each country. If authors contribute to the lower levels of class antagonisms in Denmark, we might expect that Danish authors hold to more uniform depictions of the working class than their British counterparts. Class conflict has historically been much more pronounced in Britain; therefore, we might expect British authors to have a more varied distribution in their perceptions of labor that reinforces the contesting views of labor expressed in political circles. Authors’ divisive views of labor would thereby reinforce sharp class cleavages.

(H8) Cluster analysis should demonstrate that Danish authors converge more in their depictions of labor than British authors.

(H9) Cluster analysis should demonstrate that Britain has more nodal points in the distribution of authors’ depictions of labor than Denmark.

Third, if cultural work provides context for choices about educational oversight and has bearing on institutional rules for negotiation, we expect to find different depictions of the state in discussions of education by British and Danish authors. As Denmark established a public system earlier than Britain and had less conflict over education system development, Danish authors should make more references to the state and cooperation in discussions of education than British authors. But because Denmark had stronger cultural norms about community control, Danish authors should make fewer references to assessment words than British authors.

(H10) Frequencies of words associated with the state should be higher in Danish snippets of text surrounding education words than in British snippets.

(H11) Frequencies of words associated with cooperation should be higher in Danish snippets of text surrounding education words than in British snippets.

(H12) Frequencies of words associated with assessment should be higher in British snippets of text surrounding education words than in British snippets.

Findings

A cross-national quantitative analysis largely supports hypotheses that cultural tropes provide context for the ideas, interests, and norms driving institutional change in Britain and Denmark. First, cross-national comparisons support predicted differences in depictions of the goals of education, suggesting that authors’ cultural frames may well contribute to the distinctive ideas driving institutional change in the two countries. Figure 2.1 confirms the predicted differences in the timing of references to education words. Denmark has significantly higher levels of references to education words than Britain in the years leading up to the 1814 creation of primary education. After passage of the act, Danish authors turned their attention to issues of constitutional reform and references to education declines over the nineteenth-century, a period when less governmental action was taken in education reform. In Britain, scant attention is paid to education in the early years; however, references to education words then climb steadily in Britain in advance of the 1870 act, during a period in which Victorian authors made access to and quality of schools a cause célèbre.

Figure 2.1. Timing of education words in entire British and Danish corpora

English education words include: “education, instruction, school, teach, learn, history, knowledge, read, student, write, count, arithmetic, mathematic, book, word”

Danish education words include: “uddannelse, undervisning/underviisning, skole, undervise/underviise, lære, historie, viden, læse, studerende, skrive, tælle, regn, matematik, bog, ord”

A similar figure appeared in Martin Reference Martin2018.

Figure 2.2 shows that the British corpus has much higher frequencies of individual words in snippets of text about education than the Danish corpus; and this supports our hypothesis that British cultural producers thought about education in terms of individual self-development. A close reading of texts shows that British authors repeatedly depict education as a vehicle for perfecting the individual, rather than as investment in society. Early eighteenth-century authors barely mention education, other than to make fun of the stereotypical bumbling tutor; thus, Daniel Defoe largely ignores education in both Robinson Crusoe and his journalism (Marshall Reference Marshall2007). Crusoe readily admits that formal schooling holds no allure; only on the desert island does he learn to create products (Defoe Reference Defoe2011/1719). Romantic writers around 1800 pay greater attention to education, frame learning as a path for individual self-discovery and provide poignant narratives that stir public interest in schools. Coleridge warns that “a man…unblest with a liberal education, should act without attention to the habits, and feelings, of his fellow citizens”; education would “stimulate the heart to love” (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1796, #IV; Foakes Reference Foakes1989, 191). Matthew Arnold is perhaps the most ardent advocate of education for self-development. Thus, Arnold writes that the primary goal of education was not to make good citizens, but to create the best individual: “The best man is he who most tries to perfect himself” (Arnold 1867–8, 46).

Figure 2.2. Frequency of individualism words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English individualism words include: “individual, independent, person, character, liberal, self”

Danish individualism words include: “individual, uafhængig, person, karak, liberal, selv”

A similar figure appeared in Martin Reference Martin2018.

In Figure 2.3, Danish authors make many more references to society words than British authors, and this finding supports our hypothesis that cultural tropes link education to society, long before the development of a modern education system. Even in the mid eighteenth century, Ludvig Holberg views education and employment as important benefits to society as well as to the individual: “Merit ought to be rewarded, but the reward should be adapted to the object, that the State may not suffer” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 807). Later the Romantic poets also frame the education of peasants as necessary to the general good and a strong society. Adam Oehlenschläger, who writes one of two Danish national anthems (entitled “It is a beautiful land”), links learning to the virtues of society. Denmark is strong as in the old Nordic myths; sciences and art are the hope of the future; and hearts beat for girl, country, and king. Still later, priest, poet, and philosopher N.F.S. Grundtvig believes that peasants and workers – the “workmen of the sun” – should be educated with Danish literature and history so that they may participate fully in society. For Grundtvig, this is a matter of national identity and essential to the collective folk (Grundtvig Reference Grundtvig2013/1838; Fain Reference Fain1971, 78–82; Bjerg et al. Reference Bjerg, Callewaert, Elle, Mylov, Nissen and Silberbrandt1995, 31–2). In Only a Fiddler, H.C. Andersen (Reference Andersen1908/1837, 38) regrets that “there was no regulated school for poor children in the whole town.”

Figure 2.3. Frequency of society words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English society words include: “England, English, Britain, country, folk, people, collective, communal, mutual, custom, social”

Danish society words include: “Danmark/Dannemark, Dansk, land, folk, mennesker, kollektive, fælles, gensidig, skik, social”

A similar figure appeared in Martin Reference Martin2018.

Unsupervised topic modeling confirms the findings of word frequencies about cross-national differences in the ideas surrounding the words “education,” “instruction,” and “school.” While topics change slightly in each country over time, the cross-national differences in topics are stark. Topic modeling applied to the British education snippets produces topics about individual personality attributes (goodness, greatness, nature, honor, mind and sport) and upper-class terms (which are nonexistent in Danish findings). Danish topic modeling emphasizes nation-building (languages, history), society (spirit of the Danish people) religion, the state and skills.

Topics in the British school snippets are quite different from those in the Danish collection, and resonate with the British emphasis on schools as a vehicle for self-development, especially among the upper classes. The topic of goodness/greatness is by far the most important one in the British snippets throughout all periods, although this topic declines somewhat in the final period of 1870–1920. Thus, good/great appears in the British topic modeling output twenty-six times, compared to five times in the Danish output. Nature, honor, and the mind (all associated with individual self-development) are also important topics in the first two periods, and sport appears in the third period. Denmark does not mention any of these topics. Upper class terms constitute another important topic, particularly in the first and last periods; thus, upper class terms appear as a topic eight times in the British snippets compared with zero times in the Danish ones. This count does not include the British term “master,” which is a frequently found topic and can mean either a school teacher or an upper-class child, that is, “the young master.” Government words (law, crown) appear only twice as topics in the British snippets, compared to five times in the Danish ones. Similarly, language words appear only twice in the British snippets, compared to seventeen times in the Danish ones. British topics do not include religion, equality or spirit; the topic of work appears once in the third period in Britain compared to four times in Denmark.

In contrast, the Danish corpus emphasizes nation-building, religion, society, and the state. During 1720–1770, languages emerge as the strongest topic, followed by religion, state, and work. These findings are consistent with authors’ ardent campaign to teach in the Danish vernacular rather than in Latin or Greek, and to use schools for more practical purposes. Religion, nation-building (state, history), language, and spirit of the Danish people continue to be the dominant topics from 1770 to 1820. Languages, religion, society (the people, spirit, history), and the state are the most important topics from 1820 to 1870, a period in which the folk school movement developed in the countryside and national liberals worked with authors to build up Danish culture as tool in the battle over Slesvig-Holstein. The topics change somewhat during the fourth period of 1870–1920: language (but now modern foreign languages), the people, and equality are important topics, and religion disappears. These topics are consistent with the development of the 1903 secondary education act, in which modern foreign languages was created as a new track within gymnasium, reformers sought greater equality among primary schools, and religious influences were scaled back in education.

Second, the quantitative data also support the hypothesis that authors’ depictions of class relations provide context for the construction of interests and social cleavages in the educational realm. Figure 2.4 shows that Danish authors have significantly more and earlier references to workers (and farmers) than British writers in education snippets, and this is consistent with the earlier extension of educational access to the working classes in Denmark than in Britain. This finding fits with the cultural story that Danish authors expect workers and peasants to strengthen economy and society. In Niels Klim’s Journey Underground (Niels Klims Underjordiske Reise), Ludvig Holberg makes the case for some measure of equality in his utopian society of Pontu; individuals who are considered great are “noted for virtue and industry” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 404). Laws favoring some classes are not “conducive to the general interest” (Loc. 446 to 457). With the end of serfdom, authors celebrate peasants as essential to nation-building. In his 1790 poetic play, The Harvest Festival (Høst Gildet), Thomas Thaarup describes a peasant boy’s ardent desire to be educated so that he can defend Denmark (Thaarup Reference Thaarup1822/1786). In Bernhard Severin Ingemann’s heroic stories about the Danish middle ages, the people constitute the power in those “days of departed glory…If it [the power] flashes not from many thousand eyes united, and pours not forth from every heart in Denmark, the greatest king in the universe cannot…restore to the people the lofty spirit of our ancestors” (Ingemann Reference Ingemann1913/1828, loc 7602).

Figure 2.4. Frequency of labor words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English labor words include “worker, guild, craftsman, journeyman, apprentice, farmer, peasant, serf, mechanic, labour”

Danish labor words include “arbejder/arbeider, laug, håndværk, svend, Lærling, landmand, bond, liveg, mekanik, arbeidskraft/arbejdskraft”

In sharp contrast, British writers scarcely comment on workers’ contributions to society and many authors fear that excessive education will pose problems for social stability and create unrealistic expectations among the working class. Sara Trimmer’s idea of schooling for the poor are Houses of Industry for the able-bodied poor and residential schools where five-year-old girls can learn spinning (Trimmer Reference Trimmer1801, 69–70). In an undated letter, Wordsworth notes that “Mechanics’ Institutes make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen (Wordsworth/Knight 1907, 191).

Some progressive writers support education as a means of alleviating poverty; yet even they largely ignore the contribution of the working class to society. Coleridge writes that some schooling for the poor can limit alcoholism (Coleridge Reference Coleridge1796). In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (2015/1818), education transforms the monster, making even more poignant the novel’s tragic ending. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (Reference Gaskell2011/1854) suggests that educational opportunities and charitable interventions would allow the poor to improve their own position. Dickens and Gaskell are famously sympathetic to the tribulations of the working class, but they highlight the suffering of (especially) women and children (Poovey Reference Poovey1995, 57; Guy Reference Guy1996; Steinlight Reference Steinlight2018), rather than the loss to society from an ignorant working class. Indeed, even the most progressive social reform novelists share Malthusian views about the culture of poverty and overpopulation. In Yeast (Kingsley Reference Kingsley1848, loc 2125), Charles Kingsley blames the social missteps of the working class on poverty: “Our daughters with base born babies have wandered away in their shame. If your misses had slept, Squire, where they did, your misses might do the same.” George Gissing (Reference Gissing2016/1889) stresses the cruelty of the urban poor in The Netherworld. Writers believe that the disorganization of the working class exacerbates afflictions of industrialization, a view also shared by liberal reformers such as James Kay-Shuttleworth (Armstrong Reference Armstrong1986, 642–55).

Figure 2.5 demonstrates that Danish authors make greater reference to skill words in education snippets than British authors. Their fiction fits with the choice to have differentiated secondary educational tracks that satisfy the varied practical skills needed by society and that accommodate workers’ diverse learning styles. A close reading of texts suggests that Danish authors consistently viewed workforce skills as strengthening economy and society. Nineteenth-century authors consider industrialization to be an important collective project and seek expanded mass education of workers to meet the collective goals of building society, national strength and economic prosperity. They depict advances in agricultural and industrial productivity as a national project, and workers’ skills become an issue of national security. In Montanus the Younger, Thomasine Gyllembourg connects social solidarity and investment in workers’ skills to economic productivity and industrialization. Her forward-thinking protagonist suffers from arrogance and has to learn to conform to society, yet he has excellent ideas that will benefit the country. He writes a treatise on foreign technology, connects prosperity to the freedom of working men and argues for skills training to offset unemployment related to mechanization (Gyllembourg Reference Gyllembourg2019/1837; Heitmann Reference Heitmann2011, 11–19).

Figure 2.5. Frequency of skill words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English skill words include: “skill, ability, competency, proficiency, qualification”

Danish skill words include: “færdighed, evne, kompetence, dygtighed, kvalifikation”

Danish authors stress the importance of practical skills and the problems with education that is disconnected from the real world. In Niels Klim, Holberg notes that “Intelligence resulting from methodical and practical study is preferable to the torpid insanity incident to much learning” (Holberg Reference Holberg1845/1741, Loc. 645–55). Similarly, in Ingemann’s “Erik and the Outlaws,” a character from the fourteenth century reflects on the uselessness of education dominated by classics and religious studies: “Our common-place scholars still chew the cud of mysticism, the useless learning of the schools, and the dry, worn-out Aristoteles” (Ingemann Reference Ingemann1843/1833, loc 20435–9). Playwright Johan Ludvig Heiberg shares Ingemann’s disregard for useless knowledge and enthusiasm for experiential learning in the concluding song of his vaudeville, April Fools. The setting is a small girls’ school where the headmaster is a thief and students learn little from the schools’ poor instructional method; for example, one student believes that Amsterdam is the capital of England. But students know much about life and the play ends with a song that celebrates experiential learning. Noting that “the promise of school falls short,” the characters declare that “Life is short but art will last; Life itself is a school class” (Heiberg Reference Heiberg2018/1828, 35, trans. CJ Martin).

In contrast, even when Victorian novelists are sympathetic to the tribulations of the working class and write achingly sad stories designed to pluck at our heartstrings, they are more inclined to support worker education as a mechanism for extending charity and reducing social instability rather than as a source of valuable skills (Poovey Reference Poovey1995, 57; Guy Reference Guy1996; Childers Reference Childers and David2001; Dzelzainis Reference Dzelzainis, Kucich and Bourne Taylor2012). For Bronte, educating working-class youth in Jane Eyre is akin to imperialistic evangelicalism (Gargano Reference Gargano2008, 19). Many accepted that class injustices are a natural part of the capitalist order; even radical William Godwin writes about social class: “I believe that distinction is a good thing, and necessary to the peace of mankind. But, however necessary it may be, we must acknowledge that it puts some hardship upon the lower orders of society” (Godwin Reference Godwin2013/1794, 78).

Figures 2.6 and 2.7 present the results of our cluster analysis. Clustering and visualization analyses allow us to observe the distribution of depictions of labor within the British and Danish corpora. The data confirm that British authors have much more varied views of the working class than Danish authors. In the cluster analyses, each color corresponds to a distinctive depiction of labor in fictional works within the corpora.

Figure 2.6. Clusters of writing about labor in Britain

Figure 2.7. Clusters of writing about labor in Denmark

Figure 2.6 shows many distinctive depictions of labor (in color clusters) in British fictional works: one may easily see that British authors’ depictions of labor are quite varied, with little consensus, and this picture of many competing views seems fitting in a country with high levels of class conflict. In sharp contrast, Figure 2.7, consists almost entirely of dots of a single shade; this demonstrates that Danish authors across the political spectrum essentially converge in their depictions of labor. This convergence in depictions of labor may well reinforce the more cooperative, consensual relations that exist between social classes in Denmark, and resonates with the weaker class cleavages in Denmark than in Britain.

Third, the quantitative data also support the hypothesis that authors’ depictions of institutions are consistent with the institutional rules driving education reform in Britain and Denmark. Figure 2.8 demonstrates that Danish authors make significantly more references to government in education snippets than British authors until the end of the nineteenth-century, when British reformers on the left struggle against the church to strengthen the public system. This is what we expect from a country (Denmark) where a public system is established quite early and the government (including at the local level) continues to play a major role. The importance of the state appears in Bernhard Severin Ingemann’s view of the king as the guardian of the collective good who unites the people in harmony for the good of all: “If variance and discord are not soon to rend asunder all…we must necessarily be united…in lawful obedience to the majesty and divinity of the crown” (Ingemann Reference Ingemann1913/1828, loc 5225–6). Writers recognize that government serves a positive role in promoting industrial projects, as when the protagonist in Lucky Per (Lykke Per) develops an ingenuous plan for a waterway to capture power from waves and wind that is greeted with great interest by local authorities and investors (Pontoppidan Reference Pontoppidan2019/1898). Moreover, government interventions help to offset corruption. Jacob Knudsen in The Old Priest (Den Gamle Præst) describes the corruption of a private school-building project. The cabal leading the project is “almost unregulated, in any case erratic – also in a moral sense”; therefore, external regulation and oversight are necessary to stop private abuse of power (Knudsen Reference Knudsen1901, 29).

Figure 2.8. Frequency of state words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English state words include: “nation, government, ministry, authority, law, legal, illegal, judgment, judge, council, commission, committee, public, municipality, parish, king, kingdom, crown, throne”

Danish state words include: “stat, regering, ministerium, myndighed, lov, gyldige, ulovlig, vudering, dom, råd, commission, uvalg, offentlig, kommune, sogn, konge, rig, krone, trone”

A similar figure appeared in Martin Reference Martin2018.

How different is the view of government offered by British novelists, as even the most progressive writers continuously disparage government capacities to redress social ills. Dickens ridicules self-interest in the legal system, as when David Copperfield’s Mr. Spenlow remarks, “the best sort of professional business…[was] a good case of a disputed will…[with] very pretty pickings” (Dickens Reference Dickens1850, 366). William Morris – a pillar of the Democratic Socialist Federation and later the Socialist League – is deeply sympathetic to workers, yet in his utopian novel, News from Nowhere, all institutions (states and markets) disappear. A guest from the past is told that the “whole people is our Parliament” (Morris Reference Morris1890, 72).

Danish frequencies of government words in the education snippets decline in the late nineteenth-century. This reflects the modernist genre, in which authors are less normative and more experiential in their writing. Moreover, although education under the absolute monarchy is an elite project, schooling becomes more of a bottom-up process that is apparent, for example, in the folk high school movement inspired by NFS Grundtvig. The 1864 war strengthens the importance of civil society (Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2004; Kaspersen Reference Kaspersen2020, 184) and the balance between state and society also shifted with the increasing importance of self-regulation by the social partners (Martin and Swank Reference Martin and Swank2012).

Figure 2.9 shows that Denmark has significantly higher levels of cooperation words than Britain. This again shows some correspondence between cultural touchstones and the more consensual, cooperative politics of education reform in Denmark than in Britain, where extensive partisan and religious struggle contributes to a fractious politics.

Figure 2.9. Frequency of cooperation words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English words include: “agreement, arbitration, bargaining coalition, collaboration, collective, compromise, cooperation, coordination, negotiation, pact, settlement, unanimous, unity, confederation, federation, union”

Danish words include: “aftale, voldgift, forhandling, coalition, samarbejde, fælle, krompromise, medvirkning, samordning, overenskomst, forlig, ordning, enstemmig, enhed, forbund, forening, fagforening”

Expectations of cooperation and peaceful negotiation are a constant drum-roll in Danish literature. A favorable view toward industrial cooperation appears in Henrik Pontoppidan’s Nobel-prize winning Lucky Per (Pontoppidan Reference Pontoppidan2019, 480). In Johannes Ewald’s (1889/Reference Ewald1773, 30) wildly popular poetic play, The Death of Balder (Balders Død), heroine Nanna rails against useless conflict and male bellicosity. Balder loves Nanna; Nanna loves Hother; Hother wants to fight Balder for honor’s sake; Nanna would only suffer from Hother’s “heroic” death. This 250-year-old he said/she said debate gets at an essential truth about the cultural underpinnings of cooperation in Denmark – conflict is a waste of time.

In Britain, fighting the good fight is bred in the bone. Hughes celebrates the fighting spirit of the fictious Brown family in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, who are the “chief cause of that [British] empire’s stability” (Hughes Reference Hughes2012/1857, 2). “One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no question.” The British nation should be “properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns…Whenever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen’s work” (1). Charles Macay’s famous poem, “No Enemies,” finds fault with those who miss an opportunity for conflict: “You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight” (https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/no-enemies).

Figure 2.10 demonstrates that, as expected, Britain authors make significantly more references to assessment words than did Danish authors. This fits with British expectations that government should engage in quality control, regulation, and assessment to assure that education meets the requirements to fully educate the individual. By the mid-nineteenth century, British writers increasingly lament the deplorable quality of schools and they come to support greater oversight by a centralized educational administration, a strong assessment regime and expanded regulation to improve quality. John Stuart Mill posits the need for government intervention: “The uncultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation…Education, therefore, is one of those things…that a government should provide for the people” (Mill Reference Mill1848, 947–8). Thackeray abhors the state of English education and his own school, Charterhouse, becomes “Slaughterhouse” in Pendennis (Gargano Reference Gargano2008, 44–55). Dickens sees merit in some schools: for example, in David Copperfield, Doctor Strong’s school makes “an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys” (Dickens Reference Dickens1850, 225). Yet David suffers greatly at Mr. Creakle’s Salem House where “Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began” (88). David learns little, because the “boys were…too much troubled and knocked about to learn” (93). Dickens’ Nickolas Nickleby (1839) depicts an abusive Yorkshire cheap school and the novel’s immense success helps to close a huge number of the Yorkshire schools in the wake of its publication (Collins Reference Collins1963, 104).

Figure 2.10. Frequency of assessment words in education snippets in Britain and Denmark

English words include: “quality, regulation, standards, assessment, evaluation, monitor, examination, inspect, inspection”

Danish words include: “kvalitet, regulering, standard, vudering, evaluering, overvåge, eksamen, inspicere, inspection”

Conclusion

A cultural turn in political science is increasingly inspiring scholars to explore the dynamic relationship between cultural artifacts, cultural practices and political outcomes, and literature provides a promising avenue for exploration in this cultural turn. This chapter explores cultural work that transpires collectively at a structural level, or the level of the “cultural constraint.” Generations of fiction writers rework literary symbols and narratives inherited from past literary works to address the political challenges of their times. The transmission of national literary symbols and narratives passed down through the ages provide a subtext for the manner in which authors, policymakers and citizens interpret the world, construct preferences and engage in collective political struggle. Thus, one may observe empirically how literary corpora in Denmark and Britain differed enormously in representations of education, state, society and the working man over hundreds of years and how these recurring literary tropes set the context for choices about the dimensions of education systems.

An analysis of cultural touchstones in works of art constitutes an important source of cultural frames in institutional change processes, and provides an analytically distinct mechanism from path dependence for institutional continuity. Unlike policy legacies laid down at a specific moment of policy creation, cultural tropes are a recursive and repeating phenomenon. Even as they are subject to alteration over time, they sustain essential assumptions. Cultural work consequently sheds light on the moral economies underlying political economic systems such as diverse varieties of capitalism; for example, cultural touchstones anticipated the contemporary Nordic practices of consensual negotiation led by a strong state (Martin and Swank Reference Martin and Swank2012). As early as the eighteenth century, Danish authors converged on a view of workers as central to the good of society; whereas, many British authors viewed workers with suspicion and feared the mob.

This work fills lacunae in the analysis of historical differences in institutional development across countries. Making cultural arguments about the distant past is more challenging than capturing cultural influences today, and an analysis of literary touchstones (and other cultural artifacts) provides a way to evaluate norms and values in the historical moment. Apart from process tracing with case studies, we have few tools for measuring historical cultural inputs and views, assessing empirically verifiable cross-national differences, evaluating how cultural symbols and practices transmit across generations, and exploring the interaction of cultural symbols with institutional change processes. We lack broad, cross-national data (e.g. from survey experiments and public opinion polls) to assess cultural distinctions and their associations with historical political developments. Social scientists risk making assumptions from the perspective of modern logics and this threatens to misrepresent historical dynamics, something that Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2010) refers to as reading history backwards. Studying fiction writers and their narratives, however, offers a tangible way to evaluate how culture matters to political outcomes. With computational linguistics and a close reading of texts, we may observe significant cross-national differences in historical literary images of education. Thus, the use of literature allows us to read history forward.