Tomas Cvrcek offers a re-evaluation of the Theresian school reform of
1774 and its consequences using statistical data on schooling produced
by the public administration. As the most comprehensive examination of
this vast body of statistical material to date, the book assesses the
reliability of these sources, their proper interpretation, and their
limitations in order to shed light on questions such as the extent of
the school network, the degree of enforcement of compulsory schooling,
the rate of enrolment and attendance, the level of financing, the social
and economic position of teachers, and the political economy of
schooling provision. Covering a period from the reform's inception to
the liberal overhaul in 1869, the statistical analysis reveals that, by
most measures, the introduction of universal elementary schooling was
much less successful than has been thought. Even the most advanced crown
lands did not see ninety percent of their school-age children in
classrooms until fifty years after the reform and there were many areas
where schooling made no inroads until shortly before the First World
War. In contrast to much of the previous literature that blamed
incompetence and half-hearted implementation of the policy for these
shortcomings, the author argues that the fundamental flaw lay in the
policy's design and, specifically, in the imperial government's
insistence on control and enforced uniformity of schooling throughout
the realm. The slow development of Austrian schooling thus resulted from
the inflexibility of the very policy that was supposed to speed it up.
