The first signs of a modern school system became visible in Western Europe around 1800. It was mainly the two revolutionary countries France and Switzerland – and later Prussia, with some politically determined differences – that reformed the school system, which became established throughout the 1800s based on four pillars: general compulsory school attendance, laicization, free of charge schooling, and professionalization. This process was in no way undisputed and was considerably less linear than the history of the school would like to depict, but it was inimitably successful.

It is quite possible that this success – there was broad political and social acceptance of the system despite the high costs – is connected precisely with the fact that the course of establishing the school was characterized by varying interests and concepts. This can be seen not least in the proneness of teachers in Germany towards «Reformpedagogik», or progressive education. The most popular target for criticism is what is called «Kopfschule», or schooling of the intellect only; which corresponds on the other side to the program of «formation of the person», «integrated», «child-centered pedagogy», or «self-activity».

Jürgen Oelkers shows in his contribution that this debate is neither new nor original, but instead was already in the making in the 1700s and has played an important role ever since. The most important source of criticism of the schools, writes Oelkers, is to be found in Rousseau in two regards: first, as ideology against the school as an institution per se, then as a hotbed for reform arguments within the school. Oelkers shows that in the school-internal strivings for school reform, which culminate in the concept of «self-activity», Rousseau's anti-school arguments were linked with the rhetoric of idealism, which led to the view that the school was a place for comprehensive «formation of the person». This rhetoric, says Oelkers, was possible because it overlooked content and the issue of school subjects, whereas in the real world, the delineation of school subjects in the primary and secondary school was the main part of the process. This simultaneity of idealizing rhetoric and actual practice must be criticized for the reason that pedagogical idealism obscures the actual tasks and successes of the school.

An analogous problem is discussed in this number of the journal. In the previous number of «Neue Pestalozzi Blätter/Zeitschrift für pädagogische Historiographie», Fritz Osterwalder developed the thesis that - (also) starting with Rousseau – education is still today more of a declaration of belief than a science. The editors asked three representatives of the discipline to comment on Osterwalder's paper. Heide von Felden argues that Osterwalder's concerns are inasmuch justified as he himself (over)simplifies the history, both historically and also systematically. Heinz-Elmar Tenorth also acknowledges Osterwalder's concerns, but believes that the problematic has already been known for a long time. He expects that in future, recognition of the difference between education and education science will take into scientific account the situation of the actors in educational practice in such a way that a «healthy dogmatism» can be acknowledged to be justifiable. Michel Soëtard believes that Oelker's reading of Rousseau is incomplete in that sense that Rousseau saw both the natural scientific ideal and the declaration of belief as pillars of pedagogy and thus came closer to the paradoxical character of pedagogical knowledge than knowledge that sought after scientistic unity. The belief in the refinement of man is immanently linked with pedagogical practice, but it is not accessible to a positivist understanding of knowledge. The different and in part contrary arguments in the three commentaries show that at least one element of modern science is fulfilled: discussion via exchange of arguments. And it is such discussion that this journal sees as its main task.