In 1861, the principal of a school in Lower Styria entered the classroom and started asking pupil... more In 1861, the principal of a school in Lower Styria entered the classroom and started asking pupils about their mother tongue. For Anton Šantel and his friends, the question was an awkward one, because they "were not used to such questions and not ready to answer them.” Šantel first answered that he can speak German and Slovene equally well, and only eventually told the principal that his mother tongue is Slovene. From then on, the school categorized him as a Slovene, in forms and reports his family name was changed from Schantel to Šantel, but most importantly, the proudly bilingual boy started to increasingly identify as a Slovene. Ever since their establishment, Habsburg compulsory elementary schools employed various linguistic and national categorizations in the administration and teaching. At the same time, they were promoting imperial and provincial patriotism as well as dynastic loyalty. This influenced pupils' identifications, which was especially important because national identifications were not integral to primary socialisation in the family until very late, in some cases never. The paper will trace the evolution of linguistic, proto-national, and national categorisations in Slovene-language schools and the slow emergence of Slovene as the dominant ethnolinguistic category. It will also try to evaluate the effects of this categorizations on pupils' identifications.
The article seeks to fill a gap in existing scholarship on explicit and implicit linguistic, ethn... more The article seeks to fill a gap in existing scholarship on explicit and implicit linguistic, ethnic, and national classifications in Habsburg schools and their effects. It attempts to reconstruct the classifications that appeared in textbooks and other teaching materials as well as in daily practice, pupils' exposure to them, and their engagement with these categories. Temporally, the study begins with the establishment of compulsory education (1774) and ends in the revolutionary period of 1848-49 and focuses on the Slavophone population of the Habsburg crownlands Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, and the Austrian Littoral. Our research suggests that systematic and uniform classification schemes were not yet in place in the school environment in the period under review. As a result, the influence of classificatory systems on identifications was limited. If anything, the schools inadvertently reproduced existing local and provincial identifications while the students' limited internalization of emerging transregional identifications only happened through their personal relationships with a few teachers and peers. The transition from familiarization with emerging transregional ethnolinguistic identifications through personal networks to the systemic (and often completely unintentional) reproduction of nationalist ideology happened only after 1848.
In 1861, the principal of a school in Lower Styria entered the classroom and started asking pupil... more In 1861, the principal of a school in Lower Styria entered the classroom and started asking pupils about their mother tongue. For Anton Šantel and his friends, the question was an awkward one, because they "were not used to such questions and not ready to answer them.” Šantel first answered that he can speak German and Slovene equally well, and only eventually told the principal that his mother tongue is Slovene. From then on, the school categorized him as a Slovene, in forms and reports his family name was changed from Schantel to Šantel, but most importantly, the proudly bilingual boy started to increasingly identify as a Slovene. Ever since their establishment, Habsburg compulsory elementary schools employed various linguistic and national categorizations in the administration and teaching. At the same time, they were promoting imperial and provincial patriotism as well as dynastic loyalty. This influenced pupils' identifications, which was especially important because national identifications were not integral to primary socialisation in the family until very late, in some cases never. The paper will trace the evolution of linguistic, proto-national, and national categorisations in Slovene-language schools and the slow emergence of Slovene as the dominant ethnolinguistic category. It will also try to evaluate the effects of this categorizations on pupils' identifications.
The article seeks to fill a gap in existing scholarship on explicit and implicit linguistic, ethn... more The article seeks to fill a gap in existing scholarship on explicit and implicit linguistic, ethnic, and national classifications in Habsburg schools and their effects. It attempts to reconstruct the classifications that appeared in textbooks and other teaching materials as well as in daily practice, pupils' exposure to them, and their engagement with these categories. Temporally, the study begins with the establishment of compulsory education (1774) and ends in the revolutionary period of 1848-49 and focuses on the Slavophone population of the Habsburg crownlands Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, and the Austrian Littoral. Our research suggests that systematic and uniform classification schemes were not yet in place in the school environment in the period under review. As a result, the influence of classificatory systems on identifications was limited. If anything, the schools inadvertently reproduced existing local and provincial identifications while the students' limited internalization of emerging transregional identifications only happened through their personal relationships with a few teachers and peers. The transition from familiarization with emerging transregional ethnolinguistic identifications through personal networks to the systemic (and often completely unintentional) reproduction of nationalist ideology happened only after 1848.
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Ever since their establishment, Habsburg compulsory elementary schools employed various linguistic and national categorizations in the administration and teaching. At the same time, they were promoting imperial and provincial patriotism as well as dynastic loyalty. This influenced pupils' identifications, which was especially important because national identifications were not integral to primary socialisation in the family until very late, in some cases never.
The paper will trace the evolution of linguistic, proto-national, and national categorisations in Slovene-language schools and the slow emergence of Slovene as the dominant ethnolinguistic category. It will also try to evaluate the effects of this categorizations on pupils' identifications.
Ever since their establishment, Habsburg compulsory elementary schools employed various linguistic and national categorizations in the administration and teaching. At the same time, they were promoting imperial and provincial patriotism as well as dynastic loyalty. This influenced pupils' identifications, which was especially important because national identifications were not integral to primary socialisation in the family until very late, in some cases never.
The paper will trace the evolution of linguistic, proto-national, and national categorisations in Slovene-language schools and the slow emergence of Slovene as the dominant ethnolinguistic category. It will also try to evaluate the effects of this categorizations on pupils' identifications.