ПРОСВЕТА И ПРОСВЕТИТЕЉСТВО: ПРЕДРАЧУН ТРОШКОВА УСТАНОВЉЕЊА САВРЕМЕНЕ ПОЛИТИКЕ ОБРАЗОВАЊА
EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT: PRELIMINARY COST ESTIMATE FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

Summary/Abstract: In this paper the author undertakes the exploration of the relationship between educational theory and practice of the eighteenth century and, on the other side, the stances of the intellectual and social movement of the age called "Enlightenment". The finding is not only that enlighteners were not, as commonly thought, proponents and advocates of universal and compulsory primary education, but that they have oftenly directly opposed to such ideas and expressed serious reservations about the possibility of its realization. The author points out two possible interpretations of conspicuous refusal of enlighteners to support the educational efforts for the general education of their time. According to one, the Enlightenment's conception of education was different from the educational one, as was "enlightenment" different from "education". Enlighteners were rather widened the gap between the educated and the uneducated, the elite and the common people, the rulers and the people, reasonable warning that its bridging may be accomplished only to the detriment of both. The second interpretation explains that emphasized restraint of the enlighteners toward mass-education was not (so much) visionary, prudent and reflected warning to social costs of compulsory general education, as it was a reflex of epochal, in the first place material and personnel constraints. Having later in mind, its consistent realization must looks to them as a undesirable and practically infeasible perspective. The author suggests that both "conceptual" and "historical" reasons, in an asymmetric and ambiguous interaction, played a role in, at first glance, unexpected articulation of the pronouncedly negative posture of Enlightenment towards the idea of popular education.

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