We opened the exhibition 250 Years of Compulsory Schooling on Slovenian Territory
Ljubljana 7 May 2024 – The year 2024 is a jubilee year for education, commemorating 250 years since Maria Theresa’s General School Ordinance, which marked the beginning of state education. To mark the occasion, the Slovenian School Museum has devised the exhibition 250 Years of Compulsory Schooling on Slovenian Territory, which is on display on the Jakopič Promenade in Tivoli Park, Ljubljana from 19 April to 21 June 2024. The official opening and guided tour of the exhibition took place on 7 May.
The exhibition “250 Years of Compulsory Schooling on Slovenian Territory: Literacy and Culture in the Late 18th Century” commemorates the anniversary of Maria Theresa’s General School Ordinance. This was the first legal text on primary education in force in the territory of present-day Slovenia. Its promulgation is one of the most significant events in the cultural history of Central Europe.
Eighty exhibition panels present the key features of education and culture in the late 18th century on Slovenian territory and in the neighbouring countries. The exhibition is divided into eight thematic sections and the concluding section: General school obligation, School reform in practice, Teaching method, Upgrading the Baroque literary tradition, Language and grammars, Education for a moral life, Textbooks for scholastic and general use, Natural sciences and humanities, The Far-reaching nature of the short-term school reform. The exhibition is composed of pictorial reproductions of significant extracts from the General School Ordinance, textbooks, manuals, archival documents, graphic works and objects related to education. The material comes from the library and collections of the Slovenian School Museum, the Graphics Cabinet of the National Museum of Slovenia, the Old Prints Collection of the National and University Library, and the public administration files of the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia.
The exhibition panels are numbered consecutively and remind visitors of reading a book, thus drawing attention to the culture of the written word, which was highly valued in the historical period in question. Although the pictorial images are the central elements of all the panels, they are complemented by explanatory texts. The aim of this design is threefold: to attract the attention of visitors with an eye-catching form, to broaden their knowledge in an enlightened spirit, and to give them an insight into the world of expression of historical Slovenian and other languages through extracts from books and other works.
The exhibition will be on view from 19 April to 21 June 2024 on the Jakopič Promenade in Tivoli Park, Ljubljana. It was made as a collaboration between the Slovenian School Museum and Ljubljana Tourism, with financial support from the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Slovenia. The author of the exhibition is Dr Simon Malmenvall, curator of the Slovenian School Museum.
On the beginnings of state education
The state authorities, led by Maria Theresa (reign: 1740-1780) and her son Joseph II (reign: 1780-1790), began to establish a centrally managed state education system, nominally enrolling children from all social classes between the ages of six and twelve, and marking the beginning of the introduction of compulsory and mass education. The central aim of the school reform was to increase the literacy rate in the Austrian Empire.
The creation and implementation of the School Ordinance was strongly influenced by the concurrent Enlightenment belief in the usefulness of education for the strength of the state and the happiness of the individual. Based on the principle of the universal comprehensibility of the knowledge presented, the promulgation of the Ordinance indirectly influenced the printing of growing expressiveness and the gradual strengthening of the public position of the Slovenian language. The beginnings of linguistic “empowerment”, born out of the practical needs of teaching, constituted one of the most important foundations for the formation of the modern Slovenian nation in the 19th century. In spite of the difficulties it encountered in its implementation, the Theresian-Josephine school reform contributed in the long term to the consolidation of certain principles that are still valid in social life today: education as a state concern, the awareness of making basic knowledge available to all children, the importance of group teaching, and the consideration of the moral formation or socialisation of pupils.
Photo: Andrej Peunik
