'Education for all' (‚Bildung für Alle') - Images of self and other in the production and circulation of a central myth in the transnational space

The subject of research into the educational myth (→ educational myths) of an ‘education for all’ were the manifestations of a multifaceted educational claim to be realised for all citizens, not only in the GDR but also in other states with an interest in socialist educational concepts. Three case studies were selected to demonstrate the wide-ranging internationalist educational program of the GDR (Müller, 1995). Their historical, socio-economic, political-ideological and simple geographical contrast illustrates the diversity of educational cooperation in the GDR. In accordance with this orientation, the project worked transnationally, seeking to compare and contrast, with three case constructions: GDR-Mozambique, GDR-Nicaragua and GDR-Finland.

The case of Finland represents intensive cooperation between the GDR and a non-socialist European country, which nevertheless took an interest in the GDR education system in the context of internal educational reform discourses without neglecting contact with educational policy counterparts from the Federal Republic of Germany (Hentilä, 2006, 2012). Secondly, in the cases of Mozambique and Nicaragua, two main target countries of GDR educational aid are analysed, which are located on two different continents and form two very different contexts. While Mozambique represents a post-colonial education system in the process of state construction accompanied by a Marxist-Leninist orientation in Africa (Castiano, 1997), Nicaragua represents a dynamic revolutionary process with pre-existing state education approaches in the Latin American tradition (Carnoy & Torres, 1990).

Source material for the research was retrieved from archive sources from the four countries analysed, as well as found in published contemporary witness accounts and our own interviews conducted with contemporary witnesses (cf. von Plato, 2008). The evaluation was carried out in a source-critical and contextualising manner, focusing on the transnational exchange between the participating countries and educational stakeholders on concepts and desirable goals of an ‘education for all’. The specific interests, educational policy motivations and political-ideological or personal resistance of the participating educational stakeholders from the GDR, Finland, Mozambique and Nicaragua were included in the analysis. An interweaving of three levels was considered:

(a) the structural level, which pre-shaped the GDR's bilateral educational cooperation mainly through national institutions;

b) the personal level, which shaped and, if necessary, reshaped the practice of educational cooperation through the actors involved; and

c) the ideational level, in which ideas, narratives and myths about ‘education for all’ were formed in the GDR before they circulated in the transnational space, developed and proved to be persistent to this day (e.g. Lambrecht, 2009).