‘Unsatisfactory national identity’: School inspectors, education and national identity in interwar Latvia

Abstract

The trajectory of the school system in inter-war independent Latvia was a microcosm of the larger experiences of the state. The devastation of World War I and the battles that followed undermined seriously the capacity of the new state. The first post-war years were spent laboriously rebuilding from near abject ruin. After initial reonstruction passed, however, the dominant concerns became what was to be taught and how in Latvia's schools. The process of this debate and the at times conflicting, at times complimentary, demands of schoolteachers, school inspectors, local government officials, teachers, and students built a modern, effective school system. This school system reflected an inreasingly sophisticated pedagogy, a professionalism of schoolteachers, and impressive construction of schools.

The content of schools, however, was also severely contested. With the Depression of the early 1930s the opinions of some quarters of society became more emphatic in identifying a great crisis in society, a crisis that demanded more authoritarian action, a return to traditionalism, and increased importance on nationalist content. This trend supported and was supported by the Ulmanis regime, which considerably restructured the school system, the state, and society at large in the last half of the 1930s.

This article relies primarily on archival sources drawn most from school inspectors' reports and other officials within and around the Ministry of Education.