Mobility in Education: Economic Incentive or Family Resources?

History, reflected Zygmunt Bauman, helps to understand why “the world has come to be what it is” (Bauman and Tesler 2002, p. 43). In saying that history shows us the evolutionary path the world has taken, Bauman was right. However, it is not always the case that a well-formulated goal leads to the desired outcome. In the most developed countries of eighteenth-century Europe, the historical story of education began under the best auspices. The Enlightenment Revolution, which exalted the rational disposition of the individual, also highlighted how the educational process of each person fits into a collective dimension. Being a basic aspect of the life of every community, education for life and profession should no longer be reserved for the offspring of the nobility and imparted by tutors. In the First French Republic, the Enlightenment conviction that cultural formation should underpin the identity of all citizens, and that the State should take responsibility for it, received legal recognition. It was in 1792 that the French mathematician Jean-Antoine Caritat de Condorcet drafted and presented to the French legislative assembly the Report on Public Education.