A look at the influences behind the emergence of social, political, and economic institutes in the Modern Era.
Different from the way in which most people today understand and use the term “modern,” the Modern Era, sparked by the invention of the printing press and consequently the Age of the Enlightenment, is characterized by its rigid structures and ideologies. The term “modern” is used when referring to present-day, contemporary life, which is, ironically, the Postmodern Era, recognized for its move away from the rigidity of the Modern Era. According to media studies scholar, Joshua Meyrowitz, in his 2008 chapter, “Media Evolution and Cultural Change,” there are four cultural phases marked by their distinct communication technologies. In his on-going project, “Technology & Social Change: Four Major Eras,” Communication professor Michael Soha elaborates on Meyrowitz’s distinctions to explore how and why social phenomena emerge and change throughout human history. According to their work, the Postmodern Era is seen to have incorporated the progress of the Modern Era while also integrating some features of previous eras that were left behind by its predecessor, including the blurring of boundaries. Before the Modern Era were the Ancient and Medieval eras, respectively. The Ancient era can be defined by its only communication technology: the mouth. With no tool other than one’s memory to store information, communicating or even thinking about new concepts was extremely difficult.
The Medieval era emerges with the invention of writing, though oral communication still dominated, as very few knew how to read and write and it was rather expensive for those who could. Still, the new technology quickly stirred up the culture as communication across tribes was made possible, leading to connections among people previously deemed strangers. Once the printing press is invented, however, literacy becomes more accessible to far more people than just the few Monarchs and clergy of the Catholic church. The printing press enables mass communication for the first time, being a much faster and more affordable technology than paying scribes to write texts by hand. Although the printing press did not lead immediately to the supposedly free-thinkers we consider part of the Postmodern era, it did lead to a standardization of knowledge for far more people than before, narrowing the educational gap between the minority of elites and the majority of other people.
The Modern Era is distinguished from earlier eras for how it is shaped by the industrial model. Simply put, in the Modern Era, everything was broken down into smaller parts as a way to help understand the whole. The industrial revolution sparked urbanization, meaning a surge in the populations in cities (where factory jobs existed for the large number of people moving away from farm life made somewhat obsolete by factory production). In order to manage and make sense of the chaotic world during this time, people began organizing and streamlining their processes so they could optimize the way in which they communicated and transferred information. Unlike the Ancient Era in which there were many globally disconnected tribes, the printing press enabled the rise of a singular national identity as it made mass communication possible. Each person was basically viewed as a cog in an increasingly complex machine, which formed this identity we know as a “nation.”
Although the average person might now have access to knowledge, those who had the time and luxury of being able to fully take advantage of the growing body of information were still the elites. This meant they were the ones who ultimately organized the institutions which wrote the narrative of this age. In other words, dominant ideologies arise from none other than the elites. As a cog in the machine — aka the nation — elites believed each person should serve a specific function. Following a certain path allows the nation to operate as the whole. The whole, of course, has been structured and streamlined by the elites. Institutions emerged to ensure the functioning of this nation-machine. Public health institutions ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people by tending to the sick, for example, as opposed to allowing the sick to spread their illnesses to others, perhaps the elites. Public education institutions maintain the dominant ideologies of the nation by instructing the future generations with the standardization of education.
Standardizing education allows for cohesion of a nation’s value system. Compulsory education refers to the education that is required of all members of society and is imposed by the government (the elites). Why might elites take an interest in educating the masses? And why is student education being standardized? Certainly, providing a standardized education cannot completely brainwash the public, however, standardized education can influence people in a particular way — a sort of “‘one size fits all’ approach,” if you will (Soha, 11). Institutions, such as public education systems, reify the moral narratives being told by those in leadership positions, e.g. Capitalism is a better economic system than socialism, and telling the truth is better than lying. Institutions promote ideologies that legitimate their existence because they are created and advanced by those occupying the most privileged positions.
