Standardisierung nationaler Bildungspolitiken: Die Erschaffung internationaler Experten, Planern und Statistiken in der Frühphase der OECD

The following paper analyzes phenomena of standardization describing a process of educational policy in the aftermath of the Second World War and in the middle of the Cold War – that is, around 1960. The concept of standardization is used to describe a successful historical process in which previous different existing patterns of thoughts or institutional behaviors were being replaced by one prevailing model. The European standardization process observable in the early 1960s triggered by the OECD affected the organization of the educational policies on a ministerial level designed to influence the national school systems according to a specific ideology. This ideology was transported and disseminated by a specific rhetoric that bypassed political taboo themes and that covered up the clear strategies. This paved the way for the process of standardization and the implementation of not only formal adaptation of the organization of education but also and in particular specific ways of educational planning, such as statistics, and with them specific ideologies of how society and its citizens should be shaped.