This project proposes an analysis of the secondary educational system and of the high school youth in interwar Romania by using an approach pertaining to socio-cultural history. The research is based on the assumption that specific roles are allotted to teenagers in the process of creating the Romanian nation, while discipline is the instrument used by educational authorities for the social control of the youngsters. The approach is based on the poststructuralist perspective of Michel Foucault that subordinates discipline to the distribution of roles to individuals in a democratic state and on the conceptual relation between discipline and psychosocial identity performed by Erik Erikson. The project follows two complementary paths, analyzing: 1) Practices of discipline in formal school education represented by laws and regulations, connected with how teenagers relate to obedience; 2) Mechanisms of discipline through extracurricular education, involving a case study on the youth organization Straja Țării.

A full-length study is available here.