Our guiding thesis in this article is that the recent burgeoning discussion of differentiation in the context of education has to do with critiques of the globalization theories that have been popular since 1990. In doing so, however, these critically motivated discussions run the risk of overlooking the historical roots of differentiation, which are closely related to the establishment of nation-states in the long 19th century and which themselves have much to do with educational systems and the fabrication of loyal citizens. By reconstructing the genesis of the conditions of differentiation in the context of the emerging nation-states, the article provides a historically informed basis for starting the new discussion on differentiation from an overly simplistic critique of globalization theories.