1. INHOUDSOPGAVE
History of education 2022-2023 ...................................................................................................................... 1
Class #1: An introduction to the field .............................................................................................................. 2
1.1. Some basic concepts ................................................................................................................................ 2
1.2. A common mistake when talking about the past: presentism ................................................................ 2
1.3. DEr Struwwelpeter / Zappelphillip ........................................................................................................... 3
1.4. History is never neutral! .......................................................................................................................... 3
1.5. Educational historiography ..................................................................................................................... 4
1.6. From historicism to historicizing (Popkewitz) .......................................................................................... 5
2. What brought about this historiographical evolution?............................................................................. 6
2.1. (1.) Linguistic turn or the inability of representation ............................................................................... 6
2.2. (2.) 20th century emancipatory movements ........................................................................................... 7
2.3. Historiographical evolution ..................................................................................................................... 7
2.4. New cultural history of education (NCHE) ............................................................................................... 8
2.4.1. Characteristics of NCHE ................................................................................................................... 8
Quantitative and a qualitative characteristics of educationalization .......................................................... 9
Jan Klaassen, watch out! ........................................................................................................................... 10
3. Critical undertone of “educationalization” ............................................................................................ 10
3.1. Changing views on discipline (from physical punishments to psychological influence) ........................ 10
3.2. Tensions between history and education! ............................................................................................. 11
3.3. The three duties of the historian of education ...................................................................................... 11
Class #2: Humanism & the discovery of childhood......................................................................................... 12
3.4. Religion & education during Middle Ages ............................................................................................. 12
3.5. Rise of different denominations ............................................................................................................ 12
3.6. Main characteristics of Humanism ........................................................................................................ 13
3.7. “On the education of children” .............................................................................................................. 14
3.7.1. Alternative educational ideas ........................................................................................................ 15
3.8. Juan Luis Vives and the reconfiguration of poverty relief ...................................................................... 15
3.9. De subventione pauperum (1526) On assistance to the poor ............................................................... 15
4. Philippe Ariès & the discovery of childhood........................................................................................... 16
4.1. The discovery of the child ...................................................................................................................... 16
4.2. A different school! ................................................................................................................................. 17
4.3. Thé child and thé teacher do not exist! ................................................................................................. 18
4.4. Criticism of Ariès’ theory ....................................................................................................................... 18
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,5. The enlightenment ................................................................................................................................ 19
Tentative definition of Enlightenment ...................................................................................................... 19
French revolution ...................................................................................................................................... 19
Sapere Aude .............................................................................................................................................. 20
5.1. Radically new, or relavitely old? ............................................................................................................ 21
John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) ............................................................................................................ 21
5.1.1. Main educational ideas ................................................................................................................. 21
5.1.2. Strands of the Enlightenment ....................................................................................................... 21
John locke (1632-1704) ............................................................................................................................. 22
5.1.3. The blank slate & the construction of difference by ‘experience’................................................. 23
5.1.4. The first educational initiatives for PwD ....................................................................................... 23
5.2. The politicization of education? ............................................................................................................ 25
5.2.1. The politics of education ............................................................................................................... 25
Michel Foucault and the rise of disciplinary power .................................................................................. 26
5.3. Impact of the enlightenment ................................................................................................................. 27
5.3.1. The emergence of an educational paradox ................................................................................... 27
6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, education and the construction of human differences ..................................... 28
6.1. Enlightenment and pedagogical optimism ............................................................................................ 28
6.1.1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, man of nature & cultural pessimism ...................................................... 29
6.2. Rousseau’s central educational ideas.................................................................................................... 30
6.2.1. #1 Negative education................................................................................................................... 30
6.2.2. #2 Sensorial education .................................................................................................................. 31
6.2.3. #3 Childhood and/as development ............................................................................................... 32
6.2.4. #4 Education should be adapted to the lived reality of children .................................................. 32
6.3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and educational reality .................................................................................... 32
6.3.1. Jean-Marc Itard and the Wild boy of Aveyron .............................................................................. 32
6.3.2. Educational goals set by Itard........................................................................................................ 33
6.3.3. The implementation of Rousseau’s ideas...................................................................................... 33
6.3.4. Enlightenment, Rousseau & human differences ........................................................................... 34
Retracing the emergence of special education around 1800 .......................................................................... 35
7. Humanitarian & historical materialist accounts ..................................................................................... 35
7.1. Humanitarian account........................................................................................................................... 36
7.2. Historico-materialistic interpretations .................................................................................................. 36
8. Taking on an alternative perspective: problematization ........................................................................ 38
9. A different set of questions! .................................................................................................................. 39
9.1. Emotions ................................................................................................................................................ 39
9.1.1. Solitude ......................................................................................................................................... 39
10. Daniel Tröhler, University of Vienna: Pestalozzi or Why should we care about the past if its gone?
(gastcollege) ................................................................................................................................................. 42
10.1. Why should we care about the past if its gone?................................................................................ 42
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, 10.2. Pestalozzi‘s „modernity“.................................................................................................................... 44
10.2.1. The economic upswing the the crisis of classical republicanism ................................................... 44
10.2.2. Education as strengthening the soul ............................................................................................. 45
10.2.3. The invention of modern education as solution to the problem .................................................. 47
10.2.4. The rising the nation-states after 1815 as educational projects ................................................... 48
10.2.5. Pestalozzi‘s „actuality“ or “topicality“ ........................................................................................... 49
Progressive/new education .......................................................................................................................... 52
11. Main characteristics of progressive education ................................................................................... 52
12. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) .......................................................................................................... 53
12.1. Casa dei bambini ............................................................................................................................... 53
12.2. Emancipatory struggles as context ................................................................................................... 54
12.3. Main educational ideas ..................................................................................................................... 55
12.4. Rethinking discipline, cf. clumliness................................................................................................... 56
12.5. Relationship between Montessori and Il Duce .................................................................................. 57
12.6. Montessori in exile: an unknown Indian story?! ................................................................................ 57
13. Célestin Freinet (1896-1966) .............................................................................................................. 58
Sounds and silences in the history of education: ........................................................................................... 60
the rise of the silent classroom ..................................................................................................................... 60
14. Sound studies and sound histories ..................................................................................................... 60
14.1. Origin of sound studies: soundscape ................................................................................................. 60
14.2. Sound studies..................................................................................................................................... 61
14.3. Sound histories .................................................................................................................................. 62
15. Sounds, silences & educational historiography .................................................................................. 63
15.1. Sounds, silences & the new cultural history of education ................................................................. 63
16. Some historical examples of silence’s educational value .................................................................... 66
Un très grand silence:................................................................................................................................ 67
16.1. Elements that contributed to the rise of silent reading ..................................................................... 68
16.2. Silent reading..................................................................................................................................... 69
16.3. The educationalization of silence?! ................................................................................................... 70
17. Most important topics of today’s class .............................................................................................. 70
Class 9: Shyness and the reinvention of silence by Maria Montessori ............................................................ 71
18. Silent/shy children............................................................................................................................. 71
18.1. The magic wood ................................................................................................................................ 71
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, 18.2. Existing studies on the history of shyness .......................................................................................... 72
18.2.1. Joe Moran – shrinking violets ........................................................................................................ 72
18.2.2. Warren Susmann – Culture and history ........................................................................................ 72
18.2.3. Cristopher Lane – how normal behavior became a sickness......................................................... 72
18.2.4. Susie Scott – Shyness and society ................................................................................................. 73
18.2.5. An 18th century ‘Timidus’ ............................................................................................................. 74
18.3. History of shyness and education ...................................................................................................... 75
19. The reinvention of silence by Maria Montessori ................................................................................ 76
19.1. Maria Montessori’s critique on 19th century silence ........................................................................ 76
19.2. Three silence-exercices ...................................................................................................................... 76
19.3. Educational value of silence according to Montessori ...................................................................... 77
19.4. (Neo-)liberal power and silence ......................................................................................................... 77
19.5. Reception of Montessori’s silence games .......................................................................................... 77
Authoritarian and anti-authoritarian pedagogy ............................................................................................ 79
20. A call for more authority.................................................................................................................... 79
21. Education: a continuum of freedom and authority............................................................................. 79
22. Two extremes .................................................................................................................................... 80
22.1. Fascist regimes and authorian education (1) .................................................................................... 80
22.1.1. Fascist curricula ............................................................................................................................. 81
22.1.2. Anti-authoritarian pedagogy ......................................................................................................... 81
22.1.3. Anti-authoritarian education......................................................................................................... 83
22.2. Montessori & communism/fascist thinking ....................................................................................... 84
22.3. Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 84
Emancipation or civilization? ........................................................................................................................ 85
History of education in Belgian-Congo, 1908-1960 ........................................................................................... 85
23. Some historical context ..................................................................................................................... 86
24. Education during Congo-Freestate ..................................................................................................... 88
25. Education during Belgian colonization ............................................................................................... 91
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,HISTORY OF EDUCATION 2022-2023
Prof. Pieter Verstraete & Dra. Ines Jans
Main goals of the course
- To offer students an introduction to the history of education
- Focus on Western actors and evolutions
- Not a celebration of Western history! We must relate ourselves critically to what they wrote.
- Starting in the Middle Ages and going up till the 20th Century (first half)
- Relevance of history for contemporary discussions about education
- To construct an argument and use evidence in order to prove something – history of education is a
scientific field of study
o We write a story but we do more, we write a history which is more. It is based on all kinds of
material. A historian is not a novelist because it is non-fiction, we cannot invent data. We do
something reliable with it.
Reader HoE and exam
- Compilation of sources and texts available from the Printing Service of the Pedagogische Kring (CUDI)
- Rather extensive!
- Important to keep track of the exam material every week
- Open book! Requires a different study method than a closed book exam!
- Insight and application questions - no pure reproduction!
- Essay, statement/s, unseen tekst fragment, explanation of a particular fragment from the reader
DisABILITY Filmfestival
- 8 till 12 May 2023
- To attend at least one movie
- Tickets will be available from 1ste April onwards (5 euro, including drink at the filmcafé)
- Twofold aim of the filmfestival
- Bringing people together
- Triggering discussion about the representations of persons with disabilities
- Want to become a volunteer? Send an e-mail to info@disabilityfilmfestival.be
- All practical information on http//www.disabilityfilmfestival.be
Seminar History of education
- Ines Jans
- Week before and week after Eastern holidays
- In small groups
- Seminar 1: reading text by Popkewitz on historicizing
- Seminar 2: reading text by Balagopalan on childhood and education in India
- Compulsory !
- Data and deadlines: See study guide (Toledo)
1
, CLASS #1: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
FIELD
Educationalization: the social tendency to behave as if social problems could be solved by educational means
1.1. SOME BASIC CONCEPTS
Past ≠ history ≠ historiography although it is frequently used as synonyms.
Past A collection of all the events that have occurred before the moment in which we are right now, it is
behind us. Everything that is not immediately available anymore (to humans), you need something else
(a medium) in order to say something about it. We can never reconstruct the past in a truthful manner
(everything is an interpretation).
History A science that refers to some kind of order in the here & now by a historian that he/she found in an
archive and is related to past events/figures/actors. It’s all the stories that we can present of what
happened in the past and where the interpretation is present. This interpretation can occur from
previous data/an archive or from qualitative interpretative methods History is thus the result of all the
hard work that historians undertake in order to make sense of our past.
Historiography A reflection on how we can and should write histories. It relates to a critical reflection on how to do,
reflect on, write about the history of education.
Primary source Everything that has been written/published/printed in the past, where a historian has not yet added
material some additional meaning to. It’s something that has been used by someone in the past, and historians
have not yet made use of it to transform the past into some sort of history, to reconstruct our
educational past. (ex.: a schoolbook/manual used by a teacher in the ‘20s in a particular school, …)
Secondary Something where the historian represents primary source material in such a way that it adds some sort
source material of interpretation to it. The historian puts primary source materials in some kind of order and adds
(~literature) meaning to it. (ex.: an article, …). The word secondary is used because it refers to an activity performed
by the historian because he is interested in this (ex. the law).
Categories of sources:
● Printed: article, the law, …
● Written: diary written by a teacher, …
● Visual: video-recordings, recorded interviews, painting, …
● Acoustic: interview, recording of class, gramophone, … → only available from late 19th century
(invention of the gramophone; 1st recording of sound + able to play it afterwards)
● Material: relic from a classroom in the 18th century, a school bench, a blackboard, …
1.2. A COMMON MISTAKE WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE PAST: PRESENTISM
- You can understand different things under presentism.
- Making use of contemporary objects/values/judgements/vocabulary to say something about the past.
- Judging or speaking about the past by means of contemporary language, it is for example unfair to call
things in Middle Ages dehumanizing in our context now because we have evolved
- Objects – Saying that a particular object existed in a particular time while this was not yet the case
- Norms/values – Looking at the past through the lens of contemporary norms and values
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, - Judgments – using knowledge dating from a later period than the one in which a particular decision
has been made
- Vocabulary – using contemporary words to denote historical phenomena
1.3. DER STRUWWELPETER / ZAPPELPHILLIP
Heinrich Hoffman (a psychologist in 1848) didn’t like the existing children stories. They were too funny and
exciting. They needed stories that taught them how to behave. It included 10 stories that included a
moral/lesson.
1) Ex. A child who bit his nails and in the end it ends that an adult is cutting his hand off (Struwelpeter)
2) Ex. Table manners (Zappelphilip): according to historians Philip is the first boy to ever be identified with
ADHD because he couldn’t sit still. Clear example of presentist mistake! Making use of vocabulary that is
nowadays accepted but it did not exist in the 19th century when Hoffman wrote the book.
-> Good historian tries to come as close as they are able to the vocabulary that is being used in that particular
time period to construct the past. If one uses contemporary language, it cannot represent the lived reality.
In the midst 19th century this boy did not have ADHD, it was just a naughty boy ex. ‘De Witte van Zichem’ ->
was a naughty boy who had to be corrected in many ways. Some people say that he is a prime example of a
child with ADHD but that did not exist back then, we have to use some other words that come closer to the
time then.
1.4. HISTORY IS NEVER NEUTRAL!
Silences: things/persons/events which are not spoken or written about. Silences are often representative for
the way these things, persons or events are treated in contemporary societies ex. disabilities, gender (In
history of education we only study males as if female historians did not exist)
All histories which are produces contain a particular word view. You will always discover that there is some
worldview implicit to the histories you see, you can discover them when you read the stories against the grain.
Political use of history
o Example from the Flemish context: the Flemish canon or the VRT series Het verhaal van
Vlaanderen (Tom Waes) who is reconstructing our Flemish history but there are lot of
criticizers that criticize that money is used so that a series like this is using the past in order to
confirm to Flemish identity. Because what will be included in this canon? Only famous artists?
Or also the Belgian colonies in Congo? Only white people? What are the most important
figures/things/events that characterize Flemish history?
o The past is reconstructed in such a way that it contributes to the identity formation of a
particular group (and thus also to the construction of otherness).
o Always some political power involved. That political power is not always related to very clear
identified and well delineated political parties but more generally related to politics.
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, 1.5. EDUCATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
- Although what happened in the past never changes, the way we look at that past is constantly
changing.
o Evolution in the way that we have come to write educational histories
o What happened in the past cannot be changed but the histories that we reconstruct
continuously change throughout time -> we give different justifications, motivations,
different choices to what we (don’t) find interesting, the sources we use differ
§ Ego-documents: documents written by children/teachers/… to include their
perspective in the stories we write and to come close to the actual events that
happened.
- What can change through time?
o The justification for our interest in the past
o The choices we make regarding the themes we find interesting and worthwhile
o The sources we use to reconstruct history
o The way we shape our historical narratives
Some examples
Example - Leerboek historische pedagogiek
Written by christian in 1948 → 4 reasons as to why scholars/educators should be interested in the history of
education
- History helps grasp the essence of things
- History demonstrates what needs to be done and it helps to distinguish between what works and
didn’t work
- History avoids over- and underestimations of particular events
- History brings people closer to God
Example - Inleiding in de historische pedagogiek
Noordam, p. 1: “In our view, history is a field of encounters in which we are confronted with other figures,
situations, civilisations and customs than those we encounter in our daily lives. It is now, we believe, the
case that we grow spiritually in conversation, discussion and encounter with people who are different from
ourselves. This is true in everyday life, it is true in the study of other civilisations, and it is true in the study of
the past. History provides us with material to think about, material through which we can form ourselves,
and it educates us in how to proceed. The meaning of history and thus of historical pedagogy lies in the
discussion it educates us to.”
Different justification: emphasizing the fact that exposing yourself to strange things helps you learn to act in
a different way when you are confronted with strangers in your own life
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, 1.6. FROM HISTORICISM TO HISTORICIZING (POPKEWITZ)
Move from historicism to historicizing! Underneath a very concise summary of the text. 2 dominant approaches
of our educational past, 2 possible ways in which our educational past can be reconstructed in histories.
Historicism Historicizing
Focus on the past Focus on the present
Reconstructing the past in such a way that you remain as
close as possible to the actual events/reality
An exact copy of what happened in a specific place in a
specific time period: there is nothing left out and nothing is
added to it
Everything that happens in the here and now not really
relevant, but reconstructing the past as truthfully a possible
is the most important
Man is the engine of history Man is the result of history
Everything that happens in the world is the outcome of
human actions
Humankind/real people can decide in an autonomous way
what they can(‘t) do
History is the outcome of human behavior
Archives are the pre-eminent repository of truth Archive is constructed and truth is always perspectival
Best way to reconstruct the past is to start in an archive → Archive is the outcome of different kind of decisions that have been
best place to encounter the truth made by archivists and other persons
Historians who try to reconstruct the past in a historicist THE truth is not in the archive!
way believe it is possible to reconstruct an event that took
event in the past in a truthful way → in the end, their
description of the event resembles completely what
happened in the past ⇒ nothing is left out, nothing is added
to it
Presenting an exact copy of what happened in the past
Relationship between their story and event is a 1 to 1
relationship
ð Professor would say that is not possible because
you cannot ever reconstruct something completely
in a truthful way because you add interpretation to
it.
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