back to materialities? or how to deal with memory in ... 15 speech.pdfdominant repressive discipline...
TRANSCRIPT
Back to materialities? Or how to
deal with memory in education?
The school desk as an example.
Prof. dr. (habil.) Marc Depaepe
Public Lecture at the University of Latvia
on the occasion of the conferral of a honorary doctorate,
October, 2, 2015
A honorary doctorate for a historian of
education
• Personally, I feel very honored
• But it is also an honor for our “modest” field of research
• And more particularly to my good friends and colleagues
with whom I have published a lot (e.g. Frank Simon)
The “paradoxical” history of the history of
education
• In the 19th century: high expectations in view of the
construction of “national” school systems
• Identity building and ethical codes
• Nucleus of “pedagogy” and teacher training, not only in
Western Europe but also in Eastern Europe
• Historicization… in stead of educationalization….
• A sobering effect…
The relevance of the irrelevant?
• Expectations towards history…
• It is all about interpretation…
• To see discourses about discourses, we need some
“critical distance”…
• The need for “meta”-reflections…. (philosophy, history,
culture, art…)
• Even within the context of neoliberalism and market
oriented evidence based empirical research
• Much more complex than thinking in terms of
dichotomies… ► ambiguities, complexities via historical
research…
Short comments on the “state of the art” in the
field
• “Lo, the poor history of education”, or “hail, the floroushing
history of education?” ► Paradigmatic developments in
the US, since the 1960s and 1970s – “(post)revisionism”
and the otucome of social and, from the 1990s onwards,
cultural history of education…
• Enormous literature, floroushing journals, and
organizations…. Not the least “ISCHE” (Riga, 2013)
Complex relationships with education
museums ► laboratories for h.of.ed?
• The enduring “educationalizing” trap ► museums as
educational agents with normative “messages” for the
public
• The desire to be “attractive” to the public ►
elementarization, visualization, etc…
• The desire “to keep it simple” ◄► theoretical reflection
about complexities and ambiguities of the educational past
• The pressure of figures of visitors ► the desire to be
relevant…
The case of Ypres
• Education museum in the shadow of the In Flanders Fields
Museum…
• Presumably, it will disappear in the coming years…
Showing off the “big brother” ? – political-
pedagogic discourse of the IFFM
Leading politicians look back with pride of the many
accomplishments of the IFFM since 1998 (e.g. VIFF
Flash 50)
◄ Honorary Governor of West-Flanders [P. BREYNE]
Moving towards 500,000 visitors a year
◄ The Then Minister in Charge (now Minister
President) [G. BOURGEOIS]
15 million € for 44 commemorative projects
◄The Mayor of Ypres [J. DURNEZ]
Much to learn and much to remember ► the message
of peace…
Behind these discourses…
• Social expectations, implicit and explicit
• Touristic and commercial benefits (war beer, war
chocolates…)
• Ideological interpretations (cf. the “battle” between Flemish
speaking and Francophone regions over the remembrance
and the role of Flemish Nationalism in the wars…)
• Commemoration = a present day activity!
• Rhetorics of remembrance have a present day function…
Ypres = In Flanders Fields… museum located
at the Cloth Hall (location of the first OMI,
1990-1998)
Nowadays: Hyper-modern museum with
unseen technical possibilities…
Peace education ►
commerative sites
Ypres – city of “peace”
To make sure:
• Nothing against “peace” – on the contrary, of course
• Let alone against“commemorations” (cf. 30,000 th “Last
Post under the Menin Gate”):
• Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
• The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
• Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -
• Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
(Siegfried Sassoon, 1886-1967)
But this is another, more emotional discourse about the
irrationality of war…
VisitorsYear OMI visitors IFFM visitors
1996 7,303 N/A
1997 3,423 N/A
1998 6,173 168,729
1999 9,015 236,915
2000 11,271 231,167
2001 10,160 212,298
2002 9,281 222,100
2003 9,681 205,301
2004 9,313 218,871
2005 2,323 192,995
2006 Closed 216,174
2007 1,645 206,263
2008 7,631 214,428
2009 6,748 206,887
2010 6,954 198,542
2011 7,708 177,232
2012 5,870 187,332
2013 8,446 304,579
2014 7,777 483,741
Our idea: to develop education museums as a
scientific/material basis for history of ed.
• Not only in view of scientific basis for exhibitions, but also
in the sense of workplaces for scientific development
• However, visitors were mainly (but not exclusively) “pupils”
(important target group)
• Development of an “educational pack” (museum box as an
appetiser for school trips; worksheets for visiting the
museum, “practical workshops” in the museum where one
can play school, etc.) ► discourse of fun, nostalgia, etc..
• ◄►Our incessant plea for a scientific basis in order to
interpret the history of education in all its complexity…. Cf.
the socialising role of the school in society… the very idea
of a quasi universal grammar of schooling, embedded in
the semantics of educationalisation
Vorbei ist nicht vorüber…
• It seems like a missed opportunity… also from the
museological perspective
• to contribute to the individual ‘processing’ of the
educational past (cf. the liberating laugh or perspective
inducing “aha”-moment)
• to gain wisdom and understanding of the historic role of
schooling… (place of historical reflection rather than an
educational agent…)
• Reflection in a museum starts with “artefacts”
Back to the materialities? Artefacts in the
museum – material sources for history?
Everything put
together in a
folklore
museum
(Viane):
Thematically as
well as
chronologically:
“non-sense”…
The school desk: remarkable icon of the
collective memory of schooling…• Covers of “educational historiography” in Belgium and
the Netherlands ► symbol of educational past as such
18 6-10-2015
An inevitable (and unsurmountable?)
collective memory?
Opening Ypres museum (1990), Flemish minister of ed. at
schooldesks…; analogous picture in website of Bergisch
Gladbach! Min-Präs. of NRW (2005).
19 6-10-2015
Where is the biography of objects?
• Life cycle… creation ► use ► afterlife … firewood…
• Second life… http://www.2dehands.be : repainted ► pink
color! Other functions, other contexts (also educationally)
20 6-10-2015
The school desk and its life cycle
Even a “handicap” for the future?
22 6-10-2015 /
• Can we think in another way about classrooms and desks?
• Italian design of a future classroom… ecological, but… following the grammar
of schooling for ever and ever?
• Let us be ahistoric for one moment… the desk of the future… “nil novi sub
sole?”
Why? The impressive cult of “order” and
“discipline”?
• Embedded in our mentality
• If we think about schooling…
A key element in reversing the chaos of the
old elementary instruction “per capita”…
A village school, 19th century
A village school, 17th century
“Ordo ab
chao…”
In search of relevant theoretical frameworks
• Order “in” Progress
The grammar of schooling as starting point
• Cf. Larry Cuban, David Tyack, William Tobin, etc… the
idea of a “grammar” of schooling as starting point… ►
persistent structures that makes innovation difficult
• it is not so much the innovation that changes schooling,
but the grammar of schooling that changes the educational
innovation….
• Refined with “educational” (pedagogical) component (cf.
the German literature on Pädagogisierung) and its
anthropological dimension (cf., e.g., Spanish literature ►
class archeology)
Cf. The role of “new” education
• New education; progressive education, Reformpädagogik
(end of the 19th C.)
• In the traditional literature, based on the self-discourse of
this “new education” movement (attractive to all
educationalist because of its adagium Vom Kinde Aus) this
movement was represented as a “Copernican”
Revolution… (cf. Claparède e.g.)
• But – in our view - it wasn’t… what happened was gradual
adaptation to “modernisation” ► modern education,
modern schools (even more schoolish; or schoollike than
before)
Promising attempts… in which we developed
our concepts… to understand the black box
Hypothesis on school desks
• New material (cf. Montessori tableware for preschoolers)
did not necessarily have a big impact on the educational
behavior of school (and preschool) teachers …
• It seems not to have resulted into a “copernican”
revolution..
• Nor did the (inner) architecture of the school and the
classroom…
• Cf. our analysis of the Decroly-school in Belgium…
Another faith may require another
temple…but in reality things are not so simple
Historical research on school desks?
• Foucauldian “gaze” and its “bio-political” context
• E.g. the work of Marcelo Caruzo (Berlin) on the monitorial
system
31 6-10-2015
Do we need Foucault?
Cf. Disziplinierte Körper: Die
Schulbank als Erziehungsapparat
(Hnilica, 2003) ► but the school
desk is more than an “educational”
apparatus… and the individual to be
educated much more than a
skeleton…
The irony of school reform ► ZfP
A quotation of W. Benjamin as starting point…
• “The doctor discovered I was nearsighted. And he
prescribed not only a pair of glasses but a desk. It was
very ingeniously constructed. The seat could be adjusted
to move toward or away from the slanted desktop that
served as a writing surface; in addition, there was a
horizontal bar built into the chair back that provided
comfortable support, not to mention a little bookrack which
crowned the whole and which could slide back and forth. It
was not long before the desk at the window had become
my favorite spot. (…)
Walter Benjamin (2)
• “The desk thus bore a certain similarity to my school bench. But
it has this advantage: it was safely hidden away there, and had
room for things my school bench knew nothing about. The desk
and I were united against it. And hardly had I regained my desk
after a dreary day at school, then it gave me new strength.
There I could feel myself not only at home but actually in my
shell – just like one of those clerics who are shown in medieval
paintings, kneeling at their prie-dieu or sitting at their writing
desk, as though encased in armor. In this burrow of mine, I
would begin reading (…) I sought out the most peaceful time of
day and this most secluded of all spots. I would then open my
book to page one with all the solemnity of an explorer setting
foot on a new continent”.
This quotation
is an important one for several reasons:
(1) School desk is interpreted as an instrument of the then
dominant repressive discipline in everyday school life
(2) Even a relation is led with its clerical pre-history (which is
correct I think)
(3) But the desk had also positive impact: a place for self-
finding and self-devolpment
(4) Educational outcomes are in no way the simple translation
of what curriculum builders intended
(5) Images have to be contextualized
School desks as a historical device, a
materiality of mental space
(Ill. 1: Painting of Karl Hubbuch, 1925, from Müller & Schneider, 1998)
Cf., e.g., the work of Oscar Brodsky (Odessa
1859 – Brussels 1949)
(Ill. 2: Picture of Brodsky from the Brodsky family)
Discourse of medicalization
• Fighting against scoliosis and the like…
• By introducing a brand new “made to measure” desk in
view of the purposes of the New Education… :
• The individual, foldable school desk
The individual foldable (school)desk
Not a very succesful innovation?
• Hardly any Brodsky’s desks were sold….
• WHY? How come?
(1) The designer?
(2) The publicity campaign and its discourse?
(3) Marketing or production?
(4) Object itself in relation to the envisioned markets?
(1) The designer and his discourse
• Succesful business family
• Scientific and pseudo-scientific argumentation of the
Brussels pedological and pedotechnic authorities
• Fighting against
scoliosis and the
like
(2) The Lobbying: open air schools as a
possible market
(3) Marketing and production problems were
not unsolvable
(4) The characteristics of the object
• TOO MODERN FOR THE SCHOOL?
(4) The characteristics of the object
• TOO SCHOOLISH FOR MODERN SOCIETY?
