Happy Mothers and Children in the Romantic Period, the Progressive Education and the Educational movement in 1968 W-Germany

This paper first analyses the construction of happy children and happy mothers in the romantic period in the 18th century (Fröbel) – an important background for the ideas of “social motherhood” in the first womens´ movement. Secondly her paper analyses the construction of happy mothers and children in “The Century of Childhood” of Ellen Key (1900) and third the idea of happy children in educational programs within the movement of 68 and within the alternative milieu of the 70ies.

Happy children and moral individuals: Herbartian notions of childhood

The subject of the session is the discovery of the idea of childhood as a time of happiness in different historical periods taking aim to compare those ideas and constructions. Pia Schmid focuses on constructions of happy childhood in Enlightenment educational theory and late 18th century autobiographies. Her argument will be that the notion of happy childhood was gendered and she will highlight how this notion occurs in autobiographies as happy girlhoods and happy boyhoods. The theme of Wolfgang Schröer and Florian Esser is the idea of happy children in the journal “Kinderforschung” around 1900, which was strongly influenced by the concepts of Herbart. Thus the idea of happy children had to be related to a concept of education that was deeply concerned about the morality of children coming of age. These findings will be confronted to the image of happy children in a journal of Progressive Education (“Der Säemann”) that was published around the same time. Meike Sophia Baader first analyses the construction of happy children and happy mothers in the romantic period in the 18th century (Fröbel) – an important background for the ideas of “social motherhood” in the first womens´ movement. Secondly her paper analyses the construction of happy mothers and children in “The Century of Childhood” of Ellen Key (1900) and third the idea of happy children in educational programs within the movement of 68 and within the alternative milieu of the 70ies. The paper of Christin Sager focuses on the ideas of sex education and happy children within the educational movement of 68 in Western Germany, especially in the so called “Kinderläden”.
The aim of the session is to show differences and similarities in the construction of the happy childhood. Gendered constructions, criticism of urbanisation and modernisation, utopic concepts and constructions of the special relation between children and adult educators as happy relations are categories of the analyses. The papers will show that the emphasis of the several discoveries of childhood was often connected with the idea of childhood as time of happiness.

The New Education Theory and the concept of childhood: what do pedagogical journals tell us?

One significant moment regarding childhood in the History of Education is the turning point that the New Education Theory represents. Reveling totally new conceptions of childhood, that new theory completely changed the way of seeing the rule of child in the teaching-learning process. On the other hand, the pedagogical journals played a relevant rule in the process of production and circulation of models and ideas all over the world, by disseminating the new framework concerning new theories and practices about Education established by those theorists.
This work aims to show some aspects of the process of production and circulation of the New Education Theory in pedagogical journals of Portugal and Brazil regarding specifically the concept of childhood, in one comparative perspective. It considers that the pedagogical journals constitute a significant material since it may provide valuable indications about the diffusion and reception of the specialized educational discourse.
The analysis, in this case, attempts to show the ways in which they contributed to the construction of an educational disciplinary field process. It is our intention to look at the history of the intellectuals’ production relating it with the social demands tied up to this production. It is also our goal to understand the pedagogical journals as an arena where confluences and disputes take place and where different interests are involved in the production of discourses and as objects through which we can analyze the building of a pedagogical field and the actors taking part in this same process.
The study intends to answer the following questions:
Which concept of childhood did the pedagogical journals contribute to build?
In the scientific discourse published by pedagogical journals how pedagogues and educationalists utilize that concept to justify the changes in the teaching-learning process?
In which measure the New Education Theory reinvented the concept itself?

Historians' discovery of childhood: challenges and recognitions of identity and otherness

General history is about adult persons, children constitute an exceptional, marginal, or specialized domain of history. The history of childhood is therefore quite often experienced as a personal or collective discovery of the historian, his research group or his research community. It brings historians easily to a sense of discovery and, consequently, to either a close personal involvement in his research theme and its emotional appropriation as an element of identity finding, or a true sense of otherness in the face of a lost world.

Children's sex education as a condition for hapiness in 1968 W-Germany

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Childhood in Enlightenment Educational Theory and late 18th Century Biographies

The focus of the paper will be on constructions of happy childhood in Enleghtenment educational theory and in late 18th century autobiographies. The argument will be that the notion of happy childhood was gendered and it will be highlighted how this notion occurs in autobiographies as happy girlshoods and happy boyhoods.

Happy children and moral individuals: Herbartian notions of childhood

The subject of the session is the discovery of the idea of childhood as a time of happiness in different historical periods taking aim to compare those ideas and constructions. Pia Schmid focuses on constructions of happy childhood in Enlightenment educational theory and late 18th century autobiographies. Her argument will be that the notion of happy childhood was gendered and she will highlight how this notion occurs in autobiographies as happy girlhoods and happy boyhoods. The theme of Wolfgang Schröer and Florian Esser is the idea of happy children in the journal “Kinderforschung” around 1900, which was strongly influenced by the concepts of Herbart. Thus the idea of happy children had to be related to a concept of education that was deeply concerned about the morality of children coming of age. These findings will be confronted to the image of happy children in a journal of Progressive Education (“Der Säemann”) that was published around the same time. Meike Sophia Baader first analyses the construction of happy children and happy mothers in the romantic period in the 18th century
(Fröbel) – an important background for the ideas of “social motherhood” in the first womens´ movement. Secondly her paper analyses the construction of happy mothers and children in “The Century of Childhood” of Ellen Key (1900) and third the idea of happy children in educational programs within the movement of 68 and within the alternative milieu of the 70ies. The paper of Christin Sager focuses on the ideas of sex education and happy children within the educational movement of 68 in Western Germany, especially in the so called “Kinderläden”.
The aim of the session is to show differences and similarities in the construction of the happy childhood. Gendered constructions, criticism of urbanisation and modernisation, utopic concepts and constructions of the special relation between children and adult educators as happy relations are categories of the analyses. The papers will show that the emphasis of the several discoveries of childhood was often connected with the idea of childhood as time of happiness.

La Fédération internationale de l'Education Physique, création, développement, idées.

Dès l’entre-deux-guerres, les enseignants d'éducation physique et sportive (EPS) parviennent à constituer de puissants réseaux de réflexion en vue de réformer leur discipline et de proposer des alternatives aux gymnastiques militaires ou au développement des sports. Sous formes amicalistes ou associatives, ils développent une analyse critique des contenus d'enseignement généralement dispensés. La création de la Fédération Internationale d'Education Physique (FIEP), en trois étapes successives (1911, 1923, 1953), permet ainsi d’élaborer des réflexions pédagogiques en vue de faire émerger une modélisation recouvrant l'ensemble des situations nationales et d’imposer la nécessité de créer un enseignement de qualité, c’est-à-dire répondant à la fois aux exigences scolaires et sociales. Sous cette influence, la discipline connaît de nombreux changements tant au niveau français qu'au plan international ; c’est au fond la discipline institutionnelle qui, au terme d’un processus historique, se met à incarner la critique, au moins partiellement. On étudiera les inflexions de ces réflexions dans l’optique d’y déceler les marques d’une pensée originale et paneuropéenne d’une éducation physique suédiste. Parmi les principaux responsables de cette institution, il s’agira notamment d’étudier le rôle de certains Français, dont les plus connus demeurent Philippe Tissié puis Pierre Seurin et leur influence dans l’avènement mondial d’une Education Physique hygiéniste.

Réforme ou Révolution : deux axes directeurs de la pensée enseignant

À la fin de la première guerre mondiale, deux axes de la pensée critique enseignante s’organisent. 1/ L’internationalisation révolutionnaire socialiste, portée par une partie de la CGT, qui nourrit une critique radicale à l’encontre de « l’école bourgeoise » de Jules Ferry ; 2/ Un projet politique également fondé sur la critique des ordres séparés de l’école de la IIIe République mais qui est situé dans la tradition des Lumières et des valeurs démocratiques, désireux de réformer l’école sans abattre l’économie de marché. Deux grands meetings sont organisés à l’initiative des Compagnons de L’Université nouvelle, au lendemain de la scission de la CGT, pour rallier les enseignants de tous les ordres au second axe, réformateur et démocratique. Bientôt ces deux axes de la pensée critique, révolutionnaire et réformatrice, finissent par liguer contre eux les mêmes adversaires au sein du corps enseignant : les professeurs d’humanités, qui produisent une rhétorique élitiste. À la fin de la période, on les voit converger autour de personnalités comme Paul Langevin, qui contribuent à proposer une synthèse idéologique féconde. Ils s’appuient sur des mouvements de la pensée critique de le gauche laïque en Europe, qui se rattachent à l’antifascisme, au rationalisme scientifique et aux valeurs démocratiques, et qui s’appuient sur des organisations à ramifications internationales telles que la franc maçonnerie, la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme ou encore les mouvements d’Éducation nouvelle.

Les congrès internationaux de l’enseignement primaire (1900-1930), naissance d’une pensée ?

En France, à partir de la fondation de la Fédération des amicales d’instituteurs en 1900, les congrès amicalistes offrent de nouveaux espaces de débats. Annoncés, préparés et commentés dans la presse d’éducation tant corporative que pédagogique, ils sont l’occasion d’une expression publique des instituteurs. Dès 1906, les congrès de la Fédération nationale des syndicats d’instituteurs s’organisent parallèlement. Avant la 1re Guerre mondiale, le Bureau international des Fédérations d’instituteurs et d’institutrices organise des congrès internationaux de l’enseignement primaire. On voit également des syndicalistes travailler avec Alfred Binet à la SLEPE, participer au 1er congrès de pédologie organisé par le belge Ovide Decroly ou nouer des liens avec Edouard Claparède en Suisse. Dans les années 1920 et 30, les échanges internationaux entre enseignants se poursuivent et s’accentuent. Des congrès pédagogiques sont alors organisés par des syndicats, parfois sous tutelle ministérielle. Des enseignants y côtoient des conférenciers invités, des intellectuels (philosophes, psychologues, sociologues…). Parallèlement, d’autres réseaux syndicaux internationaux se constituent, de manière indépendante et sur des bases plus subversives, notamment au sein de l’Internationale des travailleurs de l’enseignement (Frajerman, 1992).

Des réseaux complexes se tissent, au sein desquels les analyses formulées mêlent une pluralité de références. On s’attachera à l’analyse de ces réseaux à dimension internationale, qui contribuent à produire de la pensée critique. Il s’agira d’examiner les modalités de constitution de ces réseaux d’échange, de déterminer quelle pensée critique s’y construit, de quelle manière elle se diffuse (dans la presse, notamment), et comment les analyses de l’école et les projets de réformes circulent à travers différents dispositifs et registres de discours.

La pensée de l'éducation aux forums de Porto Alegre. projets concrets ou nouvelle utopie?

Au moment où une nouvelle forme de la mondialisation s’installe à partir des années 1980-1990, en lien avec le tournant néolibéral des politiques économiques, le culte de la performance, la célébration de la concurrence et du marché, le secteur scolaire en subit les contrecoups (Dardot, Laval, 2009), d’abord dans les pays anglo-saxons, en Grande Bretagne notamment, puis plus largement. Une pensée critique alternative se fait jour, qui s’incarne dans des collectifs comme ATTAC (France) et se fait entendre lors de forums sociaux mondiaux depuis 2001.

Il s’agira de constituer le corpus des interventions relatives à l’éducation qui ont eu lieu à Porto Alegre (Brésil) lors des trois premiers Forums sociaux mondiaux (FSM) en 2001, 2002, 2003 et d’analyser en quoi ces interventions peuvent répondre au programme d’une véritable pensée critique en écho au slogan du FSM : « Un autre monde est possible ». Seront plus spécialement examinés les apports intellectuels de chercheurs-penseurs comme Pierre Bourdieu ou Bernard Charlot notamment.

La Fédération internationale de l'Education Physique, création, développement, idées.

The International Federation of Physical Education, Origins, Development and Philosophy.

During the Inter-war period, the teachers of Physical Education (PE) manage to constitute powerful networks of reflexion for reforming their discipline. They want to propose alternatives to the military gymnastics and to the development of sport. In forms amicalists or associative, they develop a critical analysis of the teaching. The creation of the International Federation of Physical Education (FIEP), in three successive stages (1911, 1923, 1953) makes it possible to work out Teaching reflexions and make find a modeling recovering the whole of the National situations. In fact, the PIEP participas to impose the need for creating a teaching of quality, i.e. answering at the same time to the social and scolar rules. With this influence, the discipline knows many changes as well at the French level as with the international plan ; it’s in fact the Institutional Discipline which starts to incarnate criticism, at least partially at the end of a historical process. So we will study here the inflections of these reflexions because we want to detect the marks of an original and Pan-European Thought of the Suedist PE. Among the principal persons in charge of this Institution, we will explain will the role of French Persons, in particular Philippe Tissié and Pierre Seurin and their influence in the World Advent of the Hygienist Physical Education.

La Fédération internationale de l'Education Physique, création, développement, idées.

Dès l’entre-deux-guerres, les enseignants d'éducation physique et sportive (EPS) parviennent à constituer de puissants réseaux de réflexion en vue de réformer leur discipline et de proposer des alternatives aux gymnastiques militaires ou au développement des sports. Sous formes amicalistes ou associatives, ils développent une analyse critique des contenus d'enseignement généralement dispensés. La création de la Fédération Internationale d'Education Physique (FIEP), en trois étapes successives (1911, 1923, 1953), permet ainsi d’élaborer des réflexions pédagogiques en vue de faire émerger une modélisation recouvrant l'ensemble des situations nationales et d’imposer la nécessité de créer un enseignement de qualité, c’est-à-dire répondant à la fois aux exigences scolaires et sociales. Sous cette influence, la discipline connaît de nombreux changements tant au niveau français qu'au plan international ; c’est au fond la discipline institutionnelle qui, au terme d’un processus historique, se met à incarner la critique, au moins partiellement. On étudiera les inflexions de ces réflexions dans l’optique d’y déceler les marques d’une pensée originale et paneuropéenne d’une éducation physique suédiste. Parmi les principaux responsables de cette institution, il s’agira notamment d’étudier le rôle de certains Français, dont les plus connus demeurent Philippe Tissié puis Pierre Seurin et leur influence dans l’avènement mondial d’une Education Physique hygiéniste.

New sociability and learning: Conceptions of the child in the Spanish Enlightenment

In the last decades of the 18th century, a rapid change in the preferred forms of sociability took place in Spain. Old Catholics forms of social contact, mostly displayed in the collective performance of rituals and in numerous fiestas with religious legitimization, were increasingly seen as archaic forms of social life. The new model of the reasoning public in salons, reading circles, cafes, and free associations became a disruptive experience for some noble and bourgeois circles. This paper discusses the effects of this new sociability in the enlightened 'discovery' of the child between the expulsion of the Jesuits (1767) and the end of the Spanish Ancien Régime (about 1808). Not only these groups of the 'notables' supported the view that children learnt in a very similar way like adults in their novel social experiences did; also urban elementary teachers formulated own views on children and learning related to the new world of a social life that developed beyond religious and traditional frames. Correspondingly, numerous drafts for a comprehensive reform of the Spanish elementary schools in this time displayed the popularity of these representations. This contribution presents both printed (books, daily press) and archival materials from the Spanish sociedades económicas (societies for the promotion of the regions) and from discussions among the urban teachers.

When Childhood ends? -from a historical perspective-

People cannot stay in childhood forever. As people grow, childhood
comes to an end and adulthood begins. Formerly childhood has been
regarded as troublesome and society expected children to grow up as
early as possible. At that time childhood should be discovered.
On the contrary, nowadays especially in Japan many youngsters want to
stay in childhood longer. They seem to refuse to be adult. Most of
the youngsters do not vote at national elections, do not marry and do
not get a job (willingly or unwillingly). When and how childhood
should come to an end?
In Japan the civil law prescribes that adult be 20 years old. In fact
it was enacted more than 100 years ago when Japan started as a new
modern nation. Before that, however, it was common sense among
Japanese people that about 15 years old was appropriate for adult. At
present in many nations the adult age is 18 years old, for example,
the "Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989)" says "a child
means every human being below the age of eighteen years".
Nowadays Japanese government is considering to change the adult age
from 20 to 18. There might be various intentions, one of which is to
prevent brutal crimes by children because children must not be
punished. The stand point may not come from the interest of the child.
In this paper the author focus on the history of educational thought
and survey some thinkers, such as Comenius, Locke, Rousseau and so
on, who discovered child's characteristics. Did they think that the
end of education meant the end of childhood? The author would like
to make clear when they thought the childhood end.

On Gabriela Mistral and het work dedicated to children

" You taught me that what burns congregates to the beings around his flame. And I did in my wheel the circle of the children. " Gabriela Mistral (" The brazier ", Desolation).
These verses are those that give beginning to my presentation making clearly reflected in them Gabriela Mistral's attractive personality, forged by her modest origin, her poor, and painful infancy, her intellectual autotraining and her love for the educational tasks to which one dedicated for point .En her poems as desolation demonstrates her thin treatment with the children and her innocent souls.
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, is born in City of the North of Chile (Vicuña) on April 7, 1889, in December 22, 1914 it arises Gabriela Mistral's pseudonym that was joining the name of two big values of the universal poetry. Gabriel D`Annunzio and Federico Mistral, when she gains the wreath of laurel and the golden medal in the First Floral Games.
The verses: Cradle songs in " Bitter Song " she says textually :
" Sigh let's play, my son, the queen with the king. This green field is yours,… Of whom more might it be?" In the poem Fear " I do not want that swallow they me turn my girl ". In these summarized verses, she makes clearly demonstrated, the love for the smallest, and that was practised in her labor of teacher. The infantile round is other one of her strategies we might say with the current language in order that the children should learn to share, to join with the hands there being transmitted the heat and value of the friendship.
In this presentation, I will resort to her poetical works, where I´ll demonstrate the influence that stopped to the present day; taking her infantile rounds best important that cross the world, leaving a fingerprint of peace, and of brotherhood, which not only the hands of the small ones join, but those of the entire world.

Students Societies as a Means of Immigrant Children Integration

This study focuses on the role of students (children) societies as instruments of altering Israeli immigrant community culture during the 1950s and 1960s. Educators believed that the Hebrew education system should shape the next generation of Israelis, by teaching the established society's cultural norms. The basic assumption was that when immigrant children adopt the new norms and values, their parents will follow eventually. Meanwhile, this factionalist approach has lead to a conflict between the school's values and the immigrant children's family customs. One method of overcoming such problematic situations was using the civic education's device of student societies as an instrument of bypassing the parent's principles.
Student communities were a common device in the Hebrew education system, but unknown to most immigrant families. The students societies challenged the immigrant families in several domains:
1. Undermining patriarchal norms by progressive ideas. The children had experienced the meaning equal rights, majority, minority, and some other basic democratic terms. Forms of students self governance demonstrate the democratic method of decision making.
2. Creating unit solidarity and team sprit. The children societies functioned as supporting groups for their members. The children could rely on the their
group members in their disagreements with their families.
3. Adopting the established society practices in different areas, such agricultural training. In many rural immigrant villages the children used to take care of the school farms, and by doing so demonstrated to their parents how to be good farmers. Another example is subject of hygiene. The Israeli schools, seeing themselves as instructors in modernization, attempted to change hygiene habits of immigrants families, in a rather patronizing way. One way this was done was by conducting hygiene standards, and appointing some children as duty officers in charge.
The student societies were important arenas which helped the immigrant children to adopt the new norms, while deepening the gap between these children and their parents.

Architecture and education. 300 years of the history of Danish childhood told through its buildings.

This paper relates to a – by then – recently finish research project on buildings for Danish children during the past 300 years, from the earliest schools, hospitals and playgrounds to the latest nurseries and children’s culture centres. The project tells the history of childhood through its houses. It’s a story about how especially the 20th Century and the rise of the welfare state has designed childhood through buildings; it’s a story about the distance between educational and architectural visions and practice, about how different periods have handled the scale of the child – and its a story which demonstrates, how even the most recent buildings are rooted in a long educational history about separating the life of children from the life of adults and making sure, that children remain children.

The paper will start out with presenting the overall findings of the study, the chronologies, the actors, and the changing relationship between educational ideas and architecture for children. I will reflect over the methodological challenges and phenomenologies related to the discovering and the interpretation of children’s spaces. Only the school architecture has been object of study, where all the other types of constructions have mostly been forgotten, overlooked or taken for granted.

Finally I will raise the question about cultural heritage when it comes to social architecture built for children. Philippe Ariés demonstrated many years ago, that childhood is basically a material phenomena – and we as society are left will all the stuff of childhood, including the many buildings. But times have changed and buildings have in many cases been dramatically altered. I will argue that this “collage architecture” is the essence of architecture for children – and thereby challenging a more conventional view of cultural heritage as something authentic and original. I will also question the assumption of a specific Danish architecture for children, since international exchanges and inspirations have in many cases played an important role.

The Discovery and Establishment of ‘Childhood’ as a Pedagogical Subject. Childhood and Child Studies in Pedagogical Handbooks at the Turn of the 20th Century.

Childhood not always was subject of the discussion, neither in public nor in the scientific and particularly educational debate. However the fact, that pedagogical encyclopaedic handbooks at the turn of the 20th century contain articles about childhood, child studies and pedagogical institutions for pre-school infants indicates, that childhood and related topics not only were discovered then, but have already become a common and fundamental topic of consideration.
In my lecture I intend to compare the Encyclopaedic Handbook of Education by Wilhelm Rein (1st ed.: 1865–1899, 2nd ed.: 1903–1911) and the Encyclopaedic Handbook of Educational Studies by Joseph Loos (1906–1908).
The paper deals with the following basic questions:
- In which entries does childhood play an explicit role?
- What do we learn about childhood there?
- Can we find differing approaches to childhood?
- Did Rein’s handbook influence the one by Loos in terms of content?
- How do the relevant articles reflect the state and the level of the pedagogical discussion on childhood?

The search for Childhood age group boundaries in Mesolithic burials

Recently, the importance of the study of children and childhood from archaeological contexts has received better attention. Thanks to the increasing research and the publication of scientific papers on children and childhood in the past, a question arises about the appropriate terminology and age categories used in subadult bioarchaeological analysis. A review of the current archaeological literature on prehistoric children shows that problems do exist with the terminology used for this period and the age categories within it.
It is important to distinguish between the different age “categories”. They are: 1) physiological or biological, 2) chronological and 3) social ages. Unfortunately, in the archaeological and bioarchaeological research there are cases in which the basis on which age is estimated is not acknowledged.
Most cultures recognize a childhood period in the human lifespan. Childhood, youth, adolescence, adulthood, and other terms, which are commonly used to define age are, like gender categories, cultural constructs. The way these categories are defined varies both in time and space. The ideal first step in the study of prehistoric children would consist in the definition of significant cultural age categories and their basic characteristics.
The Prehistoric burials provide opportunities for the analysis of numerous aspects of childhood, including the use of burial practices as a way of identifying age categories that structured past societies: subadult versus adult skeletons may be used to distinguish between “child” and “adult”.
The Dnieper Rapids Region of the Ukraine is rich in Mesolithic cemeteries of different periods. The study of these cemeteries and their comparison with the Mesolithic graveyards of Europe might favour interesting conclusions about age group boundaries in Prehistory.
Thus, this paper is an attempt at defining social ages through archaeological analysis.

Development of Primary Education in Nigeria: 1900-1999

The Nigerian child has witnessed unsatisfied demand in education provisions. This study focuses on
the development of primary education in Nigeria. It looks at the education of the child at the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial era and posits that in the pre-colonial era, education of the child was a collective concern. Children belonged to the entire society and as such are investments, valuable assets. Children need protection and have right of education. The study explores the power relations and struggles amongst various political and denominational groups that concerned themselves with child education during the colonial era in Nigeria. It explores the contradiction between colonial policies and real Nigerians hopes and expectations which were apparent given the crisis that followed the initial efforts of Nigerian leaders at educational policy formulation and implementation. Highlighted is children’s rights based on 1924 Geneva Declaration of the right of the child adopted by UN in 1959 and UNESCO constitution. The study reveals educational inequality that left millions of Nigerian children without education, which was fee paying and not compulsory .With nationalist drive that treated education as an emergency, educational development was imperative. The regionalisation era witnessed phenomenal expansion in education. It was also the most tempestuous political era in Nigeria’s pre- independence history. With the empowerment to pass laws on education, there were intensive rivalries among the regions, for example the launching of the UPES. Problems of enrolment, lack of untrained teachers, non-viable primary schools were glaring ,Nigeria did not meet her UPE target in relation to Addis Ababa recommendations. With the Jomtien declaration Nigeria launched the UBE in 1999.Much progress has not been made, making it unlikely to meet her EFA target. The study recommends greater commitment of parents, communities and the government (policy makers) in keeping with the EFA plans of action.

Toys in History: The Discovery of the Material Culture of Childhood

Over ten years of study into children’s toys as indicators of childhood in the past has revealed that toys have been part of the material culture of most past societies: in ancient Persia, India and Egypt, in the Greek and Roman worlds, and in all medieval and early modern periods. It also revealed that children’s toys were almost never presented as such.
The combination of excavated objects with written sources and depictions within the same cultural framework proved that certain categories of objects were definitely meant for children to play with, and that toys had a fixed role in burial practices and rites de passage concerning children. But even as evidence grew and childhood became a theme in social history, archaeologists and ancient and medieval historians kept favouring a ‘safe’ interpretation as cultic or ritual objects. This betrays a reluctance to see children as a distinct group in past societies, even though it was well-known that those societies contained large groups of the under-aged.
This paper will present an overview of toys in their cultural contexts from about 3000 BC to 1500 AD, based on the combination of sources indicative of their function as ‘objects meant for children to play with’. It will focus on the different ways these objects have been interpreted in the last two centuries. The changes in perception and approach of this category of material give insight into the attitudes of archaeologists and historians regarding the dilemma of finding a place for childhood and play in the concepts of past civilizations often characterized as ‘primitive’, ‘barbaric’, ‘classical’ or exemplary.

Evolution of representations of the use of corporal punishment in the rural school in Peru between 1950 and 2007

A survey conducted by the author in urban and rural areas of Peru, between 2006 and 2007, depicted the trend towards decreasing use of corporal punishment in schools in rural areas, the invisibility of its use in urban schools, as well as a growing conceptualization of children as subjects of law in both areas. However, while in urban areas such trends were seen as a positive course, in rural areas these trends were seen as a negative one or accepted with skepticism; rural people see these trends rather as a sign of the inefficiency of the school to fulfill its functions of training and socialization.
These trends of opinion in rural areas weaken the social support for eliminating the use of corporal punishment and the use of any form of violence at school, slow down its eradication, keeping spaces for the reproduction of the violence at school, increases physical and psychological vulnerability of children in these areas and introduces a handicap in their training as members of the political community, however there are no studies that examine the representations underlying these trends of opinion in rural areas in a longitudinal perspective.
This paper aims to explore the evolution of representations of the use of corporal punishment in rural schools of Peru between 1950 and 2007. To do it we use qualitative methodology to analyze ten in-depth surveys conducted by the author in rural areas of Lima and Huancavelica between 2006 and 2007. The people interviewed were men and women born between the 40s and 70 of the last century, who were asked about their personal experiences and their opinions of corporal punishment by teachers against children in the school.

Right to education: Instruction sucvention for poor children in Uberabinha, MG, Brazil in early XXth century

This search aims to enlarge the education history comprehension in Minas Gerais state, Brazil in the period called First Republic using as the investigation reference Uberabinha town between 1902 and 1906. The text is the result of a funded investigation supported by CNPq (National Council for Technologic and Scientific Developing). The sources are law books, decrees, regulations, City Council books and Minas Gerais state educational laws. The city council books is the main source explaining the city worries about the population right for education, specially poor children, because besides the difficulties for them to have an access to the elementary school, it was impossible to them to get into secondary school. In Brazil states in early XX century still have the regenerate power of education belief and its power as a civil right and citizenship sense constructor and also foundation for social order and progress. This idea can be founded in debates promoted by the city council in 1902 mainly on the public money used to offer free secondary education to 12 poor children. This discussion involves for and against arguments. Against this idea we founded the city mayor, basing his argument on the lacking of public resources; and for this idea we have many aldermen based on the argument that “the instruction is the progress and social order for the people”. Many speeches said about moral principles necessity for the youth and also about the students’ good behavior confirmed by local authorities. The city council books allows us to deduce that if the children educational care was present in the city council, the worry about social order was not less important for the aldermen. So they tried to solve both at the same time.

The long-term mother-child dyad and the rights of children in German legal history since the late 18.th century.

In Prussia the rights of mothers concerning their children were legally expressed first time as part of the family-right in the Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794. A second large step in regulation was the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch of 1900 valid for the German Reich. The years since the reconstuction of the Federal Republic have seen various changes of the family right and related subjects in details on the background of the German constitution, the full adaptation the European Human Rights, UNESCO-agreements etc. and high-court decisions. During this long period in general the state always tried to secure the child during all cultural changes, modes and times of crisis, organize the conditions of her or his education and financial ressources, adding shelter by groups and institutions.
This lecture will open for a more serious inclusion of such rights into the formulation of pedagogical concepts.

Discovery of Childhood in Japanese Judicial Policy 1907-1923

In 1907, Japan changed its criminal law to introduce a legal distinction
between adults and children: Those under the age of fourteen came to be
regarded below the minimum age of legal responsibility and were exempt
from criminal persecution. The juvenile law of 1923 favoured the spirit
of parens patriae and demanded special treatment of those aged eighteen
or under: juvenile delinquency inspectors were appointed, information
about juvenile delinquents was withheld from the public, and juvenile
cases were heard in closed session only. The revised juvenile law of
1948 additionally de-prioritised pains and penalties. The period during
which these legal protections of children and juveniles were introduced,
the first quarter of the twentieth century, also saw the rise of the
child-centered education movement. The views of children and juveniles
presented by the leading proponents of child-centered education greatly
influenced the legislative process that sought to strike a balance
between the adaption of the western principles and the preservation of
Japanese traditions.

Protecting the child from child protection: from best interests to rights for children in the Netherlands

Fitting child protection in with youth care is like fitting a square peg in a round hole. Child protection wants to be a part of youth care but its intervention backed by rules of law makes it too different. The ambivalent relation also exists between child protection and the rules of law. The law gives child protection its means to intervene in the upbringing of children, but giving reasons to apply the rules became increasingly complicated.

In this contribution the historical development of the supervision order will serve as an example of how child protection mirror child images concerning their interest. This has a turning point in the seventies, when confidence in the supervision order was at its lowest point. Then at the start of the eighties the measure recovered and in a short time made a turn towards rights for children.

Images of Childhood in the penal jurisprudence of Italian court

Children have long been the objects and not the subject of legal rights. Social and political evolution has led to a progressive recognition of a series of rights which have unfortunately often continued to exist only on paper. The gap between legal norms and practice was visible throughout the twentieth century and one of the focal points was the use of violence in the education of children. In Italy the so-called jus corrigendi, written into law during the Fascist period, continued to have an influence for a long time, and to feed a doctrinal and jurisprudential debate long after the Republican Constitution.
This complex relationship among laws, social practices and pedagogical ideas has not been modified in a linear manner over time, but does show some important discontinuities: in particular in the 1970s (during
and after student revolts) and at the beginning of the 1990s (with the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child). A good place to see the situation is in the different weight given to factors presented
before and taken into consideration in the penal judgements of Italian courts from the end of the Second World War up to today. These entences, in fact, represent points of mediation by legal case paradigms with the evolution of a ‘common social sense’. They present us with many images of children as the objects of abuse and violence: and at the same time show the various methods with which identical situations have been
interpreted and subjected to the judgement of the courts.
The discovery of the child thus makes its path between traditional resistance and attempts at progress: in the course of time a new relationship between children and adults is emerging, where authoritarianism and blind obedience are replaced (though never completely) with affection and empathy.

La jerarquía católica y la educación de la infancia en la transición y el primer decenio democrático en Argentina (1983-1994). Aproximaciones críticas a una reconceptualización socioreligiosa estratégica.

Luego de la última dictadura cívico-religiosa-militar en Argentina, la educación fue una de las esferas sociales en las cuales pretendió centrarse la “transición a la democracia”. Para la jerarquía católica, esto constituyó un gran desafío, si más no sea por su estrecha relación –por su connivencia, o su silencio- con la cúpula dictatorial y su intención de formar argentinos “derechos y humanos”, en donde resultaba imprescindible una determinada forma de ser católicos.
Así, mientras cambiaba el contexto social y político e iba modificándose la relación de fuerzas dentro de dicha jerarquía, ésta produjo una redefinición que juzgamos estratégica de sus concepciones y prácticas educativas, y que supuso, en el marco de la “formación permanente” e “integral”, una reconsideración teórica de la “infancia” como “objeto” de la educación.
Será el Congreso Nacional Pedagógico (1984-1988), bajo el Gobierno de Alfonsín, el acontecimiento en que se observará su puesta en acto, paralela a la movilización de ciertas memorias católicas. Lo mismo puede decirse, con sus matices, en cuanto a las transformaciones educativas de los ’90.
En tal dirección, y prestando atención a su incidencia en los debates y leyes educativas, analizaremos comparativa y críticamente la noción de infancia que la jerarquía católica construye en el período que corresponde a la transición y el primer decenio democrático en Argentina (1983-1994). Allí, discutiremos la persistencia de una memoria católica que –en primera y última instancia- homologa argentinidad y catolicidad, yendo en desmedro de la educación pública en su sentido amplio de derecho social y limitando a la infancia en tanto sujeto activo.
Advirtiendo que dicha mirada no es hegemónica pero pesa, y más en las esferas político-decisionales, notando las posiciones devenidas hegemónicas, preguntaremos qué sucede con los derechos de la infancia a través de las concepciones y prácticas promovidas educativamente por la jerarquía católica.

Early childhood education in Nigeria: policy implementations and challenges, 1977-2007

Early childhood education in Nigeria is the pre-primary education for children aged 3-5 years prior to their entry into the primary schools. Pre-primary education in its present form was given recognition and acceptance by the Federal Government of Nigeria in the White Paper document titled “Federal Government of Nigeria National Policy on Education 1977”. Prior to this period, though there had been a number of infant classes or nursery and day care centres organized by individual proprietors in the country, there had not been any reference to this important aspect of education in government’s policies on education.
The Federal Government’s recognition of pre-primary education is the growing understanding that the period from birth to the start of primary education is a critical formative stage for the growth and development of children.
There had been a rapid growth in the educational provision at this level since 1977. For example in 1985 about 4,200 pre-primary schools were registered with government in Nigeria. This number increased to 8,300 in 1992 and has moved to 12,000 in 2003 (FGN/UNICEF 2003).
The 1977 Policy document highlights some strategies for the implementation of the pre-primary education. Government specifies for itself the responsibilities of promoting the training of qualified pre-primary school teachers in adequate number, contributing to the development of suitable curriculum, controlling the quality of pre-school institutions and encouraging as much as possible private participation in service provision.
Other important aspect specified by the document includes the issue of language policy. Nigeria had witnessed some major handicaps in the implementation of this noble educational policy.
This paper aims at reviewing current literature on the extent of implementation of the policy in the area of pre-primary education since its conception in 1977 up to the transition of civilian administration to another civilian administration in 2007.

The Appropriation of Evolutionism in Catholic Flemish Psycho-pedagogical Thought

On the occasion of the 200th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday a lot has been written about his influence in psychology (see the American Psychologist, 2009, vol. 64, 2). It seems as if the contemporary attention towards ‘evolutionary’ psychology is witnessing the fulfillment of the great expectations that were mentioned at the end of On the Origin of Species. Nevertheless, the history of science in general and the history of psycho-pedagogical sciences in particular show that dealing with ‘scientific’ discoveries from the past was much more complex than what the simple stories of commemoration like to suggest. In our case-study we want to make this general idea more concrete with the ‘appropriation’ of evolution theory into the context of Flemish Catholic Psycho-pedagogical Thought before the World War II (as it was operationalized in the Vlaamsch Opvoedkundig Tijdschrift and in the works of the priests and pedagogues Frans De Hovre and Alberic Decoene). From the point of view of catholic faith darwinism and evolutionism caused different theoretical problems. But it was not rejected totally. The validity of evolution theory in the context of biology was not so much contested. Most difficulties arose from the underlying assumption of the so-called “monism”, i.e. that there was no qualitative difference between the behavior of animals and men. Once, the moral hierachy between men and animals was re-installed, one could easily make use of some evolutionist sounding concepts like the “social heritage” of moral and national values (which were, moreover, best realised in “first class nations” like Germany and Japan!). It was said that the future of the world depended in large measure on the continuation of these values. Self-evidently education had a central role to play here. Children and youth were conceived as the motor of the “evolution”.

The Moralization of Children in Colombia: Towards Self-Governance

During the first decades of the 20th century the majority of the Latin-American countries faced the challenge of the modernization of their social, economic and political structures, and at the same time were concerned with the process of educational reform to create or consolidate the educational system. In this context, by the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, childhood became relevant as a specific category in the framework of biopolitical classifications for the social control of the population thus leading the states to the inclusion of this category in their public policies in education.

This paper discusses some of the main notions and representations having to do with the moralization of children at stake in Colombia during this period of time. This paper was written in the context of a more extended research called Education and National Images in Colombia, and it is basically supported by primary sources coming from periodical publications from the time.

Discoveries of ‘youth’ in the twentieth century

‘Youth’, like childhood, has been discovered time and again in the course of history. Complicated by the usage of different terms (adolescents, youth, juveniles, teenagers, young adults, youngsters, etc) the youth period has been given different meanings, depending on different disciplinary perspectives. This paper explores discoveries (constructions) of youth in the Netherlands, after the Second World War, from the historical sociological perspective of the Dutch youth sociologist Van Hessen. In the sixties, Van Hessen contributed to the study of youth in two ways. First, he studied youth as a social category. In this view, youth is not so much an individual’s life-stage between childhood and adult, but a social phenomenon on its own. Although embedded in and tied to society as a whole, young people also live their own youth life. Secondly, in addition to the social historian’s usual sources, Van Hessen explored the meanings and experiences of youth life from young people themselves (open interviews). One of this study’s interesting findings was that young people around 1900 experienced their youth life as a stage of being-young-together.
This study replicates Van Hessen’s study, but expands the analysis to a three-generational-youth study. The research involves 375 (youth) life-story interviews with three generations. Three relatives of different generations within one family were interviewed about their youth life (14-24): a grandparent, parent, son or daughter aged 17/18. Using the same questionnaire, this paper aims first to reconstruct youth life in the second half of the twentieth century in the northern, eastern and middle regions of the Netherlands, as remembered by the respondents. Secondly, findings from this three-generational study are compared to Van Hessen’s reconstruction of youth life around 1900, as remembered by his respondents.

From observation to science: Ovide Decroly and the visualization of the (ab)normal child

At the turn of the twentieth century, the practice of child observation reached a turning point as the research about the child and childhood became systematic and generalized. Observation, recording, measurement, and quantification became the key features in studying children and childhood. The implementation of a medical reference within the classification processes acknowledged and paved the way for the comparison, the standardization and the normalization of children’s behaviour. The normal child emerged as a cognitive being, visualized by charts, graphics, photographs and films and in this functioning as a teaching instrument for parents, teachers, and physicians.

Our study is mainly concerned with the introduction of this new kind of being, the normal child, and the way science shaped its very existence. In our study four objects will be brought together in one analysis: a concept (normality), a practice (observation and measurement, in particular the new medium of film as an observation tool), a body of knowledge (paediatrics) and a new representation of the child (the normal child) . We will do this on the basis of a case study, an analysis of Ovide Decroly’s scientific works, and in particular of a series of films he made for scientific purposes, most of them dating from the 1920s. Decroly was well-known as medical officer in the Brussels special education section and as educational reformer during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In this twofold capacity his scientific work focussed on both the abnormal and the normal child. In his scientific films Decroly mainly observed the mental development of children, with special attention to reactions and imitation, and often comparing and distinguishing between abnormal and normal children. By doing so Decroly contributed as it were to the visualization of what was considered to be the norm, normal, the normal.

American philosophy of education and the discovery of childhood

The phrase, the discovery of childhood, implies that educators realized children follow unique patterns of thinking; however, this paper will contend that American philosophers of education tended to consider children’s processes of thinking as similar to the patterns found among adults. The ideas William Torrey Harris, John Dewey, and Jerome Bruner will illustrate this point, and they may illuminate the way Americans approached education in the previous century.
Development of paper:
In 1898, Harris borrowed Hegel’s philosophy and described learning as process of self-activity. He argued that textbooks would help children assimilate the culture developed by past generations. About twenty years later, Dewey turned Harris’s formula around contending that textbooks contained the discoveries people in past generations had made as they overcame obstacles. Dewey wanted children to use those books as tools and apply the information to their activities. In 1960, Bruner introduced the ideas of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, who claimed that children went through different stages of development. Although Piaget argued that teachers should not rush intellectual development, Bruner changed Piaget’s ideas into prescriptions to arrange textbooks so that children could master the structure of various subject matters.
Conclusions:
Despite the differences separating these reformers, they agreed that childhood was similar to adulthood. On the one hand, these reformers disagreed about the nature of student interest, the appropriate method of instruction, and the nature of the subject matters. On the other hand, they claimed that there was a superior way to think and that children and adults could learn it. In addition, they believed that the traditional academic subject matters provided the means for everyone to learn to think.
In all, these reformers illustrate a pattern that American historian, Perry Miller, claimed recurred throughout American history. That is, Americans borrowed ideas from Europe to solve local problems. Because those European models dealt with different situations, the American reformers constructed their own syntheses.

Historical Analysis of Federal Government Innvoations in Early Childhood Education In Nigeria 1977 - 2008

The National Policy on Education (1977) defines early childhood education as the education given in an educational institution to children between three and five years prior to their entering the primary school. This definition however been modified in the National Policy on Education 2004 revised to include children below the age of 3 years. The purpose of early childhood education include a smooth transition from the home to school: preparing the child for the primary level of education: providing care and supervision for the children while their parents are at work: inculcating social norms as well as the spirit of enquiry and creativity through exploration of nature: developing a sense of co-operation and team spirit: teaching the rudiments of numbers, letters, colors, shapes through play and learning good habits especially good health habits. The Federal Government of Nigeria’s first attempt at documenting any policy on early childhood education in the country was the release in the Federal Government white paper on National Policy on Education 1977. Prior to this period, government left the establishment operations and control of early childhood education in the hands of individual proprietors and non-governmental agencies. Despite the established importance of this level of education to the cognitive, affective and psychomotor developments of the child, insignificant numbers of parents in Nigeria send their children to pre-primary schools. This paper analyses innovations in pre-primary education in Nigeria from the period of the Federal Government intervention in1977-2008. Such innovations cover the academic, personnel, physical and social developments of pre-school education in the country.

Hygiene and childhood typologies in Brazil (1850-1920)

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, medical discourses referring to the necessary care for a proper moral, physical, and intellectual education for children are disseminated throughout the major Brazilian cities. We will highlight those ones that focus the children classified in the specialized literature and in the records of detainment facilities as vagrants, truants, criminals/offenders, orphans, guilty, corrupt, abandoned, and destitute. The period comprehended by this study covers two political regimes in force in Brazil, which became independent from Portugal in 1822: the monarchic rule, extinct in 1889, and the republican rule, established in that same year.
This study investigated the emergence of childhood as a social problem and the treatment given to the subject by hygienist doctors, as a rule graduated from the Rio de Janeiro and Bahia Medical Schools, locations which allowed an ample dialogue with the production of countries regarded as paradigms of civilization. At the same time, we attempted to analyze imprints of those hygienists’ discourses left in the various types of institutions created between 1850 and 1920 to cater for a great diversity of children, according to a social/racial typology. In the Brazilian case, in addition to those segments beyond the reach of the family’s and the State’s rule, with the establishment of agricultural colonies and urban institutions for training in crafts, the aim was to educate the children from populations regarded as “primitive”, i.e., the free children of slaves and children of Indian blood.
Working with knowledge producing discourses focused on handling those children, we constituted our sources from the means for spreading those elements, such as theses, books, specialized journals and major newspapers, and also from the documents belonging to those institutions, which report on their reformation projects and describe daily practices, such as regulations, reports, and official correspondence.

Taking Child sciences In Account For Teacher Education

In this paper, I will study how teacher education interacts with the new academic field of child or educational sciences between the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in the French part of Switzerland.

In the 19th century, teachers colleges are in charge of primary teachers training in most of the Swiss cantons, but demands for a university degree emerge at the end of the century. At the same time, secondary schools are created. This generates a need of teachers with an educational training in addition to their disciplinary knowledge. Gradually, the Swiss universities start founding chairs or teachings of pedagogy in Faculty of Arts to teach theoretical and practical bases of educational sciences to teachers. Which knowledge of educational sciences is taught? How to integrate the knowledge of educational sciences in teacher education’ curricula? Who decide it and what kind of debates does this integration generate? Which are the new forms of educational knowledge that appear with their inclusion in teacher education? How these new forms transform mutually educational sciences and teacher profession?

In order to answer these questions, I refer to sociology of knowledge and professions and social history of social (and educational) sciences. My data were collected during a Swiss National Science Foundation Project and a doctoral research. These data show that the evolution of teacher qualifications plays an important role in the emergence and the development of educational sciences, but these interactions take contrasted ways depending of the level of teacher education. I will then compare the links that educational sciences develop with primary teacher education on the one hand, and with secondary teacher education on the other hand.

The infancy and the school hygiene and social illnesses in Mexico, at the end of the XIXth century.

At the end of the XIXth century, the children started being an object of attention both in the physical and intellectual aspect, the Mexican State opened a specific politics to attend on the childhood in diverse areas. The situation was complex, product of the abandonment that the children had per years and inclusive I would say centuries; the first steps headed for the topic of the health, in particular the school hygiene was attended, this one was qualified as a central topic for the public education in the porfiriato, reason for which there interfered new values and conceptions that were considering for the first time the child in his physical aspect and to the school environment in which an important part of his life was happening.
Therefore, there opened an ambitious program of school health that he was considering to be aspects both of education and of prevention and direct attention of school illnesses; also it was included the promotion of investigations on the part of doctors, architects, pedagogues and teachers on the topic of the school hygiene.
The government porfirista promoted a modern speech concerning the infancy, he was thinking that a modern nation, it had to transmit habits of cleanliness and health; since a country that took the industrialization as a paradigm, needed to be provided with healthy, clean and hard-working citizens, of there the importance that acquired the attention to the diverse problematic ones of health that there were enduring the children of ends of the century.
The objective of this paper, is to focus on analyzing the school hygiene as expression of a project of State, that population was thinking about how to attend to the problems of infantile health that were expressing to themselves in diverse illnesses both of school and social type and that were affecting the school and social life of this one.

Les sciences de l’enfance en formation à l’enseignement des Ecoles normales aux Hautes écoles pédagogiques : l’histoire d’une discrétion certaine. Le cas du Valais (Suisse).

place importante aux sciences de l’enfance. Ces caractéristiques reposent 1. sur une formation de haut niveau (universitaire) basée sur des savoirs issus de la recherché scientifique, savoirs partagés et admis en tant que normes professionnelles ; 2. sur une éthique et une déontologie basées sur le respect des élèves et le souci d’accroître leurs apprentissages. Ceci place donc en bonne place, dans les formations à l’enseignement, les savoirs scientifiques orientés vers la compréhension des processus en jeu dans l’acte d’enseigner, mais aussi par rapport aux processus décrivant les conditions sociales, affectives et cognitives de l’apprentissage.

Il est un fait que, du moins en Suisse, les enseignants rencontrent bien des difficultés à voir leurs associations être socialement et politiquement reconnues au niveau d’une profession (dans le sens qu’attribuent la sociologie des professions au concept) et non d’un métier. Dans ce débat, les contenus de formation sont relativement peu évoqués. Pourtant, ils sont essentiels si l’on se réfère aux caractéristiques d’une profession. Il nous a semblé dès lors intéressant d’effectuer une analyse de contenu diachronique des plans d’études des Ecoles normales du Valais (Suisse) dès leurs débuts (milieu du 19ème siècle) à ceux de l’actuelle Haute école pédagogique. Au sein de la formation pédagogique dispensée aux futurs enseignants au cours des deux siècles considérés, quelle place, effective et proportionnelle par rapport aux autres domaines enseignés, est donnée aux sciences de l’enfance (psychologie du développement et des apprentissages notamment) ? A partir de ces constats, nous tenterons de comprendre pourquoi la reconnaissance de l’enseignement en tant que profession est, aussi sous cet aspect, compromis. (272 words)

Dalton in Netherlands and Spain 1920-1940

In this paper we will describe the way in which new conceptions of child and classroom that were introduced in the 20´s of the 20th century have changed the school systems of the Netherlands and Spain. We will focus especially on the Dalton Laboratory Plan that was developed by the American educator Helen Parkhurst at the beginning of the 20th century. We will study the original plan in terms of its conception of child and classroom, but more importantly, we will examine how these conceptions were discussed by educational interest groups, and put into practice by teachers in two European countries where the Dalton Plan was actually introduced in the 20´s: the Netherlands and Spain.

In The Netherlands, a country with a long tradition of individualized learning and with a consolidated system that supports the freedom of education, the Dalton Plan has been rather successful. Not only were the key works about the method well known, but also a few schools were created in accordance with its child centred ideas. In Spain the Dalton Plan was also very well known. It has also been introduced, like in the Netherlands, via the American literature and after direct observation of Dalton schools in Great Britain that were visited by Spanish and Dutch educators in the 20’. But it was much less influential in practice, probably due to the traditional conceptions of Spanish schoolteachers, even the most progressive ones, about the freedom of the child and about the individual learning possibilities of children. Also some background ideas about the so called “individualistic national character” of the Spaniards were influencing the authorities in a subtle way in preventing the expansion of such a method.

Our paper will deal with a dialogue between the North and the South, between two countries with very different pedagogical traditions and the way in which both were facing an example of the theory and practice of progressive education. Comparing the path of an apparently well known initiative of the New Education Movement in two culturally and educationally different contexts, will give insight in the way new conceptions of child and classroom are transformed and eventually adopted into the dominant school system.

Schooling for Utopia: the uneasy marriage of romantic conceptions of the child and educational psychology in the UK 1880-1930

The paper examines the relations between Romantic notions of the child as carried by child-centred, educational social movements during the period and the emergent professional and disciplinary field of educational psychology. The movements selected include the Froebel and Montessori movements, Child Study, the Conference of New Ideals and the New Education Fellowship.
The paper addresses the question of how far these movements by inserting the needs of the child at the centre of the educational debate provided necessary conditions for the rise of the educational sciences in the UK, and for educational psychology in particular. It also examines the extent to which the popularisation of selected strands of educational psychology may have served to encourage the trend towards the differentiation of the academic field from the popular ideologies reproduced by the social movements and impacted on the relation between the sub-field of educational psychology and its parent field of psychology.
The question is then reversed and consideration is paid to the extent to which educational psychologies in their positivist as well as their interpretative manifestations – broadly, mental testing and psychoanalytical approaches – presented a means to the attainment of the utopian longings of the educational social movements.

New conception of the child: new status of knowledge and school programs"

At the beginning of the 20th century, discoveries in psychology (child study) and biology (theories of evolution) contribute to shape a new conception of the child. It leads to the emergence of the international reformist movement called New education – Education nouvelle, Reformpädagogik – that brings together all those who believe in a pedagogy based on a scientific knowledge of the child. They protest against the “traditional” school which teaches all "the same thing at the same time"; they propose instead a child centred education as natural as possible, adapted to each one’s abilities and interests. What impacts do have such educative conceptions on school programs and curriculums? What importance, what legitimacy and what credibility do the reformers give to school knowledge? Do the protagonists all share the same opinion or does this question create controversies?

Claparède – observer, chronicler, conceptualizer, and builder of a “child science” and of a new pedagogy (1890-1930)*

In our paper, we analyze how Claparède, physician, psychologist and pedagogue, echoes the evolution of child science everywhere in the world and, in parallel, how he constructs this new science in conceptualizing a “functionalist” approach. Our analysis is centred on the conceptions of the child. It articulates the paradigms and figures Claparède refers to with the institutions he builds in order to create a “new pedagogy”, a word he uses in order to refer as much to the new science of the child as to the pedagogical revolutions that it implies. Through this analysis, we will gain some insights how this science of the child takes shape, and develops. In a first phase, it is essentially descriptive and pluridisciplinary. The specialisation of research leads to a progressive dominance of child psychology. One reason of this dominance could be that psychology agrees particularly well with the dominant conception of that time on what is a child and his development seen as natural phenomenon; and forms a perfect alliance with New Education, oriented towards the natural needs and interests of the child
We describe Claparède’s contribution from four points of view. As editor in chief of the Archives de psychologie, he gets a huge documentation from all over the world he meticulously scrutinizes in the hundreds of reviews he writes, many of them on the question of child science. As a perfect chronicler he writes, for all relevant countries, a historical outline of this field of science and its many relationships to education. As a conceptualizer who strongly believes in a precise and unified terminology for science, he conceptualizes what child science should and could be and what are its relationships to pedagogy. As a builder of institutions that, in his view, are the means to guarantee durability to ideas, he gives child science and pedagogy an institutional shape in his “Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Ecole des sciences de l’éducation”.
*This paper is part of a symposium entitle 'Evolutions of the dominant paradigmes in the scientific study of child: a new conception of education and teaching" with Brehony, Ottavi, Leopoldoff-Martin, Del Pozo and Trombetta.

Paedolgy in the Russian Context: from rise to institutionalization

Our contribution aims to reconstitute and describe the early years of paedology in Russia at the turn of the 20th century and its evolution until 1928, when politics proclaim its institutional status. This promising new science dedicated to child is not a Russian specificity. As in many other countries, the genesis of paedology leans on the rising of the experimental research on the child at the end of the 19th century and closely connected to the question of the education.
What did this science represent in the Russian context? Which kind of relationship did it sustain with other sciences, mainly psychology and pedagogy? Who were the protagonists involved in Russian paedology?
The research practiced in the field of child science in Russia until 1920s does not present big differences with that conducted in Europe and in the USA during the same period by Baldwin, Compayré, Stern, Claparède, Binet, Meumann to quote only some of them. The pedological adventure in Russia starts with the personalities of Netschajeff, Rossolimo, Bernstein and Lange. But since the 1900s, the central place returns to Bechterev, who militates stubbornly for a renewal of the method in human sciences and creates a paedological Institute.
After seven years of international conflicts, revolution, civil war and famine (1914-1921), the stakes turn different than in the rest of the world. One priority is the reintegration into society of hundreds thousand children and teenagers (bezprizorniki). Pedology as an autonomous discipline appears as a necessary link to solve the multiple problems generated by this situation. Paedology starts to serve as a tool of the socio-political plan to the creation of a “New Man”. The URSS’s 1st paedological Congress in 1928 constitutes the official recognition of that science.

The Child observed

Cette proposition concerne à la fois, à travers l’étude de l’enfant qu’elle prend pour objet, l’histoire des sciences et l’histoire des mentalités, elle vise un apport à l’histoire culturelle : l’analyse d’un corpus de textes du XIXe siècle en constitue la base, leur contenu et leur méthodologie révélant des changements plus profonds dans la culture et le rapport à l’enfance.
Le comportement de l’enfant est un nouvel objet pour la science à la fin du XIXe siècle, même si de premières formes d’observation de l’enfant existent plus tôt. A cet égard, il est intéressant de discuter la nature du Journal d’Héroard étudié par Philippe Ariès, ou de s’interroger sur la prise en compte de l’enfant par J.J.Rousseau, que les psychologues et pédagogues revendiquent volontiers comme ancêtre (ceci rejoint le thème 6).
La distinction de différentes méthodes d’observation de l’enfant (observation spontanée, planifiée, enfant seul ou en groupe, étude du caractère, test de capacités…) permet de dégager ce qu’il y a de véritablement nouveau à cette période, notamment en France, qui voit l’épanouissement de la Child Study à l’échelle internationale.
Au-delà de l’attitude nouvelle qui consiste à observer l’enfant en systématisant cette approche, et de l’émergence d’ objets de connaissance, comme le jeu, le langage, des remaniements affectifs apparaissent. Le rapport à l’enfant, la valeur qui lui est accordée, la signification de l’enfance en tant qu’âge de la vie, et surtout, la vision de son éducation, changent selon les observateurs mais globalement il est perceptible que l’étude de l’enfant est surdéterminée par des conceptions philosophiques, religieuses, existentielles, qui n’apparaissent pas directement à l’origine du besoin d’observer.
Le changement du rapport à l’enfance perceptible à travers la construction de sa connaissance peut être replacé dans le processus de désenchantement du monde, ou du moins dans un mouvement d’ampleur qui traverse la culture moderne. Pour reprendre les termes utilisés par Hannah Arendt, il s’agirait d’un changement de rapport à l’histoire, à la tradition.
Ainsi, la connaissance de l’enfant et son observation se situent dans un remaniement plus large.

Claparède – observer, chronicler, conceptualizer, and builder of a “child science” and of a new pedagogy (1890-1930)*

In our paper, we analyze how Claparède, physician, psychologist and pedagogue, echoes the evolution of child science everywhere in the world and, in parallel, how he constructs this new science in conceptualizing a “functionalist” approach. Our analysis is centred on the conceptions of the child. It articulates the paradigms and figures Claparède refers to with the institutions he builds in order to create a “new pedagogy”, a word he uses in order to refer as much to the new science of the child as to the pedagogical revolutions that it implies. Through this analysis, we will gain some insights how this science of the child takes shape, and develops. In a first phase, it is essentially descriptive and pluridisciplinary. The specialisation of research leads to a progressive dominance of child psychology. One reason of this dominance could be that psychology agrees particularly well with the dominant conception of that time on what is a child and his development seen as natural phenomenon; and forms a perfect alliance with New Education, oriented towards the natural needs and interests of the child
We describe Claparède’s contribution from four points of view. As editor in chief of the Archives de psychologie, he gets a huge documentation from all over the world he meticulously scrutinizes in the hundreds of reviews he writes, many of them on the question of child science. As a perfect chronicler he writes, for all relevant countries, a historical outline of this field of science and its many relationships to education. As a conceptualizer who strongly believes in a precise and unified terminology for science, he conceptualizes what child science should and could be and what are its relationships to pedagogy. As a builder of institutions that, in his view, are the means to guarantee durability to ideas, he gives child science and pedagogy an institutional shape in his “Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Ecole des sciences de l’éducation”.
*This paper is part of a symposium entitle 'Evolutions of the dominant paradigmes in the scientific study of child: a new conception of education and teaching" with Brehony, Ottavi, Leopoldoff-Martin, Del Pozo and Trombetta.

Child science in Italy (1870-1930)

Three periods can be distinguished in the Italian evolution of child science:
1. The first one is positivist and characterized by anthropological research and by the attempt to define the psychogenesis of child’s personality (Gelmini, 1886), following the directions given by German (Preyer) and French (Perez) scientists; and also by studies on abnormal (De Sanctis, 1915) and criminal children (Ferriani, 1902), .
2. The second period between positivism and the birth of idealism produces most original studies, for instance on children’s art (Ricci, 1887), psycholinguistic development and its relationship to education (Resta, 1908), play (Colozza, 1910), knowledge on the pupil (Pizzoli), on imitation ( Pistolesi), on intelligence (Saffiotti, 1916), on general development of the child (Formiggini-Santamaria, 1922), and on self-education (Montessori, 1816).
3. The idealist orientation serves philosophy and politics by the way of school and professional orientation (Bottai, 1939), with the exception of Montessori who continues her research on the child and his/her development (1939).
References
Bottai G. La carta della scuola, Milano, Mondadori, 1939.
Colozza G. A., Il giuoco nella psicologia e nella pedagogia, Torino, Paravia, 1910.
De Sanctis S., Educazione dei deficienti, Milano, Vallardi, 1915.
Ferriani G., I drammi dei fanciulli: studi di psicologia sociale e criminale, Como, Omanim, 1902
Formiggini-Santamaria E., La psicologia del fanciullo normale e anormale con speciale riguardo all’educazione, Roma, Formiggini, 1922 (3ème éd.)
Gelmini A., Studi psicologici ed educativi sul fanciullo, Torino, Camilla e Bertolero, 1886
Montessori M., L’autoeducazione nelle scuole, Roma, Loescher, 1916
Montessori M. (1939), Dall’infanzia all’adolescenza, Milano, Garzanti, 1950
Pistolesi G., L’imitazione, Torino, Bocca, 1910.
Pizzoli U., Pedagogia scientifica, Milano, Vallardi, 1909
Resta R., L’anima del fanciullo e la pedagogia, Milano, Dante Alighieri, 1908
Ricci C., L’arte dei bambini, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1887.
Saffiotti F. U., La misura dell’intelligenza nei fanciulli. Esame critico delle proposte di misura fatte e contributo di indagine personali, Roma, Società Romana di Antropologia,, 1916.

*This paper is part of a symposium entitle 'Evolutions of the dominant paradigmes in the scientific study of child: a new conception of education and teaching" with Hofstetter and Schneuwly, Brehony, Ottavi, Leopoldoff-Martin and Del Pozo.
We describe Claparède’s contribution from four points of view. As editor in chief of the Archives de psychologie, he gets a huge documentation from all over the world he meticulously scrutinizes in the hundreds of reviews he writes, many of them on the question of child science. As a perfect chronicler he writes, for all relevant countries, a historical outline of this field of science and its many relationships to education. As a conceptualizer who strongly believes in a precise and unified terminology for science, he conceptualizes what child science should and could be and what are its relationships to pedagogy. As a builder of institutions that, in his view, are the means to guarantee durability to ideas, he gives child science and pedagogy an institutional shape in his “Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Ecole des sciences de l’éducation”.
*This paper is part of a symposium entitle 'Evolutions of the dominant paradigmes in the scientific study of child: a new conception of education and teaching" with Brehony, Ottavi, Leopoldoff-Martin, Del Pozo and Trombetta.

Ariès' discovery of Childhood Fifty Years Later: Impact and Evaluation

With his L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime, published in 1960, the French historian Philippe Ariès provided historians of culture and of the family as well as historians of education with a new and challenging approach to the history of childhood. Thanks to the English translation from 1962, entitled Centuries of Childhood, the influence of Ariès’ work has been considerable and lasting among a wide international audience. Best-known and most discussed is Ariès’ provocative hypothesis that before the seventeenth century childhood was an unimportant phase and parents refrained from becoming too emotionally attached to their offspring. Ariès’ L’enfant not only proved to be highly interesting for its imaginative perspective on the changing ‘mentalité’ of parents towards their children, but also for the variety of sources and methods used. Ariès established himself as a creative exploiter of demographic insights, theological ideas, and literary and artistic sources. There is no doubt that this varied approach turned out to be very fruitful for subsequent explorations of childcare and parent-child relations in former times. However, Ariès’ bold generalisations as well as his way in handling documentary evidence also yielded a lot of criticism and controversy. Our presentation will focus on Ariès’ claim concerning the seventeenth century as being the critical period during which childhood was discovered.
1 Before Ariès’ L’enfant, the historiography of education foremost consisted in a treatment of the great ideas of famous educational thinkers with Rousseau having the honoured place of being the ‘discoverer of the child’. Ariès has shown how a stream of pedagogical advice books and literature specifically written for children developed in France during the seventeenth century. It will be demonstrated that this stimulated both similar investigations in other territories and the search for its historical antecedents, thus weakening the assumed novelty of this type of popular literature.
2 Ariès investigated iconographical material such as family portraits for substantiating his hypothesis with respect to the changing emotional attitudes towards children, especially those in infancy. Inspired by Ariès, researchers have interpreted portraits as suppliers of cues for the absence or presence of a distinct concept of ‘the childish’. We will critically argue that in stead of evidencing a new sensitivity towards children, family portraiture and genre painting – both genres becoming very popular in the Dutch Golden Age - testified to an intensified pedagogical consciousness of the civilized classes.

History of infancy and History of the Written Culture

In this paper proposal, we will analyze how the history of education has changed in the last years with the contributions of the history of the written culture (although its field of study is not dedicated solely to the written culture of childhood). We want to analyze what has been done and advanced on the history of the written culture, in relation to childhood, at relevant publication level, webs, networks like the RedAIEP (Network of Archives and Investigators of the Popular Scripture, created to preserving, studying and spreading the patrimony of the written culture)… All this, allows us to raise new questions about the history of childhood, questions that we will try to respond with new sources and new working methods.

The education of reading and writing, like basic instruments of access to culture, has fallen in the school in our country (in other countries the literacy agents have been the family, the factory, the church…). Nevertheless, as much education as the practice of the writing has been developed, in addition to this, in other educational spaces (homes, scholastic schools of adults…), and they have had multiple manifestations (notebooks, letters…). All this is being studied from diverse perspective only in the last years.

From the history of education, we are witnesses of the evolution that the knowledge of the history of the written culture has experienced. A great interest in the history of handwriting has been generated between anthropologists, historians and linguists, in close relation with historians of Education, to know, to study and to reflect on writing. The study of the written culture does not have sense if it does not open its views towards the diverse disciplines that contemplate it and the history of education (and perhaps, very specially, the history of childhood) is, clearly, one of them.

Histories of Childhood Before Philippe Ariès: The Historiographical Contributions of G. Stanley Hall, Alexander Francis Chamberlain, and Oscar Chrisman, 1900-1920

Hugh Cunningham, like so many other historians of childhood, has credited Philippe Ariès with “discovering” the historical child: “It was Ariès’ achievement,” he writes, “to convince nearly all his readers that childhood had a history: that, over time and in different cultures, both ideas about childhood and the experience of being a child had changed” [1]. Cunningham also notes that the “vast majority” of histories of childhood written since Ariès have been influenced by his groundbreaking work, Centuries of Childhood. In this essay I highlight significant historiographical contributions that were made well before the publication of Centuries of Childhood. In so doing, this essay contributes to the conference’s theme by examining a period of historiographical “discovery” that is too frequently ignored by historians of childhood.

None of the scholars examined in this essay were trained historians. G. Stanley Hall and Oscar Chrisman held doctorates in psychology, while A.F. Chamberlain was educated as an anthropologist. But all three shared an institutional affiliation (Clark University), exercised leadership in the child study movement, and, most importantly, were deeply interested in the idea of evolutionary change—writing only a half-century after the publication of The Origin of Species, these scholars fused their child-centered research agendas with a conceptual framework that demanded that their studies be conceived of historically. By examining childhood through the lens of evolutionary change, these scholars very much predated Ariès’ historiographical achievement. And though the evolutionary methodologies upon which these pre-Ariès scholars have since been discredited (recapitulation theory, for instance), this is not to say that their works are without value. Indeed, if we position Hall, Chrisman, and Chamberlain as our historiographical touchstones, instead of Ariès, we will find ourselves asking very different questions. Further, these scholars suggested ways by which the history of childhood ought to be integrated into all other general histories, in ways that were even more radical than Ariès suggested. I look forward to contributing to this conference’s theme by re-introducing historians of childhood to a body of scholarship that has long been ignored, and suggesting ways by which contemporary work can be informed by the ideas of Hall, Chamberlain, and Chrisman.

Notes
[1] Hugh Cunningham, “Histories of Childhood,” The American Historical Review 103 (October 1998): 1197.
Select Bibliography
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis. The Child: A Study in the Evolution of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900).
Chrisman, Oscar. The Historical Child (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1920).
Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence; Its Psychology and Its Relation to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, 2 Vols. (New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1969 [1904]), 292.

Ariès' Discovery of Childhood Fifty Years Later: Impact and Evaluation

With his L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien régime, published in 1960, the French historian Philippe Ariès provided historians of culture and of the family as well as historians of education with a new and challenging approach to the history of childhood. Thanks to the English translation from 1962, entitled Centuries of Childhood, the influence of Ariès’ work has been considerable and lasting among a wide international audience. Best-known and most discussed is Ariès’ provocative hypothesis that before the seventeenth century childhood was an unimportant phase and parents refrained from becoming too emotionally attached to their offspring. Ariès’ L’enfant not only proved to be highly interesting for its imaginative perspective on the changing ‘mentalité’ of parents towards their children, but also for the variety of sources and methods used. Ariès established himself as a creative exploiter of demographic insights, theological ideas, and literary and artistic sources. There is no doubt that this varied approach turned out to be very fruitful for subsequent explorations of childcare and parent-child relations in former times. However, Ariès’ bold generalisations as well as his way in handling documentary evidence also yielded a lot of criticism and controversy. Our presentation will focus on Ariès’ claim concerning the seventeenth century as being the critical period during which childhood was discovered.
1 Before Ariès’ L’enfant, the historiography of education foremost consisted in a treatment of the great ideas of famous educational thinkers with Rousseau having the honoured place of being the ‘discoverer of the child’. Ariès has shown how a stream of pedagogical advice books and literature specifically written for children developed in France during the seventeenth century. It will be demonstrated that this stimulated both similar investigations in other territories and the search for its historical antecedents, thus weakening the assumed novelty of this type of popular literature.
2 Ariès investigated iconographical material such as family portraits for substantiating his hypothesis with respect to the changing emotional attitudes towards children, especially those in infancy. Inspired by Ariès, researchers have interpreted portraits as suppliers of cues for the absence or presence of a distinct concept of ‘the childish’. We will critically argue that in stead of evidencing a new sensitivity towards children, family portraiture and genre painting – both genres becoming very popular in the Dutch Golden Age - testified to an intensified pedagogical consciousness of the civilized classes.

Childhood, youth and modernity in popular culture: screening childhood and youth in cinema

In 1900 Ellen Key, a Swedish author, predicted that the 20th century will going to be " the century of the child". Whatever one may think of the fate of children and youth in the last century, they certainly became a recurrent and popular theme with cinema, the most popular of arts in the last century.
The fifties and the sixties were decades which gave birth to the genre of teenpics in Hollywood, and their birth coincided, more or less, with " the discovery of childhood and youth" by historians and sociologists.It is enough to mention here the names of Aries, De Mause, Eisenstadt, Erikson and Manheim.
The objectives of my paper are:
a.to scrutinize the iconography and the narratives of childhood and youth as they are screened and reflected through some of the most popular films on these subjects ,"The Kid" of Chaplin, " Zero de Conduite " of Vigo, "Beautiful Girl" of Mall, and include as well some Israeli " cult teenpics".
The assumption underlying this analysis is that cinematic production plays an important role in modern discourse on childhood and youth, and it also exerts a certain influence on the making of childhood and youth in our times.
b. Compare and test the cinematic discourse on childhood and youth with the historiographical and sociological writings of the authors mentioned above.The main objective of this comparison is to trace the relationship and the reciprocal influences between popular and scientific discourse on childhood and youth.

Portrayed Children - The Visualisation of Childhood

The importance of visual media for processes of learning and understanding is currently discussed in different disciplines. The educational discourse concerns in particular the perception of pictures as a didactic medium.

In our presentation we rather will concentrate on the visualisation of children as a means of establishing and changing certain cultural patterns of childhood. Referring to the conference theme our proposal is based on painted portraits of children in the period between the 17th and the 20th century.

The child’s physiognomy, the way the child is dressed and set on scene as well as the accessories which are integrated in the illustration are of special interest in our enquiry. Differ-ences as well as similarities are outlined by showing and analysing a selection of significant images.

The question “Which techniques of painting are used to illustrate children and childhood?” and a second aspect “Which perception and which special kind of ‘image’ of children and childhood is shown in the portrait?” will be discussed.

Our proposal is planned as a contribution to “the historiography of the discovery of childhood” (subtheme 6).

Development of Preschool education in Chile

Preschool Education in Chile has its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century due to the German influence brought to Chile by José Abelardo Núñez. The first kindergarten was formed in a particular way. After that, the first public kindergarten, attached to the Normal School No. 1, was founded in 1906. At the same time, the Austrian educator Maluschka Leopoldina was hired and the Froebelian method was used.

At the University of Chile, in the 30s of the twentieth century, an improved movement was carried out by Irma Salas who studied for her doctorate in The United States with Dewey and brought the thought of the “New School” to the country. This event led to the establishment of the Kindergarten Teachers' College in 1944 and its first principal was the prominent educator Amanda Labarca. This movement facilitated the establishment of nursery and childcare facilities throughout the country. On April 22, 1970, the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva founded the Kindergarten National committee (JUNJI) -through-law No. 17.301. As a result, new preschooler teachers were trained at the Catholic University of Chile, Universidad de Concepción and Universidad Austral de Chile. In addition, the DUOC-Farmer-Labor University Department began to prepare technical and sub- technical courses in preschool education.

In 1974 the Second Level of Transition (kindergarten) was established by The Ministry of Education including the study programs in all the subsidized educational institutions, public and private. They were able to finance this idea with state funding: this fact happened again with the First Level of Transition (Pre-Kinder) in 2008. In the case of population areas INTEGRA was founded in 1990 depending on the presidency of Chile. Nowadays this institution assists not only the poorest families but also working women in day nursery and kindergarten.

This work has a historical character based on primary and secondary sources to show the development that the Chilean State has shown in relation to preschool education and the Children´s rights in Chile.

Discovery of childhood via "educational environments": the example of the history of kibbutz children through the changes of their "children's house"

Kibbutz educational theory supported education outside the family in a common children’s house run by 'metaplot' – nannies, women who took care of all areas of the children’s life: physical care, studies, social life, work, youth movement - and sleep. All along there were disagreements on the sleeping arrangements, and on the degree of children’s house totality. Eventually, from the first kibbutz, Degania (e. 1910), till these days, theories yielded to facts: from the 1950s the totality of the children’s house was gradually reduced in parallel to the transition to sleeping with the family. Until the 1970s, the children’s house was still a day care center for the nursery and preschool children, and a clubhouse for the school children and their youth movement. There was an occasional school classroom there too. As smaller institutions amalgamated to form secondary and then elementary regional schools, the classroom was removed from the children’s house. Until the 1970s another transition happened: the youth houses for the adolescents grew stronger as children and junior or senior high school pupils left their parents’ homes for the revival of communal living. From the 1980s onwards the parents brought their adolescent children back to familial sleeping as the young ones - and the children’s houses were reorganized: Several age groups were now cared for by one 'metapelet'. The small "educational groups" doubled and tripled in size. Children’s and youth houses have grown also because the kibbutz has opened them to non-members children. The theory of educating kibbutz children within the kibbutz, away from “harmful” outside influences, has changed and with it the kibbutz relationship to its surroundings.

A hundred years after Degania the kibbutz children’s house is no longer a comprehensive and a total home. The story of kibbutz childhood as told by its changing "educational environments" can serve as a model for discovering the history of childhood via changes of physical buildings, playgrounds, and other environments.

The discursive Construction and (Ab)Uses of a ‚German Childhood‘ in Primers during the Time of National Socialism

Recent studies on primers from the time of the Third Reich in Germany show surprisingly little evidence of ideologisation. In comparison with other textbooks, national socialist contents were found to be present to a very limited degree. Rather than presenting the ideology, the books encouraged identification of the children with the presented image of the ‘German child’ and thus with their own ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ (ethnic community). This paper will investigate the reasons and context for these findings. In
addition, it will analyse the image of the ‘German child’ presented to the children, and the underlying concept of moratorium. Furthermore this study will show the continuous and effective use of the concept of the child’s “power of innocence” (Doris Bühler-Niederberger) as well as the aestheticization of violence as a basis for the discursive construction of the image of the ‘German child’.

The Discovery of the Social Life of School Children

After 1945 in Sweden, a reformation process of the school system took off that led to the establishment of the compulsory school “Grundskolan” in 1962 for all children of age seven to fifteen. This school system, which in parts is still working, represented a far reaching integrating ambition. Initially the integration ideas were focussed on social class, gender and type of talent (theoretical or practical). In the 1960s the integration principle widened, for example by embracing also physically or mentally disabled children. New psychological, sociological and pedagogical ideas both steered the changes and developed through them.

The changes also brought questions of peer relations among school children to the fore, a process which might be called the discovery of the social life of school children. Drawing on historical and sociological childhood studies, I will in this paper analyse ideas of children’s social life in school in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in relation to changes in education, society and behavioural science. At the centre of attention is the apparent shift around 1970, observable in new interests in bullying among school children and in the physical and social school milieu, when peer relations from almost unnoticed seemingly over night became at the centre of the Swedish media discussions of children and school.

The material analysed in the investigation is the journal of the Swedish parents’ organisation, supplemented by advisory handbooks for parents, journals for children and contemporary psychological, pedagogical and sociological literature and focus lies on analysing and contextualizing expressed ideas.





Anna Larsson
Associate Professor of History of Science and Ideas
Umeå University
901 87 Umeå
Sweden
mail: anna.larsson@educ.umu.se
phone: +46907865424
fax: +46907867930

Discovery of Childhood in Tokugawa Japan from the 17th century to the

In Tokugawa period almost all the people could marry and attach
importance to their family occupation and lives. Their concern was
family’s continuation and guaranty in the future. Under such
condition people became to concentrate child rearing eagerly and were
conscious of the responsibility of education and had a sense of deep
unity between parents and children.
People in the early modern age often called their children “treasure
(precious)” citing a famous ancient poem, then the author calls this
kind of rearing “child rearing as KODAKARA (precious child like a
treasure) " tentatively.
The purpose of the child rearing was same regardless the Samurai
(warriors), Chonin (merchants) and farmers, that is, family’s
continuation. As the society was stable and the succession of family
was fixed, sure succession of their profession and property was
regarded to fulfill their responsibility for their ancestors as if a
baton is handed over from ancestors to the successors. They believed
that this succession would guarantee their family lives and happiness
as well as their own old age.
The content what they expected to their successors were different in
classes and periods. In Samurai's case the parents' demands for
writing and learning rose up gradually. The demands of the merchants
were fluid, they often left their children with other people as
freeloaders or apprentices, and commercialization of such as sweets,
clothes and toys influenced their lives. In villages children who
devoted their family occupation hard and tried to enlarge any
property were praised as good successors.
In any cases the child rearing in the early modern age came to be
close regardless of the classes. This paper concentrates the
differences and relationship between the "Discovery of Childhood" in
Tokugawa era and the "Discovery of Childhood" in Meiji era.

Perceptions on Children’s Books in the Greek Educational System During Nineteenth Century.

In the eighteenth century the Greek reading public was certainly restricted. During the period of the Greek revolt against the ruling Ottoman empire that lasted for seven years (1821-1828) and the inauguration of the new nation in 1833 under the young King Otto of Bavaria, the first steps made for organizing the intellectual life of the new nation-state were observed. Despite high illiteracy figures and the absence of a systematic schooling system, there were a few educators and intellectuals who started taking an interest in the young readers. Statistics on children’s books publications during the first half of nineteenth century showed that fifty percent of them were religious stories, moral narratives, or books based on Christian teaching. These moral ideas and pure Christian beliefs that pertained to the topics of children’s books can be explained by the fact that the 1821 Greek Revolution for Independence manifested its religious character in order to contrast itself to the non-Christian Ottoman occupation. It is also noteworthy the fact that the majority of the above-mentioned books for young people were translations from European writings.
During the second half of nineteenth century and more precisely in the decade of 1870s the transition from the old method of teaching to a new one which was more progressive, started developing. The innovative surge of the 1880s generation gave rise to new literary expressions. The ethnocentric ideas and the puritan perceptions on the children’s textbooks and readers in the educational system were given up in favor of a more child-centered kind of writing. Still, these new ideas and messages which were conveyed from abroad were in somewhat ‘’contradictory’’ terms with the prevailing religious Greek atmosphere which dictated that the practices of the Greek Orthodox dogma had to be kept away from these new trends.
This paper studies the different kinds of trends that influenced the children’s books

Sobral Cid and children science teaching in primary schools

José de Matos Sobral Cid, Minister of Education in Portugal, created in 1914 the Individual Practical Works (IPW) as an all-purpose teaching method. Consequently, he structured this method with objective teaching recommendations.
For him, IPW "is excellent to stimulate the interest and initiative, educate personality and develop observation and practical skills". To coherently construct this idea, Universities could and must train primary and secondary teachers to attain this objective.
Pragmatically IPW are defined as any experimental work carry out by pupils under the direction of one or more teachers, in laboratories, museums or excursions in order to do science education, and fundamentally with the aim of creating research and analysis skills. The IPW should encourage children initiative to increase interest and motivation to knowledge “discovery”.
Sobral Cid IPW Ideas results from a broad idea of restructuring teaching methods with a synchronized scientific research development for all educational levels. The model was Humboldt model of Berlin University, where research, science and education were done together. The opportunity for his effective application comes when Sobral Cid was appointed Minister of Education.
For our young Republic, the role of education was to prepare Portugal for a new economy where a competitive industry was vital. Simultaneously, Education must prepare Portugal for a new colonial economy, where a healthy people, with new sport education and hygiene, completed by experimental schooling were a new competitive advantage. This ministerial initiative settles not only fundamental guidelines but also connects these ideas to modern didactic practices, particularly to experimental teaching, and more important, to experimental practices in classrooms.

Representations of childhood in school space: the “school retardation” concept in México 1920-1960.

The process of converting the child into a knowable and describable entity from the point of view of public schooling and its practices marks a path of diverse classifications and hierarchies that attempted to group and describe the heterogeneous passage of children through school. From the analysis of school records and teacher’s reports regarding the performance of children attending school, this paper focuses on concept of “school retardation” in Mexican public school between 1920 -1960. The interpretation supported in the paper is that hierarchies and classifications inscribed in schooling produced effects not only within the school but also outside of it, generating “classing systems” through which schoolchildren occupy positions in society. The associations between idleness, delinquency, poverty and ‘school retardation’, later called more precisely “school drop-out”, were components of a classing system that produced social representations regarding childhood. In this process the child was placed in categories that turned him into a subject of ‘governance practices’.

The Short Happy Life of Intercultural Education in the United States, 1935-55

In the World War II era, many educators believed that American young people specifically needed to comprehend how the doctrines of racial superiority that under-girded German and Japanese imperialism challenged fundamental American principles about equality, tolerance, and individualism. As a response, some American educators developed school programs designed to educate youth about fundamental democratic principles, respect for people from diverse races and cultures, and the dangers of race-based totalitarianism. The hey-day of these programs, called “Intercultural Education,” lasted from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.

This paper, submitted to the subtheme, “Child focused space: from learning environments to playgrounds and amusement parks,” explores the philosophical origins of this program, its educational and administrative developments, and the chief causes for its disappearance in the 1950s. We draw upon curricular documents, annual reports of the school superintendents, and other documents from leaders of these efforts and we provide examples from a number of major cities including Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit.

The Intercultural Education programs involved inservice training in intercultural education for the teachers, new curriculum designed to promote positive relations between groups of different races, creeds, national origins, and economic status. The underlying goal of the program was to promote both unity and diversity among diverse populations.

This movement is important in the history of U.S. education for three reasons. First, it demonstrates the powerful influence politics has on education, since it was a response to the rise of Nazism and fascism, and after the war that it declined. Second, it exemplifies that at one point, U.S. educators were successful at engaging in meaningful efforts to teach about tolerance and diversity. Third, the Intercultural Education movement was one of the first national efforts to unite black and white educators on the issue of multiracial curriculum reform. Unfortunately, this short-lived movement died in the 1950s, when conservative forces labeled these approaches as subversive and pushed them out of schools.

Children of the revolution: the conceptualization of the children in early-independent and in post-revolutionary Mexico (1820-40, 1920-40)

This paper compares the distinct conceptualization of children in two post-revolutionary periods of the Mexican history. Both periods can be characterized by an intense utopian emancipatory educational project, inextricably linked to the aspirations of State formation that followed profound revolutionary changes in Mexican society: the independence from Spain and the constitution of Mexico as a republic (ca. 1821), and the social revolution of 1910. In both post-revolutionary periods the educational project intended to form new individuals and eventually construct a new society by means of education. Corresponding to the massive transforming power attributed to education, the child was conceived in both periods as a very malleable subject, capable of being moulded by anything one could inculcate in him. The notion of the child as a tabula rasa was prevalent in both periods; yet whereas in the early-independent period educational discourses and practices stressed the idea of “filling in” the empty mind of the child, the emphasis of the post-revolutionary years lay on the possibility of “emptying” whatever bad influences the child hat from family and environment and replace them with new knowledge and habits.
This paper is thus a contribution of the conceptualization of the child as a learning subject in the framework of emancipatory educational projects. At the same time, this paper intends to be a methodological contribution to the inter-temporal comparative history of education, reflecting on both the continuity of educational traditions and the role of contingent breaks and discontinuities in the history of education of a single country.

African teacher training in South Africa in the transition to Apartheid : the responses to the Eiselen Commission questionnaire 1949 – 1951 and the implementation into policy.

In South African educational history a crucial moment is the passing of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, which introduced the policy of apartheid into the educational sector. This Act was based on the findings of the Commission on Native Education, referred to as the Eiselen Commission, which from 1949 to 1951 enquired how the educational system of the African population needed modification to fulfil the “aims of education for Natives as an independent race” and “[t]he extent to which the existing primary, secondary and vocational educational system for Natives and the training of Natives […]” needed alteration . The recommendations of this commission built the backbone of the legislation policy which informed the educational sphere of South Africa for many years. The new policy meant a dramatic change for the South African education system, as African education, which was controlled by missionaries, was transferred to total state control. Teacher training was the first branch to be directly effected, as from 1954 teachers could only be trained in government controlled institutions. This makes the study of student teachers an ideal case study on how the transitional process worked, whose opinions were recognized, and what the zeitgeist of the time was, when it comes to the training of teachers. Therefore, the paper presentation will look into the formation process of the report and the research methodology in use during the enquiry. It will deal with the Eiselen Commission questionnaire send out to various agents involved in education, which were “ […] the education departments, church bodies, universities, teachers` associations, principals of Bantu educational institutions and other interested” and their responses to the questions dealing with teacher training. Of special interest will be the answers provided by selected missions involved in education of the African population and by the African population of South Africa. Their answers will then be related to the actual formulation of the Commission Report and later the Bantu Education Act. It will be highlighted how the recommendations, critics and remarks of the agents responding to the questionnaire were incorporated into the policy.
The aim is to show in how far the critical comments of respondents, especially the church bodies and the Africans, were incorporated into the report and the Bantu Education Act. This analysis is intended to shed light on the transition process leading from the missionary education to the Bantu Education period in the field of teacher training, something that has been relatively neglected in previous research.

Child Study and reinforcement of Children Rights in Portugal

In the first decade of the 20th Century, simultaneously with a worldwide concern about children health and wellbeing, there are in Portugal a new insight about Children’s Rights. As a result, the Right to Health was an argument to teachers complaints about hygienic conditions in school and also in all school equipment like tables, chairs and so on. As a consequence, at the Second Pedagogical Congress, which takes place in April 1909 in Lisbon, this matter was discussed enthusiastically by primary teachers of Gouveia Pedagogical Circle, where we can found a well-founded comprehension of these matters that was manifested at this conference.
The main reason was the charisma of Costa Sacadura, a particularly respected physician, who was born in a village in this rural region, who has a column about school hygiene in O Hermínio, a local newspaper with regular pedagogical discussion about teaching problems. Costa Sacadura was doing research about hygienic conditions at primary and secondary schools and we can acknowledge how shocking the situation in Portugal was. He also gives practical advice to teachers about how to teach hygiene and the healthy attitude of pupils when they are writing.
As Second Pedagogical Congress leader, he works with Adolfo Lima, a New School pedagogical leader, who twenty years after writes an almost encyclopedic pedagogical textbook highlighting the importance of Child Rights.
Fernando da Silva Correia, a physician, influenced by Father António de Oliveira and Costa Sacadura, that was born in Sabugal in 1893, in the 30’s wrote small books and pamphlets with hygienic advice to mothers and young people to prevent venereal diseases that he considered a menace to children’s health. He was also an activist on children rights, highlighting the importance of reinforcement of Children Rights everywhere.

The Scientification of Child Development at about 1900 and Its Signicance for the Concept of Female Education and the Qualification of Women in Great Britain, Germany and North America

In the course of the controversies between supporters of Fröbel´s kindergarten education, which was established as a profession of women and -- romantically-organologically oriented -- supported the individuality of children, and the international "child science" (child study, pedology, experimental pedagogics) with its orientation towards the natural sciences, some of Fröbel´s female supporters fought against the measuring and rationalization of child development.

In the interest of women´s emancipation and equal rights in the context of the educational system, others of them took up the conceptual connection of higher education and kindergarten pedagogics, which existed most of all in the Anglo-Saxon countries: the qulification of women was supposed to be driven on precisely by way of empirically-based scientification of child development; however, even they insisted in such a kind of science being communicatable by way of ethical-religious postulates. In all three countries this process came along with a modernization of the systems of education and teaching which had to meet the demands of industrialization, urbanization and migration but also to consider the question of attributing kindergartens to the fields of education and the social; parallel there was the establishment of a reformed university system in the Anglo-Saxon countries, which opened up access to women.

The role which child study played with the diverging British, North American and German scientific cultures will be reconstructed in the following.

Right to Punishment: Freedom's Failed Promisse to Children

The years following World War II witnessed a double shift in American education and youth policy. First, liberals and radicals successfully attacked the progressive disciplinary nexus of compassion and bureaucratic surveillance. Youth gained a host of rights in the 1960s, evident in student-centered curricula and the increasing regulation of educators in matters of expulsion and corporal punishment. However, it was the political right in the decades following the 1960s that brought liberal visions of youthful self-direction and autonomy to ironic life. Rather than liberating youth, the eclipse of compassionate notions of social control gave rise to intensely punitive practices in schools.
In order to illuminate why liberal approaches to the regulation of youth proved so frail, this study examines the evolution of school discipline policy and practice in New York City. New York was the center of American debates about the treatment of students and youth and about liberalism more broadly. Relying on archival collections, published memoirs, newspapers, and school and youth agency records, this study examines the efforts of liberal reform organizations, together with teacher unionists, family court officials, youth activists, and such nationally prominent New York reformers and intellectuals as Paul Goodman, Kenneth Clark, and Justine Wise Polier.
The study demonstrates that educators struggling to address real needs of struggling students frequently found little guidance in sentimental liberal invocations of youthful freedom. At the same time, the development of punitive discipline policy reflected the ambivalence of liberal educators and reformers in the face of America’s increasingly contentious racial politics. Still, the study concludes, the evolution of school discipline did not reflect a Manichean conflict between enlightened liberals and reactionary proponents of punishment. Rather, the frailty of liberal discipline policies reflected fundamental tensions in a liberal capitalist society.

What has Korczak Learned from the Greek Philosophy

The twentieth century taught us difficult things about mankind and its ability to mistreat others. When humanism has lost its charisma, Korczak is a starting point for a humanistic renewal.
However, as deep as we are inspired by his legacy, past studies of Korczak’s teaching hardly show any ordered philosophy. When scholars tried to understand what kind of worldview Korczak propose they were confused.
In this study we agree that Korczak did not write systematic philosophy, however, we can show that there is a philosophical infrastructure underneath his pedagogy, which gives meaning and direction to his educational work. In-depth study of his writings leads us to a field of ideas drawn from the world of Greek philosophy.
We can identify ideas associated with Socrates on the one hand and Stoicism on the other as main resource for Korczak’s humanistic insights. The infinity of Nature; the Divine logos that permeate everything, the basic rationality of human discourse; the equality of all beings; the meaning of life and death in the face of infinity – all had been translated in Korczak’s philosophy into a unique humanistic pedagogy.
In the end, when Korczak faced the inevitable death of his children, it was the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius that helped him, according to his Ghetto Diary to cope with reality and accept it with stoic ‘apatheia’ (clear judgment).

The discovery of the toddler

By 1930 across the Western world toddlers were ‘discovered’ by scientists. The nineteenth century and the early years of the ‘century of the child’ had brought mass schooling and compulsory education for children of - what was now defined as - school age. Likewise, the previous century had seen a massive hygienic effort to safe infants’ lives in an increasingly successful campaign to reduce infant mortality. In its wake, after 1900, infants’ health bureaus were established to provide mothers, especially from the working class, with regular control of their infants’ growth and development and with advice how to practice ‘scientific motherhood’ in order to guarantee ‘modern’ hygienic child care and a ‘normal’ development of their vulnerable, little babies. It was only after school children and infants had both been institutionalised, that scientists ‘discovered’ toddler’s age as a no less hazardous stage of childhood that warranted special provisions to protect their health and development. Physicians emphasized the many illnesses that had their origins in early childhood and set out to include children between one and six years of age into the targeted age groups of all kinds of hygienic provisions. Psychologists pointed at the crucial steps to be taken in a young child’s cognitive, emotional and social development, and consequently at the special needs to be met in day care and infant schooling. Psychiatrists, moreover, informed the public about the many risks for people’s mental health – even in the long run – that lay behind the smile of a carelessly playing toddler, not aware of the fact the he might be in the middle of catching one or another sickening complex. This paper discusses the ‘colonizing’ of early childhood by experts in one country, the Netherlands.

Malaise in Civilization, Malaise in School:The Fin de Siècle and the Emergence of Scholar Illness(1880-1900)

Historiographic production about the nineteenth century define this period as the assertion of an civilization ideal based on historical experience of European countries, as Elias (1994) called "the conscience that the West has of himself". During that century , a model of analysis about cultural differences was constructed, in which European society was considered the apex of the evolutionary scale and performance of the civilizing process. In this sense, the extension of school to the totality of childhood european population was considered a condition to develop a civilized adult.
However, emerge between hygienists and specialists of education in the last decades of the nineteenth century a critical discourse about school, considering the adverse effects of the institution on physical and mental health of young students. There was an association between the idea of the decay of civilization and the emergence of was called the “school diseases”.
Such discourse dialogued with the "thought of fin Siecle" that in different fields of cultural and science production heralded the decline of European civilization and the consequences on physical and mental healthy of the population, subjected to over-stimulation and acceleration of modern daily life.
In France a Committee was appointed by the French Academy (1869) charged to study the problems of intellectual fatigue on school. That Comittee proposed a change in school organization of time and space, bringing the intellectual work to the age of the student. .
In 1898, Alfred Binet and Victor Henri published the work: La fatigue intellectuelle which opened the Library of Teacher Collection, were they analized the emergence of symptoms such as fatigue, apathy, loss of memory on elementary school population according to na experimental perspective. These symptoms were appointed as “school diseases”, characteristic of the student population of young age. Based on this diagnosis the authors proposed the reduction and reorganization of school work in order to meet the specificity of psychological childhood.
This paper focus the discourse about “school diseases” on Binet book an its relation with scientific production about the decadence of civilization: the fien the siecle view. The purpose is to understand the changes on representation about school in pedagogical production as related to the changes on historical representation about civilization.

The Development of Nursery Education in Ondo State of Nigeria, 1960-2008

Nursery Education according to the Nigerian National Policy on Education 1977 revised1981 and 2004 respectively, is the formal education provided for the children between three and six years prior to entering the primary level of education system. According to the document, the objective of Nursery education includes: effecting a smooth transition from the home to the school; teaching the rudiment of numbers, letters, colours, shapes forms etc through play; teaching good habit,esciallygood health habits ; providing adequate care and supervision for the children while their parents are at work (on farms ,in the markets, offices etc); inculcating social norms, teaching co-operation and team work among others.

To achieve the set objectives, the government is to review and enforce the educational laws which relate to the establishment of nursery schools. Government would make sure that schools are well- run through regular inspection by the ministry officials and ensuring that quality teachers and other academic infrastructures are provided.

This paper aimed at analyzing nursery education in the contexts of:

1. Tracing the development of nursery education from 1960 to the present.
2. Highlighting the involvement of government and private proprietors in providing quality nursery education to the people of the area
3. Appraising the curriculum, teacher preparation infrastructure and other facilities for pre-school education in the state.
4. Evaluating quality control in nursery education in the state since 1960
5. Identify major problems inhibiting nursery education and make appropriate recommendations for its improvement.

What a boy should know for your own good. Representations of childhood in handbook of moral and sexual education of the early twentieth century.

The study, from the theoretical contributions of cultural history, examines the production of representations of childhood in the first decades of the twentieth century. Takes as an object of analysis of the collection of books Self and Sex Series, by Sylvannus Stall (1847-1915), american theologian, pastor of the Lutheran Church. The book is entitled What a boy should know. Circulated in Brazil in its first edition in the year of 1919, and other countries. It was open to children, explicitly announcing its commitment to help them to have a child under the pure and holy sacred principles of morality. Through the reading of books offered in this period were produced and circulated varied content, especially those relating to religion, morality, health and hygiene, sexuality, among others. The book is a manual in preparation for life and defends the importance of chastity among boys, so it is characterized as a guide to good living and sexual orientation. Throughout the text, the author devotes to the production of different extracts a child moving towards a youth and adulthood, enhanced by decent, pious reading, medical and scientific information and moral lessons. Stall, as author of a moral and religious discourse, given the fears over the proliferation of pernicious readings, guides their lessons to children as a set of recommendations that make up this manual of conduct religious secular life, showing his efforts to produce a representation of childhood. Books such as Stall demonstrate the enormous pressure regulator of medical and religious discourses on the subject. Being inspired by Chartier and Darnton, the study finds that the living is never annulled by the rules that aim to control it, because you can not confuse the texts that prescribe an ideal of childhood with the gestures and thoughts that opportunity with the children readers .

Knowledge and normalcy. The discovery of the first child with autism in the Netherlands

What in the eighteenth century still basically had been a fascination with ‘queerness’ in human beings, in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century rapidly developed as a repoussoir figure for an increasing interest in ‘normalcy’. Consequently, this stimulated an interest in knowledge about the nature and the development of ‘abnormalcy’. The aim of this paper is to examine how gender was a focal point in the connection between interventions towards children with ‘special needs’ and the discovery of the children who could be indicated as such. As has been argued by various scholars, the history of interventions concerning these children had been intimately related to the creation of knowledge on what became conceptualised a ‘disorder’ and a ‘disability’. A pedagogical approach was a priori in detecting children who deviated from the ‘standard child’. Both in the subject of ‘the professional’ – either a medical or an educational – and in children who became ‘objects’ of professional scrutiny, gender is a central category. Research into the history of one of the first Paedological Institutes in the Netherlands, where the discovery of autistics children in the 1930’s was prior to the first publications on the theme, is central in the argument of this paper. The conclusion underlines the interconnection between the ‘gender’ and ‘disability’ as historical and social constructions, indispensable in understanding the dynamics between knowledge, normalcy and education.

A Significant Break in Tradition: The Election of the First Woman to the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Acadamy of Sciences

On April 4th, 1980, Lídia Salgueiro responded affirmatively to a letter addressed to her by the then-Vice President of the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, José Pinto Peixoto. This letter, dated March 28th 1980 (Document #: 149/80), expressed the Academy's Physics Section's decision to propose her name as official Associate Fellow of the Sciences Section of said Academy. In accordance with the Statutes for election, a written statement by the candidate must precede this nomination in which the candidate declares his or her acceptance of the proposed election as Fellow or Associate Fellow. In case of being elected, the Candidate must subsequently fulfil his or her obligations with respect to the Academy's norms and responsibilities.



Thus, on April 9th, 1981, Lídia Salgueiro was officially and unanimously elected as Associate Fellow of the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, following the Academician António de Silveira's official nomination, and thereby breaking the centuries-long tradition of an all-male membership of said Academy, originally founded in 1779.



However, this was not the first time that the Academy heard the name Lídia Salgueiro. In fact, already, in 1961, the Academy of Sciences had honoured her with the "Artur Malheiros" prize, received "ex aequo," for her work entitled "A Contribution to the Study of the Disintegration Scheme of 229Th, with nuclear plates." This was also not the first time that the Academy had elected a woman as one of its Fellows since, on June 13th, 1912, both Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos - two major figures of the Portuguese literary intelligentsia - were elected Associate Fellows to its Letters Section. It should be noted, however, that, with respect to this Letters Section, no new female members were elected until 1975.

Over the past twenty-five years, only seven new female Fellows have been elected to the Sciences Section of the Academy (one of whom is a Foreign Member). Moreover, the women elected to this Section amount to only 7% of the total number of Fellows at the Academy today.

Born in 1917, Lídia Salgueiro took her undergraduate degree in the Physico-Chemical Sciences, with Honours, in 1941 (having studied both at the Universities of Coimbra and Lisbon) and obtained her doctoral degree in 1945 in the field of Nuclear Physics, X-Rays and Radioactivity. With her university studies now over, she began her career as a young professor at the School of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Concurrently, she began her research career at the Centro de Estudos de Física [The Physics Research Centre], headed by Professor Cyrillo Soares. However, it was at the urging of Manuel Valadares (1904-1982) - the prestigious Portuguese physicist who had previously trained at several foreign universities -, as well as following her life-changing reading of Eva Curie's biographical account of her Nobel Prize-winning mother, that Lídia Salgueiro decided to devote her professional activities to research. She subsequently became full professor in 1974. She retired in 1978.

The present paper focuses upon the research and teaching careers of this exceptional pioneer of Portuguese women active in the field of science. It also discusses her contributions to the Physics Research Centre, a Centre whose goal was the founding of a true research school in Portugal under the supervision of Manuel Valadares. This Centre was unfortunately not successful in realizing its goal due to reasons of a political nature, which led to the expulsion en masse of all university professors opposed to the Salazar regime, in 1947. Lídia Salgueiro's colleague Manuel Valadares subsequently left for France, leaving behind him the "spirit of camaraderie and inclusiveness as well as the sustained institutional support and collaborative unity given to all researchers" that had existed until then at the Centre.

Lídia Salgueiro's research activities carried out on an in!
ternational level (University of Edinburgh, Dept. of Natural Philosophy, headed by Prof. N. Feather, Orsay, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Heidelberg), her supervision of several doctoral dissertations and the creation of her own research group, as well as her active participation in the Luso-Hispanic Conferences for the Progress of Science and contributions to the founding of two Portuguese Science Journals, the Portugaliae Física (the majority of articles in this Journal having been published in French) and Gazeta de Física (having belonged to the Editorial Board of both Journals) and, finally, her activities at the Academy will also be examined.

Lídia Salgueiro's working relationship with Manuel Valadares, her stature as an independent-minded researcher and avid supporter of several succeeding generations of researchers, as well as her devotion to the diffusion of scientific knowledge in Portugal served to establish her as a highly singular voice and presence in twentieth-century Portuguese science. Through her multifaceted and dynamic career, Professor Salgueiro has stood out for generations as a prestigious scientist (achieving ultimately full recognition by her male colleagues) elected to an Academic Institution that had long neglected the contributions of women scientists.

Publicists, gender and education reform in Sweden in the mid-19th century

Around 1850, several important education reforms were introduced in
Sweden. Roughly at the same time, numerous publicists launched their own
newspapers, which formed a new and important arena for political
activism. To an extent, the publicists argued for the benefits of their
own (middle-) class, which meant the reformation of male secondary
education as well as the introduction of girls schools. However, for the
benefit of society they also engaged in the education issue in a broader
sense, arguing about the content and forms of mass schooling. Gender is
a factor present in these discussions, revealing that there was a
readiness in mid-19th century Sweden to offer extensive education to
females as well as to males. At the same time, opinions differed around
what content was suitable - for boys and girls, rich and poor. My
findings shed new light on both education and press history, at the same
time offering new nuances to our knowledge about gender in the mid 19th
century. The Swedish case will be set in an international comparison.

A Significant Break in Tradition: The Election of the First Woman to the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Acadamy of Sciences

On April 4th, 1980, Lídia Salgueiro responded affirmatively to a letter addressed to her by the then-Vice President of the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, José Pinto Peixoto. This letter, dated March 28th 1980 (Document #: 149/80), expressed the Academy's Physics Section's decision to propose her name as official Associate Fellow of the Sciences Section of said Academy. In accordance with the Statutes for election, a written statement by the candidate must precede this nomination in which the candidate declares his or her acceptance of the proposed election as Fellow or Associate Fellow. In case of being elected, the Candidate must subsequently fulfil his or her obligations with respect to the Academy's norms and responsibilities.
Thus, on April 9th, 1981, Lídia Salgueiro was officially and unanimously elected as Associate Fellow of the Sciences Section of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, following the Academician António de Silveira's official nomination, and thereby breaking the centuries-long tradition of an all-male membership of said Academy, originally founded in 1779.


However, this was not the first time that the Academy heard the name Lídia Salgueiro. In fact, already, in 1961, the Academy of Sciences had honoured her with the "Artur Malheiros" prize, received "ex aequo," for her work entitled "A Contribution to the Study of the Disintegration Scheme of 229Th, with nuclear plates." This was also not the first time that the Academy had elected a woman as one of its Fellows since, on June 13th, 1912, both Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho and Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos - two major figures of the Portuguese literary intelligentsia - were elected Associate Fellows to its Letters Section. It should be noted, however, that, with respect to this Letters Section, no new female members were elected until 1975.
Over the past twenty-five years, only seven new female Fellows have been elected to the Sciences Section of the Academy (one of whom is a Foreign Member). Moreover, the women elected to this Section amount to only 7% of the total number of Fellows at the Academy today.
Born in 1917, Lídia Salgueiro took her undergraduate degree in the Physico-Chemical Sciences, with Honours, in 1941 (having studied both at the Universities of Coimbra and Lisbon) and obtained her doctoral degree in 1945 in the field of Nuclear Physics, X-Rays and Radioactivity. With her university studies now over, she began her career as a young professor at the School of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. Concurrently, she began her research career at the Centro de Estudos de Física [The Physics Research Centre], headed by Professor Cyrillo Soares. However, it was at the urging of Manuel Valadares (1904-1982) - the prestigious Portuguese physicist who had previously trained at several foreign universities -, as well as following her life-changing reading of Eva Curie's biographical account of her Nobel Prize-winning mother, that Lídia Salgueiro decided to devote her professional activities to research. She subsequently became full professor in 1974. She retired in 1978.
The present paper focuses upon the research and teaching careers of this exceptional pioneer of Portuguese women active in the field of science. It also discusses her contributions to the Physics Research Centre, a Centre whose goal was the founding of a true research school in Portugal under the supervision of Manuel Valadares. This Centre was unfortunately not successful in realizing its goal due to reasons of a political nature, which led to the expulsion en masse of all university professors opposed to the Salazar regime, in 1947. Lídia Salgueiro's colleague Manuel Valadares subsequently left for France, leaving behind him the "spirit of camaraderie and inclusiveness as well as the sustained institutional support and collaborative unity given to all researchers" that had existed until then at the Centre.
Lídia Salgueiro's research activities carried out on an in!
ternational level (University of Edinburgh, Dept. of Natural Philosophy, headed by Prof. N. Feather, Orsay, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Heidelberg), her supervision of several doctoral dissertations and the creation of her own research group, as well as her active participation in the Luso-Hispanic Conferences for the Progress of Science and contributions to the founding of two Portuguese Science Journals, the Portugaliae Física (the majority of articles in this Journal having been published in French) and Gazeta de Física (having belonged to the Editorial Board of both Journals) and, finally, her activities at the Academy will also be examined.
Lídia Salgueiro's working relationship with Manuel Valadares, her stature as an independent-minded researcher and avid supporter of several succeeding generations of researchers, as well as her devotion to the diffusion of scientific knowledge in Portugal served to establish her as a highly singular voice and presence in twentieth-century Portuguese science. Through her multifaceted and dynamic career, Professor Salgueiro has stood out for generations as a prestigious scientist (achieving ultimately full recognition by her male colleagues) elected to an Academic Institution that had long neglected the contributions of women scientists.

Women Governance and Sustainability in SAARC Region, an historical analysis. Joint Session on Gender and Education

The SAARC society is multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-linguistic with a Capitalist patriarchy of the approximately 1.3 billion people living in poverty of which 70% are women. The role of women in building up social economic and cultural environment and sustainable status of the nation states is very significant. Gender and sustainability & it’s role in promoting peace in South Asian region is of prime importance in the SAARC region. The commitment of women is reflected in the way, the society and culture has taken them to bring them to the forefront of the present world system. Therefore, the present paper will emphasize on the eco-feminism emerging since 1980’s and even since before to acquaint the people as to how the role of women in South Asian region has been visualized in different fields at the international level. It will also be looked into as to how the women have coped with conflicting situation in politics and sustained odds at various level in their movement to get rid of the bondage & slavery of male dominated society. There will also be focus on the role of important personalities of the women of the South Asian region at different fronts. My research will focus on the peace initiatives as well as environmental issues in the South Asian regions based on sources of the contemporary research as well as of the archival sources.

Muslim girls and French colonial educators, 1845-1870

This paper explores the French "discovery" of female Algerian childhood in the early years of colonization. Using a case study approach, it will examine the first school for Muslim girls established in Algiers in 1845. Mme Allix-Luce, who successfully petitioned the French colonial government to support financially her experiment in the "fusion of the races", ran a school and workshop for girls that attracted widespread attention and generated as well a wealth of archival documents. Mme Allix-Luce explicitly argued that young Muslim girls had the same ability to reason as French girls, and so her school offered the rudiments in French and resembled in this respect primary schools in the metropole. However, she also insisted that these girls needed professional training in sewing and embroidery to learn the skills which would offer them some independence and a work ethic in their future lives. Her school functioned from 1845 until 1861 in conjunction with the workshop; after 1861, the government withdrew its support of the school in favor of work training.
The paper will consider the nature of the learning space she established, its adaptation to local mores and its integration of learning methods from both European and Algerian sources. Her use of mutual education techniques and her integration of a work environment within the school are described in inspection reports, travel memoirs and photographs and offer the means to question the vision of Muslim girlhood and womanhood that underlay this unusual initiative in the education of indigenous girls. I will highlight the similarities and contrasts with existing schools for poor girls in France since these years witnessed the spread of girls' primary schools and the birth of the first professional schools. Ultimately I am interesting in how gendered representations of class and ethncity influenced the emergence of this first school for Muslim girls and how its existence then impacted on future developments.

Example of publications
1) From the Salon to the Schoolroom: Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-Century France, University Park, Penn State University Press, 2005, 335 p. [winner in 2007 of the British History of Education Society prize for the best book in the history of education]
2) Editor with Pierre Caspard and Jean-Noël Luc, « L’éducation des filles. XVIIIe-XXe siècles. Hommage à Françoise Mayeur », Histoire de l’éducation, 115-116, 2007, 277 p.
3) Editor with Françoise Thébaud, « Voyageuses », Clio. Histoire, femmes et sociétés, 28, 2008, 316 p.
4) « Telling Stories about the Colonies : British and French Women in Algeria in the 19th century », Gender and History, April 2009, p. 39-59.

Growing Good Catholic Girls. Gender Specific Formation of a Catholic Intellectual Elite

In the nineteenth century religious orders and congregations set to work in education on a unprecedented scale. Self-assured, they set about creating a Catholic intellectual elite, which they tried to imbue with their own religious motives, educational goals, and gender concepts. In general, in the field of history of education little interest has been paid to the educational activities of congregations (Hellinckx, Depaepe 2008). Catholicism has not been taken into account as an actor in the intellectual formation of girls. Wrongly, since at the beginning of the twentieth century women religious founded grammar schools for girls that prepared them for university. It is at least noteworthy to mention that this type of education for girls flourished in Catholic circles, since questions were asked in general if this type of education could be suitable for girls at all because of its intellectual nature. My research shows that Catholicism could be a stimulus for the formation of an intellectual elite. Religion and modernity were not contradictory; religion should be seen as an integral part of modernity.
It is interesting to investigate the traditional image of the catholic women as mother and devoted wife to which intellectual development was secondary, with this form of education that was offered to better situated girls. Since girls were not so clearly seen as the future intellectual elite, it is interesting to find out what these girls were trained for. What were the motives to found these schools and what did the women religious, and parents that send their daughters to these schools, want to achieve?

The comparative based research focuses on the process of social and intellectual elite formation through education as it was offered in three prominent Catholic grammar schools for girls in the period 1925-1968. The analysis focuses on the education system and school culture, teaching staff and students of the grammar schools. Three groups are the focus of this research: the women religious that founded, controlled and sustained the schools, lay teachers who were part of the teaching staff, students and their parents. The analysis concentrates both on the level of formal and informal knowledge, on curriculum and school culture in broad, and looks both at the providers of education (women religious and lay teachers) and the receivers (the students).
In this way, the research wants to determine to what extent processes of social and intellectual elite formation in Catholic secondary education were gender-specific in purpose and effect.

Spaces for learning: an educational genderen and class concept?

At the end of the eighteenth century, progressive educationalists pioneered new ways of learning, principally for the middle and upper classes. In theory, an emphasis on associationist developmental psychology anticipated that children taught by its principles from birth could develop equally as intellectual, physical and moral beings. The spaces envisaged for learning and the way they were used could, in principle, be adapted for all children. Yet gendered and class concepts were integral to these ideals from the start. This was so even in science, although scientific approaches and the learning of scientific subjects were at the heart of some of the most ‘enlightened’ writings. This paper will explore the interrelationship between the spaces for learning in science envisaged for children of the different sexes and classes at the turn of the eighteenth century and the educational ideals, concepts and practices underpinning these contexts. In doing so, it will draw on a range of literature, including both imaginative and prescriptive educational texts and examples of actual practice.

In the late eighteenth century, educational pioneers inspired generations of readers and women writers in both Britain and the USA to encourage children to learn not only through readable, familial books that introduced a love of knowledge through dialogue, stories and poetry, but also through exploring nature and science, through the spaces of home and its surrounds. These, largely middle-class presentations, were expected to teach youngsters to observe, classify, think rationally in an enlightened and empirical way and live as well as think healthily. They also were full of gendered and class connotations. How such ideas worked in practice and what effect they had on ensuing changes in scientific learning in the nineteenth century will be investigated in this paper.

Education of Childhood in Brazil: the readings of "The Adventures of Telêmaco" of Fenelon.

This paper examines the work - The Adventures of Telemaco (1699) - de François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715). Through an epic poetic prose, this work inspired by the Odyssey, intends educate and shape the reader. This novel as a pedagogic romance, in the perspective of teaching the moral and the discipline, seeks to train the young prince, heir of Louis XIV, with austere attitudes and at same time simplicity in face the word seeking the control of emotions. It had several editions and has been reading for generations of young people as a classic of literature. In Brazil, it was adopted in Catholic schools and the College of Pedro II. Based on memories of readers this paper analyses how the readers apprehended this reading and witch training effects it have on them.

Childhood in retrospective views

Autobiographical sources may give us very detailed description of the circumstances in which children are growing up and living. Sometime the stories are not only detailed, they are also selected in a very subjective manner. Who is the subject of the memoirs? In “poetry and truth” Goethe pointed out that the subjects are constantly chancing between telling and experience.
The lecture will
- give some examples of autobiographical stories about childhood in Austria after the second world war.
- show the reason why this sources are ambivalent, because they seemed to be authentic and reliable but there are only limited possibilities to prove.
- point out the influence of this sources in the development of child science
- give some perspectives for the scientific discussion in child science.

Father and fatherhood as reflected in the private diaries and correspondence of the 19th-century Czech bourgeoisie

In the 19th century the spheres of man’s and woman’s competences are being formed into a sharper and sharper opposition – the public sphere is meant for man, whereas the private one is meant for woman. Thus the male identity is shaped rather by the outer world – achievements in job or the army, in the functions and ranks. Man’s relationship toward family is less imminent. Though, as many a foreign researcher has pointed out, this period can be still marked as father-dominated both in family and society.
At any rate, it is apparent that the role of man was of great importance. What is less evident is the role that father played in inter-family relations and in children education – especially when the fact that the role of educator was attributed to mother is taken into account. In what way men demonstrated their emotions and love to their relatives? In what way and how they interfered in the children education? In what aspects father’s education differed from mother’s education? How the relationships father-son and father-daughter differed? What the role of father in the education of his children to gender identity was?
However, dealing with the issue of father’s role in the education process does not bring evidence only about the father-children relationship, it also enables to reconstruct the relationship of father-man towards himself. Thus, what defined fatherhood? Was the aspect of education formative to the fatherhood identity at all? What role fatherhood played in the process of male self-identification and to what extent the fatherhood phenomenon is a part of the masculine identity? Was man really defined exclusively by the public sphere?
These issues will be analyzed on the basis of private correspondence and diaries, coming from the representatives of the Czech middle class, or bourgeoisie, of the 19th century.

The diary of Alba L., the voice of a pupil in Fascist Italy

A child is a silent witness who leaves behind few weak traces. Quite by chance, I came across the diary of an 8 year old girl from Brescia, published in installments in a local newspaper «L’Arte dei Piccoli» edited by a teacher from the same city. It gives a description of everyday school life, that becomes, however, extremely interesting for various reasons.

First of all, for the period when the little girl is writing. Fascism is at its height of popularity. Alba, the young author, is testimony to the enormous changes taking place in Italian society. In a traditionally catholic country with a socialist ideology. An ideology, present since the late Nineteenth early Twentieth centuries, with a numerous following among the proletarians.

The second reason is represented by a tragic aspect….at only 8 years old Alba dies after an appendix operation. Her schoolmates narrate the fact after being called by the editorial office to continue Alba’s unfinished diary.

The third reason is that this sad story is coldly retold through the class registers of the school which, therefore, become a way of checking the pupil’s subjectivity.

Alba Lorenzini’s case is like an extraordinary historical workshop in which the same period, the school year 1932-1933, is seen from three different documented sources: the child’s diary, her schoolmates narration and that of a teacher called to fulfill his/her bureaucratic duties completing the class register with all the daily facts.

A child on the way to becoming a pupil: memories of childhood

This contribution discusses the differences in accessibility of primary education from the schoolchild point of view in 19th and in beginning of 20th century on territory of present-day Slovenia (in Habsburg Empire / Austro-Hungarian monarchy provinces with Slovenian population: Carniolia/Kranjska, Carinthia/Koroška, Styria/Stajerska and the Littoral/ Primorska with part of Istria and Triest) in line with differences in the state of the development of the educational network. One of the useful sources for a history of childhood was the memories of the school days, as a period of transition between childhood and youth with many very different nice and bad personal experiences.
In the early 19th century, only every seventh child in Slovenia received an education, and just before 1848, this number went up to every third child. After the adoption of the primary school law in 1869, attending school increasingly became the dominant way of spending one’s childhood, even though the obligatory eight-years of education was being established only slowly. A greater number of schools, better attendance and a lower level of illiteracy brought also very active development. In 1880, nearly half of Slovenians were still illiterate (45.9%), while in 1890 this percentage went down to just over a quarter (28.5%), and after that it fell even further (in 1900 it was 18.2% and in 1910 14.5%). The development of primary school education from the mid-19th century united Slovenians in various areas, increased literacy and from the late 19th century onwards influenced cultural, national and economic development.
The accessibility of education was also dependent on the language of instruction in primary schools – Slovenian, German, Italian or Hungarian – which prior to 1918 differed greatly from one Slovenian ethnic area to another. Thus, in addition to social position, educational opportunities depended on the language question, which also marks the general development of education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For girls, primary education was much more accessible than secondary, while for many poorer pupils the path to education was made easer by scholarship institutions, private and Church patrons, and money earned from private lessons given to richer students. Very frequent image of child in the school age was poor and modest pupil and way to education full of hardship. But education was an opportunity for talented children from rural backgrounds to climb the social ladder.

Early Childhood Education in Nigeria: Policy Implementation and Challenges

The right to education has been well articulated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights of 1948. The declaration recognizes the intrinsic human value of education underpinned by strong moral and legal foundations. Hence, Nigeria adopts education as an “instrument par excellence” for national development. Her philosophy of education is based on the integration of the individual into sound and effective citizenship with educational opportunities at all levels through the formal and non-formal school system. Nigeria also believes that the provision of education is the primary means of upgrading the socio-economic and political situations of the indigenous rural population of the nomadic pastoralists with an estimated population of 9.3 million and a literacy rate of 0.2%. In consonance with the provision of the 1979 Constitution, the Federal Government launched the Nomadic Education Programme (an elementary school system for nomads) on 4th of November 1986. By Decree No. 41 of December 1989, Government also established the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) charged with the responsibility of implementing the nomadic education programme in the country.
This study provided an historical analysis of the qualitative and quantitative developments of elementary education to the Nigerian nomadic pastoralists in the last 20 years of the inception of the programme. It also analyzed the political, social and economic changes that have affected the implementation of the programme. Major problems inhibiting the implementation were highlighted and solutions provided.

Mapping Childhood in the City of Quebec: Different Space Different Worlds School, Work and Leasure in a Changing Society

The concept of Chilhood can be seen in different way from time to time, from one society to the other, or looking at different region or place within a country. Taking the city of Quebec (Canada) as a laboratory, this paper takes chilhood and infancy as a «polymorph» entity where gender, social class, ethnicity and religion can shape different ways to experimentinf childood in the interweaving worlds of play, school and work .

Interestingly, deep contrasts and differences cohabit with images of the apparence of eternity and uniformity of childhoof through times.

Taking the tools oc cartography and images, this paper wish to adress the questions of chilhood within the space of the city, the space of school, the space between home and school ,and the space of school against work or combinated with work.


The combination of tools (cartography and images) with the interweaving of categories such as gender, social class, religion and ethnicity in a single city through time over a century provides interpretations of the meanings of childhood. But it also raises questions about the re-presentations of childhood as a concept and as a moving reality.

Trends and dymanics in the provision of elementary education to the nomadic pastoralists in Nigeria, 1986-2006

The right to education has been well articulated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights of 1948. The declaration recognizes the intrinsic human value of education underpinned by strong moral and legal foundations. Hence, Nigeria adopts education as an “instrument par excellence” for national development. Her philosophy of education is based on the integration of the individual into sound and effective citizenship with educational opportunities at all levels through the formal and non-formal school system. Nigeria also believes that the provision of education is the primary means of upgrading the socio-economic and political situations of the indigenous rural population of the nomadic pastoralists with an estimated population of 9.3 million and a literacy rate of 0.2%. In consonance with the provision of the 1979 Constitution, the Federal Government launched the Nomadic Education Programme (an elementary school system for nomads) on 4th of November 1986. By Decree No. 41 of December 1989, Government also established the National Commission for Nomadic Education (NCNE) charged with the responsibility of implementing the nomadic education programme in the country.
This study provided an historical analysis of the qualitative and quantitative developments of elementary education to the Nigerian nomadic pastoralists in the last 20 years of the inception of the programme. It also analyzed the political, social and economic changes that have affected the implementation of the programme. Major problems inhibiting the implementation were highlighted and solutions provided.

The School for Human Culture: Transcendentalist Pedagogy and Children's Dialogues in Antebellum America

In 1834, Bronson Alcott, a member of the Transcendentalist Club, opened the Temple School in Boston, Massachusetts. Alcott sought to provide children with an education that honored personal inspiration and intellectual acumen through a pedagogy which challenged dogmatic mimesis. Alcott utilized the Socratic Method to engage students in conversations on the gospels, philosophy and literature. Fortunately, Alcott's assistant teacher, Elizabeth Peabody, recorded many of these conversations. The presentation will focus on Alcott's specific questions, student responses to those questions, and the ensuing dialogical moves. The analysis also seeks to gain insight into Alcott's conversations from the perspectives of the children themselves, which comprise a significant portion of Peabody's observations.

Childhood and Child Rescue in Alberta, Canada; Intergenerational Consequences from 19th Century Ideologies

The notions of childhood and rescue (a.k.a. child saving) as known in England, Europe, the United States, Eastern Canada, and elsewhere emerged in Western Canada around the same time when the fur trade between European traders and indigenous people ended, and when the North-West Territories was formed in 1870 as a governing body. The Province of Alberta was subsequently formed in 1905. Child rescue practices manifested themselves in Western Canada in various forms. In the second half of the 19th century Euro-Canadian governments allowed Christian Churches to open boarding or residential schools for aboriginal children. Government wanted to assimilate the indigenous people into mainstream society, and missionaries sought to Christianize them. During that same time period, British and Canadian governments sanctioned emigration of large numbers of poor children to Canada. These children became known as the British Home Children, and they were placed-out with Canadian families on the prairies in response to a demand for labour. Inasmuch as child protection services and practices emerged and evolved during the 20th century, proponents of eugenics in Alberta lobbied for legislation to sexually sterilize children with developmental disabilities. Sexual sterilization legislation was passed in Alberta in 1928 and was implemented, and routinely practised from 1929 to 1972. Yet, progressive child protection legislation had been passed in 1909, encompassing child neglect as well as juvenile delinquency. Extensive historical research was conducted with a focus on intergenerational consequences that continue to linger from past policies and practices.

The Historical Construction of Childhood and the Educational Thought in European Seventeenth-Century

The purpose of the presentation is to understand the characteristics of the educational thought in European seventeenth-century especially seen in Johannes Amos Comenius in relation to the expansion of educational needs at the age shown in the studies of the social history of education.
As well known, Phillip Aries’study gave a big impact on the historical description of education. Except for the innovation of educational methodology by Comenius and his supporters, European seventeenth-century is often seen as a kind of interregnum between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Aries study made the age a big epoch in the history of education when childhood was constructed. However, it is not sufficient to integrate the study of the educational thought with the study of the social history of education.
Educational practice has to be based upon experience and therefore education is to some extent empirical. Nevertheless, in his major writing Didactica magna, Comenius manifested that he systematized the didactic based upon apriorism approach.
Here, we can see that Comenius discretely took a distance with the expansion of expectation for empirical approach to education shown in the study of the social history of education.

Childhood educability: a privileged laboratory for shaping human sciences, Discoveries, utopia and controversies 19th-20th centuries

Discovering childhood: through that ‘eureka’- experience passed various people in the course of history. From religious moralists to educational practitioners, from scientific pedagogues to philosophers, from poets to painters and other artists, from lawmakers to children’s rights adherents, not to forget generations of parents: all discovered childhood. Indeed, people have discovered childhood many times in history, and from various angles, both inside and outside science. For those who passed through that ‘eureka’-moment, the discovery of childhood being the centre of the universe, or at least of the educational universe, would determine their future educational thinking and acting. As a result, this long-term phenomenon in the history of education shaped a major part of educational theory and practice.