Geert Thyssen

Visualizing Discipline of the Body in a German Open‐Air School (1923–1939): Retrospection and Introspection

This article considers how historians might use imagery in the context of an open‐air school in Germany, Senne I‐Bielefeld (1922–1939). In considering the ‘nature’ of such images, issues and problems associated with their interpretation are illuminated and discussed. First, two images selected from the pre‐Nazi period of the school are examined within a theoretical discussion. Then, the article explores the question of how historians might understand the ‘discipline’ of the body of the schoolchild through its representation in photographs. The open‐air school is thereby considered as a demonstration of the result and possibility of bio‐power. Through such visual representations an argument is developed to reveal the meaning of the body in the school with reference to childrens experience of the schools power/knowledge. A third image from the Nazi period of the school is employed to point to changes in the representation of childrens bodies over time. Finally a plea is made for more attention to the emotional engagement of the historian as a valuable source in the history of education.

Mobilising meaning: multimodality, translocation, technology and heritage

This special issue explores how meaning is created, conveyed and transformed through multiple modes of communication, representation and interaction (the textual, the visual, the material, the spatial, the aural, the imaginary, etc.); through movement across spaces; through media and technologies; and, finally, through collective memoryand identity-making. In short, this issue is concerned with meaning mobilised through “multimodality”, “translocation”, “technology” and “heritage”. As such, it closely connects to several core dimensions of education which in the past few decades have undergone a revival of interest in histories of education: visuality, materiality, spatiality, transfer and circulation. Related to these key education dimensions are issues to do with the diffusion of knowledge, values, practices and ways of seeing, perceiving and feeling across and beyond borders. Such issues were at the heart of a symposium organised at the 34th International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), which took place in Geneva in June 2012 in cooperation with the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY) and the Disability History Association (DHA) and addressed the theme of “internationalization in education”. The specific topics addressed in this issue include: (1) the promotion, circulation and reception of educational undertakings through annual reports with photographic material distributed by an internationally active charitable institution and through a reading group campaigning for textbook revisions by means of pamphlets and exhibitions (Macnab, Grosvenor and Myers); (2) the changes of meaning undergone through textual and visual representations of displaced children in educational colonies travelling from Republican Spain to Britain and from networks of humanitarian–pedagogical activism to the archives (Roberts); (3) imaginings of artists, educators and policy-makers materialised in school decoration and the latter’s relation to school buildings as well as the education of taste and consumption (Burke); the journey from Germany to the Netherlands of poetry written for children as part of the educational programme of the Enlightenment, its remodelling in the function of new perceptions of the child and of forms of citizenship and its reception and use as illustrated textbooks (Parlevliet and Dekker); and, finally, the educational power

The stranger within: Luxembourg’s early school system as a European prototype of nationally legitimized international blends (ca. 1794–1844)

This comparative analysis of Luxembourg’s early school (law) system reveals the extent to which European school systems reflect “national-cultural idiosyncrasies” apart from “structural isomorphism”. It first examines the legal soil into which the Luxembourg school system was implanted. Legislative pendular swings, reflecting shifts in power relations, cultural–linguistic affinities and so on, determined the direction in which the school system would develop. Indeed, these oscillatory motions had unexpected results, which the second section reveals by presenting similarities with laws that provided inspiration for the Luxembourg law. Despite criticism of Belgian policy, the Grand Duchy’s first school law system was very similar to it. The article then focuses on some key components of the Luxembourg system and identifies a pattern of borrowings: in more strictly administrative and pedagogical matters, the French and Dutch school laws served, while the Belgian school law constituted the reference for matters intersecting with religious interests. This synchronic analysis is extended by a diachronic analysis of the historical evidence for the selective borrowing of key components of the law. The final section suggests that incipient national–cultural particularities are perhaps to be found only on the level of “inner activities” of a school system’s organisation, and that they are the products of national historiography rather than historical features observable from a comparative–perspectivist viewpoint.

Boundlessly entangled: non-/human performances of education for health through open-air schools

ABSTRACT This article starts from histoire croisée to develop a genuinely relational analysis of performances of health education in the context of open-air schools. It interrogates, through places, people, and things conceived of as being performatively entangled, the notion of an internationalisation of school hygiene. These places, people, and things – “international” conferences and exhibitions, “figureheads” of the aspiring New Schools and open-air schools movements, and printed, photographed, and designed materials – reveal open-air schools as “practice[s] and movement[s]” unbound by national or otherwise (real-)imagined borders. Fragmentation accompanied their circulation and ensued from their co-constitutive role in the mediation of knowledge and praxis around hygiene. While still underexplored, economic factors were key to this process. Their analysis from within the “meshwork” in which non-/humans were (are) entangled opens up new lines of enquiry.

Body_Machine? Encounters of the Human and the Mechanical in Education, Industry and Science

Abstract This paper unveils the body_machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the mechanical encountered each other in metaphorical, material and visual forms, thereby blurring to some extent the boundaries between them while capturing and mobilising specific forms of knowing and acting. The paper studies, first, how certain ‘orienting frames of reference’ and associated ‘experimental systems’ managed to materialise around the body_machine and penetrate theory and praxis; and, second, what visual and textual sources related to a vocational school may reveal about where and how the body_machine has come to operate in education, industry and science. The paper centres on early twentieth-century photographs and analyses these not only as media presenting, representing and interrogating common thought and practice but also as agents of meaning-making around the body_machine.

Puppets on a String in a Theatre of Display? Interactions of Image, Text, Material, Space and Motion in The Family of Man (ca. 1950s-1960s)

In the past few decades, increasing attention has been devoted within various disciplines to aspects previously considered trivial, among which are images, material objects and spaces. While the visual, the material and the spatial are receiving ever more consideration and the myriad issues surrounding them are being tackled, their convergence in educational settings across time and space has thus far remained underexplored. A travelling photo exhibition, The Family of Man, will serve as a starting point in this paper for addressing some of the complexities inherent in this convergence and thus highlight an essential yet neglected feature of education: its reliance on, and creative use of, multiple “modes” of communication and representation when attempting to produce learning effects. As a particular educational constellation that went on to travel throughout the world and interact with the contexts in which it moved, The Family of Man was anything but neutral in design. The paper will show just how carefully it was composed to promote meaning-, power-, and knowledge-making in accordance with its mission. This border-crossing installation thus constituted a spectacle of different interacting views, forms, surfaces, lighting effects, panoramas, movements, captions and other factors that aimed to create order among things and people. Nevertheless, the paper argues, “theatres of display” in education such as this do not imply determination and causality of effects, but rather provide “uncertain conditions” within a spectrum of “actors” and “actants”. The paper relates this to the manifold affordances of objects, images, places and so on, to disruptions of meaning in their convergence across time and space and to “emancipation” on the part of learners.

Mapping a space of biography: Karl Triebold and the Waldschule of Senne I-Bielefeld (c.1923–1939)

Starting from a ‘life geography’ of Karl Triebold, a leading figure in open-air education, this article provides an understanding of the seemingly ordinary but still idiosyncratic development of a German open-air school. Triebold’s life’s work, the fight against tuberculosis, conceived as character education through healthy occupation, was inspired by his experience both as a tuberculosis patient and as a teacher in a field hospital. Rest cures and saltwater baths were precursors of ‘his’ open-air school that was to be sustained by a social-insurance company. ‘Weak’, mostly poor children were to stay there, divided according to age, sex and constitution. Triebold’s influence is most apparent from the institution’s ‘concentric’ method and curriculum. Precisely these, however, were rejected. The school as such was supposedly closed, and Triebold was discharged, which enabled him to become an open-air school figurehead. This illustrates how broader institutional developments can bear the imprint of subjects’ life history.

The Trotter open-air school, Milan (1922-1977) : a city of youth or risky business?

This article inserts the concept of risk in the context of open‐air schools and investigates its implications, capacities and limits. It is contended that applying at‐risk labels to pupils who attended open‐air schools is itself a risky business. The category to some extent constitutes an anomaly within most open‐air schools’ histories, as much of what it would come to denote, did not yet exist as such when these institutes arose and flourished. Moreover, the literature suggests that at‐risk labels are often deployed, interpreted, negotiated and resisted by children and youth to whom they are applied. The article investigates that hypothesis by means of a case study of a Milanese open‐air school called ‘Trotter’. Studied in detail is its everyday educational practice before and after the Second World War. It is argued that open‐air schools like ‘Trotter’ indeed (re)constructed children and youth in modes similar to those related to at‐risk discourse, albeit in ambiguous and context‐specific ways. Moreover, the article shows that institutes like ‘Trotter’ themselves put their target groups at risk, giving occasion to multiple forms of an at‐risk paradox. Pupils of such a school particularly risked (but also resisted) being socially bracketed, stigmatized, institutionalized, abused and subjected to streaming.