17. Histories of Education
Paper
Towards an Intersectional Genealogy in the History of Education: the Case of Girls’ Education in the Belgian Congo (1908-1960)
Serena Iacobino
Université Libre de Bruxelles et KULeuven, Belgium
Presenting Author: Iacobino, Serena
Since the 1990s, controversial debates on colonial facts have been held in Belgian universities and have focused in particular on Belgium's responsibilities in relation to the colonization of the Congo (the current DRC). Various reports (United Nations, 2019; Parliamentary Commission, Experts' Report, 2021) show the increase of research on these issues and the need to make them more complex. Indeed, most studies still seem to focus on aspects related to "race" without also introducing "gender" or "class" relations in the history of the colonization of Congo (Parliamentary Commission, Experts' Report, 2021). Inspired by the work of intersectional scholars (Crenshaw, 2005), the interest of this presentation is to show how intersectionality can reshape the work on colonial history in Congo, and in particular on the history of education of Congolese girls. In addition to the intersectional lens, the presentation will focus on how a genealogical approach might be of interest to scholars whose goal is to deconstruct past and present (post)colonial discourses and practices. More precisely, the objective of this presentation is to retrace the framework of literature that led to thinking about an intersectional genealogy of educational devices for girls, during the Belgian Congo (1908-1960). Indeed, both genealogy and intersectionality are approaches that open up a new dialogue in the History of education (Coloma, 2011; Rogers, 2019). They allow for the articulation of multiple relations of domination relating to “class”, “gender”, “race” and “age” in order to problematize their historicity within various educational settings addressed to girls. Following Michel Foucault's (1997) methodological lead, combined with intersectionality, this research is structured around the following concern: to understand how schools for Congolese girls, between 1908 and 1960, did rely on an entangled multiplicity of subjugations such as “age”, “class”, “gender” and “race”.
In this respect, research on the history of education of girls has identified a social project addressed to Congolese women developed throughout the first half of the 20th century: girls should be educated in schools to become good Christian mothers, to take care of their children and the households, and to be capable of civilizing their own “African” family and social environment (Kita, 2004; Lauro, 2020). Compared to White middle-class women, perceived as the moral guardians of education and their family, racialized women in Belgian Congo were seen as “illegitimate” mothers and in need of being “educated” to 'Europeanness' (Stoler, 2013). This raises several questions: how have women been implicated in the maintenance of colonial discourse? What are the specificities of the colonial society of Belgian Congo in the representation of women, in terms of “gender”, “race”, “class” and “age”? And what role did educational devices play?
Therefore, the idea of educating a woman who could meet the standards of “motherhood” and “Europeanness” became the issue of 20th century of colonial women's education which reproduced the pattern of civilizing ideology (McClintock, 1995). Such is an ideology that justifies violence against those considered “unadapted” (working classes) and “savage” (colonized classes), in the name of progress (André & Poncelet, 2013). It is precisely this vision of progress that we can relate to and deal with in the contemporary school curricula (Parliamentary Commission, experts' report, 2021).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFoucauldian genealogy introduces us to a detailed study of power and its metamorphoses, based on the discontinuities between the various periods, with back-and-forth movements between past and present (Revel, 2002). In order to make Foucauldian genealogy more complex and respond to its controversies (Coloma, 2011), I have combined it with the theory of intersectionality, which allows for an analysis of multiple co-imbrications of power relations. Indeed, focusing on Congolese girls allows us to think jointly about the intersection of the question of childhood ("age"), of women ("gender"), of the social milieu ("class"), and of the colonial relationship ("race"). More precisely, the question is to identify and analyze the technical instruments of the schools (programs, places, etc.) that make these forms of power possible.
The sources used have mainly been the colonial archives in Belgium (archives: MRAC of Tervuren, Archives Federal Public Service of Foreign Affairs, KADOC archives of Leuven, General Archives of the Kingdom of the Joseph Cuvelier Depot) which show an interesting corpus on how the girls' schools were run in practice, on the colonial administration of the schools and on the teaching work of the missionary nuns. In addition to archives, the other materials used are the writings of Michel Foucault (1975; 2003) on the history of the school, but also of childhood and the family. However, Foucault did not include feminist or postcolonial studies in his analyses, thus presenting an un-gendered and un-racialized history of educational settings. To address these shortcomings, I have taken up the research of Silvia Federici (2015; 2019) which extends Foucault's analysis by establishing a genealogy of forms of women's subjugation throughout the history of Western societies. In addition, postcolonial studies, especially those of Ann L. Stoler (2002; 2013), show the impossibility of thinking about the genealogy of Western societies without thinking about colonial situations: pedagogical and governmental discourses and practices have been constituted by multiple back-and-forths between the “metropoles” and the “colonies”. The devices of European Empires and States are thus mutually and historically constitutive in the construction of relations of domination (Stoler, 2013).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThrough the intersection of archives and literature, specific aspects of girls' education in Belgian Congo have emerged: a correlation between the arrival of White women, the disappearance of “ménagère” (forms of "concubines"), and a more institutionalized women's education (1924). In this respect, the archives show that the word housework appears most often in the school curricula of girls, in particular from 1928 until the decolonization. This shows the birth of a new social place for most of the Congolese women in colonial society: the housewife. The encounter between the colonial situations and the strong influence of the Catholic Chruch underlines the intersection of domination(s), entailed in schools' curricula, to which girls were subject: because of their being women, Black, and belonging to a lower class, girls had to exclusively learn the arts of the household and how to properly take care of their children. The Congolese girl must be educated in “Europeaness”, but she is out of step with the Belgian girl: she is racialized by colonial society, and she suffers oppression a century later than the Belgian one. In fact, towards the second half of the 19th century, while in Belgium both lower- and middle-class women began to have access to secondary and higher education (Di Spurio, 2019), in the 20th century girls in Congo still continued to have very little schooling or stopped at middle school level, where the main orientation remains the household school (Depaepe, & Lembagusala Kikumbi, 2018). All these discontinuities and conjunctures show the interest to problematize an intersectional genealogy of girls' education in Belgian Congo. It is interesting to question how the history of the education of “Diversity” in the colonies (in this case "racialized" girls in the Congo) is ontologically constitutive of the European history of education.
References- ANDRE, G. & PONCELET, M. (2013). Héritage colonial et appropriation du «pouvoir d’éduquer»; Approche socio-historique du champ de l’éducation primaire en RDC. Cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs, 12, 271-295.
- CHAMBRE DES REPRESENTANTS DE BELGIQUE (2021).Commission spéciale chargée d’examiner l’état indépendant du Congo et le passé colonial de la Belgique au Congo, au Rwanda et Burundi, ses conséquences et les suites qu’il convient d’y réserver. Rapport des experts, 26 octobre 2021.
- COLOMA, R. (2011). Who’s afraid of Foucault? History, theory, and becoming subjects. History of education Quarterly, Vol 51,n°2.
- CRENSHAW, K. (2005). Cartographies des marges: intersectionnalité, politique de l'identité et violences contre les femmes de couleur.Cahiers du Genre, 39(2), 51-82.
- DEPAEPE, M. & LEMBAGUSALA KIKUMBI, A. (2018) « Educating girls in Congo: An unsolved pedagogical paradox since colonial times ? », Policy Futures in Education 16, n° 8 (2018): 936-952.
- DI SPURIO, L. (2019). Du côté des jeunes filles. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles.
- FEDERICI, S. (2015). Calibano e la strega. Le donne, il corpo e l’accumulazione originaria. Milano: Mimesis.
- FOUCAULT, M. (1997). Il faut défendre la société: Cours au collège de france, 1975- 1976. Paris: Gallimard. (2004).Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France. 1977-1978. Paris: Gallimard (2003). Le pouvoir psychiatrique. Cours au Collège de France. 1973-1974. Paris: Gallimard/Seuil
- HAUT COMMISARIAT DROITS DE L’HOMME DES NATIONS UNIES (2019). Déclaration aux médias du Groupe de travail d'experts des Nations Unies sur les personnes d'ascendance Africaine sur les conclusions de sa visite officielle en Belgique du 4 au 11 février 2019.
- KITA, P. (2004). L'éducation féminine au Congo belge, Paedagogica Historica, 40, 479-508
- LAURO, A. (2020). « Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo », Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. 29 Mai 2020.
- MCCLINTOCK, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York: Routledge.
- ROGERS, R. (2019). «Gender, Class and Race», quelle intersectionnalité dans l’histoire de l’éducation aux Etats-Unis? Entretien avec Kate Rousmaniere. Travail, genre et sociétés, Vol 41, n°1.
- STOLER (2013). La Chair de l’empire. Savoirs intimes et pouvoirs raciaux en régime colonial. Paris: La Découverte. (2002). « Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance », Archival Science 2, n1–2: 87,109.
17. Histories of Education
Paper
Negotiating Boundaries of Diversity in a School for All!
Anna Ahlgren1, Christian Lundahl2
1Stockholm university, Sweden; 2Örebro university, Sweden
Presenting Author: Ahlgren, Anna;
Lundahl, Christian
In the mid 19th century Europe, an increased belief in a democratic, equal education for all was ground for extensive educational reforms. In the Nordic countries, the Welfare model, with ideological as well as pedagogical interconnections to parliamentary democracy, shaped the development of the Nordic school systems (Ydesen & Buchardt, 2020). The overall purposes of education within these systems were to offer equal education, free-of-charge for all, as well as to form a welfare state mentality within the population. The main idea was that this uniform and free education for all children, regardless of background and social conditions, would lead to equality, justice and social cohesion (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006). With the implementation of the nine year compulsory and comprehensive school, enhetsskolan, the Swedish school system brought about a school-for-all, where all children entered the same school form, where no ability - or intellectually based differentiation were to take place until after the fourth or fifth grade, and then only in terms of second language choice. Many European countries implemented early educational choices and concentration, and well as early grades. In Sweden, it was argued that a later point for differentiation would benefit the students, specifically the ‘less pronounced academic talents’. It is thus a common understanding that in Sweden, as well as in other Nordic countries, educational differentiation took place relatively late in a school child’s life (cf. Tveit & Lundahl, 2022).
We suggest, however, that comprehensive methods for early differentiation of students were used already at the time of school entry. Testing for school readiness was a pronounced form of sorting, which took place in most Swedish municipalities between 1946 and 1975. These tests were motivated as help for the individual child, and as means to identify the right time to start school and to receive educational content. At the same time, there was a widespread ambiguity concerning the concept of school readiness, with different connotations and uses, on national as well as international levels (Ljungblad, 1965; Winter & Kelley, 2008). We here try to understand precisely how the ambiguities of the concept can be seen as a prerequisite for the implementation of the tests. We argue that the concept of school readiness, and the political debates and decisions behind the tests, can be understood as a way to reframe early differentiation to work better with the overall political ambition of the comprehensive school reform.
In order to better understand processes of educational reforms, and in particular the seemingly contradictory positions concerning sensitive topics like diversity and differentiation, we will look at various motives, arguments and actions when it comes to testing for school readiness. Our study is delimited particularly to the political debate in Sweden between 1946-1975, when school readiness was debated in the parliament and put into use through various reforms, to finally become abandoned. Our overarching questions concern how school readiness was conceptualized and put into use, despite it seemingly being in conflict with the idea of a diversified comprehensive school for all. In this respect we treat school readiness as a boundary object.
Theoretically we argue that the concept of school readiness, and different attempts to understand and apply it, became a way to ‘make sense of the world’, but, and this is the main point here, with a fair amount of ambiguity (Strang & Meyer, 1993, p. 499; see also Lundahl & Waldow, 2009). This ambiguity actually contributes to the attractiveness of ‘school readiness’, as advocates of different positions can unite behind it. Analytically we will treat school readiness as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn order to understand the shifting conceptualizations and uses of school readiness we have designed a study based on government documents and protocols from the Swedish parliament. These data are available through an advanced search engine called Riksdagssök (riksdagsdata.oru.se). Riksdagsök has been developed by one of the applicants, integrating data from The Swedish parliament and the National Library (KB) in a joint database of parliamentary records ranging back to the year 1521. This database includes transcripts of parliamentary debates, roll-call voting records, as well a wide range of documents from parliamentary proceedings. Riksdagssök is a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) for searching, filtering, exporting and analyzing data from the Swedish parliament. This GUI makes it possible to conduct advanced searches of all open data from the Swedish Parliament and export data in different formats. From here we can easily extract all mentions of school readiness during the selected time period, and also connect them with different political actors and processes (cf Lundahl & Serder 2020). Our searches give us appr. 150 uses of school readiness in various government texts such as bills, investigations and propositions 1944-1975, that we will base our analyses on.
In broad terms, the data searches is followed by data reduction and a content analysis (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007, p. 466ff), which we use as a point of departure for a further analysis where we look in particular at who said what about school readiness.The basic principle in the content analyses is to find statements in which school readiness is used. Each kind of usage is then classified, using NVivo 12. The findings will be analyzed departing from the concept of boundary object in that we will look for 1), is there an interpretive flexibility: does school readiness have different meanings among different political actors, and 2) are these meanings negotiated over time (Van Pelt et al. 2015, 2). 3) Is there a standardization of concept, methods and measures as the object moves between political settings and over time, 4) Is there a dynamic between ill-structured and more tailored uses (Star and Griesemer 1989).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe comprehensive school reforms, that incrementally developed across Europe and the US after WWII, were intended to strengthen values of democracy and equal rights through equivalent education for all. This mass schooling often required that children started school at the same age. Even though this entry age could vary between the age of 5-7 between different countries, the arising questions around children’s different “developmental stages” actualized new discussions around diversity. Although Sweden, like other Nordic countries, chose a strategy with late differentiation, our results show a widespread debate on school readiness, and suggestions of testing all children at age 6-7, with the results making it possible to hold back and/or reposition some children. This testing was politically contested from the start, but the ambiguity of the concept of school readiness allowed various actors to use it with flexibility, avoiding both conflict with each other, and the risk of opposing the overarching ideals of the school reform. There may be many different ways of understanding and using the concept of school readiness and the apparatuses, such as the tests, it brings forward (e.g. Neuam, 2016; Snow, 2006) ). This makes policy work easier since various actors do not (think they) need to decode it. It therefore works perfectly well as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989). In our data, we see tendencies to use school readiness in arguments both for and against early differentiation. Since the multifaceted understanding of school readiness has led to different practices in different national settings, we suggest that the view of school readiness as a boundary object is useful in international discussions of early differentiation. In the political engineering of the tension between diversity and differentiation, our historical analysis shows that the vagueness of certain concepts becomes necessities in reform processes and implementations.
ReferencesArnesen, A. & Lundahl, L. (2006). Still Social and Democratic? Inclusive Education Policies in the Nordic Welfare States. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 285–300.
Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research methods in education. London: Routledge.
Crnic, K., & Lamberty, G. (1994). Reconsidering school readiness: Conceptual and applied perspectives. Early education and development, 5(2), 91-105.
Ljungblad, T. (1965). Skolmognad. Lund: Uniskol.
Lundahl, C. & Serder, M. (2020). Is PISA more important to school reforms than educational research? The selective use of authoritative references in media and in parliamentary debates, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6:3, 193-206.
Lundahl, C. & Waldow, F. (2009): Standardisation and ”quick languages”: The shape-shifting of standardised measurement of pupil achievement in Sweden and Germany. Journal of Comparative Education, vol 45, no 3, 365-385.
Neaum, S. (2016). School readiness and pedagogies of competence and performance: theorising the troubled relationship between early years and early years policy. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(3), 239-253.
Snow, K. L. (2006). Measuring school readiness: Conceptual and practical considerations. Early education and development, 17(1), 7-41.
Star, S., & Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387–420.
Strang, D., & Meyer, J. W. (1993). Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society, 22(4), 487–511.
Tveit, S. & Lundahl, C. (2022). The struggles over grading and testing in Norwegian and Swedish basic education. Tröler, D., Hörmann, B., Tveit, S. & Bostad, I. The Nordic Education Model in Context: Historical Developments and Current Renegotiations, Routledge, 217-235.
van Pelt, S. C., Haasnoot, M., Arts, B., Ludwig, F., Swart, R., and Biesbroek, R. (2015). Communicating climate (change) uncertainties: simulation games as boundary objects. Environmental Science and Policy 45:41-52.
Whitebread, D., & Bingham, S. (2011). School readiness: A critical review of perspectives and evidence. TACTYC Occasional Paper, 2.
Winter, S. M., & Kelley, M. F. (2008). Forty years of school readiness research: What have we learned?. Childhood Education, 84(5), 260-266.
Ydesen, C. & Buchardt, M. (2020). Citizen Ideals and Education in Nordic Welfare State School Reforms. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
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