Conference Agenda

Towards the end of the nineteenth century Western education became exposed to new international ideas about how to organize a school, how to arrange a classroom and how to teach children (Depaepe, 2000). These reform pedagogical or progressive educational ideals were centered around the child, societal life and progress (Reese, 2001). In this presentation we want to expose the existing histories about progressive education to ideas and perspectives coming from new disability history and sound studies.

In line with the new cultural history of education historians of education started to reconsider the existing historical narratives about progressive education. If throughout the twentieth century historians of education often (implicitly) praised progressive educational reforms, new cultural scholarship emphasized the need to critically invest these reform pedagogical undertakings. (Depaepe, 2000; Oelkers, 1995; Stolk, 2015). Recently historians of education have also become interested in issues of diversity when examining the history of reform pedagogy. Weiler, for instance, has looked at the American history of progressive education through the lens of gender (2006). In this presentation we want to take up the new cultural history of education’s critical interest in the history of progressive education from a disability perspective.

Reform educational methods have often been developed on the basis of experiences with the education of children with disabilities (for instance Decroly and Montessori). Strangely enough, both progressive educators have received a lot of attention from historians of education (Wagnon, 2013; Van Gorp, 2005; Stewart-Steinberg, 2007; Moretti, 2011), but up till now no studies do exist that have thoroughly examined the impact of their educational methods on the history of special education for children with sensorial disabilities.

Besides looking at the history of reform pedagogy from a disability perspective, I also would like to examine the history of new education from an acoustic point of view. In a recent special issue published by Paedagogica Historica we have argued that historians of education can and should include the notion of soundscapes in their historical toolboxes as it is helpful in reconstructing and disentangling the complex ways in which education has shaped human beings (Verstraete, Hoegaerts & Goodman, 2017). Zooming in on educational soundscapes indeed enables historians of education to better identify and grasp shifting world views and societal expectations towards teachers and pupils. In this research proposal we aim to apply the notion of educational soundscapes in combination with disability to the history of progressive education. That a combination of sound and disability is a fruitful way to explore historical research questions has been proven by Scales and Sykes. Rebecca Scales, for instance, has pointed towards the intriguing role played by the radio in the rehabilitation of French blinded soldiers of the First World War (Scales, 2008). Ingrid Sykes created awareness for the important place occupied by the literal voices of blind beggars in the history of the Paris institute for blind beggars called Quinze-Vingts (Sykes, 2011).

What I will do concretely in this presentation is to present the work of Alexander Herlin. Alexander Herlin was a Belgian special educator who worked in one of the existing institutes for “deaf-mutes” that existed around 1900. Inspired by the work of Ovide Decroly Herlin developed what he called a demutisation method. It is this method – its origins, emergence and development – and its impact on the special educational soundscapes that I would like to analyse in this presentation.

Cinema became part of the culture of the 20th century all over the world and its educational potential was soon recognized. In Portugal, the cinephilia of António Ferro, Secretary of National Propaganda/Information (1933-1949), was decisive in providing cinema with strong symbolic support, which only materialized in financial support after the end of World War II (Ó & Paz, 2022). Although cinema had been part of the violence prevention strategy (Rosas, 2019), and the leader of the Estado Novo, António de Oliveira Salazar, owed the cult of his personality to the creation of his image (Matos, 2004), his disgust for cinema was well-known (Piçarra, 2006) and he himself was recognized for his iconophobia (Gil, 2017). It's just that Salazar originally militated on the Catholic fronts, which were adamantly opposed to the advance of the dictatorship of the image.

In line with Catholic countries, although with fewer resources, conditions were also being created in Portugal for national cinematography and for the reception of films from all over the world. But the attraction for American fiction films was undeniable and unstoppable. Within the Catholic action movement led by Cardinal Cerejeira, a personal friend of Salazar, the [Catholic School Youth] Juventude Escolar Católica (JEC) organized in 1935 (and renamed later in 1980 Movimento Católico de Estudantes) soon became aware of the urgency of acting in the face of the so-called immorality of everyday life. JEC organized to respond to Pius XI's encyclical Vigilantis Cura (1936), which sought to understand the phenomenon of cinema attraction and invited a screening of films, highlighting the educational potential of the seventh art.

From the outset JEC's official magazine Flama (1937-2009) raised a Campaign for the Moralization of Cinema, as a form of pressure on the government. Several journalists, chroniclers and readers considered that the censorship schemes on national foreign filmography were insufficient and lenient, and that even the films sponsored by the Propaganda Secretariat were remiss to Catholic principles. In this cause, a new profile of cinema spectators is created, active, knowledgeable, and intervening (Paz, 2020).

However, the unexpected happens. Similar to what happened in France with young people around Action Catholique by promoting the joint viewing of films, the creation of a nominal file of films and the support of a solid opinion, Catholic youth quickly ended up forming the first active and interventionist film buffs, some of whom later emerged as film critics (Vezyroglou, 2004/5; Leveratto & Montebello, 2011).

In this paper I propose, to question the subjectification processes in which this attraction for the different and otherness was built, which was initially rejected outright. It is necessary to ask which films are recommended and rejected and on which arguments are based these statements. But the main question is: how does Flama discuss this approach and establish this approach to what is different, whether in culture, habits or religion, does allowing for a specific subjectification of education through cinema.

This approach derives from cultural history as Peter Burke (2008) conceives it, also from a settling of the visual turn (Burke, 2001; Miezner, Myers & Peim, 2005). If the history of the moving image has been the prerogative of research all over the world (Dussel & Priem, 2017), in Portugal the relationship with cinema has been mainly explored from the intentions of the government (Torgal, 2000) and in creation of a differential abyss with the colonial other (Piçarra, 2016). This work is expected to contribute to filling a gap in knowledge of cultural practices towards diversity and inclusion, whereas understanding how can an approach to otherness emerge within a strong Estado Novo’s politics for sameness (Rosas, 2019).

In recent years historians of education have been employing a transnational lens to study women educators whose lives and work extended beyond national boundaries. Briggs McCormick and Way (2008, 633) propose that a 'transnational sensibilty lets scholars see the movement of goods, individuals and ideas happending in a context in which gender, class and race operate simultaneously'. Women educators transnational careers feature in recent edited books as well as special editions of historical jounrals but mostly focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Fitzgerald and Smyth 2014, Mayer and Arrendondo 2020). Following th Second World War, the increasing professionalisation of transnational humanitarian organisations provided a new field of work for women teachers and public health and social work professionals: Fielden (2015) states that nearly 200 new child welfare agencies were working overseas between 1945 and 1949 alone, but little is known about women teachers in these organisations.

Fitzgerald and Smyth's (2014) edited collection highlights solidarity, collegiality and leadership among women educators working to influence social change. However, social change is not always progressive. Some educators imposed and cultivated cultural and educational practices in their host countries (Briggs, McCormick and Way 2008; Fielden 2015; Mayer and Arrendondo 2020). Although the complexities of female agency are highlighted in the aforementioned research, insifficuent attention has been paid to the ways in which nationla identity mediates women educators' work at home and aboraod. Grosvenor (1999, 244) posits that 'there is a constant interpaly between Self and Other in the construction of national identity'. Continuing in thie vein, my presentation explores Minette jee's working life as a progressive educator across multiple sites in Britian, Morocca and Australia from the late 1930s to the 1980s.

The presentation is framed as a transnational history and explores three specific periods of Jee's transnational work, each of which is located in its temporal, geographic and socio-politcal context. The first section focuses on Jee as a teacher educator at the Malayan Teachers Training College on the outskirts of Liverpool in 1950s Britain. The second section interrogates her work as a 'daycare consultant' in Morrocco from 1959-1962 when she was employed with a transnational humanitarian organisation called the American Joint Distribution Committee. The fianl section shifts ot Jee's works as an administrator in the Kindergarten Union of South Australia from 1976-1978.

Jee's working life was enmeshed in national and international politics and I demonstrate that there was a constant struggle between Self and Other in her work. She subscribed to a hierarchical world view that some peoples and nations were more 'backward' than others, and her assumptions carried over into her relationships and work in Britian and overseas. Jee's decision-making about progressive education was intertwined with her national identity in each context.