17. Histories of Education
Paper
Untangling Past and Present in Oral History Interviews on Parenting with Three Dutch Generations
Mandy Oude Veldhuis-Talhout1,2, Hilda Amsing1
1University of Groningen; 2Windesheim, University of Applied Sciences
Presenting Author: Oude Veldhuis-Talhout, Mandy;
Amsing, Hilda
In oral history we ask people to tell us about the past. By doing so, we get firsthand knowledge of their lives, particular events and their experiences. This gives us access to information that we not often find in documents (Janesick, 2023). Especially in education, oral history can provide an insight in ‘ordinary’ practices that were too mundane to be recorded in any other way, for instance day-to-day parenting practices. In the case of ‘the inner workings’ of the family, such as child rearing, oral history can often prove to be the only source of information; since the highly private nature of what happens inside the family home – in perhaps the most emotionally charged relationship conceivable – makes the collection of empirical data on parenting practices particularly difficult (Cuyvers & Van Praag, 1997).
However, oral history has been critiqued as being unreliable as a source, because it is based on human memory, which is susceptible to change due to mental deterioration, emotions such as nostalgia, personal selection by and bias from both the researcher(s) and the respondent, and the theoretical framework, design and context of the study in which the memories are collected and/or used. In addition, individual memories can be influenced by public narratives (Maynes et al., 2008; Peniston-Bird, 2009; Somers & Gibson, 1994). According to the Australian historian Patrick O’Farrell in 1979 oral history was moving into: “the world of image, selective memory, later overlays and utter subjectivity. […] And where will it lead us? Not into history, but into myth” (cited in Thomson, 2007, pp. 53-54).
Indeed, personal memories of past events or experiences that are collected for research purposes can be influenced by a large number of factors. However, when memory itself is seen as the object of study, oral history’s supposed weaknesses – such as its inherent subjectivity – become resources as opposed to problems (Portelli, 1979). The analysis of personal narratives on past events or experiences can produce valuable insights on the way: “…people make sense of their past, how they connect individual experience and its social context, how the past becomes part of the present, and how people use it to interpret their lives and the world around them” (Frisch, 1990, p.188).
In this paper, we will present findings resulting from the analysis of narratives from three successive Dutch generations (grandparents, parents and youngsters) on how they experienced the way they were brought up by their parents, focusing on perceived educational norms in particular. These narratives give insight in how these respondents experienced the way their parents gave them direction, the rules they imposed and how they enforced them, but they also describe the love, warmth and affection the respondents experienced from their parents. The narratives recount the memories of the respondents on the way they experienced their upbringing. We propose that in these memories both previous and current educational norms, such as that of ‘authoritative parenting’ (Maccoby & Martin, 1983), influenced the way respondents told their stories and evaluated their upbringing. However, the challenge remains: Can we untangle the past and the present in oral history narratives with respect to educational norms?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedBetween 2012 and 2016, 321 youth narratives were collected containing information about the way respondents were raised by their parents. These narratives were collected in a study concerned with the individualization of youth as a social phenomenon by students studying Pedagogical Sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The students involved in this study interviewed a young person around 18 years old, one of their parents and one of their grandparents, which led to the formation of three generations of respondents based on their role (‘the grandparents’: born between 1920 and 1950, ‘the parents’: born between 1950 and 1975, and the ‘the young’: born between 1990 and 2000). Because the students recruited the respondents from their own social network the majority of these respondents came from, and grew up in, the three most Northern provinces of the Netherlands. In addition, most of the respondents in the three generations were female and respondents mainly grew up in religious (mostly Protestant) households. Differences across generations were in line with secularization and upwards social mobility. For this paper, we analyzed the way these three generations discussed their parents’ parenting behavior using grounded theory techniques, comparing experiences in and between generations (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2015). The analysis provided information about the way these respondents made sense of their past upbringing experiences, and how the present influenced their recollection and evaluation.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe oral history analysis of parenting experiences from these three generations indicated that the present day educational discourse, including the norm of authoritative parenting, likely influenced the way respondents recounted and evaluated their upbringing.
The oldest generation overall described a fairly strict upbringing, with fixed rules, few opportunities for negotiation, and self-evident obedience, sometimes even referring to their upbringing as authoritarian. However, they were often quick to add descriptions of the love and care they received from their parents, their trust in their parents, contextual explanations of their parents’ behavior, and by referring to the educational norm at the time. Most of them viewed the authoritative norm to be a present day norm, although the norm as such can be found in parenting advice guides from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards (Bakker, 2009; Wubs, 2004). Their stories mostly seem to endorse a public narrative of a change in parenting across generations, from authoritarian to authoritative. Contrary to the mainly positive evaluation of the oldest generation, the middle generation was more often critical about their upbringing, suggesting that their parents violated norms that should have been honored; norms in line with authoritative parenting. The youngest generation in turn, mostly described an upbringing fitting the authoritative educational norm at the time of the interview; an upbringing in which they felt supported and loved, but also experienced a large degree of personal freedom and autonomy. These experiences grounded an overall positive evaluation of their upbringing.
These findings show the interrelatedness between present and past, since present day norms are used to evaluate parenting practices of the past. However, by taking the narratives as the object of study and by paying attention to how memories are framed at the time of recollection, the researcher can untangle past and present to some extent.
ReferencesBakker, P.C.M. (2009). The 'good' upbringing in the family: on changing standards of quality in the twentieth century [De ‘goede’ opvoeding in het gezin: over veranderende kwaliteitsnormen in de twintigste eeuw]. In A. Minnaert, K.L. Spelberg & H. Amsing (Eds.), The Pedagogical Quotient [Het pedagogisch quotiënt] (pp. 21-44). Bohn Stafleu van Loghum.
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis (2nd ed.). Sage Publications.
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2015). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (4th ed.). Sage Publications.
Cuyvers, P. & Praag, C.S. van (1997). Gezinsopvoeding [Family upbringing]. In C.S.van Praag & M. Niphuis-Nell (Eds.), Het gezinsrapport [The family report] (pp. 185-231). Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau.
Frisch, M. (1990). A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History. State University of New York Press.
Janesick, V. (2013). Oral history, Life history, and Biography. In: A. A. Trainor & E.
Gaue (Eds.) Reviewing Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences (pp. 151-165). Routledge.
Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. In P. H. Mussen (Series Ed.) & E. M. Hetherington (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. IV. Socialization, Personality and Social Development (pp. 1-101). Wiley.
Maynes, M. J., Pierce, J. L., & Laslett, B. (2008). Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History. Cornell University Press.
Peniston-Bird, C. (2009). Oral History, The Sound of Memory. In S. Barber, & C. Peniston-Bird (Eds.), History Beyond the Text: A Student's guide to approaching alternative sources (pp. 105-121). Routledge.
Portelli, A. (1981). The Peculiarities of Oral History. History Workshop Journal, 12(1), 96-107.
Somers, M. & Gibson, G. (1994). Reclaiming the Epistomological “Other”: Narrative and the Social Construction of Identity. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Social Theory and the Politics of Identity (pp. 37-99). Blackwell.
Thomson, A. (2007). Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History. The Oral History Review, 34(1), 49-70.
Wubs, J. (2004). Listening to Experts. Parenting advice to Dutch parents 1945-1999 [Luisteren naar deskundigen. Opvoedingsadvies aan Nederlandse ouders]. Koninklijke van Gorcum.
17. Histories of Education
Paper
Pedagogies of Hope: Reconnecting Educational Pasts, Presents, and Futures in the Works of Lea Dasberg and Philippe Meirieu
Pieter Verstraete
KULeuven, Belgium
Presenting Author: Verstraete, Pieter
In this presentation, I aim to explore the role played by hope in educational historiography. To achieve this, I will introduce two influential historians of education whose writings continue to shape ongoing histories of education in the French and Dutch-speaking worlds. Despite their significant impact, these scholars are not widely known among historians of education, as only a few or none of their books and articles have been translated.
The first historian of education I would like to highlight is the late Dutch professor Lea Dasberg. While Dasberg is perhaps best known for her Dutch education bestseller, "Grootbrengen door kleinhouden" (Raising Children by Keeping Them Small), published in the 1970s, her work on 'hope' and 'pedagogies of hope' has recently regained attention from historians of education such as Micha De Winter and others. They specifically refer to Dasberg's 1980 inaugural lecture, "Pedagogie in de schaduw van het jaar 2000, of: Hulde aan de Hoop" (Pedagogy in the Shadow of the Year 2000, or: Homage to Hope). In this lecture, as well as in other writings throughout her academic career, Dasberg introduced hope as a crucial category for educators to reconnect educational pasts, presents, and futures. Inspired by her religious background, particularly her Jewish roots and her decision to move from the Netherlands to Israel, Dasberg presents a distinctive interpretation of what a pedagogy of hope can and should consist of.
The second historian of education I will discuss is the French scholar Philippe Meirieu. Meirieu is a well-known educational scientist in Francophone intellectual circles who consistently uses his research to engage in public debates. In his historical work, unfortunately available only in French, Meirieu has consistently demonstrated the value of historical reflection for contemporary educational discussions. Among the many historically inspired books he has published throughout his career are "Frankenstein pédagogue," "Korczak, pour que vivent les enfants," and "Pédagogie, le devoir de résister." Interestingly, Meirieu, like Dasberg, has occasionally touched upon the value of hope in thinking about the history of education. One of the articles in which Meirieu expresses his thoughts about hope is titled "Espoir, es-tu là."
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedI will read closely the books, aricles and other documents produced by Lea Dasberg and Philippe Meirieu. This historical source corpus will be used in order to present their views on hope and pedagogies of hope.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis presentation will compare the pedagogy of hope constructed by Lea Dasberg based on her religious convictions with the secular interpretation of a pedagogy of hope offered by the French scholar Philippe Meirieu. The analysis will be grounded in a detailed examination of the publications written by these two internationally less well-known historians of education. The primary aims of the paper are twofold: first, to encourage historians of education to explore histories written not only in their mother tongue or English, and second, to contribute to ongoing historiographical debates about the value of history in shaping educational thinking and the role emotions can play in these discussions.
ReferencesBurke, P. (2012). Does hope have a history?. estudos avançados, 26, 207-218.
Dasberg, L. (1975). Grootbrengen door kleinhouden als historisch verschijnsel. Boom.
Dasberg, L. (1980). Pedagogie in de schaduw van het jaar 200, of: Hulde aan de hoop. Boom.
Greene, M., & Boler, M. (2004). Feeling power: Emotions and education. Routledge.
Meirieu, P. (2008). Pédagogie: le devoir de résister. ESF.
Meirieu, P. (2013). Frankenstein pédagogue. ESF.
Rosenwein, B. H. (2002). Worrying about emotions in history. The American historical review, 107(3), 821-845.
Soares, C. (2023). Emotions, senses, experience and the history of education. History of Education, 52(2-3), 516-538.
Sobe, N. W. (2012). Researching emotion and affect in the history of education. History of education, 41(5), 689-695.
Toro-Blanco, P. (2020). History of Education and Emotions. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Webb, D. (2010). Paulo Freire and ‘the need for a kind of education in hope’. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4), 327-339.
Wrigley, T., Lingard, B., & Thomson, P. (2012). Pedagogies of transformation: Keeping hope alive in troubled times. Critical Studies in Education, 53(1), 95-108.
17. Histories of Education
Paper
Walter Benjamin’s Aesthetics of Existence: Ethics of Friendship, Communism of Writing and the Historian’s Craft
Tomás Vallera, Ana Luísa Paz
UIDEF, ULISBOA, Portugal
Presenting Author: Vallera, Tomás;
Paz, Ana Luísa
In this paper we seek to examine the relationship between Walter Benjamin’s life and work as an aesthetics of existence (Foucault 1990, p.12) that materialises in three different domains where the writing process takes centre stage: an ethics of friendship, his quasi-messianic aspiration towards a communism of writing, and his considerations on the historian’s craft.
The German philosopher and essayist has often inspired historians of education “to develop new ways of seeing pupils and teachers” (Lawn & Grosvenor, 2001, p.125). His thought-provoking appeal to “brush history against the grain” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 257) has often been interpreted as a motto to challenge “crude reductionism”, provide “counter-histories” (Grosvenor, 2019, p.646) and open up new possibilities and methodological approaches in the field of history of education (HE). The montage or juxtaposition of different sources, in addition to the use of historiography and theory, as a means to disrupt gender (Goodman, 2003), is a good example of how the HE has appropriated Benjamin’s work.
The author of Illuminations has also been a continuous reference in the history of childhood education (Grosvenor, 2002), as well as in studies on deviancy (Grosvenor & Watts, 2002; Charles, 2016), urban experience (Lathey, 2016; Pozo, 2019) and school architecture (Hardcastle, 2013).
It was during the visual turn that Benjamin became more appealing to the HE, most notably because, “at this intersection of visual and material studies” (Dussel & Priem, 2017, p.643), he had turned into the perfect companion in guiding historians through the “’new’ technologies of display” (Herman & Plein, p.272) and the conceptualisation of “the mechanical reproduction of images and the subsequent loss of aura and privilege in the aesthetic experience” (Dussel, 2017, p.672).
Could Dussel's notion of aesthetic experience encompass or be applied to Benjamin’s processes as both a historian and a writer? And as a result, could the philosopher’s life and work – and the dialogue between them – be conceived as an aesthetics of existence, one that places the written word at its very core? In considering the HE’s narrative turn, Pozo (2023, p.1030) argues that “the historian's subsequent task is to transform him/herself into a storyteller, the type of artist that in Benjamin's opinion could not be further from the chronicler”. In fact "the historian has no choice but to adopt the skills and craftsmanship of the storyteller in order to build, from the fragments gathered in archives, an account compelling enough to find a permanent place in the memory of those who hear it".
Walter Benjamin developed the idea of the “operative writer” in his text The Author as Producer (1934/1999). Although he was not a fan of prescribing behaviours, he was certainly an advocate of messianic imagination. While witnessing the rapid development of technology and the massification of writing, Benjamin allowed himself to imagine a revolution that would put an end to the distinction between the author and the reader, the intellectual and the people, blurring and eventually putting an end to the lines that separate them. The writer would no longer be this venerated figure who dominates thought with his/her intellect, but a producer and an experimentalist like any other. He would declare the following: “an author who does not teach writers does not, in fact, teach anyone” (Benjamin 1934/1999, p.777).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedAnalysing Benjamin’s writing processes, and his considerations on the exercise of writing as one of the main driving forces behind an aesthetics of existence, is a task that requires an exploratory reading of his complete works in search of specific fragments where the author describes his methodological choices and his views on the writer’s social role. One can identify hundreds of references to his writing praxis scattered in multiple essays, diaries, letters and notes on a number of different conversations or dialogues. In this preliminary phase, we were able to gather an array of citations and images on Benjamin’s writing practice as a technique of the self that can be divided into three main topics:
(i) An ethics of friendship
Studying Benjamin’s yearning for “a free life for youth unsupervised by parents or other authorities of the bourgeois world” (Witte, 1991, p. 23), while portraying the social and intellectual spheres he frequented, including the friends he kept in touch with when travelling or in exile, will allow us to identify a particular kind of literary community circulating both within and on the margins of academia (Witte, 2017; Pinheiro, 2020).
(ii) Writing community/ies
Collecting Benjamin’s statements on the democratisation of the written word will enable us to discuss his quasi-messianic aspiration towards a “communism of writing” while describing his stance towards the individual and “common property” of written texts. His desire of inhabiting a world in which the text has become a “common good” provides an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the idea of the research seminar as a space for imagination and projection into the future.
(iii) The historian’s craft as a form of constructivism and disruption
By studying Benjamin’s peculiar reflections on history and the historiographic process, we can access the author’s highly experimental archival and research practices while portraying the operative writer’s unwavering focus on method and methodological problematisation, in other words, on the experimental and constructive aspects of writing that are seldom discussed in present-day scientific and educational institutions. His fragmentary methodology (Ó & Vallera 2020) was in the service of generating an inventive and disruptive relationship with the present.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBenjamin’s ethics of friendship can be traced back to his desire for a free, unsupervised life. He ended up moving away from academic life, finding in his circles of friendship the support to advance in his research/life.
These collectives developed into a communism of writing, where, in the company of others, every writer worked towards becoming more singular in an environment that sought to produce difference. “Is it possible to imagine a community based on the idea that each text is assembled according to its own ephemeral and internal method?” Just because a community is imagined or desired does not mean it is not real.
Benjamin’s reflections on the writing of history seemed to be imbued with the strategic purpose of bringing the objects of the past to the present while simultaneously inserting the very texture of actuality in remote times (Bolle, 2007). He was interested in a new writing of history, an essayistic style echoing the metaphor of the “network city”, its inhabitants and products. His method? An assemblage of texts and images constituting a “reticular”, “cartographic” and “constellational” type of writing. His resolve? To delineate peculiar historical objects by “blasting” them away from the “homogenous course of history”, the sequenced progress, linearity or teleology of collective human experience, which Benjamin deemed deprived of a theoretical armature. His form of materialism, an open invitation to build singular or differentiated historical narratives, has encouraged historians to avoid the “eternal image of the past” cultivated in “historicism’s bordello”. Benjamin equates historiography, instead, with a form of inventive constructivism through which every new generation can “wrest tradition away from conformism” (Benjamin 1955/1969, p. 255 and 261-263) and “encounter the past in a new way” (Popkewitz et al., 2001, p.4), thus generating an original and disruptive relationship with the present.
ReferencesBenjamin, W. (1926/2022). Diário de Moscovo. In Barrento, J. (Ed.), Diários de Viagem (pp.81-245). Assírio&Alvim.
Benjamin, W. (1955/1969). Illuminations. Schoken.
Bolle, W. (2007). Nota introdutória. In W.Benjamin, Passagens (pp.71-75). UFMG.
Benjamin, W. (1934/1999). The author as a producer. In M.A. Jennings (Ed.), Selected Writings (Vol. 2, part2). Harvard University Press.
Dussel, I. (2017). Iconoclastic images in the history of education. Paedagogica Historica, 53(6), 668-682.
Dussel, I. & Priem, K. (2017). The visual in histories of education. Paedagogica Historica, 53(6), 641-649.
Charles, M. (2016). Towards a critique of educative violence: Walter Benjamin and ‘second education’. Pedagogy, Culture &Society, 24(4), 525-536.
Foucault, M. (1990). History of Sexuality, vol.2, The use of pleasure. Vintage Books.
Goodman, J. (2003). Troubling histories and theories: gender and the history of education. History of Education, 32(2), 157-174.
Grosvenor, G. (2002). ‘Unpacking my Library’: Children's Literature in the Writings of Walter Benjamin. Paedagogica Historica, 38(1), 96-111.
Grosvenor, I. (2019). ‘Can art save the world?’ The colonial experience and pedagogies of display. Paedagogica Historica, 55(4), 642-649.
Grosvenor, I. & Watts, R. (2002) Educational Review, 54(2), 101-104.
Hardcastle, J. (2013). ‘Photographers are the devil’: an essay in the historiography of photographing schools. History of Education, 42(5), 659-674.
Herman, F. & Plein, I. (2017). Envisioning the industrial present: pathways of cultural learning in Luxembourg (1880s–1920s). Paedagogica Historica, 53(3), 268-284.
Lathey, G. (2016). Enlightening city childhoods: Walter Benjamin’s Berlin and Erich Kästner’s Dresden. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 24(4), 485-493.
Lawn, M. & Grosvenor, I. (2001). 'When in doubt, preserve': exploring the traces of teaching and material culture in English schools. History of Education, 30(2), 117-127.
O, J.R.& Vallera (2020). A oficina do fragmento. História da Historiografia, 13(32), 331-366.
Pinheiro, M.F. (2020). Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin. Sociedade&Estado, 35(3) 817-836.
Popkewitz, T.S., Pereyra, M.A. & Franklin, B.M. (2001). History, the problem of knowledge, and the new cultural history of schooling. In T.S.Popkewitz, M.A.Pereyra & B.M.Franklin (eds.), Cultural History and Education (pp.3-42). RoutledgeFalmer.
Pozo, M.M. (2023). From personal memories to public histories of education: a challenge for the historian. History of Education, 52(6), 1015-1035.
Pozo, M.M (Ed.) (2019). Madrid, ciudad educadora, 1898-1938. Ayuntamiento de Madrid.
Witte, B. (2017). Walter Benjamin. Autêntica.
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