Susan BERGER, Northeastern Illinois University, U.S.A

Children and War

This paper presents an analysis of a series of drawings that form part of the collection of the Institut Municipal d’Educació de Barcelona. The drawings were produced by Barcelona schoolchildren during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The historical analysis is based on the children’s depiction of aspects and scenes connected with the war, and of the consequences of the conflict in their everyday lives. Specifically, the elements selected for observation and interpretation were: - representations of the impact on everyday life - representations of war. Taking as its starting point this collection, the paper sets out to identify elements which allow a comparison with other similar documentary collections dating from periods of war in the first third of the 20th century in Europe. Three cases are: the collection of the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica held in the Spanish National Library (Madrid), made up of refugee children’s drawings also produced during the Spanish Civil War, the collections produced during the National Socialist period held in the Pictorica Paedagogica Online (Germany) and the collections held in the Musée National de l’Éducation (Rouen). Such a comparison allows us to attempt to understand the shared experiences of schoolchildren as both victims of, and witnesses to, war, experiences they reflected in drawings that have become fragments of the cultural history. This paper aims to contribute to the process of converting visual memory of education into an object of study, as suggested in various studies into educational images and their creation, diffusion and perception (Grosvenor, I., 2007) – which, in turn, coincide with the ‘normalising’ of the study of “visual culture” (Smith, M, 2008; Tomaselli, KG & Scott, D., 2009). The images become direct sources for research and offer the chance to learn about hierarchies of values and cultural constructions that differ from those of our time. As Viñao (2000) has pointed out, images are charged with a historicity that allows the educational memory to be transmitted down the years. The results of our analysis allow us to identify elements of continuity, elements that run through from peacetime, in the everyday lives of the children, visible in the graphic representations of schoolwork and of their lives as inhabitants of a city. However, at the same time the drawings also enable us to recognise the ruptures that war imposes, and open up the possibility of cataloguing which elements of life in wartime were highlighted by the children in their drawings.

Gender and Pedagogy: Greek Women pedagogues – Between East and West

The proposed paper examines the role of Greek women pedagogues, as meaningful actors in transferring educational knowledge and practice from western countries, diffusing and applying them to the Greek education system -and more precisely to women’s education- during the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. The paper is based on the study of three celebrated Greek women educators, namely Sappho Leontias (1832-1900), Aikaterini Laskaridou (1842-1916) and Kalliopi Kechagia (1839-1905) - though the paper’s position is supported by references to other women educators as well, whose educational activity transcended the boarders of the Greek state, influencing and shaping Greek women’s education system in both, the Greek state and the Greek communities within the Ottoman Empire. More precisely S. Leontias turned out a leading figure for Greek women’s education within the Ottoman Empire (by influencing women’s education in general, through her own educational works and translations, her textbooks and articles on education, and the schools she organized). Aik. Laskaridou emerged as an innovative figure for the education system in Greece (by introducing preschool education and preschool teachers’ education based on Frobel’s principles). and K. Kechagia was a prestigious and powerful educator in both spaces (she run the most prestigious Greek school for girls in Ottoman Empire, the ‘Zappeion school for Girls’, and the first woman inspector for the secondary schools for girls in the state) The paper focuses on the historical conditions of the two spaces, within which the aforementioned women pedagogues performed their activity. It explores the parameters which affected their educational ‘choices’, and the forces and constrains that structured their practice, as both, educational theory and practice transferred was different in the two spaces. Mme Necker de Saussure’s and Marie Pape Carpentier’s works and education systems were mediated and diffused in the Greek communities, whereas Froebel’s theory and education system was applied in preschool education in Greece. The paper argues that a) the different historical conditions in Ottoman Empire and Greek state (the first, a state in administrative, economic and social reforms, based on western models, since 1839, and -particularly talking about the Greek community - with cultural, educational and economical connection with most of the European countries. A state with an ethnocentric culture and solely oriented to German speaking countries for its educational models, the latter); and b) the women pedagogues’ gendered social ideology and their emancipatory/antiemancipatoy position, strongly affected their educational preferences with regard to the European pedagogues, whose theories they mediated and transferred.

The construction of informal feminist knowledge in a local and global context. The debate about women's roles in the Hungarian feminist movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th century

Women teachers in Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey during the 19th century: Parallel journeys and interactions

Educating better wives and mothers or female scholars? Analysis of educational discourses from the women’s journal Žena/Woman (1911-1914)

The nineteenth century in Europe was marked by the strong women’s movement which was focused on women’s suffrage and political equality. Although most of the movement’s participants and supporters shared the same main goals, their priorities varied among countries, nations and communities. Categories such as the emancipation of women, “women’s question”, and “women’s rights” were taken into consideration in the region of southern Hungary (nowadays Vojvodina) and Serbia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Serbian women, as participants in the national liberation movement, believed that their emancipation and achievement of political equality were in the national interest. In other words, Serbian women thought that as educated women they would be better-equipped for all tasks that were assigned to them, especially for their maternal role. For Serbian women, feminism was a national project as well. This paper explores various educational discourses – which are in many ways related to women’s emancipation, “women’s question”, and “women’s rights” – as they were represented in the women’s magazine Žena/Woman. The aim of the paper is twofold: on the one hand, it attempts to show how certain Western discourses on education influenced opinions and activities of many female authors from Žena/Woman; on the other hand, it tries to explore and explain the dominance and significance of national(ist) discourse for female education. Some of the questions posed in the paper are: Should girls and boys be taught separately? Should they have the same curricula? Should girls be using their education in order to be better wives and mothers or to pursue carriers and get their own voice in the society? All these questions have been debated in Žena/Woman with strong references to aims and achievements of women’s movement in the Europe. This paper also emphasizes the significance of archival research of women’s magazines from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for establishing and better understanding of the history of female education, its theory and practice.

Transcending Borders: Psychological Measurement in Spanish Schools

After the defeat of 1898, a “regeneration-discourse” arose in Spain. Part of the proposals produced by this concern turned towards “new pedagogy” as a way to get the country out of its current crisis, characterized by political and military weakness. Therefore certain groups of pedagogues, especially the group linked to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, sought contact to foreign experts like Binet, Decroly or Claparède in order to get guidance in their attempt of introducing new pedagogical methods in Spanish schools. The internationalization of science in form of scientific conferences, personal contacts, state promotion of scientific travels, journals and the translation of foreign books helped Spanish pedagogues to get to know the new “science of the child” (pedology), the so-called “scientific pedagogy”, the “psychology of the abnormal” and, finally, mental testing. A lot has been written on the origin of the intelligence test in France and its use in the United States. There are also works dealing with the history of the conjunction between pedagogy and psychology, what nowadays is called “psycho-pedagogy” and on how this field arose in Spain. What is missing is an in-depth study of how the psychological techniques were actually used in several local educational contexts. Who did undertake the psychological measurement in Spanish schools in the nineteen twenties and thirties? For what aim? What happened to the schoolchildren after such measurement? In the present contribution we try to show how the local constrains enforced a certain interest and use of psychological measurement. Psychological measurement like intelligence testing represents an interesting case for such a study because it illustrates the crossing of several borders at the same time. On the one hand a national border, in the sense that it usually meant to introduce foreign devices. On the other hand a professional border, because the initial problem with regard to the detection of the “abnormal” child was an interdisciplinary problem. Therefore we find school physicians, teachers and pedagogues as well as psychologists promoting themselves as experts in the use of these new techniques. It is interesting to study why and how psychological measurement was done in Spain in order to get to know the similarities and differences with regard to what happened in other places like France.