Raquel MENEZES PACHECO, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil

There is no doubt, that educational sciences differ according to academic cultures they origin from and they are embedded in. History of education is the partial discipline, which is expected to mostly reflect upon these particular origins. However, the history of the history of education has rarely been analysed. The paper tries to contribute to research on educational research by looking at the development of history of education, indicated by the history of its scholarly journals. It also tries to ask in a comparative perspective, how different cultural and academic backgrounds produce different shapes of histories of education as a field of study or an academic discipline. Of special interests are a) from an epistemological point of view: structures of topics and layers of time, methods used and methodologies discussed, layout and the relationship between text, figures and pictures; b) from a sociological point of view: disciplinary and institutional affiliation of editors and authors, social function of editorials, networking and relationships to academic organisations or associations. The investigation also serves as a test, whether analyses of scholarly journals also can be applied to the rather complex academic field of educational research, history of education. The paper represents work in progress. It firstly discusses the theoretical framework, secondly, presents the methodology of investigation (including its limitation), thirdly, shows first results and discusses its comparative value.

Disability history examines how social categories about ability and disability have been formed and maintained over time. This symposium applies the disability history perspective to the history of women teachers in the United States, Mexico, and Australia, paying particular attention to the ways in which both the challenges of physical and mental ability and cultural constructs of physical and mental ability impacted the work and life of women teachers. As constructions of gender are internationally constructed and reaffirmed, so too are constructions of the “able” woman teacher inscribed with cultural notions of women’s abilities. The first paper by Kate Rousmaniere, “Those who can’t do, teach: The disabling history of American teachers” briefly introduces the field of disability history as applied to the history of American education, and then offers a history of American teachers viewed through the analytic lens of disability. The second paper by Luz Elena Galvan “Women teachers in Mexico, offers an approach to disability and retirement by discussing several cases of Mexican teachers who were diagnosed with neurasthemia and suffered broken limbs and then retired. She focuses on the case of Delfina Rodriguez as an example of how such disabilities, combined with gender prejudice, undermined the promising professional and political careers of teachers. The third paper by Kay Whitehead focuses on the problem of 'strain' or 'neurasthenia', a disability which was said to afflict teachers in the early twentieth century. Using Australian sources, this paper explores various causes of 'strain' and its reputed impact on women teachers' lives and work.

In her recent review essay on disability history Catherine Kudlick (2003, p. 767) argued that ‘the term “disability” defies easy definition’. This is also the case with a condition called ‘strain’, ‘brain fag’ or ‘neurasthenia’ in the early twentieth century. Originally conceptualized as an illness in the mid-nineteenth century, neurasthenia was associated with the stresses of modern life that afflicted middle class brainworkers. ‘Strain’ was debated at length at an Australian Royal Commission on Education in 1912 with various witnesses attempting to diagnose its causes and assess its impact on the teaching workforce, especially women teachers. There were also many suggestions about its prevention and cure. In this paper I will focus on the debates at the 1912 Commission and in other forums in the 1920s and 1930s. In essence, ‘strain’ was being constructed as a disability that had the potential to substantially limit women teachers’ work and lives to the point where they might become unmarriageable. In the final part of the paper, I will use sources from a range of countries to show that ‘strain’ was an international problem during this era.

In Mexico, some women teachers that lived by the end of nineteenth and early twentieth century, experienced different sicknesses that after some time forced them to retire. These disabilities included anemia, neurasthenia and osteoporosis, as well as bone fractures, varicose veins, and respiratory illnesses such as: colds, pneumonia and pharyngitis. Originally, I saw illness only as an element of social disorganization, that selectively attacked the poorest and the weak, just as Jacques Revel and Jean Pierre Peter affirmed (1980). After I read other studies related to body, I began to think about the “body sick” After reading Kate Rousmaniere’s paper titled “The Able Educator: Disability and the History of Teachers”, I have developed yet another view of sickness that I will present in the first part of this paper. In the second part of my paper I will focus in one teacher named Delfina Rodriguez, as an example of one woman teacher whose body became very weak and ill, yet who was not prevented from continuing to work, Rodriguez fought for better working conditions for teachers, and included in her campaign weer poems that were published in the national press, and text books. Only a few teachers, like Delfina Rodriguez, managed to have their books used in the classroom and got to be known through them. But finally, disabilities make these teachers leaves the profession, just as it happened with Delfina Rodriguez.

This paper is an exploratory history of American teachers as viewed through the lens of disability studies. By this I mean that I am looking at the history of teachers with disability as the primary marker of social relations, in much the same way that I and others have looked at the history of education through the primary lens of gender, race, and sexuality. Looking at the history of teachers through the analytic framework of disability studies allows me to explore how notions of normality have defined the work and identity of all educators. I begin with a short introduction to the field of disability history. My second and longer section is an initial sketch of a disability history of American teachers. The study of disability in the history of education has centered on the history of special education and on children and adults with special needs. This research is useful in expanding our understanding of the diversity of educational enterprises in the past, the ideologies that undergirded those enterprises, and the formative leaders and cohorts of students in disability education. Yet such studies focus overwhelmingly on students, and the absence of studies about teachers with disabilities leaves the impression that they simply did not exist. In fact, the history of schooling is filled with educators who were identified as disabled, weak, and infirmed. The problem is not that disabilities are absent from the history of teachers, but that historians have not looked for them. As Douglas Baynton, “Disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but [it is] conspicuously absent in the histories we write.” Re-reading the history of education through the lens of disability, what emerges is a steady pulse of concern about the ability and disability of teachers to do their work, a constant suspicion that there is something not completely normal about the person sitting at the teacher’s desk.

L’hygiène est certes une pratique ancienne, mais son apogée en tant que discipline scientifique et médicale se déroula à l’aube du XIXe siècle. Des historiens de la santé et de l’éducation ont abordé dans leurs recherches l’influence de l’hygiène sur les savoirs et pratiques éducatives en milieu scolaire, depuis Jacques Léonard, Georges Vigarello et Pierre Guillaume à Jean-Noël Luc et Françoise Mayeur. De façon plus spécifique, Didier Nourrisson et Séverine Parayre étudient l’hygiène à l’école et les évolutions sanitaires et pédagogiques. Bien que d’autres chercheurs travaillent sur cette thématique dans leur pays respectifs, à l’exemple de Geert Thyssen au Luxembourg, Despina Karakatsanh et Vassiliki Theodorou en Grèce, il n’existe pas pour l’heure de synthèse d’histoire de l’hygiène à l’école en Europe. En effet aux XIXe et XXe siècles, l’hygiène traverse les espaces, les sphères publiques et privées, touche progressivement les acteurs collectifs et individuels, se diffuse dans les pays d’Europe occidentale, formant ainsi un phénomène international de «propagation du mouvement hygiéniste», parcouru par une double volonté de sauvegarde sanitaire et de moralisation des populations. Ce symposium se propose d’aborder l’internationalisation de l’hygiène scolaire au travers de deux interrogations principales et complémentaires. Tout d’abord, il s’agira de réfléchir aux influences et à la transmission des savoirs au sein de l’Europe occidentale de 1852 à 1958. Puis les initiatives locales et les rôles des acteurs politiques, médicaux et pédagogiques seront comparés. Nous exploiterons différentes sources (officielles, médicales, pédagogiques, sociales, architecturales, iconographiques et audiovisuelles) et différentes méthodes (analyse de documents, approches lexicographique, cartographique et analyse de réseau). Séverine Parayre, par une étude des congrès internationaux d’hygiène et d’hygiène scolaire des années 1852 à 1913, mettra en perspective les grands débats en Europe autour de l’hygiène à l’école, les acteurs intervenants et les influences des différents pays. Sur une période similaire, Aurélie Rimbault, mettra en évidence le rôle des édiles parisiens dans l’élaboration d’une politique sanitaire et sociale en faveur de l’enfance. Gina Greene poursuivra sur l’hygiène de la petite enfance en France, en évoquant l’influence sanitaire dans l’architecture scolaire durant la première partie du XXe siècle. Geert Thyssen comparera les savoirs et pratiques dans les écoles de plein air au travers de cinq pays précurseurs du développement de l’hygiène en Europe occidentale. Despina Karakatsanh et Vassiliki Theodorou, présenteront des initiatives locales particulières aux écoles grecques durant la première moitié du XXe siècle. Pour finir Didier Nourrisson, à partir d’une étude iconographique, analysera les différentes formes de propagande d’hygiène scolaire sous la IVe République.