Christine MAYER, Universität Hamburg, Germany

The fact that school reform in Hamburg after WWI could be implemented so quickly and intensely was due to three reasons: (1) Hamburg’s public elementary school teachers were politically and socially active by tradition, and the Kunsterziehungsbewegung had also schooled them in cultural critique. The faculty thus had already engaged with, read, debated and embraced democratic demands (such as comprehensive schools, experimental schools and school autonomy) and reform ideas (such as Erziehung vom Kinde aus) before 1918. (2) The school administration itself was supportive of their efforts, with several of its Schulräte (school inspectors) later on recruited from among proponents of the reform movement. (3) The reform movement also found support among social engaged, often working-class parents. Although all four of the experimental and community schools founded in 1919 and 1920 were part of the Hamburger Schulgemeinschaft (the Hamburg school community), their programmes and developments were very different. They shared the goals of coeducation, autonomy in school administration and curriculum development, and the integration of parents, and sought the freedom to implement new forms of school organisation and instruction in order to realise the ideas of the reform movement. The schools were influential among educators both nationally and internationally, as the large number of visitors shows. Leaders of the Hamburg school reform movement frequently appeared at international education congresses such as the congress of the Internationale Vereinigung der Lehrerverbände (international union of teachers’ associations) in Berlin in 1928 or the fifth conference of the New Education Fellowship in Elsinore in 1929. Their experiment also had an influential international advocate in Elisabeth Rotten (1882-1964), founding member of the New Education Fellowship in 1921. This contribution will trace the international connection and relations of the Hamburg Versuchsschulen based on a variety of sources such as meeting minutes, school newspapers, diaries, conference proceedings, and reports of international visitors and educational traveller, following up the pathways through which pedagogical knowledge and practice circulated. At the same time, the question how the pedagogical concepts developed at the Hamburg experimental schools were received and perceived against the background of different cultural contexts and pedagogical experiences will be investigated with a view to understanding the internationalisation of pedagogical knowledge. In this context, a re-reading of the dissertation Le maître-camarade et la pédagogie libertaire (1936) which the Swiss educator Jakob Robert Schmid wrote under the supervision of Pierre Bovet (1878-1965), head of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva, will also be interesting.

In some of the Southern European countries the experimental schools of Hamburg were considered the most progressive schools in the world. Several well known teachers were going to visit them, acting not only as pedagogical travellers but also as educational pilgrims. Many articles about them were published in the most prominent professional journals. Although it was little influence in the daily school culture, the Hamburg reform played an important role in the building of the pedagogical knowledge. The Hamburg schools were considered the most advanced experiment in the field of self-government, the best experience of the "school community" and the pioneer model of connecting the family and the school. The fact that all of them were state schools, with many lower class students was an added value to an experiment that was presented as the more radical of the "New Education" experiences. In this paper we will try to detect and analyze the channels by which the knowledge about the Hamburg schools was introduced in the Southern countries – mainly France, Spain and Portugal. Several channels will be explored, like the pedagogical travellers and the educational books and journals. In second term, we will study the theoretical discourses built up around the Hamburg schools, identifying the key concepts that were defining this experience and the different appropriations that from every concept was done in everyone of the said countries. Finally, we will discuss if the influence of the Hamburg schools can be seen in some of the ideas and concepts that were extensively used in the pedagogical language of the twenties of the XXth century.

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four public schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. The experiment failed: two schools voluntarily gave up their status as experimental schools in 1925, another school in 1930, and only one school was closed due to the national-socialist seizure of power. Nevertheless, the experimental schools in Hamburg attracted the attention of educationalists worldwide, welcoming a large number of visitors during their existence, and inspiring academic studies. The German-Swiss educationalist Robert Jakob Schmid presented a critical study on the Hamburg school communities with his doctoral thesis published in French during his stay in Geneva in 1936. His work fell into oblivion for more than three decades, until it was reprinted in French and later translated into German and Spanish in the 1970s, among others. The publishers of these editions were not interested in spreading Schmid’s critiques regarding the school communities, and distorted his argumentation by different means, such as partial translations, shortening the most critical aspects or adding long introductions. In this way, they tried to use Schmid’s study as a tool to support their own argumentative interests in the educational discourse of the 1970s.

[Part 2: session 2.16.]

Selon Daniel Roche, les emprunts entre l’histoire et la sociologie ne constituent pas un risque aujourd’hui comme c’était le cas dans les années 1960. En effet, les recherches sur l’internationalisation s’inspirent souvent d’une approche en termes de transferts culturels (Espagne & Werner), d’une perspective comparée (Schriewer) ou transnationale (Saunier; Heilbron, Guilhot & Jeanpierre) de la théorie des champs (Bourdieu) ou de la théorie des systèmes-monde (Wallerstein, Meyer, De Swaan). Les sociologues emploient les concepts et les méthodes de l’historien (périodisation, prosopographie, travail sur archives, genèse des institutions, connaissance du contexte socio-historique concerné); de même, les historiens emploient les concepts et les méthodes du sociologue (étude des trajectoires, hiérarchie des institutions, offres et demandes scolaires). Quel est l’intérêt des approches couplant ainsi histoire et sociologie, notamment du point de vue des sources et des approches historiographiques? L’objectif du symposium est de débattre de méthodologie à partir de recherches empiriques qui associent les méthodes de l’historien et du sociologue pour étudier les dimensions inter- et trans- nationales de l’éducation et de la culture. Le thème sera abordé sous deux angles: 1) Comment les approches historiques et sociologiques de l’internationalisation peuvent-elles enrichir l’histoire de l’éducation? 2) Qu’est ce que l’histoire de l’éducation, dans sa dimension transnationale, permet-elle de repenser dans les concepts?

Depuis une vingtaine d’années, les pensionnats privés de l’arc lémanique, lieu historique de formation des élites européennes et occidentales, accueillent une part croissante d’élèves en provenance de pays dits émergents. Une partie des élèves sont «envoyés» en Suisse par leurs parents pour recevoir une «éducation internationale». A partir d’une ethnographie d’un pensionnat, notre travail se penche sur les mécanismes de formation et de reproduction des élites, à travers la circulation internationale des enfants et les stratégies éducatives familiales. Nous cherchons à comprendre ce que signifie, pour des élites économiques non-occidentales, investir des lieux historiques de la reproduction des bourgeoisies et aristocraties européennes. A cet égard, il est nécessaire de replacer l’émergence de ces «nouveaux recrutements» dans l’histoire de la pédagogie nouvelle et des recrutements internationaux des écoles. La perspective transnationale, celle de la dispersion géographique des membres d’une même famille et des liens familiaux maintenus à distance, et l’orientation internationale, celle des institutions scolaires et des programmes éducatifs dispensés depuis le début du XXème siècle, sont autant d’éléments pour comprendre les transformations contemporaines des rapports de force globaux. Nos réflexions sur le contexte socio-historique des recrutements de l’école et la fécondité des méthodes historiques pour le sociologue s’ancreront donc sur les questions suivantes: 1) Comment comprendre la «nouvelle» internationalisation, extra-occidentale, des pensionnats privés au regard de ce qui a pu constituer au début du XXème siècle, une «première» internationalisation occidentale? L’évolution des discours de l’école sur les origines nationales des élèves et les changements institutionnels qui ont accompagné cette transition «démographique» des années 1990 seront privilégiés dans l’analyse. 2) Comment l’institution scolaire prend-elle en charge la circulation transnationale des enfants d’élites (à travers, notamment, la négociation des relations à distance entre parents et enfants scolarisés) et en quoi celle-ci s’inscrit-elle dans une histoire longue des rapports de l’institution à l’international? Les sources écrites sur les relations entre les parents et l’institution scolaire (correspondances, archives personnelles) nous permettront de comprendre l’évolution des exigences réciproques entre familles et institution (contrôle social, maintien de la langue maternelle, transferts d’argent, etc.) et d’apporter éventuellement un éclairage, pour l’historien de l’éducation internationale, sur le rôle des familles et de leurs projets éducatifs.

De manière condensée, on peut présenter la méthode des transferts culturels comme s'efforçant d’examiner de nouvelles possibilités de dépasser le cadre national de l’histoire culturelle, en étudiant de façon quasi micrologique le processus de translation d’un objet de son contexte d’émergence dans un nouveau contexte de réception. Cet examen oblige à mettre en valeur le rôle de diverses instances de médiations (voyageurs, traducteurs, éditeurs, etc.) ainsi que l’incontournable transformation sémantique liée à l’importation (Espagne, 2011). Cette dynamique historiographique, initiée il y a presque trente ans par Michel Espagne et Michael Werner, rassemble aujourd’hui une importante communauté de chercheurs à l’origine d’une large production de travaux multidisciplinaires. Si les spécialistes en sciences de l’éducation s’appliquent également à sonder les circulations, voire les métissages qui ont structuré et continuent à modéliser leur domaine en tant que science – ce congrès le prouve clairement – plutôt rares sont ceux à avoir puisé dans la boîte à outils des transferts culturels. Cette contribution aura donc pour but d’exposer l’utilité que la recherche sur les transferts culturels peut jouer dans une réévaluation des circulations et des échanges pédagogiques de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Au travers de quelques usages et réflexions tirés de notre Gesellschaftsbiographie du théoricien de l’éducation Alexandre Daguet (1816-1894), nous exposerons les grands axes de la méthode. Nous insisterons également sur les phénomènes de réappropriation et de resémantisation de concepts pédagogiques et éclairerons quelques racines étrangères de la pensée éducative helvétique dans une perspective de transferts culturels.

Crossing borders in educational innovation. The use of foreign examples in textual and visual framing of Dutch comprehensive education in TV programmes, 1973-1977

Seal of Approval: Education in the Iconography of the early 18th Century British Atlantic

The multicultural nation at school in Australian cinema

International influences on the sudden reversal about gender issues in adult education policy in the second half of the 1960s (France)