Modernisation et emploi du temps dans les écoles primaires de la Ville du Mexique, 1885–1911

The purpose of this article is to examine the way in which the academic schedule was organized in the primary schools of Mexico City, and how the life of the children was regulated by time schedules, disciplines, punishments and school calendars. Within this sense, the academic temporality expressed in schedules and calendars signified a cultural and educational discussion, which in turn reflected the aspirations and valuations of an era. The importance acquired by elementary education at the end of the nineteenth century was the result of economic and cultural changes that affected Mexico and that intended to modernize both the state and institutions instrumental in the country's progress, such as the educational institutions. The educated elite of the Porfirio Diaz regime, influenced by European ideas and societal changes, provided impetus to the transformation of the spaces and activities of children within schools. The school schedule was widely assessed by both the politicians and the educators of the Porfiriato era. They judged it to be the appropriate means by which to prepare the children under new schemes of thought and behavior, for which they needed to provide inputs to modern school schedules, that is to say: uniforms, secularization and hygiene, which catches up with the old temporality marked by the ecclesiastical influence and which emphasized mechanical, repetitive and linear schemes. Thenceforth, the educational authorities concentrated their efforts on the creation of a type of school discipline and order. A population of children who assume ethics of work, punctuality, respect and efficiency was exactly the changing society based on industrialization and modernization that was needed.     

S'emparer de l'avenir: les jeunes filles dans les écoles normales et les établissements secondaires de l'Italie unifiée (1861–1911)

In the newborn Kingdom of Italy institutionalized post‐elementary education for girls was not available. Also the most qualified institutions (almost always private and run by religious orders and congregations) provided them with nothing but a basic knowledge of reading and writing. Focusing on the early fifty years of the Kingdom of Italy, this article analyses the process of women's access to secondary school, which developed in an expansion/strengthening phase of schools aimed at training primary school teachers. Their success produced significant imitative processes, even in private institutions, and accustomed people to the idea of state day‐schools and a formalized education for women, alternative to the traditional one, based on nunneries and domestic tutors. Playing on the absence of explicit legal constraints, women entered, from the 1880s, all kinds of secondary (classical and technical) schools, striving to gain access to the labour market and the university, and learning to make the most of their own individuality. But this growing presence of women in the state secondary schools had also other important consequences: it contributed significantly to modify the character of the private schools and to strengthen the cultural aspects of the “Normal” course. At the same time it nurtured a reaction against every kind of coeducation that would eventually find an important – and in this respect destined to failure – outcome in the Gentile Reform of 1923.     

L'enseignement secondaire dans le cadre du “Pombalisme”

The birth of the Portuguese school system can be situated during Pombal's reform of education. The process did not happen in isolation. Besides the Companhia de Jesus' high schools, which were extinguished, there were private colleges for the teaching of Latin, Greek and Rhetoric. Students had to pay a fee and used facilities in teachers' homes. What place did Pombal bestow to these disciplines and to the new colleges? Which models were adopted?

The contents of the first step of Pombal's reform stretched from 1759 to 1769. After the closing of the colleges of the Companhia de Jesus and of Évora University, the birth of high school education started with the foundation of feeless schools of Latin, Greek and Rhetoric, in order to secure a medium level of instruction and preparation for university education. The reform included another branch of education: a School of Commerce (Lisbon), and a School of Navigation and Drawing (Porto) were founded. These schools were aimed first of all at children and grandchildren of tradespeople. Pombal also tried to meet the educational needs of the aristocracy: Nobles College (and later Mafra College) was opened.

In that period, the colony of Brazil had, at the secondary level of education, some Latin and Rhetoric schools. A number of teachers were sent to Pernambuco and others were hired to cover Bahia's needs in the field. The lack of teachers, mainly of Rhetoric and Greek Grammar, was a serious problem. The implantation of reforms in the Brazilian colony was much harder than in Portugal. Schoolbooks were hardly available and the payment of teachers caused many administrative complications that produced reactions from the students' families. So the teachers used old banned schoolbooks and equally old methods.

Between Portugal and the colony in Brazil sharp differences existed in the implantation of the school system and the system's structure. In spite of the intense mercantile activities of Brazilian harbours, the colony would only have a School of Commerce in 1809, while in Lisbon such an institution had already opened 50 years before. One could point to other differences. Brazil was never allowed to have a college like Nobles College. The teaching of experimental physics was never integrated in the institution. There was only one ex‐Jesuit who gave classes at home. On the colleges' front, one must single out the unique case of Olinda, whose seminary was found by bishop Azeredo Coutinho, one of the most remarkable Illuminist personalities of Portugal and Brazil.

In 1772 the school system was completed with the creation of Reading, Writing and Counting schools and the adoption of the disciplines of Natural Philosophy and Religion at the secondary level of education. At university level, besides the innovations made in the Faculty of Theology and in the University of Canon and Civil Law, a broad role was recognized for the teaching of experimental physics, chemistry, botanic and zoology, as well as mathematics. This was the reason for the creation of the Philosophy and Mathematics Faculties, with enough resources to guarantee a realistic education.

In the Brazilian colony, teaching of a scientific orientation was undertaken through the creation of military courses. Courses of Mathematics resulted from artillery education at the end of the seventeenth century (1698) and immediately after that courses in Military Architecture were taught. In the eighteenth century, the Royal Court stimulated the creation of military courses in Brazil and other colonies. In spite of our ignorance of the results of the King's determinations, we know that military schools were founded in 1714, in Bahia, and in 1778 in Pernambuco. In this last city the Military Academy was founded, whose traces were still evident in 1812. But it was in Rio de Janeiro that this education branch was developed further, evolving later into the Royal Academy of Military Architecture and Drawing.

Due to the arrival in Rio de Janeiro of Queen Maria the First and her son, the future João the Sixth, the capital went through an intense process of cultural development. In 1808 the Navy Academy was founded, with all available scientific tools, books and machines, copying the Lisbon model. It opened its first courses in 1809: mathematics, physics, artillery, navigation and drawing. This institution would eventually be substituted by the Navy School and Naval College. In 1810, the Rio de Janeiro Military Academy was instituted, which later gave rise to the Polytechnic School and the Campo Grande Shooting School.

High schools were first created in Portugal in 1836. Criticizing Pombal's heritage, some people were convinced that this branch of public education was forming a group of sterile knowledge, almost useless to the science culture, and lacking material that could contribute to the progress of the country's material civilization. Therefore the curriculum in the National Plan of High Schools included scientific and humanistic subjects, as well as technical subjects.

The implantation of high schools is a process that finished only around 1860. Until that date, in several places, Pombal's old isolated schools of secondary education remained alive.

In Brazil the process was also painful. Only two seminary schools were active and Latin lessons were dispersed throughout the territory. Much needed was an overall plan that would consolidate this level of education. Later, the Pedro the Second College would be organized conforming with the French lycée model. But nothing stopped the old isolated courses, independent of institutions, from continuing to exist, sometimes in a brilliant way.

Our conclusions are only provisional. At present, we can state that the development of high schools in Portugal and in the colony of Brazil followed a path that was a legacy from the past. After Independence, education adopted several different guidelines, which, in their turn, moulded future initiatives.     

Les directeurs d’écoles ou l’exercice de l’autorité dans les établissements scolaires de Berlin-Est dans les années 1950

A partir d’un matériau croisant des sources officielles (lois, règlements, directives) et des sources tirées de la pratique scolaire locale (chroniques, protocoles des réunions pédagogiques d’établissements scolaires), l’article souhaite étudier concrètement la “micro-physique du pouvoir” socialiste dans les écoles de Berlin-Est au début des années 1950. On cherche à comprendre comment l’autorité socialiste s’incarne et s’exerce sur le terrain au quotidien dans la construction d’une nouvelle société au moyen de la formation d’un homme nouveau. En partant de la figure du directeur d’école comme lieu d’observation du travail pour imposer le communisme au quotidien, l’ambition est d’étudier l’exercice de la domination politique dans ses relations et ses interactions avec deux acteurs essentiels de l’institution scolaire que sont les enseignants et les élèves. Dans la mesure où le pouvoir socialiste se veut immanent, il n’est pas concentré uniquement au sein des structures du pouvoir central et son champ d’action s’exerce donc dans des “foyers locaux” où il transite par des individus qui doivent officiellement l’incarner au quotidien. Loin de considérer uniquement l’école comme une simple courroie de transmission d’un régime totalitaire qui imposerait d’en haut un système de règles, nous cherchons à travers la figure du directeur à analyser l’interaction entre Etat et société au “ras du sol”: comment exerce-t-on la fonction de directeur d’école au début des années 1950 à Berlin-Est? Dans quelle mesure l’analyse des modalités d’exercice de cette autorité éducative et politique permet-elle de mettre en évidence et d’expliciter un certain nombre de logiques politiques, culturelles et sociales macro-historiques?     

La Peur de L'évaluation: évaluation de L'enseignement ou du Sujet?

This article addresses first of all the question why nowadays evaluation is so intensively promoted. It then goes on to analyse the reasons why there is currently a resistance to evaluation among teachers. It refers especially to the situation in Greece, where evaluation has been absent since 1981, whereas before that date it was applied in an oppressive manner, more resembling discipline and punishment than the personal development of the teachers. The authors refer particularly to the work of Michel Foucault but also to that of J. F. Lyotard. They point out that it is the teachers' fear of evaluation of their personal identity rather than their professional competence that lies behind the resistance to evaluation. Emphasis is placed on the necessity to support teachers in their personal and professional development. The use of action research, termed "critical active research" in Greek, is advocated as a basic strategy for the development of the teacher as well as of the curriculum and of society in general.     

Contextualiser la place du français et du malgache dans le système éducatif du Madagascar: une perspective historique

Abstract

Avant la colonisation de Madagascar par la France en 1896, la plupart des enfants malgaches scolarisés avaient fréquenté des écoles dirigées par des missions protestantes. La langue d’enseignement était la langue malgache, une langue écrite, développée avec l’aide de missionnaires britanniques à partir de 1820. Elle était celle du groupe clanico-politique dominant. La colonisation imposa la langue française. Le pouvoir colonial avait considéré la langue comme un instrument important dans la politique d’assimilation et la création d’élites qui pourraient servir son projet. Mais l’administration coloniale dans les pays colonisés influençait fortement l’exécution de la politique éducative. Madagascar est d’ailleurs un cas pertinent dans ce sens à cause de l’existence et le statut de la langue écrite Malgache. La politique assimilatrice dominante n’a pas empêché des désaccords au sein de l’administration coloniale sur la place de la langue malgache dans l’éducation. L’argument majeur était que cette langue renforcera le groupe ethnique Merina et alimentera davantage le nationalisme malgache au détriment de l’assimilation. Depuis l’Indépendance en 1960, la politique linguistique a évolué selon les régimes politiques. Les perspectives théoriques dans le domaine de la “literacy” (des aptitudes à lire et à écrire vu comme une pratique sociale) décrivent celle-ci comme une pratique sociale et un instrument de pouvoir. Sa diffusion générale a été associée avec un développement démocratique, mais aussi avec l’oppression. L’article montre comment la politique des langues d’enseignement à Madagascar s’est basée sur des arguments politique et pédagogique dans des contextes différents.     

Education traditionnelle au Bénin,la place du sacré dans les rites initiatiques

The author shows how education among traditional communities in Benin is an initiatory process in which the acquisition of practical knowledge is closely interwoven with religion and custom. The stages of an individual's development may be marked by rites of passage, tests of prowess and endurance, and the acquisition of appropriate forms of knowledge such as the learning of tales and the oral traditions of the community. The aim is to prepare the individual to take his or her full place in society. The author also describes certain particular forms of education, such as the training of a shaman, which takes many years and involves learning complex divinatory processes as well as mastering traditional medicine.     

Emilie du Chatelet(1)

December 17,1706-September 10,1749Emilie du Chatelet.Born in Paris on December 17,1706,she grew up in a householdwhere the art of courting was the only way one could mold a place in society.During herearly childhood,Emilie began to show such promise in the area of academics that soonshe was able to convince her father that she needed attention.Provided with a relativelygood education for the time,she studied and soon mastered Latin,Italian and English.     

L'image de l'espace scolaire dans les livres de lecture de l'école primaire,Buenos Aires 1853‐1942

This paper seeks to throw new light on an important source for the History of Education, the Reading school book. Within a larger research project we are carrying out on formation of primary schools in the city of Buenos Aires, the Reading book has surfaced as a key documentary source. Our point is that the Argentine Nation State needed an architectonic dimension in configuring its primary school, a dimension that used readings and images that were distinct from material resources that traditionally signified national importance. In brief, Argentina had to turn the primary school into a place easily recognizable for what happens inside ‐ teaching and learning ‐ and for what that teaching and learning stood for. the Nation‐State in its capital city. Reading books took on an important role in this nation buildingprocess, through both iconographie and textual materials that conveyed various ways of imagining school space, especially a poetic sense of space which signified multiple modes of representation and assertion. The most interesting aspect in the paper is its use of the spatial viewpoint, along side of the material aspect of school buildings. The words and images printed in Reading books, their variance and dominance, go beyond the material and evoke the sense and meaning of space in a broader sociohistorical framework.

     

Quelques aspects didactiques du développement de la pensée des enfants dans les mathématiques et la physique

Sans résuméConférence tenue au Congrès sur l'Intégration des enseignements scientifiques, à Varna, 11–19 septembre 1968.     

Les élèves et l'histoire dans l'examen français du certificat d'études primaires entre 1918 et 1926

This article presents the method used to study examination papers written by young pupils. This sort of pupils’ work can give information on who are involved in examinations.

‐ The pupils: what they learn in history and how they produce answers;

‐ The teachers: what they teach in their class and how;

‐ The juries: how they assess by means of a grade the minimum knowledge of most of the pupils who are to leave school.

The problem here is to follow the route from laws and decrees to real teachers and real pupils. Therefore, this research relies on source material such as annual primary inspector reports, annual local teachers’ meetings with model lessons, and, above all, examination papers. For this last source, a popular examination in France at that time was used: the Certificat d'Etudes, which was given at the end of the primary curriculum for 13‐year‐old pupils. By chance, the Departmental Archives of the Somme region still has 4058 history test examination papers from 1918 to 1926.     

DIE ODENWALDSCHULE (1910‐1934)1

The two decades before the first world war were the ‘heroic’ period for French syndicalism, one that saw it emerge as a major workers’ movement pledged to revolution. Syndicalists were highly conscious of their class identity, seeing in class consciousness an essential element of a revolutionary movement. And so they rejected parliamentary politics as a means to the new socialist society that would be organized by a working class they regarded as sufficient in its own right for this task. For syndicalists, then, the spheres of daily life and of political activism tended to coincide, leading the movement to politicize every aspect of French culture.

Few aspects of this contested cultural terrain were as important to syndicalists as education. This article explores the wide range of the syndicalist movement's educational project, which encompassed the Bourses du Travail, its most enduring institutional embodiment, as well as student‐worker groups, teachers’ syndicates, apprenticeship training and model schools. Finally, the article analyzes the question whether this project was an effective means to syndicalist political goals while also considering whether efforts in popular education, teacher unionization and school reform were valuable in their own right.     

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A THREE‐YEAR REVIEW (1968‐70)

There were considerable differences in the distribution of the articles amongst the age groups of the persons studied, the sizes of the samples, the methodologies of the designs, and the number contributed by individual British universities. There was evidence that editorial policy sought to correct some of these imbalances.