Forgotten Pedagogues of German Education: A History of Alternative Education PDF
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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION Forgotten Pedagogues of German Education A History of Alternative Education Ralf Koerrenz Sebastian Engelmann Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education Series Editors Helen Lees Independent researcher London, UK Michael Reiss UCL Institute of Education London, UK This series emerges out of a recent global rise of interest in and actual educational practices done with voice, choice, freedoms and interper- sonal thoughtfulness. From subversion to introversion, including alterna- tive settings of the state to alternative pathways of the private, the series embraces a diverse range of voices. Common to books in the series is a vision of education already in existence and knowledge of education possible here and now. Theoretical ideas with potential to be enacted or influential in lived prac- tice are also a part of what we offer with the books. This series repositions what we deem as valuable educationally by accepting the power of many different forces such as silence, love, joy, despair, confusion, curiosity, failure, attachments as all potentially viable, interesting, useful elements in educational stories. Nothing is rejected if it has history or record as being of worth to people educationally, nor does this series doubt or distrust compelling ideas of difference as relevant. We wish to allow mainstream and marginal practices to meet here without prejudice as Other but also with a view to ensuring platforms for the Other to find community and understanding with others. The following are the primary aims of the series: • To publish new work on education with a distinctive voice. • To enable alternative education to find a mainstream profile. • To publish research that draws with interdisciplinary expertise on pertinent materials for interpersonal change or adjustments of approach towards greater voice. • To show education as without borders or boundaries placed on what is possible to think and do. If you would like to submit a proposal or discuss a project in more detail please contact: Eleanor Christie [email protected]. The series will include both monographs and edited collections and Palgrave Pivot formats. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15489 Ralf Koerrenz · Sebastian Engelmann Forgotten Pedagogues of German Education A History of Alternative Education Ralf Koerrenz Sebastian Engelmann Institute for Bildung and Culture Institute for Education Friedrich Schiller University Jena Eberhard Karls University Tübingen Jena, Germany Tübingen, Germany Palgrave Studies in Alternative Education ISBN 978-3-030-29569-1 ISBN 978-3-030-29570-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29570-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 This work is subject to copyright. 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This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland C ontents 1 Introduction 1 2 Joachim Heinrich Campe and the Pedagogical Anthropology of the Child 15 3 Bernhard Heinrich Blasche and the Romantic Concept of Nature Education 39 4 Helene Lange, Emancipation and Education for All 59 5 Heinrich Scharrelmann and the Art of Storytelling 79 6 Bernhard Hell and the Protestant School Community 101 7 Gertrud Bäumer, Deconstructing Gender and Discussing Social Work 125 Index 145 v CHAPTER1 Introduction Abstract Ashumanswealltendtoforgetthings—scientificdisciplinesdo thesame.Inthisbookwearguethatthehistoryofpedagogicalthoughtand action can often best be characterized by forgetting, a collective amnesia that leaves out, renders invisible or even annihilates ideas from the past. Moreandmoretextsanddocumentsareforgotten,someofthemforgood. The introduction discusses methodological questions of writing a history of“forgotten”concepts.Itoffersanoverviewoftheapproachusedinthis book. Furthermore, it introduces the six cases of the book and situates theminthefieldofeducation. Keywords History·Alternativeeducation·Forgetting·Disciplinary amnesia·Methods 1.1 DisciplinaryAmnesia---AnIntroduction Sometimes,wetendtoforgetthings—notonlywhereweleftourglasses, whetherwelockedthedoorproperlyorifthestoveisstillturnedon.Some- times,weforgetnamesofoldfriends,placeswehavebeen,theimpression ofabeautifulsunriseduringourlastvacation.Weforgetthesethingseven though they were important to us in the past. In this book we argue that ©TheAuthor(s)2019 1 R.KoerrenzandS.Engelmann,ForgottenPedagoguesofGerman Education,PalgraveStudiesinAlternativeEducation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29570-7_1 2 R.KOERRENZANDS.ENGELMANN thehistoryofpedagogicalthoughtandactioncanoftenbestbecharacter- izedbyforgetting,acollectiveamnesiathatleavesout,rendersinvisibleor evenannihilatesideasfromthepast.Moreandmoretextsanddocuments are forgotten, some of them for good. However, without a collective his- toricalmemory,educationasapracticeandHumanSciencePedagogyasa scientificreflectionofthispracticebecomeblindtoitsfailures—andalsoto thesuccessandlearningexperiencesofeducationalprogramsthroughout timeandspace.Withoutthinkingabouttheideaswemighthaveforgotten along our way, there is the constant fear—which in itself is not a prob- lem—of disrespecting important tradition or even discussing findings as ‘new’eventhoughtheywerealreadypresentedbyotherscholars. Educators have always thought about learning, diversity, how to con- struct a system for schooling and about the relation between teacher and student—those are time-transcendent problems of Human Science Ped- agogy. We are—metaphorically speaking—standing on the shoulders of others. We are evaluating our past through a lens, a perspective that is co-constructed by them and ourselves. This lens sometimes seems to be blurred,evenscratched;itisonlypartiallyreflectingthelight.Somethinkers ofeducation—asPalmerputsit(Palmer2001)—seem tobefoundingfig- uresofeducationalthought.Theyarestylizedastheybecomeidols,their creed is used for disciplinary identification and even for justification of action.ThisisespeciallythecaseofNewEducationorProgressiveEduca- tionintheEnglish-speakingworld.Insteadofreferringtothevariouspro- cessesofknowledgetransfer,thecommunalpracticeofeducationalthink- ing and the often-shared projects that were put in practice all around the globe,thenarrativesmostlyfocusonjustoneortwoauthors. This is especially the case for the meta-narrative of Progressive Edu- cation. In comparison to the German discussion, where texts by John Dewey were translated years after his success in the United States, this educatorseemstobethealmostheroicfoundingfigureofanentirelynew strandofdiscussion.Oneperson—oneman—ismentionedwhenProgres- sive Education is discussed: John Dewey. Dewey’s democratic idea for a social, just and community-based education—as outlined in his epoch- making work Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philos- ophy of Education published in 1916—is still influential today. It is still influencing the scholarly discussion. In addition to a large quantity of papers (e.g. Apple and Teitelbaum 2001) various monographs were pub- lished, summing up the intellectual development of Dewey’s thought 1 INTRODUCTION 3 and his connection to various other strands of discussion (e.g. Oelkers 2009) or discussing certain aspects such as problem-based learning or civiceducationinDewey’sworkanew(cf.KonradandKnoll2018).John Dewey definitively was and still is influential for the discussion of Pro- gressive, New or Alternative Education in Europe and all over the world (cf. Biesta and Miedema 1996). He influenced thinkers such as Decroly, Ferriere and Blonksy (cf. Koerrenz, Blichmann and Engelmann 2017). Nevertheless, there is more than Dewey—and Dewey himself might have become more of an “empty signifier” as political theorist Ernesto Laclau putsit.OnemightevenarguethatDeweyisnotreadanymorebuthisideas are perpetuated and utilized, when educators want to frame their educa- tionalmodelsasdemocratic,progressiveor“alternative”.Contrarytothis general understanding of Dewey as a “democratic” thinker, Knoll points out,thatDewey’sconceptoffersadeliberativeandcooperativeunderstand- ingofdemocracythatdoesnot putemphasisondemocraticdecisionmak- ingbyvotingorevenreliesoninstitutionalizedpartydemocracy(cf.Knoll 2018).Thisunderstandingofdemocracymustbeunderstoodasmorerad- ical than is often displayed in educational concepts. So, there might be moretothehistoryofeducationthanwhatismediatedbyintroductions, establisheddiscourseandcarriedoutinalanguage-specific,geographically- locatedandculturizedcontext. Oftenenough,educatorsandeducationaltheoristsdonotseethemesh of culture that they are wrapped in. Therefore, sometimes we all forget the most important part of concepts, their critical moments, that can be understoodastherealalternative partofthem.Certainly,alternativeped- agogical concepts are mostly critical concepts. They are part of a larger fieldcalledcriticalpedagogiesthatconsiderthesocietal,political,cultural and economic factors that influence all kinds of educational practices (cf. Kirylo2013).Criticalpedagogies,aswellasAlternativeEducation,wantto provideadifferentwayofthinkingabouteducation.AccordingtoAustro- Marxist psychoanalyst and educational thinker Siegfried Bernfeld, educa- tionisalwaysconservative.Bernfeldarguesthateducationisalwaysinflu- enced by the thoughts, ideas and ideals of a specific time: We are only teachingtoconserveourvaluesandourmodeoflife.Youcannotchangea societybyeducation;educationadjuststhesocietytothedominantvalues ofitsowntimeandperpetuatestheconservativestanceofitstime.That’s it.Onthecontrary,AlternativeEducationwants toteachandeducatefor achange;ithopesforabetter,adifferentfuturethatisalsoputforwardby education. 4 R.KOERRENZANDS.ENGELMANN This insight is part of the argument that is going to be put forward in the next chapters: Sometimes we do not only forget because we struggle to remember everything, but because certain modes of thought, alterna- tivemodesthatchallengeconservativethinkingandestablishedorders,are neglected and ignored. Forgetting and selective commemoration of con- cepts and ideas—we argue—is one of the most interesting parts of disci- pliningthediscipline,educatingtheHumanSciencePedagogythemselves. To stick to one example, one has to keep in mind that Dewey was not the only thinker when talking about Alternative Education. Even though heisperceivedasthemostimportantfigureofdemocraticandalternative education,thisperceptionisconstructedbycertainpracticesthatmustbe pointedouttobetterunderstandbothcommemorationandforgetting.On theonehand,theAlternativeEducationmovementiscomposedofmani- foldthinkersandactivists.Itisaheterogenousgroupthatishardtograsp. It’s even harder to represent this highly diverse group by only referring to only one thinker.1 On the other hand, there might be a possibility to integratevariousideasoneducationintoAlternativeEducationbyfinding theaspectoftheconceptsthatunitesthem. 1.2 AlternatingAlternativesandtheIdentity ofHumanSciencePedagogy RecentpublicationsofferedsuchasystematicunderstandingofAlternative Educationtointegratemarginalized,forgottenorevenoutlawedconcepts. According to Koerrenz, Blichmann and Engelmann the “alternative” in AlternativeEducationcanbeunderstoodintwoways.Firstly,theterm“al- ternative” refers to a difference, “an alternative is alternate to something else” (Koerrenz et al. 2017, p. 6). Alternative approaches to education try to offer an alternative to an established concept. They are in this first sensedifferenttotheestablishededucationandtheestablished,standard- ized talk about education. Secondly, alternative is always understood in a normativeway.Thereisnoalternativesetofeducationalpracticesthatdoes 1Weapproachtheissueofgenderedlanguageinasensibleway.Wetrytoavoidgendered languageoruseagenericfemininum.Incasesofthepresentedsourcesallgenderedexpressions arepointedoutassuch.Especiallywhenengagingwiththehistoryofeducation,sexrepressive commentsthatarenowadaysunderstoodassexistareomnipresent.Wetrytodealwiththis seriousissuebypointingoutsexist,racistandnationalisticcommentsinthesources.
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