Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History 9781138604780, 9780429468384

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Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History

This book offers a remarkable range of research that emphasises the need to analyse the shaping of curricula under historical, social and political variables. Teachers’ life stories, the Cold War as a contextual element that framed curricular transformations in the US and Europe, and the study of trends in education policy at transnational level are issues addressed throughout. The book presents new lines of work, offering multidisciplinary perspectives and provides an overview of how to move forwards. The book brings together the work of international specialists on Curriculum History and presents research that offers new perspectives and methodologies from which to approach the study of the History of Education and Educational Policy. It offers new debates which rethink the historical study of the curriculum and offers a strong interdisciplinary approach, with contributions across Education, History and the Social Sciences. This book will be of great interest for academics and researchers in the fields of education and curriculum studies. It will also appeal to educational professionals, teachers and policy makers. Gary McCulloch is the inaugural Brian Simon Professor of the History of Education at UCL Institute of Education, UK. Ivor Goodson is Full Professor of Learning Theory at Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, UK. Mariano González-Delgado is Assistant Professor of History of Education at Universidad de La Laguna, Spain.

Routledge Research in International and Comparative Education

This is a series that offers a global platform to engage scholars in continuous academic debate on key challenges and the latest thinking on issues in the fastgrowing field of International and Comparative Education. Titles in the series include: Comparative Perspectives on Refugee Youth Education Dreams and Realities in Educational Systems Worldwide Edited by Alexander W. Wiseman, Lisa Damaschke-Deitrick, Ericka Galegher, and Maureen F. Park 50 Years of US Study Abroad Students Japan as the Gateway to Asia and Beyond Sarah R. Asada Informal Learning and Literacy among Maasai Women Education, Emancipation and Empowerment Taeko Takayanagi Parental Involvement Across European Education Systems Critical Perspectives Edited by Angelika Paseka and Delma Byrne Transculturalism and Teacher Capacity Professional Readiness in the Globalised Age Niranjan Casinader Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History Edited by Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado For more information about this series, please visit: https​://ww​w.rou​tledg​ e.com​/Rout​ledge​-Rese​arch-​in-In​terna​tiona​l-and​-Comp​arati​ve-Ed​ucati​on/ bo​ok-se​ries/​RRICE​

Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History

Edited by Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson and Mariano González-Delgado

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano GonzálezDelgado to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McCulloch, Gary, editor. | Goodson, Ivor, editor. | González-Delgado, Mariano, editor. Title: Transnational perspectives on curriculum history / edited by Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019039386 (print) | LCCN 2019039387 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138604780 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429468384 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Curriculum change–Cross-cultural studies. | Curriculum change–History–Methodology. | Education–Historiography. Classification: LCC LB1570 .T73 2020 (print) | LCC LB1570 (ebook) | DDC 375–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039386 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019039387 ISBN: 978-1-138-60478-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46838-4 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors

Introduction: Curriculum history and transnational perspectives for studies: Generating debates on educational research

vii viii ix

1

GARY MCCULLOCH, IVOR GOODSON, AND MARIANO GONZÁLEZ-DELGADO

1 From mystification to markets: The evolution of curriculum history and life history

12

IVOR GOODSON

2 Physics for the enquiring mind: The Nuffield physics Ordinary-level course, 1962–1966

27

GARY MCCULLOCH

3 Narratives of education and curriculum transition in the former socialist European countries: The example of Estonia

41

RAIN MIKSER AND IVOR GOODSON

4 African American curriculum history: New possibilities and directions

63

LAGARRETT J. KING, ALANA D. MURRAY, AND CHRISTINE WOYSHNER

5 UNESCO mediation in Francoist curriculum policy: The case of educational television in Spain MARIANO GONZÁLEZ-DELGADO AND TAMAR GROVES

83

vi Contents

6 Transnational information flow and domestic concerns: Japanese educational exhibits in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain

108

MARI HIRAOKA

7 Local versus national history of education: The case of Swedish school governance, 1950–1990

131

JOHAN PRYTZ AND JOHANNA RINGARP

8 Curriculum history research in mainland China and Taiwan: Its status and prospect

149

CAIXIA PENG

9 Transnational colonial entanglements: South African teacher education college curricula

163

LINDA CHISHOLM

10 The failure of a pedagogical innovation: Learning to write in Brazil and France at the end of the nineteenth century

181

DIANA GONÇALVES VIDAL

11 The two faces of the same coin: National and individual refraction in curriculum policies in Portugal

198

ELSA ESTRELA

Conclusions: Transnational perspectives on Curriculum History

221

GARY MCCULLOCH, IVOR GOODSON, AND MARIANO GONZÁLEZ-DELGADO

Index

227

Figures

  6.1 ‘The Japanese Court in the International Exhibition’ 111   6.2 ‘Our Insane-itary Guide to the Health Exhibition XII’ 116   6.3 ‘Educational System of Japan’ 119   6.4 ‘Japanese Educational Exhibit at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910’ 124   6.5 ‘I was so tired after doing the rounds at the Exhibition!’ 125   6.6 ‘Leaves from an Artist’s Sketch-book: the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition, as seen by Frank Reynolds’ 126   6.7 ‘The Japanese Village’ 127 11.1 Ten competency areas in Students’ Profile by the End of Compulsory Schooling205 11.2 Teachers’ curriculum represented as the set of subjects and syllabuses hierarchically organised 208 11.3 Teachers’ curriculum represented as a path, a guideline that fosters students’ transformation 209 11.4 Teachers’ curriculum represented as a jail 209

Tables

5.1 UNESCO mediation in Francoist curriculum policy: The case of educational television in Spain. Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves 5.2 CENIDE/INCIE and UNESCO scholarships financed by the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and the UNDP, 1970–1976 5.3 Experts/Consultants in charge of UNDP

96 97 98

Contributors

Linda Chisholm is a Professor in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation of the Education Faculty at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She has published widely on the historical, contemporary and comparative aspects of education policy and curriculum in South Africa and the region. Her most recent book is: Teacher Preparation in South Africa: History, Policy and Future Directions (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2019). Elsa Estrela is currently an Assistant Professor at ULHT, Lisbon, Portugal, Executive Project Manager at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Education and Development (CeiED) and external expert in the pedagogical innovation pilot project at Boa Água school cluster. Teacher of Basic and Secondary Education (1993), she holds a Master’s degree in educational sciences (2006) and a PhD in Education (2015). She was a member of the Ibero-American Network for Research in Educational Policies (RIAIPE) and the Education, Research and Training Policy Observatory. Mari Hiraoka is a Historian of Education researching both Japan and Britain as well as the historical relationship between the two countries in the field of education. Her major research interest is in the flow of information from Japan to Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, of which she has examined origin, contents and effects. Having completed her PhD at UCL Institute of Education, University of London, UK, she currently teaches at several universities in Japan. Mariano González-Delgado is Associate Professor of History of Education at Universidad de La Laguna, Spain. His research focuses in Curriculum History and the transnational dimension in History of Education and textbooks. He has been visiting researcher at UCL Institute of Education (2014) and Uppsala University (2018) and has contributed to different journals of History of Education. Ivor Goodson is Full Professor of Learning Theory at Education Research Centre, University of Brighton, UK. Professor Goodson has spent the last 30 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and

x Contributors

enduring issues in education and has contributed over 50 books and 600 articles to the field. Tamar Groves is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Extremadura, Spain. She obtained her PhD in 2010 from Tel Aviv University, Israel, and the UNED, Madrid, Spain. She is the author of Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain 1970–1985 published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently working on women and science and scientific culture in Spain and educational modernisation processes in the same country. LaGarrett J. King is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education and Founding Director of the CARTER Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri, USA. His primary research centres on the teaching and learning of Black history in schools and society. Additionally, his research focus is on critical theories race, critical multicultural teacher education, and the history of curriculum. Dr. King has published in several leading scholarly journals, is the editor of an upcoming book, Perspectives in Black History in Schools, for Information Age Press, and is co-author of an upcoming book, Teaching American Slavery, for Peter Lang Publishing. Gary McCulloch is the inaugural Brian Simon Professor of the History of Education at UCL Institute of Education, UK. He was (2017–2019) the president of the British Educational Research Association and past president of the UK History of Education Society (2005–2007). Gary’s recent publications include The Struggle for the History of Education (Routledge, 2011), Secondary Education and the Raising of the School Leaving Age (with Woodin and Cowan, Palgrave, 2013), and A Social History of Educational Studies and Research (with Steven Cowan, Routledge, 2018). Rain Mikser is a Senior Research Fellow in Tallinn University, Estonia. His work focusses on early childhood education teachers’ and secondary education teachers’ professionalism, education and curriculum policy, and Philosophy and History of Education. Alana D. Murray is an Educator-Activist who taught world history and United States history in Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, for 14 years. She is currently serving as the principal of Shady Grove Middle School. Murray also serves as the co-coordinator for the Equity and Excellence certificate programme, a partnership between Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools, Montgomery County Education Association and McDaniel College. Dr. Murray is the author of The Development of the Alternative Black Curriculum, 1890–1940: Countering the Master Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Caixia Peng is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Teaching at SooChow University, China. Her research focus is curriculum history, policies and practice. She has been visiting researcher in UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom. Currently she works on curriculum history in China.

Contributors 

xi

Johan Prytz is Associate Professor in Education with specialisation in mathematics education at Uppsala University, Sweden. His main research interest concerns the history of mathematics education, in particular issues related to reforms and curriculum change. Currently, he is also involved in two other projects, one concerning algebra teaching and the other concerning critical thinking. Johanna Ringarp is Associate Professor in Pedagogy and Senior Lecturer in History of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research specialties include: History of Education, educational policy, teacher professionalisation, reform of teacher education, educational governance, new public management and international educational assessment. Diana Gonçalves Vidal is Professor of Education History of the Faculty of Education of the University of San Pablo, Brazil, where she is coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Nucleus of Educational Studies and Research (NIEPHE). She is a researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She was the President of the Brazilian Society of Education History (2003–2007). Christine Woyshner is Professor of Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. An historian of education and social studies educator, Professor Woyshner has edited or authored six books, including The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement, 1897–1970 (The Ohio State University Press, 2009) and Histories of Social Studies and Race, 1865– 2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) with Chara Haeussler Bohan. Her new project is an investigation of the role of black civic organisations in shaping education and schooling for African Americans during Jim Crow.

Introduction Curriculum history and transnational perspectives for studies: Generating debates on educational research Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado Curriculum history has been a field of study that has had a great impact within educational research. In relation to the new directions that were opened up within the field of History and Sociology of Education in Britain and the United States in the late 1970s, the history of the curriculum began to generate important new perspectives.1 The curriculum could not now be understood as a foreign element in relation to the various social forces that had shaped it. The changes within school subjects, as well as their origins or selection, organisation and distribution of their knowledge, had associations and relations with a series of socio-historical factors. Different aspects, such as the political contexts, the open struggles between different social actors for the control of knowledge or certain socio-cultural elements began to be central within this line of research. All these questions revealed the deep political, social, cultural and economic sense of the curriculum. In effect, the curriculum is a social construction: a construction mediated by multiple causes that refer to internal issues of the school world, to social questions and even conceptual elements about the visions we have about the idea of society. From then on, interesting research began to emerge in this regard. The first works, such as those of David Layton or Ivor Goodson,2 pointed out that in addressing the political conflicts, the interest groups and the struggles that were established in these spheres it was very important to understand the origin and historical evolution of the curriculum. On this basis, a series of historical studies would be established to observe how and why the various school subjects had been transformed. The series of best-known works within this type of research was the one edited by Ivor Goodson under the title Studies in Curriculum History, published by Falmer Press. This project would offer a remarkable number of research studies that emphasised the need to analyse the curriculum in relation to the historical, social and political variables that shaped them. In turn, this generated a framework that would give rise to different perspectives of analysis; curriculum history was opening up ways for other research avenues.3 Interesting works soon began to appear pointing to the mediation exercised by different social forces in the configuration of the multiple school

2  McCulloch, Goodson and González-Delgado

disciplines that shaped curricular policy. Detailed studies on school Science and Technology,4 Mathematics5 and Physics6 were produced. The possibility of exploring new theoretical perspectives for curriculum studies through broader analyses focussed on curricular policy itself was also opened up.7 The perspectives opened up by this series also allowed us to introduce the debate in the international arena. The international aspects were strengthened especially by an edited collection, International Perspectives in Curriculum History, edited by Goodson, published in 1987.8 In it, international movements could be observed, for instance in countries such as Norway, Australia or Canada. These research investigations opened up the possibility of carrying out comparative studies between different educational systems. But, perhaps, the most important point was that with them, a series of similar tendencies was observed in the curricular policy between countries. In spite of the variations of the curriculum that existed between nations, it was observed that the historical construction of the curriculum obeyed social patterns that were related to elements of a political nature or of another nature, such as the teacher’s own work process. From here, and in combination with the new directions proposed by the History of Education, the historical studies of the curriculum also followed paths not previously known. In this way, curriculum history began to observe the need to focus on other spaces and other social groups that also configured the reality of knowledge that was taught in the classrooms. Again, Goodson worked very deeply on teachers’ stories and life stories.9 This aspect allowed us to understand some elements of school culture that could mediate the social construction of the curriculum.10 On the other hand, the understanding of the world of school organisations did not stop at its teachers. With the use of new theoretical perspectives, curriculum history also responded to the importance that the ‘Visual turn’ could have to observe classroom life itself.11 The visual archive could provide interesting works from which to analyse what was the reality of the transmission of knowledge in the students. This even included the very place that different social groups occupied within schools.12 The role of these new social groups did not stop at this point. Studies on the role and representation of gender differences also began to develop interesting work on the reality of curriculum.13 Indeed, the male and female representation that textbooks developed began to be an important object of study.14 Other lines of research on inequality began to emerge, among which stand out the minority representation that exists in school knowledge of black groups,15 ethnic minorities16 and also gay and lesbian groups.17 It is also worth highlighting the work done regarding analyses of the scant importance that different historical events have in the construction of citizenship.18 However, these studies focussed on new theoretical perspectives have also generated the possibility of understanding that the processes of social construction of the curriculum are connected with each other within the spaces known as the nation-state. Many historical works on the curriculum have indicated that in the second half of the twentieth century, educational systems have been

Introduction 

3

connected through the phenomena of globalisation. John Rudolph, for example, investigated the importance of the context of the Cold War in the reconstruction of the Science curriculum in the USA.19 A similar aspect was also observed for the school discipline of Social Studies.20 The phenomenon of the Cold War has produced interesting research that indicates how the processes of public diplomacy21 that took place during those years, the Modernisation Theory22 or the stabilisation of curriculum policies launched by international organisations23 facilitated the standardisation of certain elements of the curriculum. The important issue to emphasise about this aspect is that from the History of Education new directions point to the central character that the transnational dimension24 has for the social construction of the curriculum and educational policies. These studies have indicated that it is necessary to build new research that goes beyond the traditional historical narratives based on nation-states.25 The processes described have also helped to stabilise a ‘Transnational turn’ within the History of Education. Daniel Tröhler, for example, has pointed out the importance that technocratic discourses had in shaping educational policy in both the capitalist and the communist blocs during the Cold War period.26 Some research has even gone further and pointed out how this ‘Transnational turn’ has modified the way of understanding history museums by breaking with the national identity myths that have been constructed from them.27 These perspectives tell us about the need to break with the notions of space.28 It would be about playing openly towards the construction of new concepts and approaches that allow us to understand how transnational phenomena can also shape national spaces.29 However, this should not make us forget the importance that local actors still play in the reception that comes from all these policies. Some years ago, Goodson pointed out the importance that the process of ‘refraction’30 has had in the phenomena of educational importation. Local actors still transform international education policies in some aspects and can act as channelling or not of the process.31 In some cases, the importance of observing the transnational dimension has been pointed out, not as a hierarchical space from top down but as a relational process.32 This book is based on these arguments. This is the result of an extensive discussion that took place within the framework of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) during 5–7 September 2017 at the University of Sussex. The chapters that follow highlight the importance that the transnational dimension has had in the historical construction of the curriculum. Globalisation, the Cold War, neoliberal policies, international expositions, biographical experience, the processes of imported pedagogies or the mediation of local actors and the relational history are discussed in these pages. The book aims to advance this debate. It has the firm purpose of helping to better understand how the curriculum is historically constructed from a transnational perspective.

4  McCulloch, Goodson and González-Delgado

From this premise, Chapter 1 focusses on a historical journey through the formation of studies on the history of the curriculum. Ivor Goodson, one of the main actors of this configuration, presents a series of arguments as to how and why the historical studies of school disciplines and the context in which they were born originated. Through careful analysis, the author reminds us of the importance of curriculum history in understanding what social, cultural, political and educational issues have influenced the social construction of the curriculum. To ignore a historical analysis, the author points out, could make us lose sight of the necessary contextualisation of any construction of curricular policy. The history of education and the sociology of education are linked by Goodson with the firm purpose of better understanding those causal elements that have themselves changed and, in so doing, changed school knowledge. Under this theoretical framework, the need to know better the life stories of teachers as a conceptual and methodological tool that allows us to understand the influence that professional fields have had in the delimitation of curricular policy and school disciplines is promoted. This aspect can also help us to observe educational reforms in a different way. One may observe, therefore, the role of teachers and contextualise their actions in order not to simply blame them for the failure of educational reforms. In short, ‘historical work should be an essential ingredient of the study of school knowledge’. This claim can be observed in Chapter 2. Gary McCulloch, another of the researchers who started the path of the field of curriculum history33 focusses on studying the development of the Nuffield Physics curriculum project. In this work, McCulloch examines the importance that the transnational connections had for the configuration of the first national curriculum project of sciences in the UK. Despite the existence of some previous works, McCulloch analyses the central role played by international connections established by one of the key people in the genesis of the project, Eric Rogers. Through the analysis of a considerable amount of material from Rogers’ personal archive, we observe how his travels and work in the USA developed a key space to understand the educational characteristics and the origin of the Nuffield Physics curriculum project in the UK. For this reason, this chapter indicates the need to introduce the transnational dimension and biographical research itself as a historical phenomenon to understand the direction taken by science education during the second half of the twentieth century in the UK. The historical dimension of life stories and the teacher’s own story is also the object of study of Chapter 3. In an investigation carried out by Goodson and Rain Mikser, it is observed how the neoliberal discourse has managed to become hegemonic within the formerly socialist European countries. Through the study of teachers’ life histories, the authors try to explain a very complex question: how is it possible that in spite of the strong criticism that Estonian teachers established about the control of the curriculum by the central government during the Soviet Socialist Republic, they have nonetheless accepted another type of broad control from the curricular policy of neoliberalism. The authors use the study of teacher narratives to try to explain how this transition

Introduction 

5

has occurred. The analysis carried out here presents an excellent example of how curricular policies are configured in other geographical areas and the importance that the transnational dimension has when constructing curricular policies at national level. Chapter 4 also emphasises the importance that the transnational dimension had in the configuration of black curriculum history in the USA. This study by LaGarrett J. King, Alana D. Murray and Christine Woyshner, makes a historical journey through consistent research and development of curriculum models made in USA black history. The first part focusses on investigating the different phases in which the indicated curricular models were developed. From here, the authors and developments on the different educational projects put in place in formal and non-formal education spaces in different historical periods. In the second part, in a more profound way, the chapter deals broadly with the different programmes of history textbooks of the African-American groups developed in different places in the USA. As a result of this, the programmes of ‘Civic Curriculum of the Black Elks’ and ‘In the 1960s: Black Studies in Schools’ are also studied. All of them, in addition to a historical overview of these alternative curriculum proposals, suggest connections with the African diaspora and transnational influence in this educational movement elsewhere. The connections and the importation of educational ideas are pointed out, as well as new alternatives proposed that open up different curricular possibilities that have not yet been put into practice. Chapter 5, written by Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves, also focusses mainly on the transnational dimension as an approach from which to capture the history of the curriculum in Spain. This chapter models a mode of analysis which focusses on how transnational and national dimensions are mediated and refracted. The authors claim the international factor as a central dimension when understanding the configuration of curricular policy during the Franco regime. It is true that there are important research works about Francoism and education. However, little has been pointed out about the central role played by international organisations such as UNESCO or the OECD in the construction of curricular policy during this historical period. Through the example of the beginning and evolution of educational TV in Francoist Spain, the authors raise the need to introduce a transnational perspective. The context of the Cold War and the Modernization Theory helped to originate an educational conception attached to the economic development that was accepted by the educational elites during the dictatorship. Due to this, this chapter proposes to establish a new approach to address historical studies on Francoism and education. In short, we should try to address in a more complex way this stage of the educational history of the Iberian country – in other words, introduce transnational connections as a factor in the historical construction of the curriculum. The importance that diplomatic flows and connections between countries have had for the changes in education is also the subject of analysis by Mari Hiraoka. Chapter 6 focusses, thus, on analysing the transnational connections

6  McCulloch, Goodson and González-Delgado

that existed between Japan and Great Britain in the educational field within the framework opened up by the International Exhibitions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this study, the author has two objectives. The first tries to show how the representations made by Japan during these exhibitions influenced the construction of the curriculum in the UK. The most important issue to emphasise here is the perspective from which the author departs. This is one of the few works that exists where it is demonstrated how a country from the periphery (Japan) managed to establish a diplomatic game that influenced the social construction of the British curriculum. From here, therefore, the second objective of the chapter is derived. That is, it seeks to indicate how the educational elements that were presented to the International Exhibitions were not mediated exclusively by educational proposals. The presentations were always influenced by political, economic and social factors. In other words, the construction of the curricula of both countries was affected by the diplomatic flows and spaces of global political dominance that were at stake during the period indicated. In order to reach these conclusions, the author focusses on analysing three World Exhibitions and a significant amount of archival material. In short, the author opens a novel line of research in this chapter about the importance that diplomatic spaces have had in shaping the curriculum. It is clear that the transnational dimension occupies a prominent place in this work. However, in this book there are also chapters that have the firm intention of improving and complicating this type of historiographic turn. That is the intention of the work developed by Johan Prytz and Johanna Ringarp. Chapter 7 aims to clarify some of the conclusions about the influence that the transnational dimension has established in some previous works. Through the Swedish case, the authors indicate the importance that local contexts still have to understand the governance of certain educational policies. There are researches that indicate the importance for the education system of the models of transnational governance to understand the school results of Swedish students in the IEA and OECD tests. However, through their research, Prytz and Ringarp indicate that it is necessary to qualify the causal relationships established in such investigations. The authors argue that a transnational perspective is important but that basing it on the category of the nation as a basic unit may hinder rather than help us understand the historical construction of the curriculum in the Swedish case. For this reason, the authors prefer to qualify the transnational factor and indicate the need to keep in mind a local perspective. Comparisons could improve if they were developed between the local communities of the different countries more than in the national set. This aspect can help us to better understand and use transnational perspectives. In this way, we can better understand the historical changes in curricular policy and school disciplines in different countries. Chapter 8, written by Caixia Peng, reviews the origin and evolution of curriculum history as a field of research in Mainland China and Taiwan. Despite

Introduction 

7

having its own national histories in its origins, the author points out how the production of research papers on the history of the curriculum was closely related to open debates from the US and the UK. In this way, the transnational dimension appears as a central element to understand the evolution of the field of study in mainland China and Taiwan. The author reminds us that the historical studies of the curriculum were strongly influenced by the works of Arno Bellack, Herbert Kliebard, Ivor Goodson and Thomas Popkewitz. As was also the case in other nations beyond the UK and the US, these studies were key reference points for their agendas and perspectives of analysis.Despite this, the history of the curriculum in this geographical area is expanding its work fronts. It is worth highlighting the research on the importance that institutions and associations have had, the political debates on the Chinese curriculum, the educational reforms and the key figures of the curricular transformation process. However, other more novel lines have also opened up a space for analysis. It is important to indicate here the history of the concepts in which the curricular policy has been handled, as well as the influence of other perspectives such as intellectual history. This chapter represents one of the most serious attempts to locate the place and evolution of curriculum history in China. At the same time, it demonstrates the mediation that international debates have exercised for the configuration or hybridisation of the proposed lines of work. Precisely this process of hybridisation occupies Chapter 9. For some years, the history of education created research lines related to the educational influence exerted by the metropolis with respect to the colonies. Different studies emphasised the impact that hierarchical processes and curricular policies born from above (top-down) had in the configuration of curricula, and even in models of teacher training in colonised countries. However, more recently, some studies have emphasised the relational rather than hierarchical process that these models of educational transfer created. In this chapter, Linda Chisholm uses the latest transnational approaches to show how the teacher training programmes in South Africa underwent a constant relational process. It is true that training models of a racial nature were set up for teachers. However, these models were subject to intercrossing, loans and transfers between ideas, people and political and cultural processes. This work, as Chisholm points out, takes as its central element the concept of ‘relationality’. Its purpose is not to indicate that there has been no domination, control or power in the relationships established between black and white teachers. Its purpose is to make us see that transnational phenomena work under these spaces of hybridisation. This is an aspect that can also promote processes of colonial inequality from other fronts. Chapter 10 of this book is developed from a similar perspective. This research analyses the influences and transfers between the projects of learning to write from France to Brazil. This is an arresting investigation of ‘transnational transference’. However, Diana Vidal argues how this transnational process failed to occur in similar ways in different countries. In France, for example, the educational debate was grouped around the importance of organisation and

8  McCulloch, Goodson and González-Delgado

school time as a more effective way to achieve the processes of learning to write. On the other hand, in Brazil the concerns were placed on the control of the teacher’s work and the proper use of time in schools. The educative debate that had transformed efficiency produced different directions whilst developing the same programme of learning reading and writing in both countries. As the author points out, the different political, economic and cultural phenomena in France and Brazil modified the ultimate meaning of this project. But not only this type of mediation was important. Understanding why the transfer and exchange of educational ideas occurred in a different way also obliges us to look to other fronts. We refer here, as Vidal points out, to the resistances, ideologies and different visions that teachers can have within their own schools. In this sense, a transnational perspective, says the author, must also be seen from these particular elements of the circulation of ideas between the contexts of the countries and their own school culture. The transnational turn acquires, thus, a greater complexity when introducing these type of considerations. Another work that points to this process of national and local cultural mediation within the transnational dimension is Chapter 11 that closes the book. In this chapter, which is addressed from the present historical time, Elsa Estrela shows us how the curricular policies implemented in Portugal have been influenced by the OECD and the European Union around the Education 2030 project. It is clear that international organisations have affected decisionmaking in the area of the construction of the Portuguese educational policy. However, this curricular policy is not developed exclusively under the same direction as the multilateral cooperation agencies. To identify this process of national transformation, Estrela uses the concept of refraction to capture how educational reception occurs. Through it, the author points out that the transfer of curricular knowledge is subject to multiple dynamics or different levels (multilevel). Knowledge is produced by different actors in different educational contexts. To illustrate this process of refraction, the author uses an investigation carried out in two educational centres. The consultation seems to be clear. The transnational dimension is a key factor of change. However, these forces of change are also produced in one direction or another depending on the historical and cultural reality of each region, country and even professional field. Finally, we provide a final editorial section to indicate what we see as the main conclusions of the book. These conclusions are dedicated to trying to improve, strengthen, discuss and make the transnational dimension more complex as a perspective from which to analyse the history of the curriculum. We point out the importance that colonisation phenomena have had, the influences of international organisations and even the processes of public diplomacy. All of them are remarkable elements that have transformed the curricular policies of the countries of origin. Despite this, we cannot forget that the transnational dimension is much more complex. It does not refer exclusively to the mediation that the large multilateral cooperation agencies have established throughout our history. Nor does it refer concretely to the mediation that

Introduction 

9

nations can exercise to implement one curricular policy or another. The phenomenon is more intricate and subtle. We refer here to the importance of the interaction of cultural elements, economic policies and even the field of education to understand how educational transfer processes occur. The transnational dimension speaks to us of a complex phenomenon carried out by multiple actors and which, of course, goes beyond national narratives. The transnational perspective exhorts us to understand the complex inter-linkages which exist in the globalised and digitalised world we now inhabit.

Notes 1 More information in Gary McCulloch, The Struggle for the History of Education (London: Routledge, 2011): 83–7. 2 David Layton, Science for the People. The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973) and Ivor Goodson, School Subjects and Curriculum Change (London: Croom Helm, 1982). 3 Ivor Goodson, ed., Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum (London: The Falmer Press, 1985). 4 Gary McCulloch, Edgar Jenkins and David Layton, Technological Revolution? The Politics of School Science and Technology in England and Wales since 1945 (London: The Falmer Press, 1985). 5 Barry Cooper, Renegotiating Secondary School Mathematics: A Study of Curriculum Change and Stability (London: The Falmer Press, 1985). 6 Brian E. Woolnough, Physics Teaching in School 1960–85: Of People, Policy and Power (London: The Falmer Press, 1986). 7 See, as an example, the works of Barry M. Franklin, Building the American Community.The School Curriculum and the Search for Social Control (London: The Falmer Press, 1986) and Thomas S. Popkewitz, ed., The Formation of School Subject: The Struggle for the Creating an American Institution (London: The Falmer Press, 1987). 8 Ivor Goodson, eds., International Perspectives in Curriculum History (London: Routledge, 2019. First published in 1987 by Croom Helm). 9 Stephen J. Ball and Ivor Goodson, ed., Teachers’ Lives and Careers (London: Routledge, 1985). 10 Mary Catherine Woolley, “Experiencing the History National Curriculum 1991–2011: Voices of Veteran Teachers,” History of Education 48, no. 2 (2019): 212–32. 11 Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere, eds., Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). 12 Kevin Myers, “National Identity, Citizenship and Education for Displacement: Spanish Refugee Children in Cambridge, 1937,” History of Education 28, no. 3 (1999): 313–25. 13 June Purvis, “Working Class Women and Adult Education in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History of Education 9, no. 3 (1980): 193–212. 14 Jessica B. Schocker and Christine Woyshner, “Representing African American Women in US history textbooks,” The Social Studies 104, no. 1 (2013): 23–31. 15 Christine Woyshner and Chara H. Bohan, eds., Histories of Social Studies and Race: 1865– 2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 16 Kevin Myers,“Inmigrants and Ethnic Minorities in the History of Education,” Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 6 (2009): 801–16. 17 Stephen J.Thornton,“Silence on Gays and Lesbians in Social Studies Curriculum,” Social Education 231 (2003): 226–30. 18 Stuart J. Foster and Adrien Burgess, “Problematics Portrayals and Contentious Content. Representations of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks,” Journal of Educational

10  McCulloch, Goodson and González-Delgado Media, Memory, and Society 5, no. 2 (2013): 20–38 and Mariano González-Delgado, “The Treatment of the Holocaust in High School History Textbooks: A Case Study from Spain,” History of Education 46, no. 6 (2017): 810–25. 19 John L. Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom.The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 20 Ronald W. Evans, The Hope for American School Reform. The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning in Social Studies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 21 Andreas Åkerlund, “The Impact of Foreign Policy on Educational Exchange: The Swedish State Scholarship Programme, 1938–1990,” Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 3 (2014): 390–409; Charles Dorn and Karen Ghodsee, “The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: Communism, UNESCO, and the World Bank,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 2 (2012): 373–98. 22 Héctor Lindo-Fuentes and Erik Ching, Modernizing Minds in El Salvador: Education Reform and the Cold War, 1960–1980 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012). 23 Poul Duedahl, ed., The History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016); Aigul Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen, eds., UNESCO Without Borders: Educational Campaigns for International Understanding (London: Routledge, 2016); Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves, “La enseñanza programada, la UNESCO y los intentos por modificar el curriculum en la España desarrollista (1962– 1974),” Espacio, Tiempo y Educación 4, no. 2 (2017): 73–100. See also Thomas Nygren, “The Contemporary Turn: Debate, Curricula and Swedish Students’ History,” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 4, no. 1 (2012): 40–60. 24 Gary McCulloch and Roy Lowe, “Centre and Periphery: Networks, Space and Geography in the History of Education,” History of Education 32, no. 5 (2003): 457– 59. More information in Eckhardt Fuchs, “History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational Scholarship,” in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges on (Post-) Colonial Education, eds. Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs and Kate Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 11–26. 25 Barnita Bagchi, Eckhart Fuchs and Kate Rousmaniere, eds., Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges on (Post-) Colonial Education (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014); Eckhart Fuchs and Eugenia Roldán Vera, eds., The Transnational in the History of Education (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 26 Daniel Trölher, “The Technocratic Momentum after 1945, the Development of Teaching Machines, and Sobering Results,” Journal of Educational, Media, Memory, and Society 5, no. 2 (2013): 1–19. 27 Wolfram Kaiser, “The Transnational Turn Meets the Educational Turn Engaging and Educating Adolescents in History Museums in Europe,” Journal of Educational, Media, Memory, and Society 4, no. 2 (2012): 8–22. 28 David Crook and Gary McCulloch, “Introduction: Comparative Approaches to the History of Education,” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002): 397–400; David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre, National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling (Standford: Standford University Press, 2005); Aida Terrón, Josep M. Comelles and Enrique Perdiguero-Gil, “Schools and Health Education in Spain During the Dictatorship of General Franco (1939–1975),” History of Education Review 46, no. 2 (2017): 208–23. 29 Ivan Lind Christensen and Christian Ydesen, “Routes of Knowledge: Toward a Methodological Framework for Tracing the Historical Impact of International Organizations,” European Education 47, no. 3 (2015): 274–88; Zoe Moody, “Transnational Treaties on Children’s Rights: Norm Building and Circulation in Twentieth Century,” Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 1–2 (2014): 151–64; Andrea Mariuzzo, “American cultural diplomacy and post-war educational reforms: James Bryant Conant’s mission to Italy in 1960,” History of Education 45, no. 3 (2016): 352–71.

Introduction 

11

30 Ivor Goodson, Curriculum, Personal Narrative and the Social Future (London: Routledge, 2014). 31 Kristen Sivesind, Azita Afsar and Kari Bachmann, “Transnational Policy Transfer over Three Curriculum Reforms in Finland: The Constructions of Conditional and Purposive Programs (1994–2016),” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 345–65. See also Johannes Westberg, “‘How did Teachers Make a Living? The Teacher Occupation, Livelihood Diversification and the Rise of Mass Schooling in NineteenthCentury Sweden,” History of Education 48, no. 1 (2019): 19–40. 32 David Phillips and Kimberly Ochs, “Researching Policy Borrowing: Some Methodological Challenges in Comparative Education,” British Educational Research Journal 30, no. 6 (2004): 773–84. See also Noah W. Sobe, “Entanglement and Transnationalism in the History of American Education,” in Rethinking the History of Education: Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods and Knowledge, ed. Thomas, S. Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 93–107; Noah W. Sobe, “Problematizing Comparison in a Post-Exploration Age: Big Data, Educational Knowledge, and the Art of Criss-Crossing,” Comparative Education Review 62, no. 4 (2018): 459–81 and Sébastien-Akira Alix, “Transnationalising American Progressivism and Emancipation: Frances B. Johnston and Progressive Education at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition,” Paedagogica Historica 55, no. 1 (2019): 55–69. 33 Gary McCulloch, Edgar William Jenkins and David Layton, Technological Revolution?: The Politics of School Science and Technology in England and Wales Since 1945 (London: The Falmer Press, 1985).

1

From mystification to markets The evolution of curriculum history and life history1 Ivor Goodson

The book International Perspectives in Curriculum History2 was published in 1987 and the genesis and genealogy of this kind of work can be traced back to the protracted curriculum debates of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, curriculum history can be traced much further back to the work of Foster Watson3 (1909) in the early twentieth century and indeed much earlier. My own work on curriculum history focussed on the evolution of school subjects. Here the main theorists had tended to be either sociologists or philosophers in the 1960s and 1970s. Likewise curriculum history was growing transnationally as many curriculum changes constituted ‘world movements’. Of course, by the 1980s as globalisation gathered force the unit of analysis began to shift from national studies to engage with more transnational concerns. The interest in studying subject knowledge first surfaced in the early 1970s. In Britain at this time there was a wave of change in secondary schooling from a previously selective ‘tripartite’ system towards a fully comprehensive system where all types and abilities of children were grouped under the roof of one school. This transformation in the organisation of secondary schooling led to an interesting series of curriculum debates both within schools and outside schools about the form that the comprehensive school curriculum should take. In addition to comprehensive reorganisation, the regime of school examinations was fairly liberal at the time and a good deal of work was done to define ‘mode 3’ examinations. These examinations were set up and partially conducted by the teachers themselves in association with examination boards (the Associated Examining Board was a pioneer in developing this mode). Whilst I had trained in history and done doctoral work at the London School of Economics, I initially taught the subject at university but was drawn into comprehensive school teaching because of its promises of social justice. My own teaching began in a comprehensive school in 1970. Significantly, I had trained under Basil Bernstein, Michael Young and Brian Davies at the Institute of Education in 1969/70 and hence had already begun to think around issues of knowledge and control. When the opportunity to develop new school curriculum courses, which aimed at the comprehensive clientele, arose I became involved. A series of new mode 3 examinations were developed in new subject areas such as environmental studies, urban studies and community studies. These new subject areas seemed to offer the chance of better patterns of motivation and

From mystification to markets   13

involvement for the children of working people than had been on offer from the more ‘traditional subjects’. Certainly, the levels of interest and engagement that these syllabuses facilitated seemed to imply that there were new approaches to learning which may well improve on or at the very least complement the traditional subjects of the secondary school curriculum. But from the beginning these new content areas were viewed as ‘not proper subjects’. In becoming so systematically involved in the production of courses on environmental studies and urban studies, I began to reflect on the genesis and genealogy of school subjects generally. Quite by chance, an advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement alerted me to the possibility of studying the question ‘whatever happened to environmental studies?’ There was a research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust which had begun at the University of Sussex in 1974 and I was offered the chance to work as a research fellow on the project for two years beginning in 1975. Alongside the project work, I began a PhD which looked at the battle over environmental studies and ruminated about subject traditions implanted in school budgets and resources, nurtured by advisors over several decades, located in special school buildings and rooms, living in its teachers. This subject tradition would seem to act as a kind of curriculum investment: an investment offering the chances of continuity, evolution and of holding a gap in which innovations might be conceived, defined and grow. At the time, I produced a position paper which stands as a reasonable statement of the research project I was tentatively trying to define at the time, so it is carried here in its original form. The paper was written in 1976 at the beginning of my doctoral studies and speculated about the possibilities that curriculum history had for scrutinising how school subjects played a part in mystifying the processes of social reproduction.

Relevant traditions School knowledge has long been a subject of study for historians; a significant body of research has been completed, notably by specialists, scholars in the field of ‘history of education’. In most, the work concentrates on the educational aspects of historical periods, a focus that is probable where the historical traditional pursues understanding of ‘the uniqueness of each individual event’.4 However, this rigid periodisation of educational history poses severe problems, since links with contemporary education often remains undeveloped, or a kind of content continuity thesis is assumed to operate. Geoffrey Barraclough has drawn up a similar indictment of modern European history, where: Historians of the recent past have assumed for the most part that, if they explain the factors leading to the disintegration of the old world, they were automatically providing an example of how the New World emerged.5

14  Ivor Goodson

Barraclough explains this partly by: The tendency of historical writing today to emphasise the element of continuity in history. For most historians contemporary history does not constitute a separate period with distinctive characteristics of its own; they regard it rather as the most recent face of a continuous process.6 Whilst historians of education have often failed to link insights into the past with our knowledge of contemporary education, many sociological studies have inverted this problem. Herbert Blumer (1969) has drawn attention to the problem when studying large-scale organisations and argues a ‘need to recognise that joint action is temporarily linked to previous joint action’. He warns that ‘one shuts a major door to understanding any form for instance of joint action if one ignores this connection’.7 This ‘historical linkage’ is important because: The designation is an interpretation through which people form and maintain their organised relations are always in a degree of carry-over from the past. To ignore this carry-over sets a genuine risk for the scholar.8 Paradoxically, since Blumer wrote this in 1969 some developments in sociology have tended to move in the opposite direction, thereby involving the ‘genuine risks’ of which he warns. Interactionist studies have focussed on the perspectives and definitions emerging through interaction and stressed situation rather than background and history. In this work, the backcloth to action is often presented as a somewhat monolithic structural or cultural legacy which constrains, in rather disconnected manner, the actors’ potentialities. But in overreacting to more deterministic models, interactionists may be in danger of failing to present any clear connection with historical process. Of course, ‘any process of interaction is never fully determined by social, structural or cultural forces and social structures emerge out of and are sustained and change my social interaction’.9 But the danger of such stress on personal potential – ‘actors always possess some degree of autonomy’10 – is that historical linkages will remain undeveloped or, at any rate, undeveloped. In studying school knowledge, the dangers of such an approach have been clearly evidenced in the past decade. Classroom practice, a crucial and often neglected area, can, by interactionist overreaction, be presented as the essential context wherein patterns of knowledge transmission are defined. One unfortunate side effect of this focus is that when attempts to reform classroom practice fail, the teacher, who is the immediate and visible agency of that failure, may be presented as exclusively culpable. In seeking to explain attempts at reform in school knowledge, we need a strategy that is curative of the classroom myopia exhibited in such accounts. Another major development in sociological studies, the sociology of knowledge, has laid claim to one such curative strategy. Knowledge is seen as evolving in response to promotional and presentational agency of particular subject

From mystification to markets   15

groups who act to defend and expand their interests. Similarly, knowledge patterns are viewed as reflecting the status hierarchies of each society through the activities of the dominant group. Very often, however, in spite of appeals from Michael Young such work has not presented the evolutionary, historical process at work.11 Studies have developed horizontally, working out from theories of social structure and social order to evidence of the application. Such an approach inevitably obscures rather than clarifies those historical situations in which ‘gaps, discrepancies and ambiguities are created within which individuals can manoeuvre’.12 As Herbert Butterfield once wrote, series of casuality are ‘by no means sufficient in themselves to explain the next stage of the story, the next turn of events’13 and Geoffrey Barraclough has noted that ‘at every great turning point of the past we are confronted by the fortuitous and the unforeseen’.14 The historical elements of recent interactionism and the sociology of knowledge may partly be a reflection of the historical period in which these new directions have developed. A review of the documents and statements of the curriculum reform movement inaugurated in the 1960s reveal a widespread belief that there could be a complete break with past traditions. At a time when traditions were thought to be on the point of being overthrown it was perhaps unsurprising that so many studies paid scant attention to the evolution and establishment of those traditions. In the event, radical change did not occur. We were left in the position of needing to re-examine the emergence and survival of that which is seen as ‘traditional’.

Towards a history of school knowledge Historical study seeks to understand how thoughts and action has evolved in past social circumstances. Following this evolution through time to the present day affords insight into how those circumstances we experience as contemporary reality have been negotiated, constructed and reconstructed over time. Shortspan interactive study or static theoretical work approaches the understanding of cultural and structural factors in a manner which is methodologically (and often in our aspiration) distinct. The historical studies in this collection have a common intention: in following the evolution of thought and action through historical time, they seek to understand that which constitutes the contemporary reality experience at school knowledge. The human process by which men make their own history does not, as Marx noted, take place in circumstances of their own choosing. However, since both men and circumstances do vary over time, so too do the potentialities for negotiating reality. The human process takes place at different levels and, though in a sense, falsely dichotomous, there are two basic levels that are not amenable to historical study: 1. the individual life-history. The process of negotiation change is continuous throughout a person’s life and occurs ‘both in episodic encounters and in long-lasting socialising processes over the whole life history’ (Blumer, 1976, 3);

16  Ivor Goodson

2. the group or collective level: professions, subjects or disciplines, for instance, evolve as social movements over time. Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss have developed the notion of professions: as loose amalgamations of segments pursuing different objectives in different manners and delicately held together and a common name at a particular period of history.15 David Layton has discerned three stages that school subjects go through: first, justify their presence on grounds of people relevance, taught by non-specialists who bring ‘the mission enthusiasm of pioneers to the task’, to the final stage where ‘the selection of subject matter is determined in large measure by the judgements and practices of the specialist scholars who lead enquiries in the field’. This last stage, ‘where teachers of the subject constitute a profession with established rules and values’16 leads to the situation Cyril Norwood described as long ago as 1943: Subjects have tended to become preserves belonging to specialist teachers: barriers have been erected between them, and teachers have felt unqualified or not free to trespass upon the dominions of other teachers.17 Similarly, Thomas Kuhn has developed an evolutionary, indeed revolutionary, model of ‘paradigm’ change in scientific disciplines.18 In a sense his work compliments that of Ben-David and Collins (1966) who have scrutinised the social factors in the foundation of psychology.19 They note that whilst ‘the ideas necessary for the creation of a new discipline are usually available over a relatively long period of time’ and in ‘several places’, growth occurs only when people become interested in the idea ‘not only as an intellectual content but also as a potential means of establishing a new intellectual identity and particularly a new occupational role’. So far, studies of history of contemporary knowledge, let alone school knowledge, have tended to resemble the pre-paradigmatic stages of discipline. The studies have been conducted in several places at different times and have often been undertaken by non-specialists who have brought the ‘enthusiasm of pioneers’ to their work. (This collection of papers may mark the transition to a new stage for an increasing number of educational researchers are undertaking historical work.) Bob Macdonald and Rob Walker have recently argued that in school curricula ‘by extending our sense of history we can develop a different way of viewing species’.20 Mary Waring’s work on Nuffield science was developed from a similar perspective: If we are to understand events, whether of thought or of action, knowledge of the background is essential. Knowledge of events is merely the raw material of history: to be an intelligible reconstruction of the past, events

From mystification to markets   17

must be related to other events, and to the assumptions and practices of the milieu. Hence, they must be made the subject of enquiry, their origins as products of particular social and historical circumstances, the manner in which individuals and groups have acted must be identified, and explanations for their actions sought.21 The justification for historical studies of the evolution school knowledge can be found at the level of thought and action. First, such work will improve our knowledge of school knowledge. Historical studies can elucidate the changing human process behind the definition and promotion of school subjects. Employing this strategy shifts the emphasis from questions of the intrinsic and philosophic value of subjects, from their existence as objective realities, to the motives and activities immanent and inherent in their construction and maintenance. Further, historical scrutiny offers insight into the existence of patterns and recurrent risk constraints: why, for instance, certain ‘traditions’ in school knowledge survive and others disappear. What historical studies do not as a major intention seek to provide are particular theories; nonetheless they may use and contribute to theory. Second, at the level of school practice, historical studies can aid analysis. Such studies might even aid in explaining the maintenance of anti-research traditions among teachers. Partly, teachers’ antipathy derives from the point M. Shipman makes about the curriculum project he was involved with: The end-product of the project was determined in the field, in contact with the school, not on the drawing board … In the end it was what worked that survived.22 But the autonomy of the teacher, her capacity for active reinterpretation, should not be overestimated, for major constraints do exist. Hence, Shipman’s judgement in a sense missed the point: only what is prepared on the drawing board goes into the school and therefore has a chance to be interpreted and to survive. Exploring the editing process which takes place on the drawing board of history with respect to school knowledge is more than static historicism. By understanding this process, we can define a range of constraints that are immanent in the teachers’ work. Historical studies should be a prerequisite to attempts to change classroom practice. Linking the teacher to the history of her/his working milieu could further the potential for actively creating new history.

Studying subject knowledge A good deal of this research programme for developing a social history of school knowledge owed a debt to the work of critical theorists and sociologists of knowledge from the 1960s onwards.

18  Ivor Goodson

At that time, a new impetus to scholarship on school subjects had come from sociologists and specifically from sociologists of knowledge. Writing in 1968, Frank Musgrove exhorted educational researchers to ‘examine subjects both within the school and the nation at large as social systems sustained by communication networks, material endowments, and ideologies’.23 In the communication networks, Geoffrey Esland (1971) later argued that research should focus in part, on the subject perspective of the teacher.24 The knowledge which a teacher thinks ‘fills up’ his subject is held in common with members of a supporting community who collectively approach its paradigms and utility criteria, as they are legitimated in training courses and ‘official’ statements. It would seem that teachers, because of the dispersed nature of their epistemic communities, experience the conceptual precariousness which comes from the lack of significant others who can confirm plausibility. They are, therefore, heavily dependent on journals, and, to a lesser extent, conferences, for their reality confirmation.25 Geoffrey Esland and Roger Dale, later developed this focus on teachers within subject communities: Teachers, as spokesmen for subject communities are involved in an elaborate organization of knowledge. The community has a history, and, through it, a body of respected knowledge. It has rules for recognizing “unwelcome” or “spurious” matter, and ways of avoiding cognitive contamination. It will have a philosophy and a set of authorities, all of which give strong legitimation to the activities which are acceptable to the community. Some members are accredited with the power to make “official statements” – for instance, editors of journals, presidents, chief examiners and inspectors. These are important as “significant others” who provide models to new or wavering members of appropriate belief and conduct.26 Esland was concerned that scholarships were developed which illuminated the role of professional groups in the social construction of school subjects.27 These groups can be seen as mediators of the ‘social forces’, to which Watson had alluded: The subject associations of the teaching profession may be theoretically represented as segments and social movements involved in the negotiation of new alliances and rationales, as collectively held reality constructions became transformed. Thus, applied to the professional identities of teachers within a school, it would be possible to reveal the conceptual regularities and changes which are generated through membership of particular subject communities, as they were manifested in: textbooks, syllabi, journals, conference reports, etc.28 In the light of the importance of historical perspectives’ Esland added that ‘subjects can be shown to have “careers” which are dependent on the

From mystification to markets   19

social-structural and social-psychological correlates of membership of epistemic communities’.29 The relationship between what counts as education and issues of power and control had been elucidated in 1961 by Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution: It is not only that the way in which education is organized can be seen to express consciously and unconsciously, the wider organization of a culture and a society so that what has been thought of as a single distribution is in fact an actual shaping to particular social ends. It is also, that the content of education which is subject to great historical agnation, again expresses, again both consciously and unconsciously, certain basic elements in the culture. What is thought of as “an education” being in fact a particular set of emphases and omissions.30 One might add to Williams’ notion of ‘the content of education’. It has been noted elsewhere that ‘the battle over the content of the curriculum while often more visible, is in many senses less important than the control over the underlying forms’.31 Young sought to follow up the relationship between school knowledge and social control and to do so in a manner which focussed on content and form. He argued, following Bernstein, that: Those in positions of power will attempt to define what is to be taken as knowledge, how accessible to different groups any knowledge is, and what are the accepted relationships between different knowledge areas, and between those who have access to them and make them available.32 His concern with the form of high-status school subjects focused on the ‘organizing principles’ which he discerned as underlying the academic curriculum: These are literacy, or an emphasis on written as opposed to oral presentation, individualism (or avoidance of group work or cooperativeness) which focused on how academic work is assessed and is a characteristic of both the “process” of learning and the way the “product” is presented; abstractness of the knowledge arid its structuring and compartmentalizing independently of the knowledge of the learner; finally and linked to the former is what I have called the un-relatedness of academic curricula, which refers to the extent to which they are “at odds” with daily life and experience.33 This emphasis on the form of school knowledge should not exclude concerns like that of Williams with the social construction of particular contents. The crucial point to grasp is that it is the interrelated force of form and content which should be at the centre of our study of school subjects. The study of subject, form and content should, moreover, be placed in an historical perspective.

20  Ivor Goodson

In fact, Young later came to acknowledge the somewhat static determinism of his earlier writing in Knowledge and Control and to argue that historical work should be an essential ingredient of the study of school knowledge. He wrote of the need to understand the ‘historical emergence and persistence of particular conventions (school subjects for example)’. By failing to situate the problems of contemporary education historically one is again limited from understanding issues of politics and control. He concluded that: ‘one crucial way of reformulating and transcending the limits within which we work is to see … how such limits are not given or fixed but produced through the conflicting actions and interests of men in history’.34 The launching of the studies of curriculum history came at a fortuitous historical time. At this time, economic world order was becoming globalised through patterns of financial deregulation and political change. Notably with the accession of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States, but also more globally, there were more changes. This meant that focussing on the nation state as the unit of curriculum change and control was no longer a valid scholarly procedure. Curriculum change had to be viewed through a more transnational lens and this was reflected in the fact that many of the books in the series came from a range of different countries. Alongside this change in the focus of curriculum history towards more transnational modalities there was a change to more focus on the teacher’s life and work. Again, this change was reflected in the work on teachers’ voices and teachers’ lives and careers and it showed how this phenomenon was changing in a transnational role, specifically in a national and contingent manner. So, in this period – the 1960s through to the 1980s – curriculum became a litmus test for issues of politics and control. To understand, for example, how different life chances were given to the children of different social groups, curriculum was a major indicator of distribution. One could say that in this period that patterns of politics and control were mystified through curriculum construction and curriculum delivery. Indeed, in 1985, Falmer Press launched a new series, ‘Studies in Curriculum History’, which focussed on the historical emergence and evolution of school subjects and curriculum. For over a decade a range of studies of curriculum history were published which now provide an invaluable archive for contemporary students and scholars. As the 1980s progressed, more and more centralised control was taken over curriculum. Perhaps the key watershed was the definition of a National Curriculum in 1988. This meant that previous patterns of curriculum construction and contestation were replaced by a much more bureaucratic centralism. From now on, understanding contests over curriculum and curriculum distribution would be a much more sociological and political undertaking. In a sense the contests over education moved from issues of curriculum construction and delivery to issues of teacher belief and teacher pedagogy. This was because the centralised dictation of curriculum was a largely covert process that could not be studied or disentangled in the previous manner. As the site of contestation moved from curriculum construction to teacher belief and

From mystification to markets   21

classroom pedagogy, so too some of the sites of curriculum study themselves had to change, for it was in the classroom contests and the school political contests that one could begin to understand how curriculum was actually being processed and delivered. Hence, a good deal of my own work moved from conventional curriculum history to a much more teacher-life-history–focussed kind of study. Stephen Ball and I produced a book called Teachers’ Lives and Careers in 1985 and this became an Open University set book.35 This was an example of the tendency that studies of teacher life histories and teacher pedagogy began to focus much more on life histories and teacher life narratives. In fact, this move towards life history and ethnography had been presaged in earlier work. In 1984 I had edited a book on Defining the Curriculum: History and Ethnography36 where we had argued these methodologies should be combined for maximum scholarly reward. In one of his last papers, Lawrence Stenhouse made two points about historical and ethnographic work, arguing that they were the two main traditions on which case study work draws. First, he argued: History is essentially documentary, concerned with the discussion and interpretation of evidence accessible to scholars. Ethnography, though it draws on field-notes, seldom treats them as documents to be made available for critical discussion, depending for confirmatory responses upon the reader’s experience of like situations, the cogency of the theory offered, and perhaps trust in the ethnographer.37 Second, and more controversially, he felt that there was a sense in which: History is the work of insiders, ethnography of outsiders. In its origins history has been how the ruling classes write about their own society, ethnography has been how they write about the societies of others … The historian, assuming a shared understanding of human behaviour, deals in the foreground of action. The ethnographer, by contrast, has used a degree of naivety as a tool to call into question the commonplace.38 But whilst the distinctiveness of history and ethnography can be evidenced and discussed, from the beginning the complementarity of the approaches in examining common problems must be stressed. Indeed, Hammersley felt that: Not only are history and ethnography complementary but they also share much in common. For example, they both display a primary concern with describing social events and processes in detail, and a distaste for theories which, as they see it, ride roughshod over the complexity of the social world. Often too they share a commitment to documenting “in their own terms” the perspectives of the people involved in the events and settings they describe.39

22  Ivor Goodson

In focussing our studies on school subjects in particular, the dangers should be clearly faced. Seeley has developed the distinction between the ‘taking’ and the ‘making’ of problems. If we ‘take’ subjects as the focus we are in substantial danger of confirming their ‘taken-for-grantedness’.40 A historical view will confirm that the reinstatement or reaffirmation of school subjects per se, and certain subjects in particular, reflects a new regime of social and political control. Whilst it can be argued that research needs to follow these changes, we must never forget that the focus reflects actions grounded in a new political climate – the new orthodoxy of a dominant subject-based curriculum is the opposite of ‘taken-for-granted’ or ‘given’ school worlds; it is in fact an index of intervention. Writing of work done in the United States, Stephen Hazlett puts forward a trenchant critique: In examining the historical moment, some writers on curriculum curiously act as if they were reading tea leaves rather than deliberately and selfcritically attempting to interpret a complex array of particulars. Sometimes their readings are so vague and abstract as to make it difficult to see a logical connection with proposed curriculum alterations, or their assertions are so categorical that they leave no room for alternative interpretations, or their statements imply that educational directives are lodged in history itself.41 Examples of the kind of work Hazlett describes are not difficult to find, where curriculum changes are simply related to notions like the ‘demands of technological development’ or ‘shifts in the economic and political climate’. Hazlett is equally forceful in his criticism of the failure of historians to come to grips with the experience of subject contents in the classroom; he argues that the technical and methodological problems involved have been overstated, and recent developments in the oral/biographical history tradition seem to indicate that there are in fact considerable possibilities in this area. The “lived” curriculum of the school and classroom is a level of inquiry that has suffered the most neglect. As a group, historians have shied away from the particular school because they have assumed that educational history is deductive and that extant records are insufficient.42 Taken together, the techniques of history and life history and ethnography can provide us with the tools to examine and interrogate school subjects empirically and may also lay the groundwork for the development of theories which capture and explain the processes of change (or absence of change) in school subjects. A multiple-focussed analysis, using histories, life histories and ethnographies, allows full account to be taken of the socially and politically constructed nature of school subjects and tends towards a view of the structure and contents

From mystification to markets   23

of the school curriculum as the products of previous and ongoing struggles, within and between subject communities. In this way the ‘taken-for grantedness’ of the curriculum and its subject components is challenged.43 Historical work concentrating on the emergence and establishment (or decline) of school subjects highlights the contested nature of subject knowledge, indicating the role played by various, vested interest groups in the selection and definition of ‘appropriate’ contents. Ethnographic inquiry and teachers’ life histories provides insights into those factors which mediate between the ‘espoused’ and the ‘enacted’ curriculum as well as emphasising the realisation and experience of the different contents and forms of subject knowledge in the classroom (or laboratory, or workshop). In both cases, conflict, compromise and negotiation are key concepts. In those public arenas (subject associations, conferences, examination boards, school staff and department meetings) where issues of content are debated and ‘settled’, the interests, in terms of career, status or access to resources, of particular groups may be at stake. In Archer’s terms, if we are to understand the outcomes of curriculum competitions, conflicts and compromises, ‘we need to know not only who won the struggle for control but also how, not merely who lost, but also how badly they lost!’.44 Such disputes and settlements are also relevant in understanding the enactment of subject knowledge and the relationship between subjects in the school and in the classroom. At the institutional level, access to resources and to teaching time affect and are crucially affected by subject statuses. Curriculum decisions taken in staff meetings are eminently political matters. Pupils ‘demand’ and ‘resistance’ places them in a position of negotiating the way in which subjects are enacted and realised in the classroom. Histories, life histories and ethnographies of school subjects can provide access to the understanding of the ‘content’ of education and a positive response to the exhortations of those such as Raymond Williams to pursue the study of ‘what counts as education’: The business of organising education – creating types of institutions, deciding lengths of courses, agreeing conditions of entry and duration – is certainly important. Yet to conduct this business as if it were the distribution of a simple product is wholly misleading. It is not only that the way in which education is organised can be seen to express, consciously and unconsciously, the wider organisation of a culture and a society, so that what has been thought of as simple distribution is in fact an active shaping to particular social ends. It is also that the content of education, which is subject to great historical variation, again expresses, both consciously and unconsciously, certain basic elements in the culture, what is thought of as “an education” being in fact a particular set of emphases and omissions. Further, when this selection of content is examined more closely, it will be seen to be one of the decisive factors affecting its distribution: the cultural choices involved in the selection of content have an organic relation to the social choices involved in the practical organisation.45

24  Ivor Goodson

As centralisation and marketisation began their pincer movement from the 1980s onwards the modes of curriculum study needed to change. The mixed methods of curriculum history and life history became more and more relevant. As central control and markets took over the construction and direction of curriculum change much that was previously subject to democratic oversight became opaque. The role of education groups was moved from coordinating curricular definition and assessment to compliance with government dictates and market imperatives. But educator groups, especially frontline teachers, were still involved in the ongoing mediation and delivery of curriculum. Hence, the sites of definition and, indeed, contestation moved their location. A combination of curriculum history and teachers’ life histories and ethnographies allowed ongoing scholarly scrutinising of these new sites of negotiation. Instead of studying the implications of curriculum construction, the new modes of study focussed on the new sites of negotiation that sat at the interface of governance, markets and curriculum delivery. New curriculum history covered those mixed methods modalities and, in doing so, broadened its scholarly outreach. Moreover, this broadened approach greatly facilitated the scholarly capacity to study ‘world movements’ of curriculum and the associated phenomena of globalisation and transnational imperatives. This was especially important, because it involved changing our study from exploring how curriculum mystified patterns of social reproduction to looking at the manifold ways in which markets produced new modalities of distribution and reproduction. Mystification remained a largely national phenomena whilst markets ensured transnational patterns. In the globalised world of education, the mixed methods of curriculum history and life history led to new patterns of study. The emerging patterns of ‘refraction’ began to lead scholars to study the interaction between global systemic narratives and national and local patterns of definition and delivery.46 New transnational patterns of curriculum lead to new methods of study (see works of W. Pinar, 2003, 2014, 2015)47 and to new international networks of scholarly activity. As new patterns of curriculum and new patterns of control proliferate, scholars need to respond flexibly and sometimes iconoclastically, such as to develop new modalities and methodologies. This is the challenge for curriculum scholars in the transnational era.

Notes 1 This article is part of the national research project IUT18-2 “Teachers’ professionality and professionalism in changing context (1.01.2014–31.12.2019)”, supported by the Estonian Research Council. 2 Goodson, I., ed. International Perspectives in Curriculum History (London: Croom Helm, 1987, 2018). 3 Foster Watson, The Beginnings of Teaching Modern Subjects in England (London, Bath and New York: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1909). 4 William H. Burston, Principles of History Teaching (London: Methuen, 1966), 31. 5 Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 9.

From mystification to markets   25 6 Ibid., 11. 7 Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969). 8 Ibid., 60. 9 Martin Hammersley and Peter Woods, eds., The Process of Schooling (London: Routledge, 1976), 3. 10 Ibid. 11 Michael F. D. Young, “School Science: Innovations or Alienation,” in School Experience, eds. Peter Woods and Martin Hammersley (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 250–61. 12 Rob Walker and Ivor Goodson, “Humour in the Classroom,” in School Experience, eds. Peter Woods and Martin Hammersley (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 223. 13 Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), 94. 14 Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), 11. 15 R. Bucher and A. Strauss (1976) in M. Hammersley and P Woods (eds) The Process of Schooling. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 19. 16 David Layton, “Science in General Education,” Trends in Education, (1972) January, 11. 17 Board of Education, Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (The Norwood Report) (London: HMSO, 1943). 18 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed.) (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1970). 19 Joseph Ben-David and Randall Collins, “Social Factors in the Origins of a New Science: The Case of Psychology,” American Sociological Review 34, no. 4 (1966): 451–65. 20 Bob Macdonald and Rob Walker, Changing the Curriculum (London: Open Books, 1976), 86. 21 Mary Waring, “Aspects of the Dynamics of Curriculum Reform in Secondary School Science,” (unpublished PhD, University of London, 1975), 12. 22 M. Shipman, “Curriculum for Inequality,” in The Curriculum: Context, Design and Development, Edinburgh, ed. R. Hooper (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1974), 2. 23 Frank Musgrove, “The Contribution of Sociology to the Study of the Curriculum,” in Changing the Curriculum, ed. J. F. Kerr (London: University of London, 1968), 101. 24 Geoffrey M. Esland, “Teaching and Learning as the Organization of Knowledge,” in Knowledge and Control, ed. Michael. F. D.Young (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971) 63–79. 25 Ibid., 79. 26 Geoffrey M. Esland and Roger Dale, eds., School and Society (Course E282, Unit 2) (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1973), 70–1. 27 Geoffrey M. Esland, ‘Teaching and Learning as the Organization of Knowledge’ in M. F. D. Young (Ed) 1971, Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education. London: Collier Macmillan. 28 Foster Watson, ‘The Beginnings of Teaching Modern Subjects in England’. 1971. EP Publications. 29 Geoffrey M. Esland, ‘Teaching and Learning as the Organization of Knowledge’ in M. F. D. Young (Ed) 1971 Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education. London: Collier Macmillan. 30 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), 146. 31 Ibid. 32 Michael F. D. Young, “An Approach to the Study of Curricula as Socially Organised Knowledge,” in Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. Michael F. D.Young (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971), 52. 33 Michael F. D. Young, ‘An Approach to the Study of Curricula as Socially Organised Knowledge’, 38. 34 Young, 1977b, 248–9. 35 Ivor Goodson and Stephen J. Ball, Teachers’ Lives and Careers. 2nd Ed. (London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer/Open University, Open University Set Book Edition, 1985).

26  Ivor Goodson 36 Ivor Goodson and Stephen J. Ball, eds. Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer, 1984/2013). 37 Lawrence Stenhouse, Case Study and Educational Practice (East Anglia: Mimeo, Care, University of East Anglia, 1982), 4. 38 Ibid. 39 Martin Hammersley, “Making a Vice of Our Virtues: Some Notes on Theory in Ethnography and History,” in Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies, eds. Ivor Goodson and Stephen J. Ball (London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer, 1984), 15. 40 J. Seeley, “The ‘Making’ and ‘Taking’ of Problems,” Social Problems no. 14 (1966). 41 J. Stephen Hazlett, “Conceptions of Curriculum History,” Curriculum Inquiry 9, no. 2 (1979): 129–35, 130. 42 J. Stephen Hazlett, ‘Conceptions of curriculum history’, 131. 43 Michael F. D. Young, Bringing Knowledge Back In: From Social Constructivism to Social Realism in the Sociology of Education (Routledge: London, New York and Philadelphia, 2007). 44 Margaret S. Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems (London: Sage, 1979), 23. 45 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, 145. 1961. London: Chatto and Windus. 46 See Ivor Goodson and Tim Rudd, “Developing a Concept of ‘Refraction’: Exploring Educational Change and Oppositional Practice,” Education Practice and Theory 34, no. 1 (2012): 5–24; Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson, I., “The Concept of Refraction and the Narrative Approach to Exploring Multi-Level Social Reform Initiatives: Conceptual and Methodological Issues,” in The Routledge International Handbook of European Social Transformation, eds. P. Vihalemm, A. Maso and S. Opermann (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2018), 84–97; Ivor Goodson and Sverker Lindblad, eds. Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe (Rotterdam; Boston and Taipei: Sense, 2010). 47 See works William F. Pinar, Donna Trueit, William E. Jr. Doll, and Hongyu Wang, The Internationalization of Curriculum Studies (New York: Peter Lang, 2003); William F. Pinar, International Handbook of Curriculum Research, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2014);William F. Pinar and Zhang Hua, Autobiography and Teacher Development in China: Subjectivity and Culture in Curriculum Reform (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

2

Physics for the enquiring mind The Nuffield physics Ordinarylevel course, 1962–19661 Gary McCulloch

The Nuffield physics curriculum project has a strong claim to have been the first national curriculum project held in the UK, with significant social and political implications. Yet there has been very little research on this project since its introduction over half a century ago. This chapter reviews the experience of the Ordinary Level General Certificate of Education (O-level GCE) project in its development stage of 1962–1966. It does so in particular by investigating the transnational dimensions as opposed to the national basis of the project, involving its personal and ideological connections with the United States. The key role of the project organiser, Eric Rogers, was based on these transnational connections. His ideal of physics for the enquiring mind, developed in a widely influential text, was based on his transatlantic experiences. These were manifested first in his early career travelling in the United States and communicating with John Haden Badley, the veteran headmaster of the progressive independent school, Bedales School, in England. They were highlighted also in his interactions when he was based at Princeton University in the US with the local team of Nuffield physics, while he was its organiser during its development phase.

Introduction The Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project (NFSTP) marked the beginning of a concerted phase of curriculum reform in Britain in the 1960s, reflecting the high hopes for educational and curriculum change, and more broadly for social change, that were widely held during that decade. It represented modernisation in a new age of science dominated by the atom bomb and the space race. In many ways it was, at least initially, an elite project, strongly influenced in the British context by the elite independent schools, and confined largely to the 20 to 25 percent of pupils in grammar and independent schools who were able to take the O-level examination at the age of 16.2 As such, it was perhaps overshadowed by the egalitarian reforms of the 1960s such as progressive education in primary schools, comprehensive secondary

28  Gary McCulloch

education, the Schools Council curriculum reforms of the later 1960s, and polytechnics and the Open University in higher education.3 Nuffield O-level physics was the first project to be developed under the NFSTP, and perhaps the most innovative and interesting. It addressed an issue that has remained an important policy concern in subsequent decades, that is, how to excite and enthuse pupils about physics. Nuffield physics aimed to achieve this through encouraging pupils to conduct their own experiments, and to think as far as possible like scientists, rather than by learning facts. In essence, this approach can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Archimedes and his famous cry ‘Eureka’ – ‘I have found it!’. Yet it has received little historical attention. Unlike Nuffield O-level chemistry, which was the focus of Mary Waring’s significant study published in 1979, Nuffield O-level physics in particular still awaits detailed historical treatment.4 In the 1960s, it could be suggested that Nuffield Science was ‘conceived on New Education lines’, and that it demonstrated that ‘progressive methods are working their way into the schools’.5 The Safari project at the University of East Anglia pointed out that the ‘Nuffield Approach’ was not simply about ‘a particular technique for teaching science’, but rather ‘relates to a whole complex of meanings which have connotations which stretch into history and biography, as well as into the wider psychological, social and moral facets of human action’.6 In the early twenty-first century, this historical, biographical and social lineage has been all but forgotten. Even Roy Lowe’s excellent history of progressive education does not clearly recognise this link.7 Thus, it has been asserted that progressivism in English schools is a ‘lost legacy’.8 A deeper examination of the hidden ancestry of Nuffield physics suggests another story, and a different verdict. The research that has been published on Nuffield Science has generally traced its national development in relation to changes in education, politics and society within Britain. In this sense it has followed the dominant historiographical trend of British school science education, which has been national in its focus rather than transnational or even international. The classic work of Michael Argles in the 1960s, followed in later decades by writers such as David Layton, Edgar Jenkins and Brian Woolnough, was largely national in its approach rather than seeking to emphasise the international context and still less the influences that ran in different directions across national borders.9 The history of science education in Britain, and the history of Nuffield Science itself, has also tended to lack a strong biographical or life history dimension in understanding the ways in which science teachers and educators developed during their careers. There were many teachers whose lives and careers helped to shape and were in turn shaped by Nuffield Science, in their schooling, teacher training, teaching and later work in the field. Such personal and professional links can forge a direct connection between different initiatives over a lifetime. One example of this was Gordon van Praagh (1909–2003), who was inspired by the ‘heuristic’ or guided discovery methods pioneered in

Physics for the enquiring mind  29

the nineteenth century by H. E. Armstrong, both at school and in his teacher training, before becoming a chemistry teacher and later being appointed as a member of the headquarters team for Nuffield chemistry in the early 1960s.10 In his published memoir, van Praagh himself traced significant links between Armstrong, Nuffield and the National Curriculum that was introduced in the late 1980s that together provide an important contribution to our understanding of these developments.11 The transnational dimension can be closely linked to the biographical aspect. Recent work has included research on the marketing of the Dalton Plan in Great Britain in the 1920s; Sue Middleton’s study of correspondence between Bloomsbury, London and New Zealand for the New Education Fellowship in the 1930s and 1940s; and Elsa Estreda’s exploration of the personal dimension in curriculum policies in Portugal since the 1960s.12 In the case of Nuffield Science, teachers and educators who began their careers in the 1930s will often have retired by the 1970s, and in this period channels of transport and communication over long distances were transformed. In the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, international travel was mainly by ferry or ships, which might take weeks, or by the hazards of early air flights. Airmail letters were at their historical peak volume, but took several days or longer to reach their intended recipient. The telephone remained unreliable and difficult to coordinate. By the 1960s and 1970s, the telex and telegram were more effective means of written communication within a much shorter period, while the telephone and air travel had become standard and effective international links. Email communication and personal computer technology remined unknown for another generation, but the changes by the mid- to late twentieth century were already immense, and helped to reshape the nature of transnational connections within the span of a professional lifetime. For the Nuffield physics O-level project, the key figure was undoubtedly Eric Rogers (1902–1990). Rogers was educated at the progressive and coeducational boarding school Bedales in Hampshire from 1916 to 1921, before going on to study at Trinity College Cambridge. He gained first class honours in Mathematics and Natural Science and was then appointed as physics master and assistant house master at Clifton College, Bristol, from 1925 to 1928. He returned to Bedales as a physics teacher in 1928, but left in 1930, eloping before the end of summer term with a history teacher at the school, Janet Drummond, whom he married in the US later that year. For the next two years he was a tutor and instructor at Harvard College, a post that allowed him to visit schools and study developments in physics education in the US, returning to England to take up a physics post at Charterhouse school from 1932 to 1937. He then went back to the US, as assistant head at the Putney School, Vermont, until 1940, with appointments following at Mount Holyoke College and then St Paul’s Concorde, before becoming associate professor of physics at Princeton University, New Jersey, in 1941. At Princeton, he was to become a professor of physics and remained for thirty years until he retired in 1971.13

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In the late 1950s, Rogers became a member of the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) which took the lead in reforming school physics education, stimulated by the shock created by the Soviet Sputnik satellite in 1957.14 He also prepared what became his best-known work Physics for the Inquiring Mind (1960), followed in 1962 by Teaching Physics for the Inquiring Mind.15 His principal ideas were rehearsed in these works. In particular, he expressed his antipathy towards the effects of traditional science courses. He argued that children were naturally drawn to science: Young people are thrilled with the idea of scientific experiments and knowledge. Many a small boy is eager to learn physics and chemistry. When we show him a plain test tube, his tongue hangs out with enthusiasm. He longs to play with the first magnet he sees. Yet such enthusiasm was deadened by a few years of science courses: A few emerge still determined to be scientists – but even they usually have a strange picture of science as a set of stamp-collections of facts, or else a game of getting the right answer. For the majority, well-meant teaching has built a wall around science, a stupid antagonistic wall of ignorance and prejudice.16 Rogers insisted that science courses should show what science is like, what scientific procedure was like and what scientists were like. Experiments were central to this, but so was theory, which played a complementary role. The different parts of a science course should also be clearly linked together in Rogers’ view, which posed challenges for textbooks, laboratory work and examinations alike: Ideally, laboratory work should be the student’s own investigation of nature, not a well explained, clear exercise on the chapter of the week. When we find these learning aids falling far short of the ideal, we must put our trust in two strong human influences: the student’s wish to learn science as a whole – a wish that can be suggested and encouraged – and the skill of every good teacher as an active guide towards connected knowledge.17 His ideals, forcefully expressed, provided the central basis for the transnational connections underlying Nuffield O-level physics in its formative years.

From Bedales to Harvard During his initial sojourn in the US while at Harvard in 1930 to 1932, Rogers conducted a correspondence with the head of his old school, Bedales, keeping

Physics for the enquiring mind  31

him up to date with his plans and reflecting on his experiences. The form of this correspondence was as significant as the content. For the most part, he wrote letters by airmail, often very long ones written in two or more stages over a period of time that took several days to arrive. These provided, in some cases, detailed notes on his visits to schools and in other instances lengthy and thoughtful reflections on his ideas and travels. These letters suggest that the initial source of his inspiration for teaching and for curriculum change came from Badley, Bedales and interwar progressive boarding schools. Equally, they show him comparing the nature and quality of education in general and the physics curriculum in particular in England and the United States, and clearly weighing up the problems and advantages of each and assessing potential ways forward. Bedales School was well known for the strength of its progressive ideals. The first teaching appointment of its headmaster, Badley, was at the newly opened independent school Abbotsholme in 1889, under Cecil Reddie. In 1893, Badley left to found Bedales as a coeducational school, and it was for the principle of the coeducation of boys and girls that Bedales became best known. Like Abbotsholme, Bedales cultivated a broad curriculum with a strong community ethos unlike the strict classical curriculum espoused by the traditional independent schools. In the early 1930s, Badley was towards the end of his long tenure as headmaster of Bedales, and he retired in 1935.18 The time taken over Rogers’ airmail correspondence with Badley is clear throughout. In an early letter, in October 1930, Rogers resolves to ‘post the beginning now, and continue it really soon – spurred on by all the good intentions which I have been storing up for some time’.19 Another letter at the start of 1931 notes that he had looked forward to writing but, ‘It was meant to begin the New Year – so it looks as if I should begin my New Year in February.’20 Another is declared to have ‘waited long enough – it has spent the last week in my handbag, waiting for spare moments’.21 The letters themselves reflect Rogers’ affection for his old school and headmaster, and reveal the source of his reforming zeal and idealistic passion. He addressed Badley as ‘Dear Chief’, and repeatedly emphasised his nostalgia for Bedales, where, as he recalls, ‘changes are tried, not merely talked of’.22 He yearned for the ‘jostling happiness’ of Bedales, while realising ‘how very far ahead Bedales is’.23 Indeed, he lamented, ‘I often feel very homesick for Bedales, and I long more and more to get back to something that I call real school life.’24 He was interested in some experimental initiatives in the US, such as for example at Rollins college in Florida (which took 26 hours to reach by rail travel from his base in Boston).25 He was also impressed by some of the ‘progressive’ schools in New York, especially in the younger classes. The Dalton schools in particular caught his attention for their use of projects under the Dalton plan, and more broadly for their school buildings and furnishings.26

32  Gary McCulloch

On the other hand, he was highly critical of some of the common features of education in the US, especially the emphasis on examinations and the poor standard of the courses and teachers. Rogers commented that Added to the difficulty of finding good staff, is the burden of the universal use of marks, both to the universal use of marks, and to their progress and to register final “grades”, which, it seems, end the study of a subject and sanction its carefree dismissal to a remote memory. He added that ‘the evil here lies in the attitude of being satisfied with knowledge accumulated, examined, dismissed – a museum disease (in which one journey through the museum is insufficient)’.27 He soon became impatient with the mechanical system of mass education in the US, as he complained: ‘People here are crazy about tables of numbers and facts, and it is pitiful to find them applying their methods undiluted to a living thing like a school.’28 Even the best progressive schools, he lamented, were ‘run by cheerful visionaries who talk too much and let their school run on with a standard of teaching that seems hopeless’, while for older students ‘the other schools drum in facts (and a worship of temporary fact acquisition) in a way that smells of old text-books with wood engravings’.29 He preferred to be with ‘experts to teach specialised subjects’ rather than teaching large groups of children of an average standard ‘as a mere bread-and-butter thing’ such as was the custom in American high schools, and to be ‘where people are happy, learning to live, not merely learning verbs or trying to pass exams’.30 These ideas also influenced his approach to teaching physics. He observed that physics teaching was concentrated almost entirely on the entrance to university, ‘either dreary or taught by very raw people; with practically no good experimental work’. This dull style of physics teaching he found to be repeated when students took a physics course on entering university, ‘which does little more than repeat this drudgery – yet with very fine lecture experiments, and real teachers giving the courses’.31 At Harvard, he was given some of the lecturing and an almost autonomous role in reorganising a general course in physics for those who had studied physics at school but would do no more after this, and welcomed the opportunity ‘in eliminating more logical substructure, and building up instead some idea of scientific ideas and aims, and methods’.32 Thus, for Rogers’ restless energy, the opportunities seemed to be in teaching small groups of students with an academic grounding at high school or university, although he was also frustrated by the structures of examinations and rote learning that he found at these higher levels of education. He soon realised that it would be better to return to England, although he was increasingly conscious of the economic difficulties affecting education on both sides of the Atlantic, and that he would much prefer to return to a new-style independent school such as Bedales rather than a traditional one. Having failed in his efforts to return to Bedales, he looked at other similar progressive independent

Physics for the enquiring mind  33

schools, settling in the end on Charterhouse School, and returned to England in 1933. These early experiences and travels between Britain and the US appear to have done much to establish the ideals and ambitions of the young Eric Rogers. Bedales was the crucible for an educational career in which his reforming instincts came to the fore in his chosen subject, physics.

From Princeton to Nuffield physics By the 1950s, Rogers was at the peak of his distinguished career as professor of physics at Princeton University. The wider context had changed greatly since his earlier sojourn in the US, but some aspects remained recognisably the same. In Britain, the spread of secondary education to the whole age range had in many ways entrenched the position of academic grammar schools within a system of different types of school, while the independent schools, struggling in the 1930s and during the Second World War, had regained much of their former dominance. In both Britain and the US, the school curriculum remained much as it had been in the interwar years, while the wider society continued to change. Internationally a ‘Cold War’ had developed in which the US and the Soviet Union were ideologically opposed protagonists, with the atom bomb and the emerging ‘space race’ key features of a global contest. In the US, one initiative created to help modernise the school science curriculum and respond to these new challenges was the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), established at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. The following year, the National Science Foundation granted the PSSC 245,000 dollars in aid to support its work to facilitate curriculum change at the high-school level, with an emphasis on the most able pupils. The ‘spirit of enquiry’ underlying the PSSC’s sources was very much in line with Rogers’ Physics for the Enquiring Mind, and indeed Rogers himself was a member of the PSSC. Josep Simon has found that the PSSC was transnational in nature, with many leading PSSC staff travelling to different countries and being exposed to a range of national cultures.33 Rogers brought his earlier transnational experiences into play for the benefit of the project, and also shared his insights to support fresh initiatives in Britain. The PSSC and other US ventures also attracted attention from Britain, and in late 1960 R. A. R. Tricker of the Ministry of Education visited the US, covering over 6,000 miles, to find out about new trends in science teaching. In his report on his visit he emphasised that the new courses being designed were suited to the particular organisation of schools in the US: ‘It is most unlikely that we would wish to adopt this pattern for ourselves; we would wish for any changes which may be necessary to evolve from our own traditions.’34 It also seemed to him unlikely that school science in Britain would develop a similar reliance on indirect teaching through films and television, or adopt American courses as ‘packages’ for use as they stood. At the same time, he argued that

34  Gary McCulloch

American text books, teaching films and apparatus might well be helpful in the British context. He also recommended what he saw as the ‘spirit of enquiry’, rather than the ‘performance of exercises’, that underlay these new courses. Tricker was especially interested in the laboratory apparatus designed by the PSSC and developed as kits available for schools at low prices. As he noted, The design of much of the apparatus is original and ingenious. That for dynamics is delightful. The timing device made from the movement of an electric bell and paper tape for use with small trolleys mounted on roller skate wheels, the “hover craft” vehicles using dry ice and moving practically without friction over a sheet of plate glass and the stroboscopic camera are excellent examples.35 The Ministry of Education in Britain had resisted intervening actively in curriculum matters, but by the late 1950s there was increasing interest among a number of groups in the possibility of curriculum change, with the science curriculum a clear priority. The science teachers’ associations, the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy and the newly created Minister for Science (Lord Hailsham) supported an initiative put forward by the Nuffield Foundation. The NF initially set aside £250,000 for the revision of O-level science courses, and the Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project (NFSTP) was launched formally with the support of the Government in April 1962. The Nuffield project in O-level physics was the first to be organised, but its first organiser, Donald McGill, suddenly died in March 1963. Eric Rogers had been enlisted as an adviser to the project, and he was now invited to take over as its organiser. There had been many international events and visits that had helped shape the ideas underlying the Nuffield O-level project, besides Tricker’s visit to the US. As early as 1956, Henry Boulind of the Science Masters’ Association, who was to be a key figure in Nuffield physics, was a delegate at a conference on school science curricula held by UNESCO in Hamburg, Germany, and was encouraged by the ideas raised at this conference. John Lewis, a physics teacher at Malvern College, who became associate organiser of Nuffield physics when Rogers was appointed, had visited PSSC and also West Germany and the Soviet Union to discuss the new developments.36 Such contacts continued after the launch of the Nuffield project. Rogers himself for example took the opportunity to elaborate on his vision for school physics at a Commonwealth education conference held at the University of Ceylon in 1963. The principal aim of science teaching, he reiterated, was to encourage understanding: ‘Science should appear to pupils as a growing fabric of knowledge in which one piece that they learn reacts with other pieces to build fuller knowledge.’37 For Rogers, therefore, the ultimate purpose of O-level physics was in order for pupils ‘to understand physics as a well-woven fabric in which experiment and theory play complementary parts, and to think of scientists as intelligent, sensible, skilful and imaginative people’. Indeed, he declared, pupils performing experiments could be ‘scientists for a day’.38

Physics for the enquiring mind  35

Rogers maintained his position at Princeton University after he became organiser of the Nuffield physics project, and this transatlantic link became a key feature in the development of the project. The American connection was at the heart of the project, although it did not lead necessarily to straightforward imitation but rather to creative engagement. One example of this was around the ticker-tape experiment for demonstrating velocity, pioneered by PSSC. Rogers was in favour of including this in Nuffield physics, but aimed also to improve on this basic design. As he explained privately in August 1963, ‘At the moment, we are planning to have trolleys and ticker-tape like PSSC. I myself would not mind keeping to them and not expanding into ones with speedometers, etc.’ He anticipated that this decision would disappoint some of the regions, and, he suggested, ‘There is also the point of pride that all the Nuffield investigations would have led us back to the one PSSC has formed.’ So the issue was how to retain the trolleys and ticker tape while developing a ‘Nuffield way’ of measuring velocity. Rather than using the PSSC-style ticker tape, which would mean ‘having to expand again and again to beyond what the analysis means’, he preferred using a scheme of using a Panax 1000 cycle pulser to count the pulses. This led him to argue that a system of using multiple photographs would also be needed. In practice, however, this approach might be too expensive for most schools to adopt, especially if it might require purchasing a number of Polaroid cameras. He pointed out that ‘when our Nuffield apparatus appears to be expensive, LEA controlling East Overshoe will stop the Polaroid camera first of all’. Thus, he concluded, ‘we should recognise that, like having a second car in the family, to have a Polaroid is a piece of American richness that we should not impose’. This meant choosing between an ordinary cheap camera and a homemade one, and he proposed a homemade model that had again been designed in the US. This used paper rather than film and had been employed successfully with large classes. This again involved borrowing from the US but there was at least some mitigation for this in Rogers’ mind: ‘I am sorry to suggest contemplating another American design but at least this one was made by an English technician that they imported to America.’ He had asked the Scottish team to try this equipment but they had found difficulties and, Rogers suggested, ‘I have the feeling they did not give it a fair trial.’39 Rogers’ approach to the trolleys and ticker tape highlighted a number of aspects of his leadership of the project. First, he retained a passion for his vision of theory and experiments, which he used to combine as far as possible the best of British and US designs. Second, he had an eye for detail with which he insisted on being closely involved. Third, he was aware of the likely practicalities of cost and difficulty that would arise once the equipment trials gave way to a full run of the programme. Finally, he was highly suspicious of inspectors and bureaucrats – the officials of ‘East Overshoe’ – and of different factions and interests that might undermine his vision of the programme. These were key features of Rogers’ interaction with Nuffield physics from his base at Princeton University. He made sure that he attended as

36  Gary McCulloch

many meetings as possible, which involved a large amount of travel across the Atlantic. At the same time, he kept up to date through airmail correspondence, telex messages and long-distance phone calls. This kind of transatlantic contact was fundamentally different from his writings to Badley in the early 1930s. His earlier correspondence had been reflective in nature and took time to write and receive. They were meant to describe and discuss the situation as it existed, rather than to intervene and affect the situation on an ongoing basis. By contrast, his role as organiser of the project meant that he was continually sending messages, often on comparatively small points of detail, to other project leaders. This led in turn to personal frustrations and stress as the pressure of completing the trial stage of the project became increasingly fraught. Besides the mounting expenses of the travel and communications, there was some determination to keep the findings of the trial stage confidential and secret from the wider public until they were completed, while there were also growing time pressures to complete them within a few years. This combination of factors led to the relationships between Rogers and his associate organisers, Ted Wenham and John Lewis, becoming increasingly difficult. Wenham, based at Worcester Training College, usually managed to keep the peace but Rogers and Lewis were often at odds. In a private note, Wenham pointed to the ‘personality clashes’ between Rogers and Lewis on the one hand, and also between Rogers and John Maddox, who was responsible for the project at the Nuffield Foundation. According to Wenham, Rogers was ‘brilliant, sensitive, with an outstanding course’, but was an ‘absentee landlord’. Meanwhile, he noted, Lewis had made a ‘great contribution’ to English physics teaching but was ‘not at his best at this level’, and ‘has found it difficult to get Eric’s [Rogers’] confidence and is depressed about it’. He saw Maddox as ‘very able, somewhat insensitive and lacking tact, concerned to develop an administrative machine which creaks badly because it is not geared to needs of trials and schools’. He concluded that the project was ‘stuck with an absentee landlord for better or worse’.40 These tensions were reflected in Rogers’ messages from the US. For example, he began one long note to Maddox, from Palmer Physical Laboratory at Princeton University: This follows my telegram to you today. Your notes for a paper on Board examinations has arrived and I am anxious to get a reply back to you in time. A telephone call would have cost me less than that long telegram, but I thought the telegram would put my comments more clearly.41 In March 1965, Rogers wrote to Wenham that he was ‘gravely concerned’ at the way in which decisions were being made at the Foundation: ‘I get word with just time to reply, now often by cable (which is proving very expensive). I fear I must take strong measures and at the same time try to hold things in order in this respect.’ He added that Wenham appeared to be missing some of the key meetings.42 Wenham responded that he saw his own role in the project in

Physics for the enquiring mind  37

part as ‘an encourager of the flagging; the universal uncle upon whose shoulder all and sundry can weep salt tears’, observing diplomatically that ‘we all (on both sides of the Atlantic) are over-pressed’.43 Creating suitable new examinations for the new courses and gaining the cooperation of the examination boards was a further challenge. There was no textbook for pupils, with only a resource book designed for teachers. The examination, like the course itself, had to be designed to encourage an understanding of science. To this end, Rogers devised meetings held at the briefing conferences at Loughborough University in 1964, which were described as ‘shredders’. The participants each drafted a question which was circulated to the group and discussed intensively. Extensive negotiations took place with the examination boards, and it was the Oxford and Cambridge board, already associated with the most elite or able pupils, that took responsibility for the Nuffield O-levels. The trials were developed with the help of regional panels and practising physics teachers from schools around the country, mainly grammar and independent schools. A complete draft of the first four years of the pupils’ course was trialled in 16 schools in 1963–1964, then extended to about 50 schools the following year, with the aim of having a first version of the complete range of teaching materials prepared for large-scale production by the start of the 1965–1966 teaching year. The teachers’ guide for Nuffield physics pointed out that it was intended for the most academically able pupils, with ‘the standard of the “B” stream of a three-stream grammar school at the centre of our target’. Nevertheless, it was designed as a programme of ‘physics for all’ suitable for the general educated man or woman. The emphasis, as it reiterated, was on teaching for understanding rather than on collecting information or memorising formal statements by rote, or solving mechanical problems by formulae, or carrying out routine measurements by following detailed instructions. The vision for this Nuffield approach was of pupils not just when learning physics at school, but a dozen years later when they are in the world: a young man working in a bank, presently to be a manager; a lawyer, who must deal with scientists and even with science; a nurse; the manager of a shop; a history teacher in school or university; and the mother or father of young children who in turn will approach children with an attitude – of delight or boredom – that starts at home. Physics itself was conceived as ‘a connected fabric of knowledge, in which something learnt in one place proves useful somewhere else, and something discovered later throws light on something worked out earlier’, as pupils thought things out for themselves, learning physics as they did so.44 These prescriptions echoed Eric Rogers’ philosophy when in the United States, before the start of the Nuffield project; and to the extent that this was true, it was largely the achievement of Rogers himself.

38  Gary McCulloch

Conclusion The progressive enthusiasm and idealism of the youthful Rogers in the 1930s were still recognisably present in the Nuffield physics organiser of the early 1960s, while both the form and the content of the transatlantic communications helped to shape the character of Nuffield physics as a transnational project. This transnational dimension also helps to explain the difficulties and limitations of Nuffield physics. Rogers found himself traversing the Atlantic Ocean both in bodily form and in his exasperated phone calls and messages. Nor did ideas that originated in one place always sit well in a different time and place. There was some resistance to the notion of imitating the educational practices of the United States. The translation and interpretation of the project in the English context may have found some advantages in the established academic tradition of the English grammar school, and it was able to enter into fruitful partnerships with the Ministry of Education, the Nuffield Foundations and teaching associations. On the other hand, its finer ideals were less wellsuited to the rigid and established demands of examination boards. Moreover, the trend towards reorganisation of secondary education into comprehensive schools in the 1960s was not altogether helpful to its position, as it was not clear how well it could be adapted to the needs and interests of a wider range of pupils. At the same time, this transnationality lay at the heart of the achievements of Nuffield physics and of its ultimate significance. First, it involved ideas and practices that crossed national borders, and indeed oceans and continents, over time and space. The progressive ideals of the 1920s and 1930s, developed over the previous generation at Bedales school, were translated into American designs and approaches in a later generation and crossed the Atlantic again to emerge in the Nuffield physics project. The concept of pupils as scientists was one that reverberates in different forms in and across a range of educational arenas. The ticker-tape experiment was one of many practices that were tried and tested in the United States and interpreted in Britain. Over a professional lifetime, the mobility of Eric Rogers in engaging with the educational problems of his youth and early adulthood in a different national context through his mature adulthood, and then investing this experience once again in his own homeland, again exemplifies this transnational set of aims and processes. In the end, too, this curriculum project can afford us some hope and optimism even in our most pessimistic times. It suggests that curriculum change takes place across time, often many years, and space, encompassing large distances. It proposes also that the legacy of the progressive schools is only ‘lost’ when considered in static terms, bounded by its own narrow and limited time and space. It need not be consigned to such a place, nor even to a single school, or city, or nation. This legacy can be reinvented, reconceived, in different circumstances with other players to work out its possibilities for new generations – in the 1960s, and perhaps still for generations yet to be born.

Physics for the enquiring mind  39

Notes 1 This chapter is a revised version of a professorial inaugural lecture, ‘Curriculum change across time and space: Eric Rogers, Nuffield physics and Worcester Training College’, delivered as visiting professor at the University of Worcester, 12 June 2019. 2 See e.g. Gary McCulloch, Edgar Jenkins and David Layton, Technological Revolution? The Politics of School Science and Technology in England and Wales since 1945 (London: Falmer, 1985), esp. Chapter 7. 3 See e.g. Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order, 1940–1990 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990), esp. Part II. 4 M. Waring, Social Pressures and Curriculum Innovation: A Study of the Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project (London: Methuen, 1979). On Nuffield Advanced-level physics, see K. Fuller, D. Malvern, Challenge and Change: A History of the Nuffield A-Level Physics Project, 1993. 5 W. Boyd and W. Rawson, The Story of the New Education (London: Heinemann, 1965), 187. 6 Safari project, University of East Anglia, memorandum, ‘The Nuffield Approach’ [n.d.; c. 1974], p. 3. 7 Roy Lowe, The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom (London: Routledge, 2007). 8 C. Rogers, “The Lost Legacy of Progressive Schools,” Times Educational Supplement, 24 May 2019, p. 18. 9 M. Argles, South Kensington to Robbins: An Account of English Technical and Scientific Education since 1851 (London: Longmans, 1964); David Layton, Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973); Edgar W. Jenkins, From Armstrong to Nuffield: Studies in Twentieth-Century Science Education in England and Wales (London: John Murray, 1979); Brian E. Woolnough, Physics Teaching in Schools 1960–85: Of People, Policy and Power (London: Falmer, 1988); Brain E. Woolnough, “Changes in Physics Teaching in England Since 1960: The People, Policies and Power in Curriculum Administration,” in Case Studies in Curriculum Administration History, eds. H. Haft and S. Hopmann (London: Falmer, 1990), 125–39. 10 W. E. Brock ed., H.E. Armstrong and the Teaching of Science, 1880–1930 (Cambridge: CUP, 1973); School Science Review, “Obituary – Firestarter Extraordinaire: A Tribute to Gordon van Praagh’, vol 85 (no 311), December 2003, pp. 125–7. 11 G. van Praagh, Seeing it Through:Travels of a Science Teacher (Coventry: Frognal, 1988). 12 See María del Mar del Pozo Andres and Saak Braster, “The Power of Networks in the Marketing of Pedagogical Ideals: The Dalton Plan in Great Britain (1920–1925),” History of Education 42, no. 6 (2018): 840–64; Sue Middleton, “Claire Soper’s Hat: New Education Fellowship Correspondence Between Bloomsbury and New Zealand, 1938– 1945,” History of Education 42, no. 1 (2013): 92–114; and Elsa Estrela, “The Knowledge of Policies: The Personal Dimension of Curriculum Policies in Portugal,” British Journal of Educational Studies 67, no. 2 (2019): 217–33. 13 Biographical details from K. Fuller, “Eric Rogers 1902–1990,” in Wonder and Delight: Essays in Science Education, Institute of Physics, eds. B. Jennison and J. Ogborn (Bristol, 1994), 203–6. 14 See John L. Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave, 2002), especially Chapter 5. 15 E. Rogers, Physics for the Inquiring Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960); E. Rogers, Teaching Physics for the Inquiring Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962). 16 Rogers, Teaching Physics for the Inquiring Mind, p. 2. 17 Rogers, Teaching Physics for the Inquiring Mind, p. 2. 18 See W. A. C. Stewart, The Educational Innovators: Vol. II, Progressive Schools 1881–1967 (London: Macmillan, 1968), esp. Chapter 14.

40  Gary McCulloch 19 E. Rogers, letter to J. H. Badley. 30 October 1930 (Rogers papers, Bedales School archive). 20 Rogers to Badley, 25 January 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 21 Rogers to Badley, 10 March 1931 (Rogers paper, Bedales). 22 Rogers to Badley, 25 January 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 23 Rogers to Badley, 10 March 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 24 Rogers to Badley, 10 March 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 25 Rogers to Badley, 25 January 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 26 Rogers to Badley, 10 March 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 27 Rogers to Badley, 10 March 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 28 Rogers to Badley, 30 July 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales). 29 Rogers to Badley, 10 February 1932 (Rogers papers, Bedales school). 30 Rogers to Badley, 30 July 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales school). 31 Rogers to Badley, 25 January 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales school). 32 Rogers to Badley, 21 October 1931 (Rogers papers, Bedales school). 33 J. Simon, “The Transnational Physical Science Study Committee: The Evolving Nation in the World of Science and Education (1945–1975),” in How Knowledge Moves: Writing the Transnational History of Science and Technology, ed. Krige (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 308–44. 34 R. A. R.Tricker, “Impressions of the Teaching of Science in Schools in the United States of America,” 1961, p. 5 (Ministry of Education papers, National Archives, ED.147/794). 35 Ibid., Appendix A. 36 New Scientist, 5 October 1961 and 12 October 1961. 37 E. Rogers,“The Aim of ScienceTeaching in Schools:Teaching Science for Understanding,” in Commonwealth Education Liaison Committee, School Science Teaching: Report of an Expert Conference Held at the University of Ceylon, Peradenija, December 1963, 1964, p. 24. 38 E. Rogers, “The Physics 11–16 Programme,”, in Nuffield Foundation, The Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project: Progress Report (October 1963), p. 11. 39 E. Rogers, letter to T.Wenham, 19 August 1963 (papers of Ted Wenham, and Keith Fuller papers, in personal possession). 40 T. Wenham, note, [n.d.] (Wenham / Fuller papers, private). 41 E. Rogers to J. Maddox, 20 January 1965 (Wenham / Fuller papers, private). 42 E. Rogers to J. Maddox, 21 March 1965 (Wenham / Fuller papers, private). 43 T. Wenham to E. Rogers, 26 March 1965 (Wenham / Fuller papers, private). 44 Nuffield Physics Teachers’ Guide 1, ‘Background Information: The Physics Programme: General Introduction’, Nuffield Foundation (London: Longmans/Penguin Books), 1–2.

3

Narratives of education and curriculum transition in the former socialist European countries The example of Estonia1 Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson

Introduction The late 1980s marked a period of substantial curriculum reforms throughout most of Europe. Although sharing a partly similar vocabulary of teacher autonomy and curriculum agency, the reforms in the Western and the then-socialist countries were aimed in different directions.2 The prevailing argument in many Western countries was economic efficiency and the need to overcome the inequality of students’ learning outcomes that allegedly resulted from the teachers’ excessive curricular freedom. Teachers, therefore, were placed under stronger centralised political and public surveillance and accountability pressure. A wellknown manifestation of this is the National Curriculum introduced in England and Wales in 1988.3 The traditional Western, notably English,4 model of an autonomous professional was radically redefined according to the neoliberal ideology: it started to denote a transparent, publicly accountable, simultaneously collegial and individually oriented professional who satisfied centrally defined and standardised evaluation requirements in conditions of diversity and complexity. The European nations of the socialist bloc faced somewhat different challenges. Invigorated by the hope of approaching liberation from the Soviet Union, the overwhelming aspiration was schools’ and teachers’ extensive curricular autonomy, freedom of choice, de-monopolisation, and de-centralisation of the education systems.5 Even though the need to combine autonomy with some degree of central coordination was recognised, strict external control over teachers and curriculum seemed to be a thing of the past.6 The late 1980s and early 1990s appeared to constitute a spectacular ‘window of opportunity’ for these countries, with multiple options, including any of the Western curriculum models and a certain ‘third way’ of their own. Now, a few decades later, this window of opportunity has been closed; a global neoliberal conceptual framework quite incontestably dominates the curriculum policy transitions in the ex-socialist space, intensifying standardisation, external control and outcome-driven assessment practices.7 In several

42  Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson

countries, notably in Estonia,8 this has produced dubious and disappointing effects on teachers’ personal and professional commitment, just as it has done in the openly centralised system of England.9 In this chapter, we tackle an important but relatively neglected question: what made it possible to subordinate teachers in the ex-socialist environment, contrary to the initial systemic reform proposals, so easily, under the neoliberal curricular policies that deny teachers’ agency and emphasise managerial strategies of external control, standardisation and accountability? The answer to this question is complex. Recent calls for ‘criss-crossing’ in transnational comparative education emphasise reflexivity and relationality and aim ‘to surface the entangled complexity of sometimes disparate educational actors, devices, discourses and practices’.10 Relationality, as we interpret it, recognises the intrusive power of global master narratives, such as neoliberalism, but also takes into account other dimensions that refract –  i.e. modify, redirect and potentially transform – global initiatives in different contexts.11 Indeed, as Chisholm12 demonstrates, the transnational approach avoids overemphasising hierarchical transmission and the boundedness of a single nation-state context, and observes intra-national and other factors significantly contributing to what emerges as curriculum policies and practices. A similar transnational outlook also frames our study. On the one hand, comparative education researchers have argued that Western-governed international aid institutions import ways of thinking and curricular practices to the Third World and the formerly socialist European countries, which are presented in cognitive/educational terms but which actually appear as an ideological cultivation of a narrow, neoliberal form of democracy.13 It is contended that the Western-imposed principles can be ‘misleading and destructive to local sociocultural professional values and how teachers perceive their professionalism’.14 However, this is not just another mode of colonialism defined in terms of power relations between a small number of ‘core’ states and the remaining ‘periphery’ states, which form the majority.15 Instead, several other dimensions come into play. Teachers in the Western countries are no less oppressed than those in the ‘periphery’ countries by the neoliberal managerial practices: which highlights the disparity between systemic and personal and professional interests, a phenomenon that has many parallels that cross state boundaries.16 As we will demonstrate, not only managerial structures but also some influential ideological tools for redefining teacher professionalism in the former socialist European countries have been created not only by Western experts, but also – if not primarily – by local or regional political-administrative and academic leadership. Besides, whereas the Western Anglophone countries form the motherland of neoliberalism, educationalists from these countries are also its harshest critics, whose work, therefore, when disseminated to other settings, would open up new prospects in these settings for understanding the mechanisms of neoliberal governance, but would in turn be enriched by the unique experiences of compliance and resistance in these settings. (For this mutual enrichment, we hope our study and

Narratives and curriculum: Estonia  43

our co-authorship serve as a good example.17) There are thus many ways in which the interaction between the historically different settings can be mutually informative and enriching. Previous studies that have addressed our question raised earlier18 have confirmed that ‘governments irrespective of political persuasion are not likely to give up control of the curriculum’.19 In parallel with the partial decentralisation of curriculum responsibilities, most of the post-socialist countries, just like the ‘old’ Western countries, soon established central regulations and accountability mechanisms, such as teacher professional standards, tests for students at different school stages and state examinations in certain subjects for school graduates. This marked the formal redefinition – but not the end! – of what Goodson has discussed as a ‘centralised control over curriculum’20: the reforms provided not only criteria for evaluation of individual teachers within each subject field, but also a basis for a status hierarchy between different subjects. Although teacher representatives were engaged in the elaboration and establishment of the new regulations, this generally failed to provide teachers with the promised curriculum ownership, since the control practices maintained and reproduced the existing status structures right through fundamental systemic reforms.21 However, these formal policy changes alone, from the Soviet-type control mechanisms to neoliberal ones, can hardly fully explain the success of neoliberalism in the ex-socialist curriculum landscape, since teachers had learned to be particularly alert to external control. Unlike their Western colleagues,22 teachers in the socialist countries had been accustomed for decades to operating and maintaining their national mindsets in conditions of foreign political and ideological oppression. Many identified themselves, and were covertly regarded by people, as professional representatives of the hidden opposition to the political regime, evading and resisting it when necessary and possible.23 In the late 1980s and the early 1990s teachers’ curricular autonomy and agency had become a key policy promise, so that the new regulations and curriculum documents, in essence conservative measures, were hardly enough to maintain existing formal status structures. An influential systemic narrative was obviously necessary to gain public and political acceptance of the idea that teachers as a professional group were in need of substantial reform. We hypothesise that such a systemic narrative was provided by constructing a specific narration about qualitatively different stages of transition that the post-socialist education was expected to pass through. This narration was then applied to educational professionals, above all to teachers. We do not assume it was, initially at least, a conscious and consistent project. Yet we believe that it has been influential in subordinating teachers to the Western-imported neoliberal ideology, and so retaining considerable political control over their work. As a systemic narrative, the stage-sequential transition proposal does not provide precise guidelines to teachers (this is the task of curriculum documents and other regulations). However, it is all-encompassing and impositional. Having been created soon after the fall of the socialist bloc,24 it gradually

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became a device for new curriculum policy makers to (re)interpret and to (re-)evaluate historical events and turning points. Because it is selective and interpretative, it is adequately examinable only when juxtaposed to individuals’ personal and professional narratives, hence our methodological preference for teachers’ work-life narratives. After having introduced the definitional issues of our study and having outlined the stage-sequential systemic narrative of the late- and post-socialist education and curriculum development, we will provide excerpts from Estonian teachers’ work-life narratives to discuss and to problematise this systemic narrative. At heart is the tension between those above and beyond the school who seek to impose a narrative on the schools, and those on the frontline delivery who may have entirely different intentions and hence narrative.

Historicisation and juxtaposition of narratives in education and curriculum research Our study follows the strand of the critical historical analysis of contemporary education policy. This approach gained prominence in the English-speaking world in the late 1960s, when the earlier confidence of the relatively linear and gradual progress of education systems, and consequently the close relationship between policy and history, started to decline.25 It became increasingly recognised that ‘time’ and ‘periodisation’ are highly problematic qualities in studying educational change. Based on the work of the Annales school of the French historians, Goodson has pointed to the previously under-recognised multiple periodisations and the multiple accounts of educational reform cycles.26 He challenges the unjustifiably strong focus on the ‘snapshot notions of social context and time’ in education and curriculum research, whereas longer reform cycles and continuities are too often ignored.27 For our purposes in this paper, we have selected two different continuities to address and to juxtapose: a) the dominant systemic narrative that seeks to maintain control over individuals and strategic professionals (most notably teachers) right through the systemic reforms, while changing its vocabulary according to the fiats of the reforms; b) the personal and professional narratives of individuals who strive to maintain the integrity of their thoughts and actions right through the systemic reforms and, at best (although not often), possess a critical mindset about the systemic narrative. Thus, we consider it important to distinguish between what we call the systemic narrative and personal and professional narratives. This distinction has grown out of the research tradition developed by Goodson and his colleagues.28 Goodson maintains that the systemic narrative is compiled on the basis of documentary

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sources covering the main historical events and breaking points in a region’s or nation’s history, whereas work-life narratives are compiled on the basis of lifehistory interviews with individuals representing the profession under observation:29 in our case, teachers. This distinction is particularly important for our purposes, since the systemic narrative and the social representations inscribed in it are constructed and dominated by the political and academic stakeholders, rather than by teachers. Thus, it is important to maintain that the systemic narrative is not neutral, since its composers necessarily tend to select and interpret the documentary sources according to their own reform agenda.

The systemic narrative of stage-sequential transition in the ex-socialist countries: ‘Cultural backwardness’ Although many country-specific variations were inherited from the socialist period and before,30 curriculum transition has followed a similar pattern in most of the ex-socialist European countries. As with any other public sphere, curriculum decision-making was strictly state-monopolised throughout the socialist bloc during the Soviet domination. School curricula were typically compiled by special state-centralised institutions that prescribed for teachers both curriculum content and instructional methods.31 Teachers’ curriculum agency was not considered important.32 Following the rapid political shift from Soviet-type totalitarianism to liberal democracy in 1989–1991, most of the post-socialist European countries immediately and effectively de-ideologised their curriculum documents.33 Although many shortcomings and inconsistencies resulted from the hastiness of the political and economic transition, most of these countries also succeeded in delegating decision-making in many areas to the school level and eliminated the state monopoly on students’ school choices.34 National curricula as statelevel documents were introduced around the mid-1990s, and teachers were included in committees for compiling the documents.35 Several difficulties with teachers using their granted curriculum authority persisted, but the formal curriculum process was essentially democratised. As will be argued, practising the hidden curriculum during the Soviet time allowed teachers some curriculum agency, which showed that the formal reforms were potentially less influential for teachers than is often imagined. Attempts at theorising and systematising the late- and post-socialist educational and curriculum transition started as soon as the necessary time had elapsed for a thorough deliberation of the reforms.36 As Mitter observes,37 the ‘models of periodisation’ extended from ‘the assumption of linear progress derived from modernity theory and claiming universal validity’ to the direct ‘historical actuality of the post-communist region of Eastern and Central Europe’. The multitude of different ‘periodisation models’ indicated that from the early days on, it was recognised that the transition was neither an easy nor homogeneous process.

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The influential proposal that appears to have gradually developed into a systemic narrative and which we specifically aim to tackle has been perhaps most thoroughly developed by the Romanian researcher Birzea.38 It argues for a specific kind of stage-sequential transition in late- and post-socialist education. Birzea claims that the post-communist [sic!] transition, itself a catchword of the 1990s that was too often left undefined, actually includes multiple interdependent processes, each with its own duration and objectives: a) political transition: the fastest process, accomplishable in around five years; b) economic transition: accomplishable in around ten years; and c) cultural transition: the slowest process, accomplishable over about one generation (25 years), because it involves changing values, attitudes, competences, social relations and lifestyles.39 Birzea further argues that the post-communist transition was overwhelmingly a political and economic process, relatively successful in terms of the transition from totalitarianism to democracy and also from a controlled to a market economy. Having successfully completed the political and economic transition (and these were the primary criteria for the desired EU accession), the ex-socialist countries still need to perfect the ‘new transition stage’, which is social, educational and cultural, rather than political or economic in essence.40 Birzea’s emphasis on cultural transition as the slowest and the most difficult one is echoed in many other studies on post-socialist education and curriculum reforms.41 Several authors have written about the ‘cultural gap’ between East Europe and the ‘old’ Western Europe.42 This notion refers to the cultural differences and specific events that occurred behind the Iron Curtain during the years of the Cold War, which is why the ex-socialist countries are claimed to face the challenge of ‘reculturing’ their education system.43 We attempt to demonstrate below that within the framework of this systemic narrative, teachers have been portrayed as key embodiments of ‘cultural backwardness’. However, a closer look at teachers’ narratives exposes a great but seriously under-recognised potential for, and indeed necessity of, reconsidering this systemic narrative.

Cultural transition and the representation of the ‘ex-socialist’ teachers There’s an ironic contradiction in the European ex-socialist countries’ systemic narrative that in our view has remained under-discussed. On the one hand, the post-socialist curriculum reforms have been described as ‘essentially a bottom-up process based on individual, school, and local activities’.44 Teachers have been regarded as the most influential actors in these reforms.45 On the other hand, teachers in these countries – and particularly the more experienced generation – are overwhelmingly viewed as obstacles rather than promoters of curriculum change. As Kallen has commented in the Central and Eastern European context, ‘mentalities are slower to change than texts’, and teachers’ strong state of ‘anomie’ often results from officially rejected but reassuring ideological certainties.46 Consequently, to use the vocabulary of Westbury,

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teachers are always [seen as] invisible agents of the system, and not as sources of animation for the system. This starting point leads to a view that existing teachers are a (if not the) major brake on the innovation, change and reform that the schools always seem to require.47 To give a more easily comprehensible structure to the complaints expressed about the ‘ex-socialist’ teachers, we tentatively categorised these complaints in terms of the generally recognised standard components of the curriculum, such as: (a) the framework of assumptions about the learner and society, (b) aims and objectives, (c) the content or subject matter, with its selection, scope and sequence, and (d) modes of transaction (e.g. methodology and learning environments).48 These components should be understood broadly rather than as a fixed set of detailed prescriptions in curriculum documents of a given country. Yet each of the components indicates an important aspect of the alleged backwardness of the ‘ex-socialist’ teachers’ mentalities. The basic framework of assumptions about the learner and society was essentially a new component in the formal curriculum documents of the postsocialist period, since the previous, Soviet-type, curriculum was compelled to rigorously follow the Soviet ideology and therefore did not need to explain these assumptions specifically.49 The considerations of the transition from a totalitarian to a democratic political system and from a controlled to a market economy that were included in the curriculum documents have been discussed in numerous previous papers, and we will not repeat them here. Central to our purposes is the cultural aspect: the envisioned ‘transformation of the homo Sovieticus into a rational capitalist actor’50 and the overcoming of a ‘pattern of passivity, inertness, carelessness and insensitivity in deference to […] a “command-administrative system”’.51 A number of articles depict ‘ex-socialist’ teachers as prototypes of this alleged cultural backwardness in comparison to teachers in the ‘old’ Western countries. In slightly varying terms, teachers are described as strongly holding to a totalitarian ideology and value system, lacking the ability for individual decision-making, responsibility, tolerance and respect for diversity, expecting top-down directions, having a fragmented understanding of curriculum and preferring outdated teaching practices and student–teacher relations.52 We do not argue that teachers with socialist-period work experience should be completely exempt from such criticism. Neither is it to claim that the critics are generally unaware of the circumstances and the good practices of the socialist period. As Rubene contends, ‘it would be wrong to believe that in the postSoviet space the concepts “an autonomous personality” and “critical thinking” are new and unprecedented’.53 Moreover, the nature and degree to which the above criticism holds true is a matter of many cross- and intra-national variations. However, the criticism expresses the overwhelming systemic narrative according to which teachers are lagging and reluctant recipients of the cultural transition who have little meaningful to say about how the post-socialist education and curriculum history should be written, interpreted and periodised.

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Given that teaching often tends to be a lifelong career, we are concerned about the consequences of the thesis of the generation-long cultural transition that tends to undervalue the teachers’ socialist period experience and to stigmatise many of them (particularly the more experienced) as an inadequate and outdated labour force in constant need of retraining. Such a portrayal, often contrasted to the allegedly more ‘progressive’ and ‘innovative’ mentalities of learners and other members of society, frames the public image of teachers in respect to several specific curriculum components that we now briefly address. In terms of curriculum aims and objectives, the new type of personality that an attempt was made to develop by the new, post-socialist curriculum was an independent, critical and creative person who would have business skills and would be able to assume risks but would also be reliable, responsible, active and cooperative.54 Pachociński claims that the shaping of such a personality has been unfamiliar to the majority of teachers.55 Rubene contends that many teachers still consider the school’s main task to be providing knowledge, but not teaching children thinking skills.56 In terms of curriculum content or subject matter, teachers in the ex-socialist countries are claimed to favour encyclopaedic and outdated content,57 to lack a necessary link to skills, competence and practice,58 to prioritise the acquisition of facts,59 and to have been unable to reflect upon their total acceptance of the prescribed curriculum content before the fall of the socialist bloc.60 In terms of the modes of transaction, i.e. methodology and learning environments, the socialist-inherited teachers are claimed to favour ‘rote learning and didactic approaches’,61 exhibiting unnecessary rigour and control over the behaviour of their students and thus suppressing their spontaneity, creativity and freedom of action and thinking.62

The systemic narrative and teachers’ voices It has long been recognised that complaints about teachers’ alleged conservatism, rigidity and narrowness in curriculum issues are inevitably biased and that the solution to these problems depends on many interrelated systemic factors, such as teachers’ professional preparation, social status and remuneration.63 Very rarely, however, have teachers been engaged in the elaboration of a systemic narrative of the ex-socialist education and curriculum. We side with rare voices, notably Kitaevich,64 in arguing that a disproportionately high emphasis has been put on the (nation-)state as the main or the only agent and narrator in historicising post-socialist education and curriculum transition, at the expense of the potential contribution of the narratives of practising teachers. Relying on the experience of Georgia, but applicable to the ex-socialist space in general, Kitaevich contends that ‘much of the research on collective memory has been strongly influenced by the academic penchant to imagine the collective memory discourse as largely state-hegemonic and content-wise orthodox’.65 Kitaevich exemplifies her argument through the Georgian situation, writing that,

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Since 2004, following an increase in resources and state capacity, the new Georgian government committed itself to consolidate the official collective memory discourse through the unprecedented formation of the standardized national curriculum, which, among other things, outlined how history should be understood and learned.66 By interviewing different generational cohorts of history teachers in Georgia, Kitaevich eloquently demonstrates the existence of ‘generational cleavage lines’ in the teachers’ interpretations of education and curriculum history, which form clearly distinct categories of narratives. However, our task is somewhat different from that of Kitaevich. Kitaevich demonstrates how the relatively well-formed, internally consistent and mutually distinct interpretations of different generational cohorts of teachers diverge, each in its own way, from the state-hegemonic, systemic historical identity narrative. Kitaevich thus strongly emphasises the peculiarity of each generational cohort. We also consider teachers’ long-term generational commitments to be extremely important for their personal and professional identity formation, as well as in shaping their interpretations of historical systemic narratives.67 However, we also envisage the limitations of prioritising the ‘generational cleavages’ too highly. First, this prioritisation is limited because other differences, such as those in teachers’ individual narrative capacities, also significantly influence their interpretations of the past.68 Second, we believe that over-emphasising generational differences involves a risk of ‘generational relativism’. Strongly generation-specific differences, as far as they exist, by definition appear and disappear together with the respective cohorts of teachers. To simplify a little, only one generational narrative at a time, if any at all, can converge with the dominant systemic narrative. This makes the opposition between the systemic narrative and the majority of generational narratives immanent, and the former not quite adequately debatable compared to the latter (i.e. the systemic narrative necessarily loses because it stands alone, and confronts so many different generational narratives). Our task in this chapter is therefore to question the dominant systemic narrative as per se deceptive or one-sided at best, on the grounds that it contradicts the personal and professional commitments of teachers more generally, across different generational cohorts. Our methodological commitment to interview those teachers with some socialist-period teaching experience (see the Methodological note) did not result from the belief that these teachers would necessarily form a distinct generational cohort in terms of their commitments. Rather, we needed to ensure that the respondents had the experiential capital to comment on the socialist-period representations in the currently dominant systemic narrative. With a range of almost 30 years of teaching experience (from 30 to 59 years’ experience), our respondents were grouped according to the fact that they exposed the political ‘ordering’ of the dominant systemic narrative. In the next section, to explore the complexities noted above, we focus in detail on the case of Estonia.

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The Estonian context: Specifying the scene Curriculum policy in Estonia during the socialist period and thereafter generally followed a pattern similar to that of the other ex-socialist European countries.69 However, in comparison to the other republics of the Soviet Union, educational politicians in the three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – frequently stood out as obstinate and rebellious in acting against Moscow’s orders during the Soviet period. Many special conditions for Estonian education (such as special classes for talented children and original school textbooks written by Estonian authors) were carved out through intense debates with the Moscow central authorities, and oppressive regulations were often ameliorated by national-minded local education politicians.70 The example of these politicians’ courage (even though only a few teachers would have been directly aware of those policy processes) may partly explain the Sovietera Estonian teachers’ narratives, which contradict their systemically cultivated image as passive, rigid and conservative obstacles to desired reforms. Rather, teachers in the Soviet period practised covert resistance by teaching national values via hidden curricula, and the majority of them were characterised by a ‘silent and hidden reluctance towards compulsory ideological education and towards the centralization of curricula’.71 For a short period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the school curricula were rapidly de-ideologised and the Soviet-inherited official curriculum regulations became defunct, there emerged an unprecedented education policy vacuum that some authors have even called curricular ‘anarchy’.72 The new formal curriculum documents and their development process were introduced along with designing the first national curriculum for basic and upper secondary education, and enacting it as a government regulation in 1996.73 The documents included a list of general principles of freedom, democracy and humanity that were accentuated in the transition agenda of the ex-socialist countries. Most importantly for our purposes, these documents also emphasised the changing role of teachers, from curriculum implementers to curriculum developers and drafters of educational policy. Teacher representatives were engaged in the development of the national curriculum documents, and teachers were delegated the primary responsibility for compiling the official curriculum for their schools: school curricula.74 There’s again irony in this ostensible delegation of curriculum authority to teachers. Having become accustomed to individually reinterpreting the Sovietera official study programmes as circumstances allowed, teachers nevertheless generally lacked the competence to develop formal curriculum documents at the school level, since such documents did not exist in the Soviet period. Neither were representative bodies of teachers (i.e. professional associations) yet well formed by the mid-1990s, although this would have been quite necessary for successful participation in the development of the national curriculum. These circumstances caused considerable confusion and criticism among teachers about the new curriculum development model, including the feeling

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of inferiority and exclusion from the process.75 One of our respondents commented as follows: what was really positive [during the Soviet time] was that teachers could concentrate on their work. And this work also included some curriculum work. You had to divide the programme, or syllabus … for the year. But now the teachers in nineteen … actually not yet in those years, but when the first curriculum appeared in ninety-six, teachers were all of a sudden required to compile the school curricula. They had no idea what a curriculum was! And they … Probably they wanted to do the job, but they just couldnt! Because curriculum theory and practice was not taught in the Soviet time.76 The irony is thus that these were not the teachers’ actual Soviet-time classroom practices but the new, post-Soviet administrative requirements, combined with the lack of relevant resources, in which context the teachers’ alleged inefficiency first emerged after the fall of the socialist bloc. This unfavourable context, postSoviet rather than Soviet-inherited, may have contributed more than is often realised to the post-Soviet impression of teachers’ cultural backwardness.

Estonian teachers’ work-life narratives: A call for reconsidering the systemic narrative of post-socialist curriculum history Methodological note. The empirical material used in this chapter is based on work-life narrative interviews conducted with 26 schoolteachers across Estonia from 2015 to 2018. The teachers varied in terms of educational background, subject taught, gender and regional location of the schools. Although their length of teaching experience also somewhat varied, they were all selected because they had taught during the Soviet period, thus having started teaching no later than 1987. The study is a part of the research project launched in Estonia and led by Ivor Goodson, ‘Teachers’ professionality and professionalism in a changing context’, lasting from 2014 to 2019. We will next present and discuss some insightful interview excerpts that question the prevailing stage-sequential systemic narrative of curriculum in the exsocialist countries, and particularly the way in which teachers have been positioned in this narrative. The curriculum components described above form a broad framework to cover various curriculum aspects under consideration.77 However, many respondents commented on these aspects in an overlapping manner. In terms of the framework of assumptions about the learner and society, several teachers explicitly addressed the systemic narrative, including its implications for historical periodisation of curriculum issues: It’s difficult to say what exactly the time of a particular [curricular] principle is. Probably some principles are considerably older than Soviet-era principles … But they [school headmasters in the late Soviet era] required

52  Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson

certain things that were also required in the Soviet time. They called it ‘classical education’, and the ‘classical school’. There were school subjects to be studied, and rules to be followed […]. Nowadays, what’s more common is ‘More freedom!’ But that’s a grave mistake. Our very first minister of education [of the Republic of Estonia in 1918] said, ‘Freedom is not the starting point of education. A free and autonomous personality is the result of education’! But we started [the post-Soviet transition] from the wrong end. We started with ‘Freedom, freedom’! […]. If you do not say that everything was bad in the Soviet time, you are an enemy!78 We see a powerful emphasis on educational and cultural continuities through different historical-political periods in this teacher’s narrative. Several basic curricular assumptions (e.g. ‘classical education’) that are often attributed to the teachers’ socialist-inherited mentalities actually formed a consistent set of general pedagogical principles. These originated from certain well-known educational, philosophical, sociological or psychological schools of thought, which in a democratic society also exist simultaneously with other schools of thought, and which thus have only secondary connection to a particular political system (e.g. although only certain educational concepts were officially tolerated in the late Soviet Union, this does not necessarily mean that these concepts could not be accepted, along with other concepts, in democratic societies also). Another powerful challenge to the dominant systemic narrative of the stage-sequential transition emerged from the teachers’ deliberations about the ‘honeymoon period’ in their previous careers and from the reasons why they preferred a certain period to any other one. The coolest period to work at the school as a teacher was when the Soviet time was over and the new Estonian government did not know yet what to do with teachers. There was a period of around 15 years that was really cool, a kind of super time when I could do everything on my own, and invent things on my own. There wasn’t much control. … This cool period started somewhere in the late eighties and lasted until around 2005. Then they started these SWOTs79 and stuff like that … some time in the late nineties. I think the ministries started to have more money to compile these control mechanisms and regulations.80 Several other teachers shared the admiration for the nineties as a period of freedom and maximum ‘window of opportunity’. The teachers’ narratives first demonstrate that it would be an exaggeration, at least, to claim that as a result of the Soviet occupation a whole ‘generation’ grew up ‘that is used to obedience and expects directions “top-down”, having no capacity for decision-making and individual responsibility’.81 Instead, most teachers were insightful about the circumstances of their lives and work in the socialist era and afterwards, enjoyed any professional freedom that they were granted, and

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evaluated different periods in their career according to the chance for freedom and autonomy. The earlier quotations pose at least two questions for any linear, stage-determined approach to the ex-socialist curriculum history: (a) why do the allegedly obedience-oriented teachers prefer the ‘anarchist’ 1990s to any other period in their career? and (b) why did this ‘honeymoon period’ adored by teachers end so quickly? Our study only allows us to provide hints for further research addressing these questions. However, we can suggest a continuity of our teachers’ urge for freedom that explains their preference for the 1990s: an urge that through different political systems has been no less genuine for teachers in Estonia than for those in, say, England.82 To address the second question, it appears that in terms of formal restrictions on teachers’ professional autonomy, the neoliberal re-regulation of education and curricula (financially supported by the EU and other international aid institutions83) surprisingly resembles the previous, socialist era: it provided not only additional resources for enhancing education but also, and perhaps crucially, resources for administrating and regulating teachers. We next turn to the issue of curriculum aims and objectives. As mentioned earlier, the post-socialist reforms aimed at developing active, creative, critical thinking, and a responsible and cooperative personality, for which task the ‘ex-socialist’ teachers’ mentalities have been considered a serious obstacle. Comparing the mentalities of her own and her current students, a veteran teacher commented: I have come through [professional hardships] with the help of Sovietinherited hardening. Rules and regulations come and go, but I still do what I like. [Laugh.] Or rather, I try to squeeze myself somewhere in between […]. But with the children … We had innovation lessons, where we deliberated on a problem and the ways to solve it […]. Then they said that their biggest problem was learning […]. And I asked … ‘How can you solve it?’ And then they agreed that this would involve wearing devices on their heads so that all the wisdom would just flow in. So they would not need to study anything. And I asked if they would also agree to subject themselves to external control: devices around their heads so they could be controlled in every way: where they were, what they were doing … how many sips of coffee they had … And they accepted everything! They would give up all their privacy, just so wisdom would flow into their heads and they would not need to work for it […]. But maybe this is just the generation of the 2000s, who are ready to live in such a self-sacrificing manner.84 This narrative excerpt directly contrasts with the dominant view of the exsocialist curricular reality, where an uncreative, uncritical thinking and obedience-oriented teacher is positioned to educate her students, who have a strong

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disposition towards creativity, independence, critical- and open-mindedness and activity. For example, Rubene states that a considerable number of teachers ‘believe that the authoritarian, knowledge-centred Soviet education model is the best option and the school’s task is to provide knowledge, not to teach how to think’.85 Our Soviet-experienced teacher speaks most directly against such an account. In terms of curriculum content and subject matter, the dominant complaint about the allegedly encyclopaedic, fact-oriented and impractical learning content was addressed by teachers from two different perspectives. First, several teachers challenged the popular requirement for immediate ‘practicality’ and the devaluation of fact-orientation: Whether we want it or not, the gymnasium is preparation for university. We could just sit together and have fun and … But what’s next, then? If we do not learn anything by heart, do not work hard … The classical knowledge has to stay, the foundations … how could I otherwise start making connections, building up? I remember a long time ago when an [Estonian] school principal who had visited some schools in America […]. talked on the radio about how they gave marks there just for students expressing their opinions, no matter what the students said. And only later did the teacher start giving them correct information. But when you just say it incorrectly somewhere, then I can’t keep smiling and saying: ‘How wonderful that you said it this way!’ I mean, I could, but … I do not make any progress this way, OK?86 The respondent’s commitment to the classic curriculum not only involves content, but also includes broad educational aims of making students able to draw connections and to progress on their own terms and in their own directions. Besides that, several teachers explicitly challenged the claim that the socialistinherited curricular practices were essentially ‘impractical’. Quite the contrary, they considered the socialist-period curriculum to be providing students not only with necessary practical skills but also positive attitudes and work habits. Some things have been lost – unnecessarily so. Take, for example, [the school subject of] traffic. At that [Soviet] time, I took it most seriously. There were not even as many cars at that time, but there were traffic displays and… county competitions in traffic, all the bicyclers and … […]. This could have continued. And I think about the school subject of civil defence: it should be distinct and have its own characteristics. But it also could have existed together with Red Cross courses, for example […]. We had a very careful teacher and I think that all our old people, everybody, can make an emergency splint. But today I’m not sure if they [students] can make one. Perhaps it’s not necessary now, as emergency vehicles come so fast … But … such things could have continued. And even the school

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garden […]. In the countryside, children do not recognise plants and birds and so on.87 This narrative extract demonstrates that the ‘impracticality’ complaint is onesided at best. They also point to the often-unacknowledged significance of cultivating work habits in students as a major precondition of the practical value of education. Teachers’ attitudes towards the modes of curriculum transactions, methodologies and learning environments were visible from, and essentially intertwined with, their preferences regarding curriculum content. An eloquent example was the teacher quoted earlier who considered biological aspects, such as knowledge of plants and birds, to be teachable in the course of outdoor activities and by working in the school garden. However, where ‘rote learning’ is still used, teachers consider it to be a reaction to present-day educational challenges and not a Soviet-inherited habit: Literacy among school children and university students is now weaker than ever. My generation, and probably also the generation after me … learned to write thanks to reading. But as they [children today] do not read any more, they do not have any visual memory whatsoever […]. Due to our reading background, we had strong visual memory. And now I have discovered for myself that its extremely useful to give dictations to my students, long and short ones. Because otherwise they do not read their own handwriting. But if she … writes it by herself, following my dictation … yes it is boring, but then she really sees the words that need commas there and … perhaps then she puts the commas in the right places in examinations.88 It appeared from the interviews that the ‘ex-socialist’ teachers who still work today are remarkably alert to the present-day challenges. If anything significant distinguishes them from their younger colleagues from the post-socialist period, it appears to be the courage to use a richer – not poorer – range of methodological tools to deal with educational inadequacies without undue shame.

Final considerations Our aim in this chapter has been to discuss and to problematise the currently dominant systemic narrative of the late- and ex-socialist curriculum history, which claims that there is a stage-sequential transition and inevitable ‘cultural backwardness’ among socialist-experienced teachers. Particular attention was paid to the way in which teachers are portrayed in this narrative. Currently, we do not (and indeed cannot on the basis of the existing data) refute this narrative altogether or even suggest firm changes to it. However, our data allow us to

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highlight certain aspects of obvious bias, one-sidedness and over-simplification in this systemic narrative. First, there appears to be a major disconnection between the ex-socialist systemic rhetoric of the ‘cultural gap’ and the ways in which the ‘old’ Western Europe, its systemic narratives and teachers’ personal narratives are culturally influenced by the recent neoliberal restructuring, standardisation and accountability policies. The acclaimed ‘Western’ cultural values of creativity, critical mindset and individual decision-making tend to have been considerably transformed since they were first proclaimed as models for the post-socialist cultural transition (suggestions like this have indeed been made before).89 Our teachers’ narratives, particularly those that refer to the ‘honeymoon period’ of the 1990s and the re-regulation of the early 2000s, clearly indicate this phenomenon. The changes to more strictly regulated, outcome-driven and standardised practices in the Western countries exhort us to ask: what is the cultural transition moving towards? Second, it appears that bold assessments about the socialist-inherited education and curriculum practices, including teachers’ commitments and roles in these practices, are often made without a necessary more in-depth look at the socialist-period curricular realities and the teachers’ choices and commitments at that time. There’s also been insufficient deliberation, and perhaps too little primary data, about what teachers actually have transmitted from the socialist period to their current attitudes and practices. Our respondents confirmed that at least to the same extent to which the socialist system subjected them to oppressive policies, they always actively searched for opportunities to stay committed to their internalised missions and ideals. The circumstances of the socialist period thus functioned in two ways: suppressing teachers’ free thinking but simultaneously shaping and tempering their spirits to resist oppression. Relationality here emerges in the sense that, whereas several respondents more or less explicitly observed the overt Soviet domination and the more indirect neoliberal domination as ‘versions of one another’90, both have dominated their mindsets less than is commonly supposed. Third, the teachers’ narratives indicate that the systemic narrative often unduly attributes political connotation to the aims, contents and methodological solutions that are favoured by teachers purely on pedagogical, not political grounds. One may ask, for example, why is it Soviet-specific when teachers favour, for clear reasons, classic curriculum content or ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge, a school of thought often called essentialism? Likewise, traditional methods of memorisation (pejoratively called ‘rote learning’) are neither necessarily bad nor outdated, nor socialist- nor Soviet-originated just because a teacher with socialist-period experience finds it suitable to apply them in certain wellelaborated learning contexts. Several other allegedly socialist-inherited curricular principles, such as an unduly hierarchical teacher–student relationship or a weak link to students’ practical skills, were substantially challenged by our respondents, or were

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explained by them as necessary from the perspective of students’ present-day curricular needs. Indeed, politicising education and curriculum issues has been considered to be an essential component of cultivating the neoliberal version of democracy, both in the global South and in the former socialist European countries.91 The overall message for the reconsideration of the dominant systemic narrative appears to be the need for substantial diversification and multi-directionality. First, the cultural transition needs to be discussed in reciprocal terms rather than in terms of the ex-socialist education systems and their teachers onesidedly seeking a certain model of the ‘West’. Second, a more nuanced knowledge of the socialist-period teachers’ working realities, and a more respectful attitude towards their potential contribution, would help to overcome the overwhelmingly state-centred, politically dominated and politically motivated writing of the systemic narrative of education and curriculum.92 Third, and closely connected to the aforementioned, politically motivated rhetoric should be clearly disentangled from professional, pedagogical deliberations. Given the obvious cleavages between the systemic narrative of the exsocialist curriculum history and teachers’ individual work-life narratives, there inevitably arises the question of systemic interests. Why does the thesis of the ex-socialist teachers’ cultural backwardness still considerably appeal to political and academic circles, to the extent that it has been poured into a stage-sequential transition narrative that cements the image of teachers’ backwardness for at least a generation? Relying on our interview excerpts that explain the end of the 1990s’ ‘honeymoon period’ and the curriculum re-regulation since the early 2000s, we would claim that at least part of the answer lies in the neoliberal, managerial takeover of the education and curriculum discourse. To justify the ever-increasing administrative apparatus and the expanding regulatory practices in education, teachers need to be portrayed as inherently deficient and constantly needing assistance to keep pace with the rapidly developing society. The rhetoric of a long-term cultural backwardness is a powerful, and perhaps the only conceivable, tool for neutralising the hard-nosed, alert and perceptive socialist-period teachers who are not readily swayed by empty slogans. The promotion of a myth of cultural backwardness provides a systemic narrative to legitimise the neoliberal re-drawing of education. It bears little resemblance to the teachers’ perception of their practice. Our suggestion is to fulfil the promise that was expressed in the first post-socialist Estonian national curriculum in 1996: to truly change the role of teachers into ‘drafters’ of educational policy, as a result of which they would truly be engaged in systemic curriculum production and hence could narrate education and curriculum history in their countries and beyond. Relationality in terms of the power and constraints of the neoliberal takeover is visible in our results. Indeed, since the mid-1990s, Estonia and the other former socialist European countries have been pushed towards more standards- and accountability-driven curriculum policies characteristic to the

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Western Anglophone countries93. However, a closer look at the dimension of systemic narrative versus teachers’ personal and professional narratives demonstrates that neoliberalism succeeded to significantly different degrees at different levels of society and extended, even though it also somewhat modified, old oppositions between domination and resilience rather than creating new ones. As a world project, neoliberalism has changed education policies and potentially also the ways in which schools function. But when the Westerndelegated reform initiators challenged the ‘conformism of teachers’94, there was in Estonia, for reasons common across the former socialist European countries, much less conformism to be found than they assumed. Instead, it appears to have been much easier to find conforming cadres of administrators for implementing mechanisms of mediation and control and confirming academicians for developing a respective conceptual framework for the reforms. Of course, without further analysis, one cannot be sure about their motives, since many people are inherently susceptible to ‘reforms’ and define progress exclusively in terms of change95, whereas others may define their chances for further professional success in terms of complying with new policies. As Ross has contended, ‘Choosing not to speak from the heart is frequently awarded in academe’96. All in all, our study indicates that experienced teachers appear to be the last bastion of resistance to neoliberalism being fully implemented in curricular practices, just as they were the last bastion of resistance to the Soviet ideology decades ago.97 Several implications for further research in terms of relationality arise from our study, such as how successive modes of domination can be related to each other in personal and professional narratives, how the transfer of any foreign ideas and practices to new settings inevitably brings about criticism of these ideas from their original contexts, and how national and local identities are maintained in this process. A further research perspective, important both for the former colonial global South and for the former socialist European countries, is the development of teachers’ mindsets in conditions of the systemic narrative having radically changed but a certain form and degree of foreign domination still persisting. Will their resistance become all-encompassing and ontological and therefore not useful for meaningful deliberation? We finally want to emphasise the political importance of the research strategy that we applied. Irrespective of the specific theory used and the decisions made on sampling, data collection and data analysis, much historical and contemporary research on curriculum policy takes official documents and systemic guidelines as the natural, almost God-given starting point against which a certain curricular aspect is to be measured. However, such an approach has very limited purchase in terms of understanding’ the reality of schooling, neither can it illuminate mechanisms by which existing patterns of power and governance are transformed and maintained. Politically conservative and quietist, such research leaves both the managerial class and teachers playing on their own grounds, so leaving politicians and managers space to develop and to impose narratives on a population which is experiencing

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something very different from what the narrative is telling them. Our strategy to juxtapose top-down systemic narrative with teachers’ work-life narratives is emancipating in the sense of demonstrating how myths are made by governments right through the major changes in political systems and are then peddled as systemic narratives.

Notes 1 This article is part of the national research project IUT18-2 “Teachers’ professionality and professionalism in changing context (1.01.2014–31.12.2019)”, supported by the Estonian Research Council. 2 Note that the socialist bloc of European countries included a number of formally independent states that were de facto dominated by the Soviet Union, as well as a number of republics formally belonging to the Soviet Union. We use the notion of ‘socialist’ to refer to all these now independent countries, whereas the notion of ‘Soviet’ refers to the republics of the former Soviet Union. 3 See Ivor Goodson in this volume. 4 Ivor Goodson, “Context, Curriculum and Professional Knowledge,” History of Education 43, no. 6 (2014): 768–76; Gary McCulloch and Colin McCaig, “Reinventing the Past: The Case of the English Tradition of Education,” British Journal of Educational Studies 50, no. 2 (2002): 238–53. 5 Ladislav Cerych, “General Report on the Symposium ‘Educational Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe: Processes and Outcomes’,” European Education 31, no. 2 (1999): 5–38. 6 Cerych, “General Report on the Symposium; Denis Kallen, ‘Curriculum Reform in Secondary Education: Planning, Development and Implementation’,” European Journal of Education 31, no. 1 (1996): 43–55. 7 Monica E. Mincu, “Myth, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Eastern European Education,” European Education 41, no. 1 (2009): 55–78; Wolfgang Mitter, “Between Retrospect and Expectation:Trends and Dimensions of Education in East Central Europe,” Orbis Scholae 4, no. 2 (2010): 41–60. 8 Erss et al., “Teachers’ Views of Curriculum Policy: the Estonian Case,” British Journal of Educational Studies 62, no. 4 (2014): 393–411; Rain Mikser, Anita Kärner and Edgar Krull, “Enhancing Teachers’ Curriculum Ownership via Teacher Engagement in State-Based Curriculum-Making: the Estonian Case,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 48, no. 6 (2016): 833–55; Meril Ümarik and Ivor Goodson, “Nostalgia in the Narratives of Vocational Teachers as a Way of Understanding Responses to Change,” Critical Studies in Education, 1–16. 9 Goodson, ‘Context, Curriculum and Professional Knowledge’; Goodson in this volume. 10 Noah W. Sobe, “Problemaitizing Comparison in a Post-Exploration Age: Big Data, Educational Knowledge, and the Art of Criss-Crossing,” Comparative Education Review 62, no. 3 (2018): 335. 11 Ivor Goodson, “Times of Educational Change:Towards and Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction,” Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 6 (2010): 767–75. 12 See Linda Chisholm in this volume. 13 Richard Tabulawa, “International Aid Agencies, Learner-centred Pedagogy and Political Democratisation: A Critique,” Comparative Education 39, no. 1 (2003): 7–26; see also Le Ha Phan, “The Politics of Naming: Critiquing ‘Learner-Centred’ and ‘Teacheras-Facilitator’ in English Language and Humanities Classrooms,” Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 42, no. 4 (2014): 392–405. 14 Phan, ‘The politics of naming’, 396.

60  Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson 15 See the distinction as discussed by Tabulawa, ‘International Aid Agencies’, 11. 16 Goodson, ‘Context, Curriculum and Professional knowledge’. 17 See also Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson, “The Concept of Refraction and the Narrative Approach to Exploring Multi-Level Social Reform Initiatives: Conceptual and Methodological Issues,” in The Routledge International Handbook of European Social Transformation, eds. Peeter Vihalemm, Anu Masso and Signe Opermann, (Routledge Taylor & Francis Ltd), 84–97; Ümarik and Goodson, ‘Nostalgia in the Narratives of Vocational Teachers’. 18 Erss et al., ‘Teachers’ Views of Curriculum Policy: the Estonian Case’; Mikser, Kärner, and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers Curriculum Ownership’. 19 Erss et al., ‘Teachers’Views of Curriculum Policy: the Estonian Case’, 393. 20 See Ivor Goodson in the Introduction in this volume. 21 Mikser, Kärner, and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers’ Curriculum Ownership’, 851. 22 See Goodson, ‘Context, Curriculum and Professional Knowledge’. 23 Edgar Krull and Karmen Trasberg, “Changes in Estonian General Education from the Collapse of the Soviet Union to EU Entry,” ERIC Online Submission: 1–19. 24 Cesar Birzea, “Back to Europe and the Second Transition in Central Eastern Europe,” Orbis Scholae 2, no. 2 (2008): 105–13. 25 Gary McCulloch, The Struggle for the History of Education (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011). 26 Ivor Goodson, Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics: The Selected Works of Ivor F. Goodson (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2005); Ivor Goodson, “Times of Educational Change: Towards and Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction,” Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 6 (2010): 767–75. 27 Goodson, Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics: The Selected Works of Ivor F. Goodson, 106–7. 28 Goodson, “Times of Educational Change: Towards an Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction,” in Developing Narrative Theory: Life Histories and Personal Representation, ed. Ivor Goodson (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); Ivor Goodson and Scherto R. Gill, Narrative Pedagogy: Life History and Learning (Pieterlen, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2011). 29 Goodson, ‘Times of Educational Change: Towards an Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction’. 30 Cerych, ‘General Report on the Symposium’; Mitter, ‘Between Retrospect and Expectation’. 31 Cerych, ‘General Report on the Symposium’. 32 Mikser, Kärner and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers Curriculum Ownership’, 837. 33 Kallen, ‘Curriculum reform in Secondary Education: Planning, Development and Implementation’. 34 Cerych, ‘General Report on the Symposium’. 35 Mikser, Kärner and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers’ Curriculum Ownership’, 838. 36 Cesar Birzea, Educational Policies of the Countries in Transition (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Press, 1994). 37 Wolfgang Mitter, “Decade of Transformation: Educational Policies in Central and Eastern Europe,” International Review of Education 49, no. 1–2 (2003): 83. 38 Birzea, Educational Policies of the Countries in Transition; Birzea, ‘Back to Europe and the Second Transition in Central Eastern Europe’. 39 Birzea, ‘Back to Europe and the Second Transition in Central Eastern Europe’, 109. 40 Ibid. 41 Gábor Halasz, “From Deconstruction to Systemic Reform: Educational Transformation in Hungary,” Orbis Scholae 1, no. 2 (2007): 45–79; Tamas Kozma and Tunde Polonyi, “Understanding Education in Europe-east: Frames of Interpretation and Comparison,” International Journal of Education and Development 24, no. 5 (2004): 467–77; Monica E. Mincu and Irina Horga,“Visions of Reform in Post-Socialist Romania: Decentralization

Narratives and curriculum: Estonia  61 (Through Hybridization) and Teacher Autonomy,” in Post-Socialism is Not Dead: Reading the Global in Comparative Education, ed. Iveta Silova (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2010), 93–123; Dana Moree, “Teachers and School Culture in the Czech Republic Before and After 1989,” Curriculum Journal 24, no. 4 (2013): 586–608; Eleoussa Polyzoi and Marie Černá, “Focus on Educational Change and Globalization: A Dynamic Model of Forces Affecting the Implementation of Educational Change in the Czech Republic,” Comparative Education Review 45, no. 1 (2001): 64–84. 42 Kozma and Polonyi, ‘Understanding Education in Europe-east: Frames of Interpretation and Comparison’ , 473; Mincu and Horga,‘Visions of Reform in Post-Socialist Romania: Decentralization (Through Hybridization) and Teacher Autonomy’, 104. 43 Polyzoi and Černá, ‘Focus on Educational Change and Globalization’. 44 Cerych, ‘General Report on the Symposium’, 11. 45 Cerych,‘ ‘General Report on the Symposium’; Polyzoi and Černá,‘Focus on Educational Change and Globalization’. 46 Kallen, ‘Curriculum reform in Secondary Education: Planning, Development and Implementation’, 52. 47 Ian Westbury, “Teaching as a Reflective Practice: What Might Didaktik Teach Curriculum?” in Teaching as a Reflective Practice. The German Didaktik Tradition, ed. Ian Westbury, Stefan Hopmann and Kurt Riquarts (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 15–39. 48 Maurice J. Eash, “Curriculum Components,” in The International Encyclopedia of Curriculum, ed. Arieh Lewy (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1991), 67–9. 49 Mikser, Kärner, and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers’ Curriculum Ownership’. 50 Kennedy, quoted in Moree, ‘Teachers and School Culture in the Czech Republic’, 587. 51 Kerr, quoted in Mincu and Horga, ‘Visions of Reform in Post-Socialist Romania’, 104. 52 Halasz, “From Deconstruction to Systemic Reform: Educational Transformation in Hungary”; Moree, “Teachers and School Culture in the Czech Republic”; Polyzoi and Černá, “Focus on Educational Change and Globalization”; Zanda Rubene, “Topicality of Critical Thinking in the Post-Soviet Educational Space. The Case of Latvia,” European Education 41, no. 4 (2010): 24–40; Krystyna Salitra, “Education of Teachers for Polish Schools at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,” European Journal of Teacher Education 26, no. 1 (2003): 101–8; Janusz J. Tomiak, “Polish Education Facing the Twenty-First Century: Dilemmas and Difficulties,” Comparative Education 36, no. 2 (2000): 177–86. 53 Rubene, ‘Topicality of Critical Thinking’, 27. 54 Richard Pachociński, “Educational Development in Central and Eastern Europe.Trends, Perspectives and Barriers,” European Education 29, no. 3 (1997): 6–25; Rubene,“Topicality of Critical Thinking.” 55 Pachociński, ‘Educational Development in Central and Eastern Europe’. 56 Rubene, ‘Topicality of Critical Thinking’. 57 Pachociński, ‘Educational Development in Central and Eastern Europe’; Polyzoi and Černá, ‘Focus on Educational Change and Globalization’; Salitra, ‘Education of Teachers for Polish Schools’. 58 Polyzoi and Černá, ‘Focus on Educational Change and Globalization’, 72. 59 Pachociński, ‘Educational Development in Central and Eastern Europe’; Rubene, ‘Topicality of Critical Thinking’. 60 Moree, ‘Teachers and School Culture in the Czech Republic’. 61 Pachociński, ‘Educational Development in Central and Eastern Europe’, 15. 62 Tomiak, ‘Polish Education Facing the Twenty-First Century’. 63 Cerych, ‘General Report on the Symposium’. 64 Evgenia Jane Kitaevich, “History That Splinters: Education Reforms and Memory Politics in the Republic of Georgia,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 14, no. 2 (2014): 319–38.

62  Rain Mikser and Ivor Goodson 65 Ibid., 320. 66 Ibid., 333. 67 Ivor Goodson, Shawn Moore and Andy Hargreaves, “Teacher Nostalgia and the Sustainability of Reform: The Generation and Degeneration of Teachers’ Missions, Memory, and Meaning,” Educational Administration Quarterly 42, no. 1 (2006): 42–61. 68 Goodson, Developing Narrative Theory. 69 Mikser, Kärner and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers’ Curriculum Ownership’. 70 Vadim Rõuk, Johannes L. van der Walt and Charl C. Wolhuter, “Science of Pedagogy in Soviet Estonia (1944–1991): Resilience in the Face of Adversity,” History of Education 47, no. 1 (2018): 108–24. 71 Krull and Trasberg, ‘Changes in Estonian general education’, 7. 72 Krull and Trasberg, ‘Changes in Estonian general education’, 8. 73 Mikser, Kärner, and Krull, ‘Enhancing Teachers Curriculum Ownership’. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Female English and German language teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 46 years. 77 Eash, ‘Curriculum Components’. 78 Female English and German language teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 46 years. 79 SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is a frequently used planning technique to help a person or organisation identify these four qualities for planning further objectives, decisions and actions. For further analysis, see for example Erhard K. Valentin, “Away with SWOT Analysis: Use Defensive/Offensive Evaluation Instead,” The Journal of Applied Business Research 21, no. 2 (2005): 91–105. 80 Female arts and handicrafts teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 36 years. 81 Rubene, ‘Topicality of Critical Thinking’, 28. 82 Goodson, ‘Context, Curriculum and Professional Knowledge; McCulloch and McCaig, Reinventing the Past’. 83 See Tabulawa, ‘International Aid Agencies’. 84 Female arts and handicrafts teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 36 years. 85 Rubene, ‘Topicality of Critical Thinking’, 25. 86 Female German language teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 39 years. 87 Male physical education teacher in basic school, with teaching experience of 50 years. 88 Female Estonian language and literature teacher in basic and secondary school, with teaching experience of 49 years. 89 See Moree, “Teachers and School Culture in the Czech Republic”; Peter Scott, “Reflections on the Reform of Higher Education in Central and Eastern Europe,” Higher Education in Europe 28, no. 1–2 (2002): 137–52. 90 See Chisholm in this volume. 91 See Phan, ‘Politics of Naming’ ; Tabulawa, ‘International Aid Agencies’. 92 See Kitaevich, ‘History that Splinters’. 93 Erss et al., ‘Teachers’Views of Curriculum Policy: The Estonian Case’. 94 Tabulawa, ‘International Aid Agencies’, 18. 95 Ivor Goodson, “The Crisis of Curriculum Change,” Taboo Fall–Winter (2000), 109–23. 96 Heidi Ross, “The Space between US: The Relevance of Relational Theories to Comparative and International Education,” Comparative Education Review 46, no. 4 (2002): 407–32. 97 Krull and Trasberg, ‘Changes in Estonian general education’.

4

African American curriculum history New possibilities and directions LaGarrett J. King, Alana D. Murray, and Christine Woyshner

The history of curriculum is a relatively new area of study, having emerged in the late 1960s in the United States. For a long time it had overwhelmingly focussed on the politically charged nature of the twentieth-century formal school curriculum, although in recent decades scholarship has broadened to include earlier eras, informal and non-school public settings and marginalised groups.1 Although research on curricula for African Americans has been under-studied until very recently, scholars have theorised that black curricula is ‘inextricably tied to the history of the black experience in the United States’.2 Therefore, in this chapter we seek to explore a fuller history of African American curricula, which we deem as plural and varied across time and place. As Barry Franklin argues, we cannot view the American curriculum ‘as a single, uniform entity’, and the same holds for the subfield of black curricular history.3 Given our stance that curricula for African Americans in US history is plural and multi-faceted, we investigate the gaps in the existing scholarship by asking broadly, what exactly are black curricula and what were their influences? What were the goals and emphases of black curricula, and how did they change over time? Bearing in mind that informal spaces are just as important as formal schooling in the history of black education,4 we posit that curricula for African Americans have been created in multiple spaces and were often developed in times of strife or political, cultural or social change. To provide some background, we begin with an overview of the scholarship on black curricular orientations and the research that has informed this study.

Black curricular orientations In the past several decades, education researchers have begun examining one of the most important reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: African American education and the evolution of curricula for black students in educational settings.5 Scholar William Watkins delineated six curricular orientations for African Americans: functionalism, accommodation, liberalism, reconstruction, Black Nationalism and Afrocentrism.6 Watkins’ codification captured broad, important ideological debates that had an impact

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on black students, families and educators. He outlined key events in the history of black education, including the struggle to obtain literacy in the black community, the impact of the Hampton-Tuskegee model, the spread of cultural nationalism via the figures of Marcus Garvey and the Nation of Islam and the legacy of educational philosophers such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Asa Hilliard. However, in constructing a framework for the education of African Americans and black curricula, Watkins overlooked a central theme that we develop in this chapter: the importance of teaching black history, which was viewed by African American educators and community leaders as central to the quest for full citizenship in the United States after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Furthermore, this cultivation of black history curricula necessarily included a global vision, one which embraced a transnational, diasporic focus. Watkins’ orientations for the education of African Americans are widely accepted. However, missing in his broad brushstrokes are the influences of black women teachers, school administrators and community leaders; a fuller exploration of non-formal educational settings; and an acknowledgement that transnationalism was at the heart of a black educational vision.7 Indeed, Watkins’ construction of black curriculum orientations is highly gendered, centring on the contributions of black and white male educators and spotlighting schools. However, by studying the evolution of curricula in black schools, which includes the teaching of black history, the influence and role of black women in formal and informal education settings can be better acknowledged. Additionally, by studying the impact of civic organisations in black communities, the ways citizens supported educational initiatives and implemented a public curriculum can be uncovered as well. These local-level discursive spaces allowed for African Americans to have the freedom to reimagine how their children could be educated for citizenship, freedom and prosperity. In particular, they adopted a diasporic view – one which emphasised the political, historic and cultural contributions of Africans of the diaspora and their descendants in Europe, Asia, and the Americas – which allowed for a new way for African Americans to envision themselves and their communities by remaking racialised identities that were about success, transcendence and power.8 Recognising the limitations of Watkins’ work in not acknowledging the inextricable connection between curricula and black experiences in the United States, King, Simmons and Brown developed an additional framework for examining and understanding Black curriculum orientations.9 They argued that early twentieth-century black educators were revisionist ontologists who viewed the black curriculum as political and as a means to revise, repudiate and redress racial constructs about black people made popular by white theorists and historians. According to King, Simons and Brown, black educators held the following four ideologies about curriculum: black liberalism, black nationalism, critical theory and black feminist theory. Each curricular approach spoke to the existential experience of being black in the United States while challenging anti-blackness in education. This experience necessitates inclusion of what

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Givens calls ‘educational diasporic practice’, or the ‘creation of educational systems and practices by black subjects that recast the narrative of Africa’ as a source of pride and humanity.10 The approaches captured the socio-historical realities of being black and provided strategies to address racialisation through both educative and political means. These four ideologies differed and sometimes competed against one another, but the curriculum consistently promoted black freedom, self-determination and social justice.11 In building on the orientations as outlined by Watkins and King, Simmons and Brown, we discuss three directions in moving the conversation on the history of black curricula forward. First, scholars cannot overlook the centrality of the teaching of black history to promote civic participation and social justice among and within black schools and communities. We contend that the teaching of black history has been a constant across settings and locales over time and has served to unite black citizens around common goals and aspirations. Second, we assert that a closer look at the development and implementation of curricula within schools and communities is warranted, because it has the potential to add nuance and richness to the broad strokes of the curricular orientations outlined earlier. Finally, we reveal the emphasis on transnationalism found in black curricula of the past and assert its centrality in allowing for black students and teachers to locate themselves as part of the ‘imaginative space’ of the African diaspora.12 Because our discussion rests on an understanding of the development of black curricular frameworks, in the next section we outline its four phases.

Stages in the development of black curricula Our research has revealed four distinct but overlapping eras in the development of curricula to teach African Americans black history and other related topics and subjects (such as civics, economics and sociology) in schools and non-formal settings. The first, from 1880 to 1930, we have labelled the building phase. Scholars such as James D. Anderson, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, Derrick Aldridge, Anthony Brown, Keffrelyn Brown, Jeffrey Snyder and Ronald Butchart have documented the development of a black education community in the period after Reconstruction. For example, Butchart reveals how the newly freed people mastered a curriculum of rigour in the liberal arts, despite years of having been denied access to literacy and schooling.13 This education was viewed by the students as a necessary condition for civic participation and, as Butchart argues, education and the franchise could not be disentangled in the minds of the freed people. Also, towards the end of this period Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois began to create scholarship and disseminate it through various channels, especially through teachers’ organisations. This new curriculum emphasised racial uplift and community building.14 During this time, in addition to male educational leaders, black women participated in building a black curriculum which placed African American history at the centre. Nannie Helen Burroughs, Anna Julia Cooper and Leila

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Amos Pendleton and others developed textbooks, pageants and speeches which emphasised key themes in black history with an eye towards teaching students about liberty, justice and their civic rights and responsibilities. During this period, the contours of an alternative black curriculum in social studies and history began to emerge. The alternative black curriculum emerged was a ‘pedagogical counter-narrative’, which sought to challenge and remake the racist dominant narrative of United States and world history.15 This period is characterised by the creation of materials which outlined key principles of black history, and it was disseminated through such venues as civic organisations, schools and families. The next period, approximately 1930 to 1960, is defined by a norming of black history curricula and more explicit attention to the civil rights of African Americans. In the early part of this period, with the establishment of Negro History Week in 1926, the black history curriculum was eagerly embraced by black women schoolteachers as evidenced by the lesson plans and articles that appear in the Negro History Bulletin.16 In addition, black fraternal organisations utilised elements of an alternative black curriculum, integrating it into their civic work in the black community. As the Brown v. Board of Education decision fundamentally altered the education landscape towards the end of this norming phase, a marked increase in the spread of black history curricula occurred, as well as attention to literacy and civic education with an eye towards helping African Americans exercise their right to vote. Throughout this phase, a transnational black perspective was emphasised, which was more than a fetishisation of African cultures; instead it was ‘an intentional effort to expose black students to more rigorous understanding of Black heritage and diasporic belonging’.17 In the next phase, from 1960 to 1980, one of the key legacies of Brown v. Board of Education and the subsequent struggle for school integration was the popularisation of Afrocentric ideology as a central theme in black history curricula and more explicit activism of black students and civic groups in civics and social justice activities. Black history manifested itself in different strains. First, the goals of Afrocentrism and an Afrocentric curriculum were defined as ‘placing African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior’.18 It involved both content and method. Emerging also at this time were Africana Studies, which emphasised the political, cultural and historic contributions of Africans through the diaspora in Europe, the Americas and Asia.19 During this time of the US federal government’s increased funding of public education and the development of curriculum, emerged the development more broadly of an ethnic studies curriculum that questioned the social, economic and political status quo. While the alternative black curriculum always emphasised the connection between US history and world history, it converged in this phase with the impact of the modern-day US Civil Rights Movement. One of the results of the modern-day US Civil Rights Movement was an increased interest in ethnic studies, which ushered in an era where the black history curriculum coexisted in public spaces with Asian American and Chicano/Latino American studies.20

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Finally, in the period from 1980 to the present, black history curricula have confronted the challenge of the multiplicity of narratives, which defines the postmodern era. In working to shape black children’s racial and cultural identities, educators struggle to find a voice amongst the cacophony of divergent curriculum reform movements vying for educators’ attention, as well as the testing movement, which influences all curricula and schooling to the present day.

Counter-narratives and black curricula We now illuminate three episodes that highlight central themes in the development of curricula for African American students and the teaching of black history in formal and non-formal settings. We examine the influences of black women teachers, school administrators and community leaders; we argue for a fuller exploration of non-formal educational settings in the history of black curriculum; and we reveal how transnationalism was at the heart of a black curricular vision which comprised a diasporic perspective. These three themes are evident in our discussion of the textbooks authored by an African American woman teacher and the educational efforts of black voluntary organisations. We conclude with a discussion of the push for black studies in schools in the 1960s. Leila Amos Pendleton’s world view

Textbooks are commonly used primary sources for curriculum historians, and those who research black curriculum history are no exception. Many textbooks on black history were produced during the building phase of black curriculum development (1880 to 1930), and textbooks with a focus on black history played a critical role in the development of education for African Americans.21 Authors sought to provide comprehensive counter-narratives that directly challenged racist texts being produced by white authors. Historian Alana Murray has argued that the alternative black curriculum, or black history curriculum, in social studies contained four key elements which comprised content and pedagogy. First, the alternative black curriculum stressed that African civilisations contributed to an overall world history. Next, the curriculum emphasised the central role enslaved people played in building social, political and economic institutions in the United States. Third, the writers of the alternative black curriculum encouraged an identity connected to the African diaspora, which linked African Americans’ struggle with people of colour throughout the world. Finally, the alternative black curriculum highlighted the need for dialogue about race and racism and the importance of white allies.22 The textbooks created by black authors during the formative years of black curricula reflected the key principles of an emerging genre of materials which challenged white historians’ attempts to create a canon which was taught in

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multiple subject areas. However, collaborations between African American male academics and African American female educators often reflected standard gender imbalances in relationships between men and women in the early twentieth century. Leila Amos Pendleton was one of the most prolific black history textbook authors of her generation, during the foundational period in the development of the black history curriculum. She was born in 1860 in Washington DC, the daughter of a policeman who served his community. She earned her diploma at Washington High School in 1886 and then graduated from Miner Normal School. Pendleton specialised in English during her time there and then taught for four years until marrying Robert Pendleton in 1893. Robert Pendleton offered a key resource to his spouse as he owned a printing house that was called Pendleton’s Quality Printing House.23 Pendleton published at least two books through her husband’s printing house, including: A Narrative of the Negro (1912) and Frederick Douglass: A Narrative (1921).24 Pendleton also produced articles, such as ‘Our new possessions: The Danish West Indies’, which appeared in the Journal of Negro History in 1917, and ‘An Alphabet for Negro Children’, which appeared in the NAACP’s journal, The Crisis, in 1915.25 Throughout A Narrative of the Negro, Pendleton used a regional approach to develop a transnational view to world history. The textbook was published in 1912 and went through 14 editions.26 Specifically, she claimed that African geography played an important role in world history: Let us look at a map of the Eastern Hemisphere. In the northern part we see Europe and Asia, and southwest of these lies Africa, almost entirely in the Torrid Zone. … Remember these countries, for on their soil many of the most important events of the ancient world took place. Some hundreds of years before our Savior was born in Bethlehem, hundreds of years before men had even heard the names “England,” “France,” “Germany,” “America,” the people of northern Africa were engaged in building cities, sailing the waters, and rearing statues and monuments, some of which latter are standing until this day.27 Pendleton posited that the kingdoms of Abyssinia and Meroe were as influential as Rome or Greece. Moreover, she interspersed a variety of illustrations to support and supplement the narrative throughout her entire book. For instance, in the section on Ancient Africa, Pendleton used a map of Africa and an image of Meroe to augment her analysis. This positive emphasis on the achievements of Africa attempted to counter the dominant narrative’s emphasis on African inferiority. Second, she tried to shape black children’s identity in a positive way by using the inclusive ‘we’ in her writings. Pendleton also attempted to reframe the dominant narrative in the debate over the utility of colonisation at this time. For instance, in A Narrative of the

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Negro, the author described the journeys of Mungo Park, a native of Scotland, through West Africa in the eighteenth century, as well as outlining the colonisation of Sierra Leone and Liberia.28 To support her claim, Pendleton used imagery effectively, including the pictures ‘A native youth of modern Africa’, ‘Image of the native king and council, hinterland Sierra Leone’ and ‘Image of Liberian soldiers and citizens’.29 Her rewriting of the history of colonisation reveals a complex set of choices. It appears that central to her understanding of black history was her attempt to place colonisation within the larger history of Western ideas and Christianity; hence the centrality of Sierra Leone and Liberia in her story. Pendleton’s language, however, reads as paternalistic in her discussion of the ways in which the colonies of Sierra Leone and Liberia were functioning in the twentieth century. A Narrative of the Negro is also notable because of its emphasis on the struggle of African Americans in a diasporic context. After discussing colonisation, Pendleton presents the freedom struggles in Santo Domingo and Haiti. The centrality of the Haitian Revolution in the alternative black history curriculum cannot be overstated. Moreover, Haitian leaders gave her a way to discuss black freedom and autonomy, an important counter-narrative to the dominant narrative of inferiority. Pendleton extended this claim to a discussion of a free black maroon community in Brazil and Haiti.30 Another key element of this diasporic claim was Pendleton’s attempt to reframe the conversation about slavery. She attempted to enumerate the types of slavery throughout world history, noting that the phenomenon of slavery was not a political condition found only in the United States. This perceived effort to normalise the conditions of African Americans may have underplayed the extent to which modern slavery, with its reliance on networks of capitalism, was a truly different historical phenomenon. Yet, Pendleton’s discussion of slavery once again employed her use of empathy as strategy to aid her young readers in understanding the condition of slavery. Remarkably, to connect with her audience of grade-level children, Pendleton opened the chapter using the rearing of a kitten as a metaphor for slavery.31 Pendleton addressed the history of the United States, as she transitioned from world and diasporic history to the centrality of African Americans in nationbuilding. In an attempt to de-centre the colonisation of North America, she underscored the Negro Plot of 1741 – an attempt by blacks and poor whites to burn New York City by setting a series of fires – and the role of Jenny Slew, one of the first black women to sue for freedom against her master. Through this de-centring, Pendleton elucidated the origins of African American citizenship.32 It continued, as she developed another common theme essential to the alternative black curriculum in social studies: the role of the black man in the military of the United States. The author equated military service with citizenship as she discussed the role of Crispus Attucks and other black men during the Revolutionary War, the military service of African American sailors during the War of 1812 and the impact of black soldiers in the Civil War.33

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Finally, Pendleton stressed the accomplishments of African American women. Indeed, in A Narrative of the Negro she creates a mythos of black womanhood, thereby reframing the institutional structures during the time she wrote, the Progressive Era, with black female figures equivalent to those mythical figures of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at the centre of the narrative. Pendleton devoted an entire chapter to Phillis Wheatley, and discussed at equal length Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Pendleton also extended the notion of citizenship to contemporary clubwomen, such as of Fanny Jackson Coppin, and the growing role of the black women’s club movement. This became a narrative to help socialise black women to a claim of citizenship that was equal to those of black men.34 Thus, as early as 1912, key elements of a black history curriculum are present in A Narrative of the Negro. The first innovation, a modelling of African American teaching that built on empathetic understanding of the student, was of course, simply a technique. This technique, however, is most likely the most revolutionary aspect of A Narrative of the Negro, because it presumed that the African American student was one that deserved empathy on the part of the teacher as a matter of course. Other innovations included the decentring of a Eurocentric geography, the disruption of simple colonisation narratives, and the reclamation of citizenship for African American men and women. The importance of Pendleton to building a black history curriculum, therefore, cannot be underestimated.35 A Narrative of the Negro is not often referred to in scholarship on the history of black curriculum. The textbook deserves more attention, however, both for its usefulness in outlining the parameters of the African American canon – with transnationalism at its core – and for the basic fact that the book’s existence reflects that Pendleton published during an era which was constricted by the unyielding bonds of sexism and racism. A public curriculum in informal spaces

Pendleton’s stressing the contributions of black clubwomen reflects the robust activity of civic organisations of the time. While historians of education in recent years have explored the history of African American schooling, Danns, Purdy and Span point out that teaching and learning often happened in informal spaces, such as churches, families and community groups.36 Therefore, in this section we present an overview of the educational activities and transnational connections to education in black civic voluntary organisations. We discuss the transnational alliances that founded the segregated associations, share organisations’ interest in international political and social events and reveal how black curricula for advancement, racial uplift and citizenship were developed in these groups. As the number of civic voluntary associations increased greatly after the Civil War, Americans of all races and socioeconomic classes organised them

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and employed their networks in achieving political and social goals. Black Americans were especially active in forming voluntary organisations to meet community needs; these voluntary organisations were second only in number and influence to churches, which were the most central institution in African American life.37 No fewer than 500 black civic organisations existed from the end of the Civil War to the late twentieth century. These associations were founded for a variety of purposes – social, protest, business, professional, civic, trade and religious reasons – and their efforts as well as their membership overlapped. Being a member of a civic organisation afforded members networking opportunities; fellowship, literary and artistic inspiration; and educational advancement. As one scholar explains, ‘the associations created a racially autonomous world that shielded African Americans from racial abuse and humiliation, while enabling them to serve the needs of the black community with honor, dignity, and respect’.38 While their focus was on mutual aid, the teaching of cultural rituals and the guiding of civic activities, historian Christine Woyshner argues that education and schooling were central to the mission of black civic organisations.39 Black civic organisations were either independent or parallel orders. Parallel orders were founded as separate black counterparts to existing white associations, such as the National PTA, YMCA and YWCA, and fraternal groups such as the Elks, Prince Hall Masons and Odd Fellows. Independent, or distinctive, organisations existed on their own, without white counterparts, such as the Independent Order of St. Luke and Universal Negro Improvement Association. Among parallel orders, some had to rely on transnational alliances to become established, because white fraternal groups would not sponsor them. For example, the (black) Grand United Order of Odd Fellows relied upon its ties to England to organise its first unit. In 1843, when rebuffed by white lodges in the US (called the Independent Order of Odd Fellows), Peter Ogden – who was black –enlisted the help of his former lodge in Liverpool. Thus, Victoria Lodge #448 sponsored the new Philomathian Lodge in New York City. Lodge #646 (numbers 1–645 were in England at the time, with a total membership of approximately 60,000 members) and the first black American lodge was under white British direction, but had authority to open others in the United States.40 The black Elks, or Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World (IBPOEW), was able to establish an independent, parallel lodge in the United States. The white Elks (Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, or BPOE), was founded as the Jolly Corks by Charles Vivian, an English immigrant who worked as a comic singer, in 1867 in New York City.41 The white organisation refused to help open a black lodge, but in 1898 Arthur Riggs, a Pullman car porter in Cincinnati, Ohio, found a BPOE ritual booklet left on a train seat and obtained a copyright for it, thus founding the IBPOEW, or black Elks.42 The white Elks challenged the legitimacy of the black lodge and launched a protracted battle in the courts, but they were ultimately

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unsuccessful. The IBPOEW went on to become one of the largest black fraternal organisations in the country by the mid-twentieth century. The black Elks’ constitution, which embraced the same mission and values as the white organisation, articulates the organisation’s purposes: ‘Its objects shall be and are benevolent, social and altruistic—to promote and encourage manly friendship and kindly intercourse, to aid, protect and assist its members and their families.’43 Education was central to this undertaking. Calling themselves the Elks of the World was intentional, as it reflected the founders’ vision to create a transnational organisation based on the understanding that black people around the world were united as a result of the African diaspora. The Elks established lodges in Canada, Cuba, Great Britain, the Philippines and France, although little is known about these far-flung groups, their activities and the frequency of communication with the US lodges. If the main publication of the black Elks, the Washington Eagle, is any indication, none of the international lodges reported to the US grand lodge, but they were mentioned in its pages.44 The pages of the Washington Eagle, did, however, reflect members’ interest in what was happening around the world. For example, it was not uncommon to find reports on South Africa and the encroachment of apartheid beginning in the late 1940s. The first appears in the November 1949 issue, shortly after apartheid was instituted. Elks’ members were informed that the Colored People’s National Union in Kimberley, a diamond mining town, were organising to protest disenfranchisement of white, coloured and Indian peoples in the country. The Kimberley Union ‘urged Negroes everywhere to use whatever legitimate means they can to resist apartheid segregation and demand that the government abandon its segregation policy.’45 If we accept the definition of curriculum as a set of discursive practices in educational settings, the black Elks developed, promoted and taught a curriculum of civil rights, economic sustenance and racial uplift through its publications, meetings and educational initiatives.46 Transnational influences were evident in its education curriculum from the early decades. The organisation’s early educational philosophy was summarised in a 1902 report, which emphasised both work with the hands and with the mind.47 The Junior Elks was created in 1927 to enlist the children of members. Lodges in Philadelphia and Baltimore took the lead in organising young black men into ‘herds’ of 30 members each, and the herds learned the IBPOEW principles of justice, brotherly love, charity and fidelity, as well as ‘the Negro’s history in Africa and America’.48 Within 3 years, the Junior Elks had grown to 52 herds in 29 states, as well as in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto.49 Educational activities became more formalised after World War I, after 1,500 black Elks returned from the service overseas. In 1920 the order initiated a college scholarship programme, which was intended to ‘cultivate stronger racial consciousness’ by urging community members to commemorate the birthdays of black leaders such as Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar.50 Shortly thereafter, in 1925, the Elks made official their

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commitment to education by organising an Education Department, which became the most important and active committee of the association. Its purposes were to increase school attendance and length of time in school for black youth and to further support and develop the scholarship programme. In creating a separate department dedicated to education and schooling, the Elks proclaimed: ‘whereas the most needful thing for the advancement of the American negro is education’, and they resolved to see to a formal education of every boy and girl.51 The Education Department immediately implemented various curricular initiatives. It established an Elk Educational Week to begin on the second Sunday of every April. During that time, Elks provided information on higher education and assigned each day of Educational Week a focus on encouraging and supporting education. On Sunday, members spoke at their churches about the importance of education. On Monday, members visited and inspected private and public schools. Tuesdays saw the Elks’ committee members sharing the information they had gathered and concerns with school officials. Wednesday and Thursday were set aside for making home visits and contacting parents. On Friday, the lodges provided entertainment in their communities to raise money for the college scholarship fund.52 During Education Week, the oratorical contest was held and the Daughter Elks hosted a luncheon for the contestants.53 This pattern continued until 1950, after which it was discontinued, but the organisation continued the scholarship programme and oratory contests. It also became increasingly devoted to school desegregation and adult education to combat illiteracy so adults could pass voter registration tests.54 This brief overview of the curriculum in black civic organisations reveals a desire to unite with the peoples of the African diaspora and commitment to promoting an alternative black curriculum which stressed racial uplift and social justice. This curriculum appeared in the pages of organisations’ newsletters and publications and was enacted in their adult and youth educational programmes which emphasised literacy and citizenship. The section represents a mere glimpse at the ways civic organisations played a role in supporting and promoting the education of African Americans outside of formal school settings, since this strand in the history of African American education is vastly underdeveloped. Through pageants, publications and programmes, black voluntary associations developed a curriculum of civic engagement, race pride and economic sustenance that served members and those in the black communities in which they were located. Black studies in schools in the 1960s

Black civic organisations became increasingly radicalised over the course of the twentieth century, as the 1960s became a time of paramount social change. That decade, the long Civil Rights Movement peaked with more visible and public televised acts of civil disobedience from those who sought an equitable nation.55 What is less known during this era is the fight for black curricula

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in schools. The 1960s and 1970s saw an explosion of K-12 curriculum in the form of black studies, which was based on an ideology that sought to (1) improve the self-concept of young black children; (2) balance the curriculum and eliminated crude stereotypes and ugly phraseology; and (3) ease interracial relations through reducing ignorance in the curriculum.56 The demand for K-12 black studies was heightened during the Civil Rights Movement, as many students, teachers and community members insisted on black history in the schools. As discussed earlier, black studies drew on theoretical developments in Afrocentrism and Africana Studies, both of which had strong transnational impulses. Afrocentric curricula sought to raise the selfesteem of black students as it endeavoured to challenge the dominant narrative of Western civilisation. More radical than Africana Studies, Afrocentrism as a theory examined oppression and resistance, while Africana studies focused on the contributions of African diasporic peoples to the rest of the world.57 Black students, teachers and concerned community members from places such as Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City protested the need for more black history and black studies in schools. Students from those school districts fought for equitable school conditions, more black teachers and the right to have black studies courses taught by black teachers, as part of the official curriculum. For instance, in 1967, 3,500 Philadelphia students were able to force change from the school board. Despite the Philadelphia Police Department’s controversial tactics that resulted in many persons injured or arrested, the school districted created an ad hoc committee for the infusion of African and Afro-American heritage, which ultimately led to a policy to include black history in every school in the district.58 The demand for black studies in K-12 schools occurred through both grassroots efforts led by educators, as well as top-down approaches from policy makers. As Rose Marie Walker Levey notes in her special report for Education USA, ‘Black studies in schools: a review of current policies and programs’: Some school officials faced militant students’ demands for black studies. Other [were] motivated by a subtler pressure from students and community residents. Some administrators initiated black studies programs as a means of preventing trouble and still others have acted out of an honest recognition of a void in the curriculum.59 The pressures from the black community, primarily black students, did not necessarily yield successful inclusion of black studies in schools, nor was the adoption of black curricula even across the United States. The protests, however, did start discussions regarding the definition of an equitable curriculum, which was the first attempt at institutionalising black studies as official school policy. In this section, we investigate the different ways black studies was legislated through state law-making bodies; we discuss how certain school districts in the United States enacted policies and developed black studies programmes; and we explore how the demands for black studies influenced the development

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of school resources by considering the parallel development of a black history textbook market. While almost half of the states attempted to institutionalise black history in the 1960s, the policies were only as good as how well they were enforced and implemented. By 1969, seven states – California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey and Oklahoma – introduced legislation mandating or recommending black history in the curriculum. The laws in some of these states focussed on an integrated American history curriculum taught by teachers that promoted the presence of black history content in the curriculum, while other states, such as Connecticut and Michigan, focussed solely on the use of textbooks to ensure that black history as well as other ethnic specific groups were included in the pages. The curricula also required in-service teacher professional development, African American history bibliographies of important readings, and revision of US history textbooks. Implementation varied regarding local school district enforcement of these mandates; in some places oversight was required, where the state board would visit schools and require reports concerning the regulations, while others recommended changes, leaving discretion to local schools.60 Some states (Kentucky, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont) merely issued policy statements via their departments of education, most of which provided recommendations including developing bibliographies of black history resources and materials. For example, Kentucky schools were ordered to include ‘adequate treatment of the historical significance and the important role of the Negro’,61 which was planned for the student’s senior year in American history. The Pennsylvania State Board of Education mandated black history would be taught in both elementary and secondary classrooms. The Board also suggested the integration of black studies by outlining how it could be incorporated in civics, economics, geography and world cultures. Like Pennsylvania, Rhode Island required black history in both elementary and secondary schools and it, along with New Jersey, included funding for teachers’ professional development. In those states that did not draft legislation or policy statements (Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington), bibliographies and teaching guides were developed to support the development of content and instructional methods. In 1969, Maryland was the first state to create a State Negro History and Culture Commission. The Commission, appointed by the governor, was created to study the status of black history and recommend action plans to better foster it. Additionally, the US Congress attempted to pass legislation for a National Black History Curriculum through the National Commission on Afro-American History and Culture Act, first introduced in 1968, then in 1969. The legislation called for a 15-person committee to be appointed by the President, where the purpose was to ‘integrate the Negro’s role and heritage into history books, schools, libraries, museums, and the press’. The legislation failed but other iterations were put forward, ultimately passing in 2003.62

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A common theme in black studies programmes was that elementary and secondary programmes differed. In elementary settings, black studies programmes were integrated with the rest of the curriculum. For example, half of Philadelphia’s elementary schools’ social studies curriculum included aspects of African and Afro-American studies beginning at the kindergarten level. Black studies programmes in secondary schools were designed as separate classes and started as early as middle school. Most programmes, however, would occur during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades. Rarely were these courses required for graduation, most were elective courses, and they ranged from a semester to a year long. A few courses sometimes were scheduled before or after school, as with one-third of Philadelphia’s black studies courses. Many school districts offered a range of black studies course across academic disciplines including history, literature, art, dance, languages and music which reflected a transnational approach. Swahili was popular, as were black culture, dance and history. For example, in Madison, Wisconsin, schools used sociology and current events as the basic for their course in eighth and ninth grades. All Rochester, New York, schools by the 1969–1970 school year offered Negro History and Black Literature as elective courses. Berkeley, California, had a range of courses including, Black History, History of Minorities, African Dance, Swahili, African Studies and Afro-American Literature. Philadelphia’s course offerings included Afro-American History, African History, Swahili, Afro-American Literature, African History, Black Culture in Art, Negro Culture and even Chinjanja. The advent of black studies programmes also helped develop some non-traditional educative spaces such as the interracial book clubs and Afro-American cultural organisations developed through the Buffalo, New York, public school systems.63 The efforts to develop black history courses also influenced the type of teaching materials needed, which were developed both internally and externally. Materials were designed to encourage students to build a foundation of black history, examine racial injustices and cultivate black pride. For example, Berkeley developed a fully integrated course for fifth graders where they developed a study guide called, U.S. History: A Study of the Afro-Americans.64 The study guide included four sections: West African civilisations; slavery; the Civil War, Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods; and Afro-Americans in the twentieth century. Evanston’s District 65 created five resource manuals for teachers. These five teacher manuals were The Negro in American History, Interpersonal Relationships among Students, Black Power and Its Effect on Racial Interaction, Common prejudices of Negroes and White and The Black Self-Concept.65 Earl Minkwitz, a San Francisco teacher on special assignment, wrote a black history textbook for the district titled, The Negro in American Life and History.66 He was aided by a teacher curriculum committee and resource consultants, as well as prominent historian John Hope Franklin, who served as a consultant. The book begins with Colonial Heritage and ends with Negroes and the Search for Full Equality; it includes common black history topics such as slavery, Reconstruction and civil rights, and it covers aspects of institutional

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racism and Black agency, introducing terms such as racism, white supremacy and imperialism. According to Superintendent Robert E. Jenkins, the resource book was not to be used as a separate course but as supplement resources to make the history course complete.67 The external resources included popular textbooks written by academic historians, the majority being black. Some of the more popular textbooks included, William Katz’s Eyewitness: The Negro in American History,68 adopted by Flint, Michigan and Providence, Rhode Island; John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom69 was adopted by Cleveland; Rayford Logan and Irving Cohen’s book, The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experiences70 was adopted by San Mateo and Madison; and Lerone Bennett’s Before the Mayflower71 was adopted by Evanston. In addition to black history textbooks, many school districts used popular literature such as A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Harriett Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad; and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.72 What defined this era of black curricula was the availability of resources on African and African American history and the pressure to develop instructional materials. At this time, black studies suffered from a lack of consensus regarding its theoretical approach, which resulted in its not being a priority in schools, which led to its losing ground to multicultural curricula in the late 1970s. School districts sought for ways to define black citizenship through the influences of Afrocentric curricula and Africana studies, yet they struggled with implementation because of differing philosophical debates. One was that it should steer away from politics and be truly integrated within the traditional US history narrative, and the other was that it should have a therapeutic value, a social justice orientation and be critical to racist structures.73 Both embraced a diasporic view, however. Most of the black studies programmes tended towards attempts to depoliticise history, but the movement did challenge curriculum structures and what it meant to implement an equitable curriculum filled with culturally relevant instruction.

Conclusion The path of the development of black curricula since Reconstruction has been circuitous and uneven. In this chapter, we charted its course and identified phases that it has gone through, starting with a building phase, followed by a norming period. Then came a struggle for black history in the schools and the current era, in which black curricula are carried along in the stream of a multiplicity of narratives in a postmodern era. We have identified gaps, which are opportunities for further research. These gaps have included not enough attention to women and gender, and little mind to explore teaching and learning settings outside of formal schools. Further research on these two areas will elicit rich findings about the ways black women community leaders and teachers shaped curricula for African American children and adults. Moreover, investigating the education of African Americans in churches, families, communities

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and civic organisations is long overdue. Throughout each, and over time, we recognise the interest in embracing black peoples around the globe in the black curricula, for a connection to and with the diaspora of Africans to different continents has given the black curricula a grounding and direction for generations of students. Thus, we argue for continued investigation of women’s roles, an uncovering of the influence of civic organisations in developing and teaching curricula for African American youth and adults, and an understanding that transnationalism and diasporic studies have been at the heart of black curricula since the early days of curriculum development. Individually and together, our research points up the centrality of an alternative black curriculum as defined by Murray, and it reveals distinct but overlapping phases of development of African American curricula. Black curricular innovations were focussed on social justice, racial uplift and resistance to white authority, both in the school curriculum and in community life, in families, churches, neighborhoods and voluntary organisations. These curricular innovations and the implementation of them must be uncovered much more fully in the historical record. We encourage other scholars to engage in this pursuit to follow certain avenues as to what black students learned and how it changed their world views and shaped their civic participation and identities. Also, it remains to be researched how nonformal settings shaped black history and black studies. Perhaps most surprising to us was the centrality of a diasporic view in the black curriculum as it evolved from the nineteenth century to the present. African American curriculum developers and implementers sought to link the plight and agency of black peoples around the world towards the goals of social justice, liberty and full citizenship. This was evidenced in the textbooks, curriculum documents, policy changes and publications of voluntary associations that we studied. All of this, and more, remains to be uncovered as the multiplicity of black curricula warrants further study and explication.

Notes 1 Barry Franklin, “Epilogue: Some Musings on What’s New in the New Curriculum History,” in New Curriculum History, ed. Bernadette Baker (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2009), 295–96. See also Benjamin Justice, “Curriculum Theory and the Welfare State,” Espacio,Tiempo y Educación 4, no. 2 (2017): 19–42. 2 William F. Pinar, William M. Reynolds, Patrick Slattery and Peter M. Taubman, “Understanding Curriculum as Racial Text,” in Understanding Curriculum, eds. William F. Pinar, William M. Reynolds, Patrick Slattery and Peter M. Taubman (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 319. Please note that in this chapter we use the terms African American and black interchangeably. 3 Franklin, ‘Some Musings on What’s New in the New Curriculum History’, 299. 4 Dionne Danns, Michelle A. Purdy and Christopher Span, eds., Using Past as Prologue: Contemporary Perspectives on African American Educational History (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, Inc., 2015), 9. 5 See, for example, Anthony L. Brown, R. Crowley and LaGarrett J. King, “Black Civitas: An Examination of Carter G. Woodson’s Contributions to Teaching about

African American curriculum history  79 Race, Citizenship, and the Black Soldier,” Theory and Research in Social Education 39, no. 2 (2011): 277–99; K. D. Brown and Anthony L. Brown, “Silenced Memories: An Examination of the Sociocultural Knowledge on Race and Racial Violence in Official School Curriculum,” Equity & Excellence in Education 43, no. 2 (2010): 139–54; LaGarrett J. King, “When Lions Write History: Black History Textbooks, African American Education, and the Alternative Black Curriculum in Social Studies Education, 1890– 1940,” Multicultural Education 22, no. 1 (2014): 2–11; Alana D. Murray, The Development of the Alternative Black Curriculum, 1890–1940: Countering the Master Narrative (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Christine Woyshner and Chara Haeussler Bohan, eds., Histories of Social Studies and Race, 1865–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Jarvis R. Givens, “‘There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom’: Carter G. Woodson and the Occasion of Negro History Week, 1926–1950,” American Educational Research Journal 56, no. 4 (January 2019): 1–38. 6 William Watkins, “Black Curriculum Orientations: A Preliminary Inquiry,” Harvard Educational Review 63, no. 3 (1993): 321–38. 7 Givens, ‘There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom’, 24. 8 Anne-Lise Halvorsen, “African-Centered Education in the Detroit Public Schools, 1968–2000,” in Histories of Social Studies and Race, eds. Christine Woyshner and Chara Haeussler Bohan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 195–212 for a discussion of Afrocentrism, Africana Studies and Multicultural Education (p. 197) and Jarvis R. Givens, “A Grammar for Black Education Beyond Borders: Exploring Technologies of Schooling in the African Diaspora,” Race, Ethnicity and Education 19, no. 6 (2016): 1294. 9 LaGarrett J. King, Crystal Simmons and Anthony L. Brown, “Revisionist Ontology and the Historical Trajectory of Black Curriculum,” in The Curriculum: De-Canonizing the Field, eds. Joao M. Paraskeva and Shirley Steinberg (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 395–412. 10 Givens, ‘A Grammar for Black Education Beyond Borders’, 1294. 11 For African American values, see V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of African-American Resistance (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 1984). 12 Givens, ‘A Grammar for Black Education beyond Borders’, 1288. 13 Ronald E. Butchart, “Race, Social Studies, and Culturally Relevant Curriculum in Social Studies’ Prehistory: A Cautionary Meditation,” in Histories of Social Studies and Race, 1865–2000, eds. Christine Woyshner and Chara Haeussler Bohan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 19–36. 14 See Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993) and Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, “Making Black History Practical and Popular: Carter G. Woodson, the Proto Black Studies Movement and the Struggle for Black Liberation,” Western Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 2 (2004): 372–83. 15 Murray, The Development of the Alternative Black Curriculum, 3. By racist dominant narrative, we mean the formal school curriculum which presents a historical narrative that privileges the experience of white Europeans and their contributions and presents a worldview that is racist. This racist worldview presents Africans and African Americans as inferior intellectually, culturally and socially and as incapable of advancing. 16 Givens, “‘There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom’,” 2. In fact, Givens argues that the networks of black teachers’ associations were largely responsible for the spread of Carter G. Woodson’s Negro History Week, which began in 1926. 17 Givens, “‘There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom’,” 4. 18 Molefi Kete Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia, PA:Temple University Press, 1987), 6. See also Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988). 19 Anne-Lise Halvorsen, “African-Centered Education in the Detroit Public Schools, 1968–2000,” 197. 20 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to address the various ethnic groups represented in the ethnic studies curriculum.There is a long history of such initiatives, commonly referred

80  King, Murray and Woyshner to as intercultural education and, later, multicultural education. On intercultural education, see, for example, Nicholas V. Montalto, A History of the Intercultural Education Movement, 1924–1941 (New York: Garland Publishing Company, 1982) and Diana Selig, Americans All:The Cultural Gifts Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 21 See LaGarrett J. King, C. Davis and Anthony L. Brown, “African American History, Race, and Textbooks: An Examination of the Works of Harold O. Rugg and Carter G. Woodson,” Journal of Social Studies Research 36, 359–86 and LaGarrett J. King, “‘A Narrative to the Colored Children in America’: Leila Amos Pendleton, African American History, Textbooks, and Challenging Personhood,” The Journal of Negro Education 84, no. 4 (2015): 519–33. 22 Alana D. Murray,“Considerations on the Alternative Black Curriculum in Social Studies: The Book of the Negroes,” The Journal of Social Studies Research 40, no. 1 (January 2016): 1–2. 23 LaGarrett J. King, “‘A Narrative to the Colored Children in America’: Leila Amos Pendleton, African American History, Textbooks, and Challenging Personhood,” The Journal of Negro Education 84, no. 4 (2015): 519–33. 24 Leila Amos Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1912) and Leila Amos Pendleton, Frederick Douglass: A Narrative (Washington, DC: RL Publishers, 1921). 25 Leila Amos Pendleton, “Our New Possessions: The Danish West Indies,” The Journal of Negro History 2, 267–88; Leila Amos Pendleton, “An Alphabet for Negro Children,” Crisis Magazine (1915); and LaGarrett King, A Narrative to the Colored Children in America, 521. 26 Pendelton, Leila Amos (b. 1860). http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n96026503/ Accessed 31 December 2018. 27 Leila Amos Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro (Washington, DC: Press of R. L. Pendleton, 1915), 9. 28 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 38–44. 29 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 44–53. 30 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 54–63. On value of black students learning about the Haitian Revolution, see Jarvis, “‘There Would Be No Lynching If It Did Not Start in the Schoolroom’,” 13–14. 31 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 74–80. 32 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 83. 33 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 101. 34 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 139–42. 35 Pendleton, A Narrative of the Negro, 101. Acknowledging this importance does not mean that A Narrative of the Negro is without flaws. Initially, A Narrative of the Negro is exactly that, a narrative. Pendleton did not reflect the professional norms of history insofar as she did not use citations throughout the book or use transparent notation. Moreover, A Narrative of the Negro contains key factual errors. For example, she referred to Deborah Sampson, a white woman who fought in the American Revolution, as a black woman. 36 Danns, Purdy and Span, ‘Introduction: Towards a New History of African American Education’, 9. 37 Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). See also Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000) and Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); and Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985). 38 Nina Mjagkij, Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (New York: Garland, 2001), vii. See also Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos and Marshall

African American curriculum history  81 Ganz, What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 4–5. 39 Christine Woyshner, “Black Civic Organizations During Jim Crow: Leadership from Without,” In International Handbook of Historic Studies in Education: Debates, Tensions, and Directions, eds. Tanya Fitzgerald (Springer, in press). 40 Charles H. Brooks, The Official History and Manual of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1902/1971). 41 Charles Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, 1898–1954 (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1955). 42 Charles E. Dickerson, “The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World: A comparative study of Euro-American and Afro-American Secret Societies,” PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1981. 43 Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, 55. 44 “Educational Page,” Washington Eagle vol. 49, no. 17 (June 1953), 5. 45 “Negroes as Church Against Segregation,” Washington Eagle,vol. 20, no. 44 (November 1949), 3. 46 Thomas Popkewitz, “The Production of Reason and Power,” in Cultural History and Education: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling, eds. Thomas S. Popkewitz, M. A. Pereyra and Barry M. Franklin (London: Routledge; 2001), 151–83. Dickerson, “The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World.”This additional focus on race and social justice was common among black parallel orders. 47 Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, 66. 48 Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, 237. 49 Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. 50 As quoted in Dickerson, ‘The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World’, 305. 51 As quoted in Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, 194. Dickerson, ‘The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World’, 283. 52 Dickerson, ‘The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World’. 53 Wesley, History of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. 54 See “Elks Give $2000 to School Fund,” Washington Eagle vol. 49, no. 21 (November 1953), 6.The donation was to Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP. See also,“Cooperation Urged in Functional Illiteracy Program,” Washington Eagle vol. 39, no. 7 (July 1952), 5. 55 Jaquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233–63. 56 Larry Cuban, “Not ‘Whether?’ But ‘Why? and How?’: Instructional Materials on the Negro in the Public Schools,” The Journal of Negro Education 36, no. 4 (1967): 434–6; Elmer E. Wells, “Black Studies, An Educational Dilemma,” Negro History Bulletin 36, no. 2 (1973): 29–33. 57 Halvorsen, “African-Centered Education in the Detroit Public Schools, 1968–2000,” 197. In this section we refer to both Afrocentrism and Africana Studies as black studies and do not make a distinction between them. 58 Matthew J. Countryman, “‘From Protest to Politics’: Community Control and Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia, 1965–1984,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 6 (2006): 813–61. For a discussion of Detroit’s efforts, see Anne-Lise Halvorsen, “AfricanCentered Education in the Detroit Public Schools,” in Histories of Social Studies and Race, eds. Woyshner and Bohan, 195–212. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 59 Rose Marie Walker Levey, “Black Studies in Schools: A Review of Current Policies and Programs. Education USA Special Report,” (Washington, DC: National School Public Relations Association, 1970), 4. 60 Levey, 6. 61 Ibid., 7.

82  King, Murray and Woyshner 62 Ibid., 9. This legislation was the catalyst for the National Museum for African American History and Culture, which was established in Washington, DC, in December 2003. 63 Ibid., 13. 64 Ibid., 18. 65 Ibid., 24. 66 Earl Minkwitz, The Negro in American Life and History (San Francisco Unified School District: San Francisco, CA, 1967). 67 Other school districts wrote their own textbooks. Buffalo’s History of the Negro in America (Levey, 19), was written for students in elementary and middle school. A committee of school district personnel and students guided the book’s development. Like San Francisco, the text was to be used as a supplement. The Cleveland textbook, The Negro American: His Role, His Quest, was written in simple language and was designed based on the deficiencies of the teacher’s knowledge about black history (Levey, 13). The consultant for the book was famed historian, Benjamin Quarles, and John Hope Franklin conducted professional development with teachers. 68 William Loren Katz, Eyewitness:The Negro in American History (Simon & Schuster, 1971). 69 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro American (Random House, 1969). 70 Rayford Whittingham Logan and Irving S. Cohen, The American Negro: Old World Background and New World Experience (Houghton Mifflin, 1970). 71 Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Penguin Books, 1969). 72 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave,Written by Himself (New York: Signet Books, 1845); Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Vol. I” (1852); and Harriet Tubman, “Conductor on the Underground Railroad” (New York, 1955). 73 Hare, Nathan, “The Teaching of Black History and Culture in the Secondary Schools,” Social Education (1969); Harlan, Louis R. “Tell It Like It Was: Suggestions on Black History,” Social Education (1969).This argument is like the debates between the difference between Negro history and Black history in the 1960s, see Harding, Vincent, Beyond Chaos: Black History and the Search for the New Land (Institute of the Black World, 1970).

5

UNESCO mediation in Francoist curriculum policy The case of educational television in Spain1 Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves

Introduction: Transnational dimension as a new historiographical perspective in the construction of curriculum policy The central roles played by processes of educational transfer and transnational dimensions in the construction of educational policies at a global level have been widely tackled topics in the History of Education. Many researchers have indicated the remarkable exchanges that colonisation processes created between countries at various historical times.2 However, phenomena related to ‘centre’ or ‘periphery’ have not been the only studies from a historical perspective; the influence of international organisations has also occupied an increasingly relevant space within this field. Research into the impact that such organisations had in the interwar period in European countries;3 the mediation that the USA exercised in the Latin American educational space through the Alliance for Progress and the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) during the second half of the twentieth century;4 or the importance of institutions such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or the World Bank (WB) in the mediation and creation of different educational models at the international level5 are all sound proof of this. Even in recent years, we can find interesting studies that point to the role that public diplomacy has played in shaping cultural, scientific and educational ideas among countries.6 In this sense, the scope of the curriculum policies means they were often included in transnational mediations.7 In recent years, we can see a significant number of studies that have highlighted the significant influence of international organisations in curriculum change in different countries. Such works have shown the importance that globalisation has had in educational transfer.8 This is an aspect that reflects how a web of networks that has been woven between international and regional institutions has produced great transformations in curricula at a local and global level.9 However, these processes have not only affected present time. The rise of the policies and theories of modernisation during the second half of the twentieth century modified the curricular reality of many educational systems.10 The space opened up by the Cold War

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intensified changes, for example, in literacy policies in developing countries.11 It also originated new policies to introduce changes in the contents of school textbooks and subjects.12 It even fostered other forms of knowledge transmission through the translation and circulation of school books and libraries.13 The aim of this chapter is to analyse the origin and evolution of educational television in Francoist Spain. The beginning of this curriculum model offers a good example of the influence exerted by international organisations and the context of the Cold War in attempts to modernise and transform curriculum proposals during a period of development in Spain. More specifically, it points out how UNESCO, in relation to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), established itself as the main institution that recommended it desirable and necessary for Spain to acquire (together with other developing countries) new functionalist and technical perspectives in the educational field. This chapter, therefore, aims to demonstrate how the curriculum models during the Francoist period can be interpreted as possible concrete actions of the transnational phenomenom. In this sense, this research attempts to show that the conception of the educational system established by Franco’s dictatorship was similar to the premises that had been defined by the aforementioned international organisations. One could even affirm the existence of remarkable confluences in the ideas transmitted by these organisations. Educational TV, therefore, is analysed as a curriculum policy framed within the broader framework of economic development and Modernisation theories. This framework can help us understand the origin, direction and evolution of TV as an educational tool in Spain. This does not mean that we do not take into account the importance of the part that local actors could have played in the introduction of educational TV. As Ivor Goodson has pointed out, the processes of importing and exchanging educational ideas are usually mediated by a process of interpretation or ‘refraction’ on the part of local actors.14 However, this same author explains that, in spite of this process of interpretation, local actors can play a role in favour of such policies. In a recent work on the Finnish curriculum policy, this fact has been demonstrated.15 It has been shown how local institutional independence has served as a framework to improve the introduction of curriculum policy proposals from international organisations. In this way, educational transfer does not occur exclusively from a hierarchical position by international organisations.16 As Elsa Estrela has shown,17 international organisations try to create relevant networks with local actors to facilitate the implementation of their educational perspectives. This means that, in some cases, the import process unfolds as intended,18 while in others, it can suffer the mediations of the national context or modifications of the initial idea that was to be developed.19 Thus, transnational educational discourses ‘can be advantageously examined and understood from a local/national viewpoint’.20 Therefore, the introduction and development of educational TV in Spain can be understood as a transnational process in which local actors played an important role in its establishment or nuance of this.

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The beginnings of educational TV in spain: A phenomenon mediated by UNESCO In 1952, the Ministry of National Education (MEN) published an article in the final section of a Spanish journal, Revista de Educación (Journal of Education), headed ‘Cronicas’.21 It seemed to be a minor item. Its author tried to summarise and endorse the arguments put forward by UNESCO in a congress held in Milan that same year on ‘Audiovisual methods in fundamental education’. The author pointed out that ‘illiteracy is not an exclusively cultural problem’. The same deficiency referred to problems related to ‘factors of an economic nature’. In turn, other phenomena related to ‘malnutrition’, ‘uncultured’ or ‘social justice’ could also be attributed to a lack of education and illiteracy. Thus, problems of poverty could only be remedied ‘through educational formulas that encompass both cultural and social economic measures’.22 In this sense, the author came to accept that illiteracy could be synonymous with poverty. Therefore, it was necessary to ‘specify more urgently’ the expansion of Fundamental Education programmes in Spain to seek a solution to the problem of illiteracy and an immediate improvement in living standards and in economic production among the broadest and most varied sectors of the rural population.23 However, it was necessary to find as efficient a formula as possible to deal with the issue. It was argued that this formula could be found in ‘audiovisual methods’, since they offered ‘indisputable efficacy’ in producing literacy and learning processes. The following year, the same journal published another article about audiovisual media and teaching. This time, it made direct reference to educational TV.24 It was a work that analysed the first university that launched an educational TV model for its students: Georgetown University in Washington. This article tried to show the great ‘educational possibilities of television’. The author pointed out again and again that the model that was presented in Georgetown was shown as a broad experience of progress and modernity that opened the doors to the ‘world of the future’.25 The important aspect to emphasise about these articles is that they focussed on essential ideas such as education, development and modernisation. Thus, the first references that appeared on educational TV in Spain were directly framed under the principles of ‘functional literacy’ to which UNESCO had turned because of an open struggle with the WB.26 In this way, when the Program of Fundamental Education27 arrived in Spain, the direction seemed to be clear. The modernisation process had made a niche and, in the early sixties, it was already established as the main orientation that UNESCO would follow. After the publication of these first articles, it took a few years until other works relating to educational TV appeared. At first, it seemed that this topic was diluted in Spain. However, nothing was further from reality. Educational TV, as a curriculum model, soon became a widely researched topic in the Spanish educational field. Indeed, 1958 was a special year in this sense. On the one hand, many more finished studies began to appear on what educational

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TV meant within the school space in the strict sense. The Revista de Educación published three works by Jacques Bousquet who would eventually be designated as responsible for UNESCO Advanced Training Programs (ATP) in Spain with the creation of the National Center for Research and Development of Education (CENIDE). Later, we will return to this insititution. The first two articles28 were presented separately but were actually part of a joint publication. In them, Bousquet reflected on the meaning of TV in the classroom. He wondered if TV could ‘replace the traditional teacher’. However, this reflection was not expressed with the aim of actually ‘replacing the teacher’. Simply, he wanted to record that the use of TV in the classroom aspired to ‘improve the working conditions of teachers and teaching techniques’; that ‘everyone can easily acquire secondary instruction [secondary education]29; and that it could ‘eliminate the difference between the urban and the rural.’30 In addition, in the third article,31 this same author insisted on the question of educational TV. This technical element could help lower the ‘cost of education’ in developing education systems and achieve the goal of universal schooling and greater economic modernisation. At the same time, the journal Bordón, dependent on the Spanish Society of Pedagogy (SEP), published a monograph dedicated to ‘School television and radio’. In it, one could find articles which included and supported the arguments described earlier.32 Most of the works that appeared in this special issue presented different models of school TV and radio that were implemented in countries such as France, England or Colombia.33 All of them were cases related to UNESCO experiences. However, the most interesting article in this monograph had to do with the development of a series of criticisms of educational TV.34 Again, the author questioned if TV could ‘supplant the role of the teacher’. However, this type of criticism did not lead to any limitations in the Spanish context. In fact, such criticism did nothing more than reproduce the warnings that the UNESCO Courier had published a few years earlier in a special issue on ‘Television: opportunity and educational problem’.35 In any case, educational TV was presented as a valid formula to address structural issues of concern to UNESCO, i.e. literacy and universalisation of education as a formula to achieve economic development. Moreover, other types of studies began to appear that made the issue even more complex. In these studies, educational TV was not only proposed as a formula for overcoming illiteracy. TV’s educational aspects for students could be multiple. TV could, for example, also function as a curriculum method that could help implement the UNESCO International Understanding Program in Spain to promote ‘knowledge and mutual understanding’.36 In addition, it was associated with clear attempts to modernise the classroom by ‘reforming’ old textbooks such as ‘Encyclopedias’,37 and by ‘reviewing traditional didactic methods’.38 Even during these first debates, we could hear important voices from the Spanish educational field that saw TV as a space in which, along with the Sociology of Education or Comparative Education, to highlight the

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relationship between school and ‘economic development’39 and make ‘educational reflection more scientific’ and modernise pedagogical research. In short, to make education evolve from ‘an artisanal stage to a technical stage’.40 Thus, in this second group of articles, discussions about educational TV appeared in ways that were closer to teaching practice. In fact, these discussions were already part of initiatives being developed by the UNESCO Program of Fundamental Education in Spain. In 1953, Spain signed the agreement to become a full member of UNESCO.41 This had two consequences. The first was the creation of the Spanish National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO and with it the management of a series of seminars promoted by UNESCO in Spain to deploy the Number One, Principal Education Project for Latin America.42 These seminars were of a varied nature. It was possible to observe such diverse subjects as the Training Course for Technicians in Educational Statistics, Course on Complete Unitary Schools, School Constructions or a Course-Colloquium on the Integral Planning of Education.43 The important thing to emphasise here is that all these seminars were aimed at modernising the Spanish educational system and, related to this, some publications supported the use of audiovisual media to achieve such an aim.44 The second is that two educational institutions, the Junta Nacional contra el Analfabetismo (National Board against Illiteracy) and the Comisión para la Extensión Cultural (Commission for Cultural Extension), increasingly adjusted their objectives by directing the educational field towards functional literacy processes. Therefore, the idea to relate more education with economic development was gaining ground. In this way, the Junta Nacional contra el Analfabetismo created a literacy programme for the military in which audiovisual methods were used to try to make the learning of reading and writing more efficient.45 In addition, the Comisión de Extensión Cultural translated and adapted into Spanish a series of Fundamental Education Notebooks published by UNESCO with the aim of ‘having all the means at their disposal, audiovisuals and publications’ to ‘make rural areas literate’.46 To do this, we should mention the first initiatives of public television in Spain. Televisión Española (TVE) created between 1958 and 1966 a series of programmes that aimed to help eradicate illiteracy. Despite not being linked to the school system nor managed directly by the MEN, programmes such as Classroom TV, English Lessons, French Lessons, Images to Know, School Television, TV Classroom or University TV47 originated in relation to the initiatives that international organisations had recommended to Spain concerning the issue of illiteracy. However, it was not just the question of illiteracy and improvement in pedagogical techniques that generated and shaped the introduction of educational TV in Spain. Ideas about the importance of education for economic development also defined educational TV’s beginnings and directions. In December 1961, the OECD, in collaboration with Franco’s regime, formed a group of specialists with the aim of analysing ‘long-term Spanish educational needs’.48 In the conclusions of the report, the OECD noted that Spain had to undertake a ‘vast program of development of education’ in order to ‘double its

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gross national product between 1961 and 1975’. To achieve this, the OECD was clear in its proposals. Spain should ‘expand access to education for lower income classes’; ‘reduce existing inequalities between some regions and others in the access to culture’; ‘expand access to women’s education’; and ‘reduce early abandonment of studies by students’. The goal, in short, was to ‘profoundly change the quantitative and qualitative structure of the active national population’49 through the education system and thereby achieve an expansion of human capital that would, in turn, produce greater economic development. However, OECD recommendations did not end at this point. In an extension of that same report, together with the WB, both institutions extended the scope of their recommendations for Spain. These involved the start-up of a project to develop the countries of southern Europe. We refer to the Regional Mediterranean Project.50 In this report, the OECD and the WB noted that ‘providing space for all children’ in the school system was a totally necessary plan. Indeed, ‘the connection between education and economic development is so important that the report was not complete without some reference to this’.51 Thus, for these international organisations, the investment in a ‘quantitative increase’ in ‘primary education’, ‘technical education’, ‘university level’ or ‘professional training for adults’ was an important issue. But equally important was ‘an increase in quality’.52 It was also necessary for the Spanish educational system to modify its ‘disastrous lack of teaching materials’.53 That is to say, to use new didactic techniques, such as educational TV, in order to achieve this increase in schooling, and, at the same time, improve the ‘quality’ of teaching’. The Modernisation theory, therefore, began to manifest itself as one of the basic principles that would orchestrate the curriculum policy during Franco’s regime. Educational TV would, therefore, work as a double tool. In parallel to the expansion of schooling, it would also promote improvements in the training of human capital to encourage economic development. In this way, proposals framed within such objectives began to emerge. In 1963, the first educational TV model assigned directly to the MEN was established. It was the Centro Nacional de Enseñanza Media por Radio y Televisión (National Centre of Secondary Education by Radio and Television), better known as RTV Baccalaureate.54 Among its main objectives was to ‘to take as far as possible the principles of education expansion and equal opportunities for all Spaniards’.55 To achieve this, the Education Minister, Manuel Lora Tamayo, stated that ‘modern audiovisual techniques’ were the right tools, and that they were ‘needed to play an important role in raising the cultural level of our people, essential to tackle the development tasks that are urgent’.56 The important point to note about this initiative is that RTV Baccalaureate directly integrated the recommendations that international organisations had made to Spain during these years. The principle of equal opportunities was not a gratuitous aspect or mere discourse made by the regime to play to the gallery. In fact, such a principle came to be a fundamental precondition to reach the objective of economic development, which educational TV could help to achieve.

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For these reasons, we should not be surprised that Spain adhered to this curriculum model. In fact, UNESCO had already strongly insisted on the need to use TV as a way to alleviate illiteracy and create economic development processes in other countries. Some years before the creation of the RTV Baccalaureate in Spain, UNESCO had already published a series entitled ‘Reports and papers on mass communication’. It included studies on the use of educational TV in different rural areas in European countries,57 in Asian ones58 and even using audiovisual media as a way to promote knowledge of art.59 However, UNESCO’s efforts did not focus exclusively on these regions. According to UNESCO, educational TV could be an adequate method to solve the infrastructure problems of some of the poorest geographical areas of the world. In a meeting on ‘Educational broadcasting in tropical Africa’ that took place in 1961 in Moshi, Tanganyika, the member countries of UNESCO reached an agreement. Due to the ‘general lack of teachers’60 on the African continent, different countries such as Morocco, Kenya or Nigeria should try to establish regular educational TV services. In addition, from the early 1960s, UNESCO had already begun to develop projects in Arabic countries.61 Thus, educational TV was established, under the guidance of international organisations, as a valid and necessary curriculum model to try to achieve the purposes of economic modernisation in countries worldwide. In this sense, Spain did not appear as an educational island. It was one of the countries in the orbit of the strategic plans of UNESCO, the OECD and the WB to use the education system as a modernisation tool. Educational TV, therefore, was not deployed as a curriculum model in an abstract way. In fact, its origin had to do with attempts to expand teaching among different social classes, improve teaching and learning processes and, in a broader way, set Spain on the path to the economic development proposed by international organisations. It was about providing a solution to social problems (poverty, unemployment, inequality and poor education) through tools of a technical nature. In the end, educational TV in Spain was framed within the plans of Western countries to try to improve the living conditions of developing countries, a kind of curriculum policy framed more broadly within the debates of the Cold War on educational modernisation.62

The expansion of educational TV as a curriculum policy Around these debates on education and development, the first Spanish research on educational TV soon began to appear. In 1963, the person who finally became the Director of Educational Radio-Television in Spain, Jesús García Jiménez, published an article in a monograph of the journal Bordón dedicated to ‘Education and economic development’. The title of the article, ‘Audiovisual media and culture of development’63, was full of references to authors, books and reports published by UNESCO on this particular topic. All this endorsed the importance of the idea that ‘the media’ were central to ‘an increase in national productivity’ in Spain.64

90  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves

However, the attempts to socialise the use of audiovisual media in the classroom did not remain exclusively within the scope of the academic debate. The Centre for Documentation and Teaching Guidance in Primary Education (CEDODEP), as the body responsible for training and improving teaching, began to develop proposals to establish the use of TV in schools. During the early 1960s, the journal Vida Escolar (School Life) published a series of case studies so that audiovisual methods began to be used more systematically in primary school classrooms. Studies on reflections about an ‘efficient use’ by teachers, the application of ‘magnetic recording’ or ‘the tape recorder’, began to be habitual in their pages.65 The CEDODEP even created a contest among teachers in order to motivate the use of audiovisual media in classrooms.66 We should not be surprised at all by the quick initiatives to socialise this curriculum model among Spanish teachers. The publication of these first practical examples occurred in parallel to the commitment that the MEN had acquired with UNESCO for using this type of measure. In an intervention on 26 October 1964 before the 13th International Conference of UNESCO, the Minister of National Education, Manuel Lora Tamayo, stated that ‘the Spanish Government will continue to participate actively in the various activities that constitute the UNESCO program’, among which ‘the problem of teacher training at all levels’ stood out.67 This commitment did no more than endorse the one that had occurred shortly before with the celebration in Spain of the 1st Ibero-American Literacy Seminar in coordination with UNESCO. At the same time, a specific table was created to work on ‘the use of audiovisual and information media in general’ in classrooms.68 Within this educational climate, early experiences began to appear on the use of educational TV in primary school classrooms. All of them were presented at the 3rd National Congress of Pedagogy held in Salamanca in 1964. The very title of the congress, ‘The Spanish school system based on economic and social needs’, gave the measure of where these early works were aimed within educational TV. Without going any further, Raquel Payá Ibars presented an experience on the use of TV in a series of schools in Madrid. After using TV to teach mathematics, the author concluded that ‘television is an audiovisual technique of decisive importance in the training and cultural, professional and social promotion of people’.69 The importance and attractiveness that this image could have to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for the working world was also endorsed by other experiences carried out in the same period.70 In fact, these initiatives were the result of the creation by MEN of the General Directorate of Information’s Study Group on Audiovisual Techniques (GESTA). Their objective was to investigate and promote TV in the classroom in order to try to make this technique the backbone of the learning process given that ‘teaching through television has a greater training value than direct teaching’.71 Attempts to promote TV in the classroom did not stop at this point. Educational research, as a formula to improve teaching practice, began to be an area that also needed to be reinforced and encouraged. In the closing

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speech of the aforementioned 3rd National Congress of Pedagogy, the president of the SEP and the San José de Calasanz Institute of Pedagogy, Víctor García Hoz, made this clear. In today’s world, ‘progressive technification of social life implies greater intervention of scientific factors’ with the purpose of increasingly adapting the educational system to the world of ‘life and develpoment’.72 In this way, a ‘total revision of the school system’ was needed in which ‘the university should be the guide of the entire educational system’. In this sense, the university should encourage educational research so that it would rebound on primary and secondary education with the aim of moving away from an ‘aristocratic space of isolation’ and commit itself to the ‘whole society’.73 That is to say, that new curriculum techniques should be investigated to unite education and employment in a way that had not been done to date. Thus, educational research had to stop being approached from a theoretical point of view with which it was often initiated and move on to a more technical way. The aim was clear; to indicate how to use TV in schools and what benefits it could have for students and teachers as a technique of school modernisation.74 To some extent, these studies picked up on evidence of some research that had been carried out in the Center d’études et de recherches pour la diffusion du francais and that was also published in Spain as an example to follow.75 In this way, the need to investigate the implementation of educational TV went much further and included spaces not explored until this date. For this reason, the MEN, in conjunction with the Ministry of Information and Tourism, the GESTA, the Directorate of Social Promotion of the Ministry of Labor, the Office of Ibero-American Education (OEI) and Spanish Television began, around 1965, an international conference on film and television educational activities within the framework of the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The aim was to observe what kind of activities were carried out in other countries in order to be able to import an educational TV project for Spain. The proposals to promote this curriculum innovation did not stop growing during this decade, so much so, that CEDODEP published a monograph on the International Exhibition of School Audiovisual Media that had taken place in Basel in June 1966.76 The need to publish this special issue in its journal Notas y Documentos (Notes and Documents) was justified by the need for the ‘almost uninterrupted renewal that teaching demands’.77 For these years, it had already been interpreted that the results and modernisation of the educational system depended notably on the ‘teachers’ and ‘the didactic means and instruments’.78 For this reason, works by members of CEDODEP, who had gone on an information-seeking mission to the International Exhibition, were published in this issue.79 It also contained some of the most representative studies of authors working in relation to UNESCO and the use of educational TV in the classroom.80 We should not lose sight of the fact that this issue was really aimed, as the director of CEDODEP pointed out in his presentation, at further introducing Spanish teachers to the ‘important process of developing the modern teaching material’ which was being discussed in ‘the meetings of UNESCO experts’.81

92  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves

As Juan Manuel Moreno Garcia himself admitted in a positive way, ‘it is the invasion of technology into the classroom’.82 On the other hand, CEDODEP promoted the change towards the new curriculum policy, not only through its journals Vida Escolar or Notas y Documentos. In 1962 said institution reconstructed its own organisational structure and created a new department called ‘Teaching Materials’. Among its tasks was ‘studying national and foreign models of teaching materials of all kinds’.83 In this department, ‘special’ relevance was given to everything that was related to the ‘audiovisual media’. Likewise, in this same year the CEDODEP published a monograph in its journal Notas y Documentos which reproduced the ‘Report of the UNESCO meeting of experts’ held in Paris on ‘New methods and techniques in education’.84 In the following years, seminars and publications on educational TV were on the rise and titles appeared such as Las técnicas audiovisuales (Audiovisual techniques), Los medios audiovisuales en la escuela (Audiovisual media in school), Ideas en orden a la introducción en la escuela de las técnicas audiovisuales (Ideas in order to introduce audiovisual techniques), Tecnología audiovisual y educación (Audiovisual technology and education), El Circuito Cerrado de televisión y la formación del profesorado (Closed-circuit television and teacher training) and in collaboration with Televisión Española, La Televisión Escolar en España, 1967–1968 (School Television in Spain, 1967– 1968).85 We must also add other initiatives such as the edition of the Boletín de Medios Audiovisuales (MAVES) (Bulletin of Audiovisual Media) which was aimed at promoting among teachers what was considered as ‘highly effective support of teachers’ work.’86 However, this greater emphasis on the use of educational TV as an element of economic development was also related to the close links that UNESCO had established between both aspects during the second half of the 1960s. As Emile McAnany has pointed out, since the late 1940s, UNESCO had become a ‘fast consumer’87 of American literature on media and development. With the publication of the first works of Stanford University professor Wilbur Schramm, UNESCO quickly turned to the approach of economic modernisation through the use of TV in the education system. Thus, in 1964 UNESCO decided to publish, together with the Stanford University publishing house, Schramm’s book, which delimited the clear relationship that could exist between mass media, education and economic.88 However, UNESCO not only published Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in Developing Countries during 1964; that same year saw another book by Schramm on the effects of educational TV on children.89 This showed, as McAnany indicated, how UNESCO and other international organisations such as the Ford Foundation had ‘a strong focus and interest’ in launching TV projects as a curriculum model on which the whole education system had to pivot.90 Thus, during this decade different educational TV projects were carried out in countries such as American Samoa, El Salvador, Thailand or Peru under the supervision of Schramm.91 In this way, Spain was not going to be outdone and so also headed towards the development of the first and only model of educational television with its

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  93

own programming within classrooms that had been produced in Spain. The programme, called TV Escolar (School TV), was created in 1968. It was an initiative carried out between the MEN, TVE and CEDODEP and that had its origin in the First Development Plan. The objective, as already indicated, was that there should be a ‘progressive introduction of audiovisual aids in the field of teaching’,92 in order to achieve more effective learning by students that would result in an improvement in human capital and economic development. To achieve this, the MEN created a programme within TVE that had to be broadcast during school hours (between 11 am and 12 noon) so that the schools could connect with the teleteacher for one hour a day and receive teaching between three and six days a week. For this, CEDODEP would be responsible for publishing the ‘TV Escolar Programming Schedule’, as well as the ‘Educational Guides’ that teachers and students of each centre had to follow.93 However, TV Escolar was not a standard educational TV programme similar to those in other developing countries. It was different from what was being carried out in parallel in Colombia, El Salvador or Peru. TV Escolar did not have a pattern of organisation of the educational system in which TV was a structural curriculum element. In fact, as pointed out by its director, Jesús García Jiménez, TV Escolar followed rather the model of developed countries that were members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and that had ‘proven its effectiveness’ in the classroom.94 The reason for this may be found in the statements that the General Director of Primary Education made at the opening of TV Escolar. Joaquin Tena Artigas wrote an introduction very carefully and with some misgivings about the actions that teachers could take. On several occasions throughout the introduction, he pointed out that ‘the use of audiovisual aids’ should not be established as a central element of education. For Tena Artigas, TV Escolar could not question the ‘indisputable personality of the figure of the teacher’ in the classroom.95 From the MEN, the General Director of Primary Education knew well that other models of educational TV had generated ‘situations of distrust and rejection by school administrators and teachers’ in other countries.96 Without going any further, the implantation of educational TV in El Salvador had produced, during 1968 serious altercations that would originate the germ of the civil war that overthrew the military dictatorship of this Central American country.97 In addition, the situation of Spanish teachers during those years was not the best either. Since 1967, there had been some teacher strikes due to salary issues.98 In this way, TV Escolar was an educational project subject to a double process of ‘refraction’. That is to say, at the same time as it was conditioned by local actors, its origin was also the result of the transnational context and of the educational and political difficulties that the programmes of UNESCO found when it was put into practice in impoverished countries. Thus, TV Escolar hardly lasted a couple of years. With the arrival of the Ley General de Educación (General Law of Education) of 1970 (LGE)99, the education system under the dictatorship was completely restructured and TV Escolar stopped broadcasting during academic hours. Maybe it had much to do with what has already been stated. However, the abandonment of TV Escolar also

94  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves

had its raison d’être in the delimitations that UNESCO had established with the perspective of educational planning. A more research-focussed approach was being adopted that saw educational TV as a more apt formula for teacher training or as a complementary tool rather than an approach that the entire school system should be organised around.

The transformation of educational TV: Evolution and new directions Despite the rapid disappearance of TV Escolar from Spanish classrooms, educational TV did not disappear as a curriculum tool. Around the debates for the creation of the LGE, educational TV would suffer an important shift. Now, it was established as a research and teacher training technique and, in some cases, as a practice to be developed in the classroom through a new format: Closed-circuit television (CCTV).100 However, CCTV also originated as an instrument close to the space in which other educational TV proposals had been born. In fact, CCTV came to be a formula within the framework that saw education as a lever to promote economic development. However, now the focus was different. CCTV was fully inserted in a line of intervention that UNESCO had opened since the late fifties. We refer to Educational Planning.101 To ensure that educational systems fulfilled their role in development, it was necessary to establish prior research on the effectiveness of the educational techniques that were to be used. There was, therefore, the need to ‘plan’ education based on scientific research. In fact, the aforementioned works of Schramm were inserted within this model of intervention.102 CCTV was one of the instruments that could be used to improve education through research. The problem was that Spain had never established an educational reform under the principle of Educational Planning. The different reforms that had taken place under Franco’s regime tended to appear somewhat disconnected from the field of university research.103 However, through discussions prior to the implementation of the LGE, there was an attempt to adopt this principle. In fact, the LGE was supervised at all times by UNESCO’s International Advisory Committee on Reform, which included Philip Coombs.104 In a secret meeting that took place in Madrid and Toledo between 3 and 7 March 1969, the Advisory Committee issued a series of recommendations. Among these the need to give ‘priority to educational research’ was highlighted as important to produce ‘a transformation in the traditional system’ that was based on a model of ‘rigid, unjust, social structures opposed to development’. To make this transformation, it was necessary to use, among other aspects, ‘modern technology’.105 Moreover, the vision of using educational TV as a research tool for Educational Planning was not only an approach promoted by UNESCO. At the end of the 1960s, the Spanish educational field had changed substantially. Within it, a debate was established on the need to transform the classical

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  95

pedagogical models towards the Education Sciences.106 That is, Spain began to move towards the approach taken in France which was based on a model of research and educational planning107 and in the direction in which the curriculum method of CCTV was very popular and widely used. Thus, around the discussions about the origin of the LGE, it was decided that this was the model to be followed.108 The idea was to build research spaces at universities that would ‘plan’ and train teachers of primary and secondary education in order to bring the school system closer to the objectives of economic development. The system that was devised was called the CENIDE Network of Institutes of Educational Sciences (CENIDE-ICEs). In fact, in a report prior to its establishment, the committee in charge of implementing this network made a trip to the main universities in the United States to launch the model. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the group of experts established that ‘pedagogical research’ should be ‘the driving force of educational innovation and the group considers it would be of great interest for the Institutes of Educational Sciences to study and test various research schemes’,109 and investigate which ‘modern educational technology’ should play a prominent role in the ‘teachers’ professional training’.110 As we have already pointed out in other works,111 in reality CENIDE was a body promoted by different international organisations such as UNESCO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).112 The creation of CENIDE in 1969, therefore, was part of a broader development plan together with other projects provided by the UNDP such as ‘Postal services’, ‘Air pollution in Bilbao district’ or ‘Scientific study of water resources in the Canary Island’. In addition, a specific project on ‘Educational television’ was requested, which would merge with the research work of CENIDE.113 In order to achieve this objective, CENIDE was established as a federative entity that was responsible for coordinating the ICEs that had been created in the different Spanish universities with the ‘triple responsibility of research, training and experimentation’.114 Around these objectives, a series of seminars for teacher training, research projects and purchase of technical material began to be developed. Within this branch of activities, research into Educational Planning through CCTV was widely promoted (Table 5.1). However, in order to be able to build an educational system linked to economic development, not only did research seminars take place, but the use of CCTV also needed extensive training of Spanish teachers, who had to start researching with this new curriculum tool. For this reason, through UNESCO, and the funds of the Ford Foundation and the UNDP, CENIDE began to launch an extensive programme of training scholarships for teachers at different educational levels. The objective, as indicated in the reports issued by the Spanish Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO, was to try to achieve the improvement of key personnel of countries that did not yet have the necessary means and skills to make a ‘contribution to the development of research’.115 It is true that within this scholarship plan there was a range of

96  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves Table 5.1 UNESCO mediation in Francoist curriculum policy: The case of educational television in Spain. Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves* Type of activity

Specialist UNESCO

Date

Number of such activities

Scheduled teaching

Dean Brown; M. Lobrot; Berruer Ortuño; Berruer; Faure, Bousquet, La Borderie Fourastier; Bereday and Starön; Head of the Unesco Project

1969/1970

3

1969/1970 1969/1970

3 5

1969/1970

3

Educational CCTV Computer-assisted teaching Other conferences

*  Author prepared from data from the CENIDE, ‘Actividades del CENIDE’ Revista de Educación no. 209 (1970): 61–65. See also ‘Televisión para la formación del profesorado. Seminario del Profesor Valerien’, Revista de Educación no. 218 (1971): 68–9.

different training specialties for teachers. Despite this, those that stand out are those related to ICT, especially those for Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) and CCTV (Table 5.2). In addition, the use of educational TV as a research method for curriculum improvement was also promoted through the purchase of equipment and materials to carry out such research. Thus, in 1969, CENIDE contacted Bousquet, which, as mentioned earlier, had already been designated as the UNESCO ATP in Spain. In December of that year the director of the Center d’Electronique de Massey, J. Comiran, wrote a letter to Bousquet, the purpose of which was to acquire CCTV equipment for CENIDE.116 With approximate funding of 1,200,000 pesetas provided by the WB, the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) initiated the start-up of this project. In this confidential report, the aforementioned editorial stated that the model described ‘would allow us to place in the hands of Ibero-American countries an important advance in media and education, which we do not hesitate to qualify as one of the advances that will revolutionise the decade of the 1970s’.117 The result was Bousquet’s recommendation to the General Technical Secretariat of the MEC to rush to ‘order and install the corresponding closed TV circuits as soon as possible’.118 However, the purchase and import of technological equipment did not occur in isolation. The implementation of CCTV and other ICTs required the presence of researchers versed in the subject. This was the main formula used to accelerate research activities within the centres and achieve the objectives of educational modernisation. Thus, CENIDE also requested UNESCO and the UNDP to exchange/invite international experts. In a programme designated ‘SPA 19.04.93’, the arrival of experts from different disciplines was approved between 1969 and 1972. Most of the consultants that were requested

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  97 Table 5.2 CENIDE/INCIE and UNESCO scholarships financed by the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and the UNDP, 1970–1976* Type or specialisation of scholarships

Number of sholarships Country of destination

Mathematics teaching Group dynamics Teacher training Science teaching Didactic of English CAI

5 6 4 15 7 27

Psychology

18

CCTV Educational television Programmed learning

18 5

Sociology of Education Curriculum development Teaching social sciences Others

5 6 3 16

Totals

135

Belgium (2), Switzerland, USA Belgium, France (2), USA (3) USA (4) USA (12), United Kingdom (3), United Kingdom (4), USA (3), France (3), Canada (3), USA (17), United Kingdom (4) France (4), USA (12), Switzerland, Belgium France (12), Canadá (1), USA (4), United Kingdom (1) Puerto Rico, USA (2), RFA (2), Belgium France (2), USA (3), United Kingdom United Kingdom (3), Switzerland (3) United Kingdom (2), USA France (3), United Kingdom (5), USA (6), Belgium, Switzerland USA (54), France (37), United Kingdom (18), Belgium (10), Switzerland (7), RFA (4), Canada (4), Puerto Rico

*  Author prepared from data from the ‘INCIE Becarios programas Internacionales’ y ‘Comisión Nacional Española de Cooperación con la UNESCO. Secretaría General. Estudio sobre el programa de becas UNESCO-España 1953–1975. Madrid, Junio de 1976’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box 75/ Folder 1; and Box 76/Folder 1.

were related to topics concerning educational innovation, an aspect that, by then, was synonymous with CCTV, programmed learning and, above all, CAI (Table 5.3). From here, the first Spanish studies began to appear on the use of CCTV as a curriculum model. In all of them, it was highlighted that ‘their effectiveness is already outside the field of the hypothetical’.119 CCTV could work perfectly as a method in which the teleprofessor avoided ‘the styles of the different teachers, as well as avoiding either ‘advances or delays in the rhythm of completing a program’ or ‘defects of the prevailing individualism of the traditional system’.120 In addition, the advantages of the model were highlighted, such as ‘the most significant reactions of the students can be studied in detail’, the ‘reduction in time of the lessons given’ and that the teacher could ‘see his or her own lesson and discuss it’ to study any failures by using the ‘rewind’.121 In this way, research multiplied during the early seventies.122 Even CENIDE

51 47(1/2) 36 24 12 24 24 24 242(1/2)

Senior technical advisor Research on innovation systems Computing Documentation Programmed learning Semiology of television Sociopsychological pedagogy Design of the medium Totals

3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3

1969 12 11(1/2) 0 0 0 0 0 0 23(1/2)

1970

12 12 12 6 11 4 6 6 57

1971

12 12 12 12 1 12 12 12 73

1972

12 12 12 6 0 8 6 6 62

1973

*  Author prepared from data from ‘SPA.019.4.93. Plan de Operaciones España. Centro Nacional de Investigaciones para el desarrollo de la Educación’, AGA, Box 61709: Proyectos y programas de la UNESCO, 1969–1979.

Total months of consultation

Experts/Consultants in charge of UNDP

Table5.3 Experts/Consultants in charge of UNDP*

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  99

commissioned the ICE of the University of Valencia to conduct an investigation whose reports had ‘a total of five volumes with 1,500 pages and four magnetoscopic tapes’.123 It is true that the CCTV models were important during these years. Nevertheless, this type of instrument for the development of the curriculum soon disappeared. As we have seen in the previous tables, CAI gradually positioned itself as the main technique to improve the curriculum for Educational Planning. There are various aspects that can explain this change. During 1972, CENIDE was subject to an inspection by UNESCO specialists to observe the operation of the centre. In the report that was issued, the mission strongly recommended two things. The first had to do with its institutional evolution. The inspection was concerned about the centralisation of CENIDE and its performance as a ‘super-ICE at the national level’.124 This would be one of the motives that transformed the CENIDE into the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias de la Educación (National Institute of Education Sciences) (INCIE).125 The second referred to the need to develop educational planning under the most modern teaching techniques. The experts recommended that the CENIDE pay ‘particular attention to the implementation of a CAI project as a nationwide task’.126 In this way, the CAI was observed as a more adequate curriculum model to promote the academic and productive abilities of students. In fact, the CENIDE itself, already in its subsequent evolution as the INCIE, once again requested the assistance of CAI consultants to deliver new training courses for teachers. During 1973, within the project designated as ‘UNDP / SPA / 19’, CAI specialists began to arrive, such as C. H. Cook and J. R. Hardley of the University of Leeds, A. Bernstein of the State University of New York or H. E. Mitzel of the Pennsylvania State University.127 In addition, within the same project, there was a request for the purchase of ‘computer equipment for the Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) project’.128 These new directions also came from the official side of UNESCO. During these years, the aforementioned organisation published a series of reports on the need to double efforts in using computers in a curriculum model.129 These reports were directly aimed at countries such as Spain, which were already in the orbit of the proposals of international organisations, to bring them closer to the most advanced models of capitalist development.130 However, the gradual disappearance of TV as a curriculum policy on which to base economic development cannot only be explained by the internal variations of the reports and positions of international experts. The decade of the seventies was a turbulent time from different points of view for the Spanish educational system. As we know, the curriculum is a social construction that is mediated by multiple actors. Among them, local actors play an important role in defining it. Just at the moment when educational TV seemed to be at its peak, several events took place that changed its meaning within the Spanish educational field. The first of them has to do with the growth of teachers’ movements and alternative educational groups in the last years of the dictatorship. Groups such as the Pedagogical Renewal Movements (MRPs),

100  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves

established a constant criticism towards the educational models of the LGE and proposed alternative curriculum spaces.131 These debates facilitated, among other things, the construction of a broad criticism of technical pedagogies.132 Second, the decline of the regime also opened the door to discussions within the field of Education Sciences. The different areas or fields of education such as the History of Education, the Psychology of Education, the Sociology of Education or Didactics undertook their own projects. This division opened up new lines of research and limited the possibility of directing the educational field from an integrated or univocal position.133 Third, and perhaps most importantly, during the 1970s an open criticism of the Modernisation theory was established worldwide.134 For the first time, important studies were conducted that questioned the relationship between the education system (and the use of educational TV) and economic growth.135 Some proposals or lines of research also gathered momentum in Spain through the theories of reproduction and a change in the demands of social actors towards the education system.136

Conclusion: The transnational dimension as a framework to the analysis of the curriculum policy in Franco’s regime Educational TV was a curriculum policy that was very present in the Francoist educational space. However, its origin should not be sought in the attempts of the regime to establish a tool of indoctrination of the values of NationalCatholicism. Neither should it be understood as a curriculum attempt that was implemented to legitimise and ‘whitewash’ Spain’s image on the international stage. Its origin was situated in a very specific debate. Its beginnings arose from the space opened up by UNESCO to try to encourage, through education, developing countries to modernise their economic structure. In the end, the dictatorship had joined and accepted the concept of education that the Western bloc had opened up in the context of the Cold War. In this sense, since the beginning of the fifties, when these types of initiatives were promoted at an international level, the Spanish educational field began to develop proposals in this regard. At first, efforts were focussed on eradicating illiteracy. To do this, educational TV was viewed as a possible technique that could help solve the problems of rural areas, and, at the same time, it was presented as a curriculum policy that favoured the modernisation of the school system. In this way, the Cultural Extension Commission and the National Board against Illiteracy deployed their initiatives within the framework of UNESCO’s Program of Fundamental Education. From this moment on, these types of proposals proliferated. The Modernisation theory extended their discursive scope and with them, also their practical foundations. In the early sixties, the OECD, the WB and UNESCO proposed that the regime double its efforts to expand schooling at all levels of education as a way to achieve economic development. To do this, educational TV could function as a key curriculum policy. Thus, the

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  101

regime concurred with this policy and soon created the National Centre of Secondary Education by Radio and Television, while research on the use of TV in schools multiplied. Despite what we may think, the dictatorship was not reluctant to promote the principle of equality of opportunity. After all, it was about Spain trying to achieve economic development similar to that of surrounding countries. It could be said that the discourse of modernisation built a kind of image within the dictatorship that absorbed and overcame the possible reluctance that some groups could have regarding these types of policies. This does not mean that the values of National-Catholicism disappeared. They were still present. However, the conception of the educational system as a basic pillar to achieve the goal of development was the same as that expressed by international organisations. This was an aspect that set to one side the traditional values of the dictatorship. This direction predominated, and at the end of the seventies, Spain had created its own educational TV program (TV Escolar). However, its duration was short. The reasons for its disappearance were several. Perhaps, the main one refers to the assimilation of the Educational Planning approach proposed, again, by UNESCO. Thus, under CENIDE and INCIE, the Spanish educational field initiated a series of programmes, seminars and research experiences through CCTV. In reality, and like the previous educational TV programmes, CCTV also had as its ultimate goal to ensure that the educational system was more in line with the objectives of economic development. Its rapid disappearance also tells us about the crisis of the model in two aspects. The first was related to the birth of other curriculum techniques such as computers. The second was due to the rupture of the regime and of a worldwide crisis about the Modernisation theory. Be that as it may, the important thing to emphasise at this point is that educational TV during the dictatorship must be included in the debates on the transnational dimension and concrete conceptions of educational systems. Its origin, as well as its direction and subsequent evolution, are only understandable if we place it under this framework or perspective of analysis.

Notes 1 This chapter has been developed within the framework of research projects Economy, patriotism and citizenship: The economic dimension of political socialization in Spanish school textbooks from late Francoism to the Transition, EDU 2016-78143-R and Modernización, desarrollo y democratización. El papel de las potencias europeas occidentales y de las organizaciones internacionales en el cambio político y social en España, PGC2018-097159B-I00 and Societal Transformation in Conflict Contexts (TRANSFORM), funded by the Research Council of Norway. We would like to thank the ULL Citizenship History Group Seminar and the Uppsala Studies of History and Education Seminar at Uppsala University for previous discussions we have had about this research. All have been very helpful and have improved the text. In addition, we thank the Spanish National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO, and in particular Eva Balsera Porris, Victoria de la Serna, Carmen Pinar and Virginia González Martínez for the help and technical support provided.

102  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves 2 Gary McCulloch, The Struggle for the History of Education (London: Routledge, 2011); Eckhart Fuchs, “History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational Scholarship,” in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and CrossCultural Exchanges on (Post-) Colonial Education, eds. B. Bagchi, E. Fuchs and K. Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 11–26. 3 Karen E. Andreasen and Christian Ydesen, “Educating for Peace: The Role and Impact of International Organizations in Interwar and Post-War Danish School Experiments, 1918–1975,” Nordic Journal of Educational History 2, no. 2 (2015): 3–25. 4 Hector Lindo-Fuentes, “Educational Television in El Salvador and Modernisation Theory,” Journal of Latin American Studies 41, no. 4 (2009): 757–92. 5 Poul Duedahl, ed., The History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016); Augil Kulnazarova and Christian Ydesen, eds., UNESCO without Borders: Educational Campaigns for International Understanding (London: Routledge, 2016); Michele Alacevich, “The World Bank and the Politics of Productivity: The Debate on Economic Growth, Poverty, and Living Standards in the 1950s,” Journal of Global History 6, (2011): 53–74; Aida Terrón, Josep M. Comelles and Enrique Perdiguero-Gil, “Schools and Health Education in Spain During the Dictatorship of General Franco (1939–1975),” History of Education Review 46, no. 2 (2017): 208–23. 6 Andreas Åkerlund, “The Slow Reunification of Development Assistance and Public Diplomacy: Exchange and Collaboration Activities Through the Swedish Institute 1973–2012,” in Communicating National Image through Development and Diplomacy: The Politics of Foreign Aid, eds. J. Pamment and K. G. Wilkins (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 143–67; Óscar J. Martín Garcia, “A Complicated Mission: The United States and Spanish Students During the Johnson Administration,” Cold War History 13, no. 3 (2013): 311–29. 7 John L. Rudolph, Scientist in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Ronald W. Evans, The Hope for American School Reform: The Cold War Pursuit of Inquiry Learning in Social Studies (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2011). 8 Lyn Yates and Michael F. D. Young, “Globalisation, Knowledge and the Curriculum,” European Journal of Education 45, no. 1 (2010): 4–10. 9 Lyn Yates, “Europe, Transnational Curriculum Movements and Comparative Curriculum Theorizing,” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 366–73. 10 Ivan L. Christensen and ChristianYdesen, “Routes of Knowledge: Toward a Methodological Framework for Tracing the Historical Impact of International Organizations,” European Education 47, no. 3 (2015): 274–88, 280. 11 Charles Dorn and Karen Ghodsee, “The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: Communism, UNESCO, and the World Bank,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 2 (2012): 373–98. 12 Thomas Nygren, “International Reformation of Swedish History Education 1927– 1961: The Complexity of Implementing International Understanding,” Journal of World History 22, no. 2 (2011): 329–54. 13 Céline Giton, 2016. “Weapons of Mass Distribution: UNESCO and the Impact of Books,” in The History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts, ed. P. Duedahl (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), 49–72. 14 Ivor Goodson, “Times of Educational Change: Towards an Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction,” Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 6 (2010): 767–75. 15 Kirsten Sivesind, Azita Asfar and Kari E. Bachmann, “Transnational Policy Transfers Over Three Curriculum Reforms in Finland: The Constructions of Conditional and Purposive Programs (1994–2016),” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 345–65. 16 More information in Chapters 2, 9 and 11 of this book.

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  103 17 Elsa Estrela, “The Knowledge of Policies: The Personal Dimension in Curriculum Policies in Portugal,” British Journal of Educational Studies 67, no. 2 (2018): 217–233. 18 Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009). 19 David Phillips and Kimberly Ochs, “Researching Policy Borrowing: Some Methodological Challenges in Comparative Education,” British Educational Research Journal 30, no. 6 (2004): 773–84. 20 Kirsten Sivesind and Ninni Wahlström, “Curriculum on the European Policy Agenda: Global Transitions and Learning Outcomes from Transnational and National Points of View,” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 271–8, 276. 21 Guillermo De Reyna,“Los métodos audiovisuales en la Educación Fundamental. Notas al congreso de Milán,” Revista de Educación 1, no. 2 (1952): 164–7. 22 Ibid., 164. 23 Ibid., 165. 24 José A. De Sobrino, “Una universidad por televisión en los Estados Unidos,” Revista de Educación 4, no. 9 (1953): 47–9. 25 Ibid. p. 49. 26 Dorn and Ghodsee, ‘The Cold War Politicization of Literacy’, 375. 27 More information about this subject in Jens Boel,“UNESCO’s Fundamental Education Program, 1946–1958:Vision, Actions and Impact,” in The History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts, ed. P. Duedahl (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), 153–67. 28 Jacques Bousquet, “Televisión y Educación (I),” Revista de Educación no. 73 (1958): 35–8; Jacques Bousquet, “Televisión y Educación (II),” Revista de Educación no. 74 (1958): 64–8. 29 Bousquet, ‘Televisión y Educación (I)’, 36 and 37. 30 Bousquet, ‘Televisión y Educación (II)’, 64. 31 Jacques Bousquet, “El precio de la educación,” Revista de Educación no. 88 (1958): 25–9. 32 Mª Teresa Femenías Loyola, “Una experiencia de diez años,” Bordón no. 78–79 (1958): 415–24. 33 Henri Dieuzeide, “La Televisión Escolar Francesa,” Bordón no. 78–79 (1958): 405–14; Duncan Taylor, “La labor del Servicio de Radioemisiones Escolares de la B.B.C,” Bordón no. 78–9 (1958): 395–404; Enrique Warleta Fernández, “Educación fundamental por radio en Colombia,” Bordón no. 78–9 (1958): 459–68. 34 José Costa Riba, José, “Problemas pedagógicos de la Radio y Televisión,” Bordón, no. 78–9 (1958): 369–84. 35 UNESCO, “La Televisión: Oportunidad y problema educativa,” El Correo de la UNESCO 6, no. 3 (1953). 36 Mª Concepción Borreguero Sierra,“La televisión en las zonas rurales del Japón,” Revista de Educación no. 147 (1962): 31–4, 31. 37 Gonzalo Gonzalvo Mainar, “El texto escolar y la didáctica moderna,” Bordón no. 92–3 (1960): 247–54, 248. 38 Jesús García Jiménez, “La enseñanza de la religión por radio y televisión,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 21, n. 82–83 (1963): 55–74, 55. 39 Víctor García Hoz, “Algunos números sobre la educación en sus relaciones con la vida económica y los medios de comunicación,” Bordón no. 107–108 (1962): 127–36, 127. 40 Adolfo Maíllo, “Cuestiones actuales de educación y enseñanza,” Revista de Educación no. 149 (1963): 114–18, 118. 41 However, from 1951, Spain began to assist as an invited observer at different conferences organised by UNESCO. For more information see: Ángel Oliveros, XXV años de la Comisión Nacional Española de Cooperación con la UNESCO (Madrid: UNESCOMEC, 1978). 42 MEN, España y la Unesco, Colaboración al Proyecto Principal ‘Extensión y Perfeccionamiento de la Educación Primaria en América Latina (Madrid: MEN, 1962).

104  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves 43 MEN, España y la Unesco, 5–18. 44 Juan Navarro Higueras, “Medios Audiovisuales: Problemas Generales,” in La Escuela Unitaria Completa (Madrid: MEN/CEDODEP, 1960), 220–6. 45 Adolfo Maíllo,“Los métodos rápidos de enseñanza de la lectura y la escritura en la Junta Nacional contra el Analfabetismo,” Bordón no. 54 (1955): 371–4. 46 Luis García, “Cuadernos de educación fundamental,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 18, no. 70 (1960): 207. 47 Tamara Antona, “Los orígenes de la Televisión Educativa en TVE (1958–1966),” Estudios sobre el Mensaje Periodístico no. 20 (2014): 209–26; Gabriela Ossenbach and Tamar Groves, “Entre la mitificación y la crítica: el cine y los medios audiovisuales en la escuela primaria en España en el tardofranquismo y la transición, 1958–1982,” Cahiers de civilisation espagnole con contemporaine no. 11 (2013): 2–17. 48 Martínez Moreno and Medalla Normann, “OECD: Desarrollo de la enseñanza española,” Revista de Educación no. 175 (1965): 117. 49 Ibid., 117. 50 OECD, “La educación española en el desarrollo económico,” Revista de Educación no. 147 (1962): 25–30. For more information on this question see Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, “Modernizadores y tecnócratas. Estados Unidos ante la política educativa y científica de la España del Desarrollo,” Historia y Política 34 (2015): 113–46. 51 Ibid., 26. 52 Ibid., 27. 53 OECD, ‘La educación española en el desarrollo económico’, 27. 54 Orden del 9 de noviembre de 1962 (BOE del 28 de noviembre de 1962). 55 Decreto 1181/1963 de 16 de mayo, para el establecimiento del Centro Nacional de Enseñanzas Medias por Radio y Televisión (BOE no. 131 de 1 de junio de 1963). 56 “Editorial,” Bachillerato RTV. Revista de Orientación Didáctica e Información Escolar. Primer Curso no. 1 (1963): 1. 57 Roger Louis and Joshep Rovan, Television and Tele-Clubs in Rural Communities: An Experiment in France (Paris: UNESCO, 1955). 58 UNESCO, Developing Mass Media in Asia: Papers of a UNESCO Meeting at Bangkok (Paris: UNESCO, 1960). 59 UNESCO, Film and Television in the Service of Opera and Ballet and of Museums: Reports on Two International Meetings (Paris: UNESCO, 1961). 60 “Meeting on Educational Broadcasting in Tropical Africa, Moshi, Tanganika (1961) EDBC/AFR/5; WS/0861.95,” www.unesco.org/ulis/cgi-bin/ulis.pl?catno=144689& set=005BC9BB9F_1_417&gp=1&lin=1&ll=1 p. 4. 61 Henry Cassirer and T. S. Duckmanton, “Educational television in Pakistan” – (mission) 4–23 October 1960; report WS/0961.113, www.unesco.org/ulis/cgi-bin/ulis.pl?catno =156962&set=005BC9BC7E_3_448&gp=1&lin=1&ll=1 62 Victoria Cain, “From Sesame Street to Prime Time School Television: Educational Media in the Wake of the Coleman Report,” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 590–601. 63 Jesús García Jiménez, “Medios Audiovisuales y Cultura de Desarrollo,” Bordón no. 118– 19 (1963): 379–406. 64 Ibid., 381. 65 Juan Navarro Higueras, “La grabación magnética,” Vida Escolar no. 62 (1964): 26–8; Juan Navarro Higueras, “Aplicaciones didácticas del magnetófono,” Vida Escolar no. 65 (1965): 19–1; Juan Mallas Casas, “Uso eficiente de los medios audiovisuales,” Vida Escolar no. 37 (1962): 32–4. 66 “Primer concurso sobre guiones radiofónicos,” Vida Escolar no. 33 (1965): 33. 67 Manuel Lora Tamayo, “España y el Programa 1965–66 de la UNESCO,” Revista de Educación no. 166 (1964): 53–9, 59. 68 Ibid., 55. 69 Raquel Payà Ibars, “Los usos de la TV en las actividades formativas,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 23, no. 91–2 (1965): 660–6, 661.

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  105 70 Luis Suárez Rodríguez, “La utilización de los medios audiovisuales en la enseñanza laboral,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 23, no. 91–2 (1965): 760–1; Antonio Martín Alonso, “Bases pedagógicas para una didáctica audiovisual,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 23, no. 91–2 (1965): 614–15. 71 Luis Mateos Canelos, “Televisión y enseñanza de las matemáticas,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 23, no. 91–92 (1965): 622–3, 623. 72 Víctor García Hoz, “Discurso de clausura,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 23, no. 91–92 (1965): 845–62, 858. 73 Ibid., 859. 74 See for example Jesús García Jiménez, “La televisión, promesa y amenaza educativas (I): Televisión infantil y vida de familia,” Revista de Educación no. 170 (1965): 104–11. This work was the first of a series about educational TV. Three following works were published in successive editions of the Journal of Education no. 171, 172 and 173 all of which were in 1965; Julio Eugui, “La Televisión escolar ante un gran future,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 24, no. 96 (1966): 347–57; and Carlos Porras Pasamontes, “Las ayudas audiovisuales en las Bibliotecas. Ayudas basadas en las técnicas de reproducción de imágenes visuales,” Bordón no. 145–6 (1967): 53–61. 75 Claudio Malandain, “La percepción ante la pantalla y las técnicas audiovisuales,” Revista de Educación no. 150 (1963): 169–73. 76 “El material didáctico:Tendencias y realizaciones. 8 Didacta,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966). 77 “Justificación,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966): 1. 78 Ibid., 1. 79 See for example Ambrosio J. Pulpillo, “Información general sobre la ‘8 Didacta,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966): 7–9; Juan Navarro Higuera, “El material audiovisual en la ‘8 Didacta’,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966): 9–11. 80 Gaston Mialaret, “La televisión en circuito cerrado y los problemas de la enseñanza,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966): 25–8. 81 Juan Manuel Moreno García, “Presente y porvenir del material didáctico,” Notas y Documentos no. 17 (1966): 4–7, 5. 82 ‘Justificación’, 1. 83 CEDODEP, El Centro de Documentación y Orientación Didáctica: Diez años de actividades (1958–1968) (Madrid: MEN-Dirección General de Enseñanza Primaria, 1968), 18. 84 “Nuevos métodos y técnicas de educación,” Notas y Documentos no. 4 (1962): 3–14. 85 CEDOCEP, “Las técnicas audiovisuales.” Documento cicloestilado, no. 17 (Madrid: CEDODEP, 1964); Juan Navarro Higueras ed., Los medios audiovisuales en la escuela (Madrid: CEDODEP 1967); CEDODEP, Ideas en orden a la introducción en la escuela de las técnicas audiovisuales (Madrid: CEDODEP, 1968); CEDODEP, Tecnología audiovisual y educación (Madrid: CEDODEP, 1969); Juan Navarro Higueras, ed., “Special Issue ‘El Circuito Cerrado de televisión y la formación del profesorado’,” Notas y Documentos no. 29–30 (1970); Comisión de Radiotelevisión educativa, La Televisión Escolar en España, 1967–1968 (Madrid: RTVE-Dirección de Enseñanza Primaria, 1968). 86 “Propósitos,” Boletín Medios Audio Visuales no. 1 (1966): 1–3, 2. 87 Emile G. McAnany, Saving the World: A Brief History of Communication for Development and Social Change (Baltimore, MD: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 20. 88 Wilbur Schramm, Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in the Developing Countries (Palo Alto and Paris: Stanford University Press-UNESCO 1964). 89 Wilbur Schramm, “The Effects of Television on Children and Adolescents,” UNESCO Reports and Papers on Mass Comunication no. 43 (1964). 90 McAnany, Saving the World, 25 91 Wilbur Schramm, Philip H. Coombs, Friedrich Kahnert and Jack Lyle, New Educational Media in Action: Case Studies for Planners. 3 vols (Paris: UNESCO, 1967). 92 Joaquín Tena Artigas, “Un nuevo instrumento al servicio de la enseñanza: la Televisión Escolar,” Vida Escolar no. 95 (1968): 18–20, 18. 93 See for example, Vida Escolar no. 95 (1968): 16–18.

106  Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves 94 Jesús García Jiménez, “Televisión escolar. Notas informativas acerca de su naturaleza, planteamiento y ejecución,” Revista de Educación no. 196 (1968): 88–90, 88. 95 Tena Artigas, ‘Un nuevo instrumento al servicio de la enseñanza’, 18. 96 Ibid., 18. 97 Lindo-Fuentes and Ching, Modernizing Minds in El Salvador, 145–82. 98 Tamar Groves, Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain, 1970–1985 (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014). 99 Ley 14/1970, de 4 de agosto, General de Educación y Financiamiento de la Reforma Educativa (BOE no. 187 de 6 de agosto de 1970). 100 At the end of the 1970s, various studies on CCTV had already been published by the MEN, the SEP and the CEDODEP. See for example Jesús García Jiménez, “La formación del personal de televisión,” Revista de Educación no. 182 (1966): 88–92; María Dolores Navarro Vicedo, “La enseñanza por televisión en circuito cerrado. La experiencia docente de Marly Le Roi,” Bordón no. 171–2 (1970): 167–81; Mialaret, ‘La televisión en circuito cerrado y los problemas de la enseñanza’. 101 The first debates on Educational Planning can be seen in the work of Jacques Bousquet, “Tendencias del planeamiento educativo en 1968,” Revista de Educación no. 201 (1968): 43–7; and Juan Manuel Paredes Grosso, “Métodos de Planificación de la Educación,” Notas y Documentos no. 27 (1970): 2–44. 102 Wilbur Schramm, Philip H. Coombs, Friedrich Kahnert and Jack Lyle, The New Media: Memo to Educational Planners (Paris: UNESCO, 1967). 103 A good study on the nature of the division between the culture of reformers, the university culture and the school one can be seen in Juan Mainer, La forja de un campo profesional. Pedagogía y didáctica de las Ciencias Sociales en España (1900–1970) (Madrid: CSIC, 2009). 104 ‘Carta de Ricardo Díez Hochleitner a D. Gabriel Betancur, Presidente del Comité Asesor Internacional para la reforma de la Educación en España, 17 de septiembre de 1969’, Spanish National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO Archive (ACNEC-UNESCO), Box 342/Folder 2. 105 ‘Informe de la reunión del día 3 de marzo de 1969. Comité de Cooperación Internacional para la reforma Educativa en España’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box 342/ Folder 2, pp. 2, 3. 106 “¿Pedagogía o Ciencias de la Educación?,” Revista de Educación no. 186 (1967): 28–9. 107 Gonzalo Jover Olmeda and Blanca Thoilliez Ruano, “La pedagogía ‘au pluriel’ y su incidencia en la reformulación del conocimiento teórico de la educación en España,” in Francia en la educación de la España contemporánea (1808–2008), ed. J. M. Hernández Díaz (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2011): 219–47. 108 Jacques Bousquet, “Las puertas del futuro,” Revista de Educación no. 209 (1970): 15–18. 109 “Informe sobre el viaje a Estados Unidos de la Comisión de Profesores Universitarios encargada de estudiar la organización de los Institutos de Ciencias de la Educación,” Revista de Educación no. 206 (1969): 55–62, 57. 110 Ibid., 56. 111 Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves, “La enseñanza programada, la UNESCO y los intentos por modificar el curriculum en la España desarrollista (1962– 1974),” Espacio,Tiempo y Educación 4, no. 2 (2017): 73–100; Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves, “Educational Transfer and Local Actors: International Intervention in Spain during the late Franco Period,” in Teaching Modernization: Spanish and Latin American Educational Reform in the Cold War, eds. L. Delgado Gómez and O. Martín García (New York, Berghahn Books, 2018). 112 ‘Country and Intercountry Programming. UNDP assistance requested by the Goverment of Spain period 1972–1976’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box 75/Folder 1. 113 Ibid., 15. 114 ‘Decreto de creación del CENIDE de 1969’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box75/Folder1, p. 35.

UNESCO mediation in Francoist policy  107 115 ‘Comisión Nacional Española de Cooperación con la UNESCO. Secretaría General. Estudio sobre el programa de becas UNESCO-España 1953–1975. Madrid, junio de 1976’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box 75/Folder 1, p. 3; and Box 76/Folder 1. 116 ‘Carta de J. Comiran a Monsieur Bousquet Secretaría General Técnica, 18 de diciembre de 1969’ Main Archive of the Secretary of State for Education (AGA), Box 61765: Documentación sobre el CENIDE año: 1969–1976. 117 ‘Informe sobre el Sistema EVR y sus posibilidades para la enseñanza. Estrictamente confidencial’. AGA, Box 61765: Documentación sobre el CENIDE año: 1969–1976. 118 ‘Carta de J. Bousquet ATP CENIDE vía J. Manuel Paredes Secretario General CENIDE a Ilmo. Sr. Pedro Segú y Martín Secretario General Técnico del MEC, 30 de marzo de 1970’, AGA, Box 61765: Documentación sobre el CENIDE año: 1969–1976. 119 Enrique Smith Verdier, “Circuito cerrado de TV y formación del profesorado,” Revista Española de Pedagogía 31, no. 121 (1973): 101–10, 101. 120 Navarro Vicedo, ‘La enseñanza por televisión en circuito cerrado’, 174. 121 Carmen Ruiz Heredero, “¿De qué modo un circuito cerrado de televisión contribuye a formar profesores?” Bordón no. 182–3 (1971): 381–98, 390. 122 See as an example the monograph of the Revista de Educación no. 219 (1972), devoted to the ‘Microenseñanza’. 123 INCIE, Circuito cerrado de televisión y enseñanza (Madrid: MEC, 1975), 13. 124 ‘Asistencia al Centro Nacional de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo de la Educación, Madrid. (Proyecto SPANED-19). Informe de la Misión de Inspección. Septiembre de 1972’, ACNEC-UNESCO, Box 75/Folder 1, p. 19. 125 About this change see González-Delgado and Groves, ‘La enseñanza programada’, 89. 126 ‘Asistencia al Centro Nacional de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo de la Educación’, 23. 127 ‘Consultores UNESCO. Proyecto UNDP/SPA/19 CENIDE. 18 de enero de 1973’, AGA, Box 61709: Proyectos y Programas de la UNESCO. 128 ‘Carta del Jefe de la Sección del CENIDE a D. Manuel Utande Igualada Director de la Unidad Administrativa del Programa del Banco Mundial. 31 de octubre de 1973’, AGA, Box 61709: Proyectos y Programas de la UNESCO. 129 UNESCO, New Trends in the Utilization of Educational Technology for Science Education (Paris: UNESCO, 1974). 130 Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla, ‘Modernizadores y tecnócratas’, 146. 131 Groves, Teachers and the Struggle for Democracy in Spain. 132 José Gimeno Sacristán, La pedagogía por objetivos. La obsesión por la eficacia (Madrid: Morata, 1982). 133 Antonio Viñao, “La Pedagogía como Ciencia, Arte y Profesión en la España del siglo XX,” in Un siglo de Pedagogía científica en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Madrid: Universidad Complutense, 2005), 55–62. 134 Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 135 Robert F. Arnove, “Sociopolitical Implications of Educational Television,” Journal of Communication 25, no. 2 (1975): 144–56; Martin Carnoy, “The Economic Costs and Returns to Educational Television,” Ekistics 40, no. 240 (1975): 370–84. 136 Carlos Lerena Alesón, Escuela, Ideología y Clases Sociales en España: Crítica de la sociología empirista de la educación (Barcelona: Ariel, 1976).

6

Transnational information flow and domestic concerns Japanese educational exhibits in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain Mari Hiraoka

Introduction In the field of history of Japanese education, a transnational perspective of the developments of the system is one of the most popular and long-standing research interests. For example, studies on oyatoi teachers, governmentemployed foreigners who taught local people in Japan in the late nineteenth century, have attracted many Japanese scholars in the hope that they would show how this education policy helped Japan evolve into a modern nation. In Britain, too, such a scope of research has been well studied. Being a centre of an empire, the country had educational connections with their overseas territories, and thus naturally when they look at education in their former colonies, historians of education tend to focus on a single direction: either information, practice or manpower flowing from home to overseas, which helped, or at least had some influence on, modernisation of local education systems. Interestingly, these two cases have a common aspect: the transnational flows of information concerned in both countries were from the centre to peripheries, and more or less in relation to the modernisation process of the receiver side. However, a call has recently been directed to the reversed current of transnational information flows. It has been argued that the relationships between British society at home and other parts of the Empire were far more complex than have been deemed. Rather, they need to be envisaged as networks of powers operating in every aspect of human activity, and there is no doubt that such relationships must have brought about cultural, commercial and military intercourses in all directions.1 In this respect, Ruth Watts tries to show the potential of this kind of research by drawing examples of images of the colonised from various forms of sources, such as art, children’s literature, exhibitions and scientific theories related to race, gender and evolution, and encourages historians of education to evaluate the effects of the ‘imperial gaze’ in the nineteenth century on social life in Britain, and argues that ‘they supplied a powerful, insistent undercurrent to nineteenth-century life’.2 This suggests that further research into the movements and forces from the periphery to the centre should be required to fill the gap.

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As in the case of Britain and their former colonies, there must have been a flow from Japan, a periphery, to Britain, the centre of the world. In fact, Britain was one of the major countries from which oyatoi teachers originated, and there have been many previous studies on them. However, little has been done for the other direction of transnational flows. Perhaps this is due to the difficulty in evaluating the effects on the receiver side, which was certainly much smaller than that from Britain to Japan. Nevertheless, some mark may well be left on British society. This is surely worth an investigation, as it also constitutes what we are now, which may be affecting unconsciously how we see ourselves and teach our children about others. In order to investigate transnational flow from Japan to Britain, this chapter examines international exhibitions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain at which Japanese educational exhibits were displayed. After brief overview of British international exhibitions and Japan’s presence in them, three exhibitions held in London will be investigated chronologically: the International Health Exhibition of 1884, the Japan Educational Exhibition of 1907 and the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910. They varied in size and impact on society, but were the only exhibitions held in Britain before the Second World War that had a substantial Japanese education section. For each exhibition, what aspects of Japanese education were presented, and how and why, as well as how they were received by the British public, will be examined. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, to illustrate how domestic discussions on education, including curriculum changes (in Britain), were affected by transnational flows of information from a country on the periphery (Japan) to the metropolitan centre (Britain) of the world; second, to argue that selections and emphasis of information presented at an education section of an exhibition, both in terms of what information was provided and received, were often not purely educational, but subject to other factors, such as political, economic, social and diplomatic considerations. In doing so, this study will demonstrate the past practices of transnational exchange of ideas and experiences from one country to another, suggesting that transnational aspects of education are not a recent phenomenon exclusive to the era of globalisation.

Background: International exhibitions, education reforms and Japan After the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Western world saw a series of largescale international exhibitions in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. In Britain, too, international exhibitions were regarded as not only an important impetus to commercial activities but also a powerful means of communication. However, after the 1862 International Exhibition, Britain hosted no ‘official’ large-scale international exhibition comparable to ones held in Paris and America. Instead, numerous smaller international, bilateral, domestic and local exhibitions were held in London as well as in other major cities. The notable early examples were a series of thematic exhibitions

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held in London in the 1880s: Fisheries (1883), Health (1884), Inventions (1885) and the Colonies and India (1886) International Exhibitions. Although all of these exhibitions were meant to be ‘international’, their concerns were directed to domestic and imperial affairs, as can be seen from the themes, which were confined chiefly to specific and practical areas, rather than aimed to arouse enthusiasm for showing off their grandeur in an international arena. Particularly, as Edwards puts it, the selection of themes indicates British ‘fear of and fascination with science and technology’,3 the source of their pride celebrated by the Great Exhibition. A series of grand exhibitions held at the Great White City in the early twentieth century was another example. The exhibition site was developed by Imre Kiralfy, a professional exhibition organiser. Born in Hungary, Kiralfy started as a showman in Europe and, having succeeded in creating popular spectacles first in America and then in England, he bought 140 acres of farmland at Shepherds Bush in West London, where his company constructed a permanent exhibition site with an artificial lake surrounded by elaborate white buildings and various entertainment facilities. The first of the series was the Franco–British Exhibition (1908), which was a huge success, and subsequently followed by five more exhibitions: the Imperial International (1909), the Japan–British (1910), the Coronation (1911), the Latin–British (1912), and the Anglo–American (1914) Exhibitions. The notable feature of these exhibitions was that they offered both massive leisure attractions and substantial facilities that were claimed to be for educational purposes. Greenhalph argues (1989) these exhibitions represent a distinctive British pattern.4 In general, as international exhibitions grew larger both in size and as profit-making events, the number of visitors to an exhibition became an indication of its success, and thus exhibition organisers had to take prospective visitors’ taste into account: the masses wanted exhibitions to give them an experience completely different from their everyday life. As a result, in America and the rest of Europe, the organisers’ idea of what an exhibition should offer had shifted from public education to being entertaining, assuming that it could still be of educational value. In Britain, too, the same trend prevailed from the late nineteenth century onwards, and entertainment elements increasingly came to occupy much of the exhibition venues. However, the British organisers of exhibitions continued to see education as an indispensable and independent element of exhibitions, as opposed to entertainment. Greenhalph attributes this division to ‘the subliminal obsession with work’.5 In fact, it was often the case that the organisers intended to make exhibitions a place for serious learning, whereas people attended an exhibition for pleasure. Furthermore, as Kiralfy’s company was a private enterprise, it inevitably sought ways of attracting the masses in order to make a profit, but at the same time it claimed to be an education facility in order to gain official recognition. Meanwhile, Japan was a source of entertainment at early international exhibitions as a half-civilised singular country situated on the periphery of the modern world. Japan opened its doors to the world market in 1854 at the

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very beginning of the enthusiasm for international exhibitions. The Tokugawa Shogunate government, not realising the importance of presenting themselves to the world, left it to others to represent Japan at several early exhibitions. The best-known case was the London International Exhibition of 1862, at which 614 objects were exhibited as ‘Japanese’, but they were in fact Rutherford Alcock’s private collection. Alcock, the first British diplomatic representative to live in Japan, was about to publish his impressions of Japan, The Capital of Tycoon (1863).6 He noted that, having failed to convince the government to cooperate, he decided to pursue the task by himself.7 The collection, consisting of lacquer ware, ceramic ware and bamboo works, caught the favourable attention of art circles, but the Japanese observers saw it as a disordered mixture of bric-a-brac, dishonouring the country which ‘industrialization had left behind’ (Figure 6.1).8 The first international exhibition to which Japan themselves sent their delegates was the Paris Exhibition of 1867. At the exhibition site, a Japanese teahouse and geisha girls attracted public attention, which created the fixed set of things Japanese that visitors, and exhibition organisers, expected to see at international exhibitions. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Vienna Exhibition (1873) was the first exhibition in which the new government participated. Following the suggestion of foreign advisors, the main exhibits were of an oriental flavour and stunningly large. As a result, the Japanese section was welcomed enthusiastically, and the exhibited items sold well. This experience

Figure 6.1 ‘The Japanese Court in the International Exhibition’ (Illustrated London News, 20 September 1862, 320).

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shaped modern Japan’s general policy on planning international exhibitions, and successfully brought into vogue Japonisme, which prevailed in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Europe and America. Despite this success, Japanese observers of these exhibitions often found the way their country was presented uncomfortable. Japan was then struggling to make herself recognised as a civilised modern nation on an equal footing with Western nations. Their ambition was to achieve the revision of unequal treaties, in which Japan granted consular jurisdiction to foreign countries and lost its own tariff autonomy. The government well understood the nature of international exhibitions as a kind of battlefield where nations were seeking a superior position over others by showing their advanced technology. However, without any modern element worth presenting to the Western audience, Japan had no choice but to set themselves up as an old country with a lot of singular charm, for which they had felt disgraced in London in 1862. Thus, how the nation should be represented at international exhibitions was an issue to be debated well into the twentieth century. Under these circumstances, ‘education’ was a convenient content at international exhibitions for Japan to show its progress as a modern nation. Japan initiated its modern education system in 1872, and coincidently, ‘education’ was one of the major themes at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. The United States Commissioner saw the link between the success of a nation in industries and its education, and reported that ‘The meaning of the exhibition … is very clear. … The best-educated nations produce the best work’, and in this respect, Japan was already regarded as having better schools than China.9 This set a precedent: with an emphasis on the implementation and rapid progress of a modern state education system, they could illustrate Japan’s promising future. In other words, ‘education’ was the only area in which Japan could safely claim to be modern. Despite this political intention of the Japanese government, the British masses generally saw exhibitions as a rare event where they could have direct contact with foreign countries, and responded to them in various ways, which will be seen in the following sections.

The International Health Exhibition of 1884 and technical education The International Health Exhibition of 1884 was the second of a series of four thematic exhibitions held in the 1880s in London, and this was the first major exhibition in Britain in which Japanese education exhibits were officially presented. The exhibition was divided into two sections. Initially, the theme was just ‘health’, and ‘education’ was added later. On the subject of the inclusion of ‘education’, the Official Catalogue (1884) argued that it was the right time to illustrate the progress of the national educational systems introduced in 1870. In addition, technical education had been a much-debated topic, as Britain increasingly had difficulty in international competitions and the report of the

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Royal Commission on the subject (the Samuelson Report) was about to be published in the same year.10 Nevertheless, ‘education’ drew much less public attention from the outset, as the exhibition was often dubbed ‘the Healtheries’. The exhibition itself was a great success, attracting over four million visitors. Japan first hesitated to participate in the exhibition because of the domestic financial difficulties caused by the accumulated debts of the new government’s modernisation policies and the very late notice of the exhibition. Nevertheless, the Japanese government decided to send a large-scale delegation. The serious commitment of the Japanese government was due to the diplomatic interest of the day. Japanese diplomatic records show that the government sought British favour for the abolition of consular jurisdiction, which was then under negotiation. At the same time, hostility against China over Korea was developing, over which Britain had a certain influence.11 In addition, the sub-theme of the exhibition, ‘education’, was almost the only area where Japan could successfully present its modern aspect and reasonably expect favourable responses from the audience at international exhibitions.12 Eventually, the number of educational exhibits prepared for this occasion was the largest ever, culminating in 1,067 copies of books and 1,792 items of instruments, apparatus, samples of pupils’ work, plans, photographs and models of school houses. Furthermore, two booklets were officially published: one outlining the latest condition of the Japanese education system, and a catalogue of the educational exhibits with detailed explanations. Another notable point was the involvement of Seiichi Tejima, the commissioner of the Japanese education section. It was for the first time since the Philadelphia Exposition (1876) that a commissioner exclusively in charge of education was appointed for an international exhibition.13 Tejima was then Director of the Tokyo Educational Museum14 and had been indirectly involved in the establishment of the Tokyo Vocational School (1881), of which he was to become the president in 1890 when it was reorganised as the Tokyo Technical School. He also had a lot of experience abroad; he worked as a translator for the Iwakura Mission (1871–1873), a diplomatic delegation of the new government to the United States and Europe, and visited the Philadelphia and Paris Exhibitions (1876 and 1878, respectively) as a member of the Japanese delegation. Tejima’s enthusiasm in presenting Japanese technical education at the exhibition can be found throughout A Catalogue with Explanatory Notes of the Exhibits from the Department of Education, Empire of Japan, in the International Health and Education Exhibition, Held in London (1884). This was written by Tejima himself, and at the very beginning he showed his regret for the incompleteness of the exhibits relating to technical education, and explained this was because the organised system of technical education had just been introduced in Japan.15 Tejima must have had the second Education Code (1880) in mind. The code reorganised various technical and vocational schools into one system, which had hitherto suffered from a lack of uniformity due to their ad hoc origins. Therefore, giving his gesture of regret, he implied that there would be a rapid development of technical education in Japan, and thus he actually

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expressed his pride in the work. Furthermore, he noted another reason for his regret. Some of the Japanese educational exhibits had been damaged during shipment, and although they did not constitute a large part of the collection, most of them were ones related to technical education.16 From these accounts, and his background, it can easily be assumed that Tejima had highly anticipated arousing favourable interest among the public in Japanese technical education in comparison with that of England.17 Contrary to his expectation, however, there was almost no response to Japanese technical education, although Japanese education in general attracted a fairly large amount of comments. The favourable aspects pointed out were: the central authority which controlled the whole education system, including the content of teaching, systematically; the high status of education and teachers; and the rapid progress of educational ideas and schools following the Western model. For example, The Times commented that the exhibits showed ‘the surprising readiness with which the Japanese have adopted Western ideas of education and methods of instruction’ and reported thoroughly aspects of the system, from the school leaving age to the university of Tokyo. Above all, the reporter seemed to be impressed by the fact that children aged from 6 to 14 years were said to be almost invariably sent to school, that the schools were supported by local rates, and that universities were controlled by Monbusho, a central authority in charge of all educational matters.18 Nature seemed particularly interested in the centralised administration of the education system in Japan and the status of education in government. For the latter, it reported that school textbooks were either compiled or chosen by the government, and ‘the rules by which all schools are governed, whether they are local, general or private’ had to be approved by the Minister of Education. For the latter, it stated that ‘The Education Department in Japan is one of the ten principal offices of State, its head ranking as a first-class Minister’.19 The Manchester Guardian, on the other hand, highlighted ‘arts and sciences in Japanese schools’. The article first compared Japan with ‘Siam’, the former name for Thailand, in terms of the display and information, and with China in terms of a practical point of view, and then concluded that: the Japanese, more especially with their educational exhibits, have shown more what the exhibition demanded from a practical point of view. The extent to which the kindergarten is used in Japan and the models and appliances for teaching the various arts and sciences in Japanese schools are all well worthy of study, some as a contrast to our own methods, others as showing how far European methods are gaining ground in Japan.20 The attention of the reporters to technical education may have been because of the differences between the locations of the publications – a newspaper based in a large but still local industrial city, and a nationwide newspaper and a specialist magazine based in the capital. Nevertheless, these are only some of

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the instances of the kind of comments identified so far that Tejima must have anticipated.21 Interestingly enough, the recommendations of the Samuelson Report of 1884 published later in the year were identical with the aspects of Japanese education picked up by the media. The Royal Commission on Technical Instruction had been set up in 1881 in order to investigate possible remedies for the lamentable decline of British industry revealed at the 1876 Paris Exposition. The unregulated condition of technical education was deemed to be the cause of the failure in international competitions. The final report not only recommended more scientific instruction and training of manual work for children, but also pointed out the state’s responsibility to provide technical education, as in other European nations that were successful in the field. In fact, elementary education was narrowly confined to ‘the three Rs’ due to the payment-by-results system since the introduction of the Revised Code (1862). At secondary level, too, school boards, as a rule, were responsible for elementary education only. Neither were they officially allowed to include technical subjects, nor did other authorities which had the power to provide technical education exist. The Department of Science and Art, established in 1853 under the aegis of the Board of Trade, offered grants for scientific and artistic higher education, but its works remained fairly independent even after coming under the Privy Council. The Committee of the Privy Council on Education was eventually incorporated into the Education Department in 1856. The situation in which there was no single central authority to control education had been much debated as the cause of the deficiencies in the education system in general. However, the scientific and technical branch of education may have been the branch of education that suffered the most in this respect. Thus, it is understandable that even Nature, which had often reported on the development of Japanese technical and scientific education, mentioned the highly centralised administration instead of technical education itself. In fact, Nature had constantly claimed higher status for scientists and engineers in Britain and often expressed their frustration with reforms delayed by the lack of central government initiative. The high status of education in society, and of the Ministry of Education (Monbusho) among the government offices, was surely the aspect of Japanese education they wanted to propagate. On the content of teaching, too, as one local paper stated, ‘we are glad to see that there is no mention of payment by results, … which is working such ruinous effects on the … children in England’22, reflecting a shared concern about the narrowly limited scope of education, calling for science and other more practical subjects in the school curriculum. Another point to be considered here is the shifting of public expectations and the decrease in popularity of education as a subject of interest. A glance at the Foreign Exhibition section and the Education Section in an illustration that appeared in Punch reveals the unpopularity of these themes. This clearly shows that ordinary visitors wanted an exhibition to be a source of entertainment,

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Figure 6.2 ‘Our Insane-itary Guide to the Health Exhibition XII’ (Punch, 30 August 1884, 98).

not a place for serious learning; whereas the organisers were still obliged to provide educative collections, believing that an exhibition was a rare event for the general public to learn about the world. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Japanese technical education did not attract much attention. The image of Japan that the masses wanted to see at the exhibition remained unchanged: its beautiful women and exotic customs, which were to be displayed further by The Mikado (1885), Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, and the Japanese Village (1885–1887), a popular commercial exhibition of Japanese culture held in Knightsbridge, London (Figure 6.2).

The Japanese Education Exhibition of 1907 and moral instruction As a type of exhibition, the Japan Education Exhibition (1907) was different from the Japanese education section at the International Health Exhibition in two respects. First, it was an independent temporary exhibition solely devoted to Japanese education, and held in a corner of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Its predecessor had been part of a larger event with an abundance of other attractions, but visitors to this exhibition can be assumed to have been initially interested in Japanese education, or at least either Japan

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or education in general; thus the number of visitors, which is unknown, was presumably not so large. Second, it was not a result of careful planning, but rather happened incidentally, with no explicit indication of its organiser. What is known is that it was held in conjunction with series of lectures on Japanese education delivered at the University of London, and as Dairoku Kikuchi,23 the officially invited lecturer appointed by the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbusho), noted, the exhibits were a part of his collection brought from Japan in order to supplement his lectures. According to the Museum’s records, Kikuchi handed the collection to the Board of Education in April, and it was put on display at South Kensington from May to June.24 Furthermore, the same document and the preface of the pamphlet published by the Board for the exhibition suggest the involvement of the Special Inquiry Division, a section within the Board engaged in collecting and reporting both domestic and international information in order to stimulate public interest in education.25 This indicates one of the most important aspects of this exhibition to note: the exhibition, and also the lectures on Japanese education at the University of London, were initiated by British educationists and administrators concerned with education. The early twentieth century saw a sudden surge of British interest in Japanese education, and moral education in particular. This phenomenon is often attributed to the Rosso–Japanese War (1904–1905). However, it should be noted that there were defined anxieties for the future prevailing in society around the turn of the century, which must have been the fundamental cause of the British positive attitude towards Japanese education. This pessimistic frame of mind became clear in the second Boer War (1899–1902). The unexpected struggle on the battlefield revealed the weakness of the army and the unhealthy condition of the working classes, creating the consensus that something should be done to improve the physique and the mindset of the whole nation. Education was thought to be one of the areas which needed to be targeted. In fact, there were some instances in which Japanese education was mentioned in this context even before the Russo–Japanese War. Under these circumstances, Japan’s victory over Russia triggered British interest. Japan was then an only ally of Britain, but British public was sceptical about Japan’s capacity to fight against Russia when the war broke out. However, seeing their achievements on the battlefield, the British press coverage became full of war reports, mostly praising the efficiency of the Japanese military organisation, discipline, and the high morality of their officers and the ranks alike. The keyword was bushido, the code of the samurai, the ancient warriors of Japan. The term was popularised by an article, ‘A Soul of a Nation’, which appeared in The Times. It stated: Bushido offers us the ideal of poverty instead of wealth, humility in place of ostentation, reserve instead of réclame, self-sacrifice in place of selfishness, the care of the interest of the State rather than that of the individual. … In the schools bushido is now regularly taught.26

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In this way, Japanese education was talked about as the secret of Japan’s success. This view surely developed out of discontent with Britain’s own education. Thus the University of London decided to hold lectures on Japanese education. Kikuchi’s lecture at the University of London and the Japanese Education Exhibition were an official response to this British interest. The exhibits were samples of elementary and middle-school students’ work such as drawings, and compositions in English. Diagrams, books and photographs of teaching apparatus, children at study or play were also displayed. One noteworthy feature of Kikuchi’s message was that the progress of Japan as a modern nation was supported by its education system, in which children’s reverence towards the Emperor, the father of the extended family, was effectively nurtured. As the essence of such an education, the official translation of the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) was for the first time introduced outside Japan. The collection was later circulated to four local exhibitions held in Edinburgh (1908), Manchester (1908), Belfast (1909) and Sunderland (1910).27 There was not much response to this exhibition in the press, perhaps due to its smaller scale and far too narrow scope. Nevertheless, as this exhibition stemmed from British official interest, the investigation into the content of a British government publication will reveal what attracted British education administrators. The small booklet was exclusively on the Japanese education system, and prepared by the Board of Education for the occasion of the event. It was based on the notes Heath, the then director of the Office of the Special Inquiry, took at Kikuchi’s lecture, so the content surely reflected the official interests of the British side. It includes three key features representing the Board’s interests in Japanese education: first, the linearly progressive system from kindergarten to university controlled by central government; second, moral instruction, especially the teaching of patriotism, and the way the State was involved in it; and third, the expected roles of women and how to educate them in order to fit into society (Figure 6.3).28 Interestingly these are the same aspects of Japanese education system as those caught attention at the Health Exhibition: Japan’s systematic school system. This suggests that British education administrators still saw their education system lacking an effective central administration and support even after the introduction of the Board of Education (1900), which was supposed to be the central authority, comparable to Japan’s Ministry of Education. As for the Imperial Rescript, whose effect Kikuchi particularly emphasised, the author commented: although ‘It would be difficult to carry the same message to an Englishman as to a Japanese’, it was claimed that ‘The children are so imbued with the spirit of it that it forms a part of the national life’.29 The Board of Education later distributed this booklet to teachers, and it was reprinted in 1909, which shows that the Board thought the knowledge of Japanese education would be of use to their teachers. The copies were also sold at the site of the Scottish National Exhibition (1908). The organisers of the exhibition, to which this collection was lent, seemed to find this booklet useful, as various sources indicate that they often made official comments based on it.

Figure 6.3  ‘Educational System of Japan’ (Board of Education, Japanese Educational Exhibition, 1907, 13).

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Of the few articles that appeared in the press, the longest and most favourable response to the 1907 exhibition was the one in The Times. The article began by reminding the readers of the Japanese military success in the Russo–Japanese War as was very fashionable at that time, but did not reflect on Kikuchi’s emphasis. Dubbing the Japanese the people ‘to whom the “religious difficulty” is happily unknown’, the way in which the Japanese gave moral instruction at school was introduced, and the article continued: This people … teaches morality to the youngest children by means of pictures, which hang round their class-rooms and are explained by their teachers. Indeed, the best part of the first year is spent in mastering these pictures, with their descriptive titles, “Be lively,” “Don’t tell a lie,” “Take care of your body,” “The Joys of Home,” &c.30 The reporter commented on this as to ‘Whether these pictures have an effect that is never eradicated, or whether all Japanese boys and girls are good by nature’.31 As for the Imperial Rescript on Education, it was mentioned and an extract was published at the very end of the article, but it was picked up as a mere example of the tools with which moral instructions were conducted. In the end, neither the Board of Education nor The Times seemed persuaded by the explanation for the secret of Japan’s national strength offered at the Japanese Educational Exhibition of 1907, but they still deemed Japan to have something useful that Britain did not possess. During this period immediately after the Russo–Japanese War, many individuals who were concerned with moral education in Britain frequently referred to Japanese education. For example, the result of Michael Sadler’s research project, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools (1908) and G. Spiller’s Report on Moral Instruction and on Moral Training in the Schools (1909) both showed their interest in how morality could be taught independently from religion, one of the issues then being highly debated. However, Japanese moral education, either the idea or the method, did not make its way into practice in the British formal education system.

The Japan–British Exhibition of 1910: Education versus entertainment The Japan–British Exhibition (1910) was one of the international exhibitions held on a vast exhibition ground at Shepherd’s Bush, London. For this occasion, a Japanese-style gate and two Japanese gardens were erected, but there were also many attractions which had nothing to do with Japan, such as the Flip Flap and the Mountain Railway. Outside the main site, the Japanese Village and the Japan Fair were constructed, where Japanese craftsmen showed their skills and sold their handiwork in Japanese-style houses. In other words, it was like a large funfair. Consequently, it was a great success as a commercial enterprise, visited by a total of approximately 8,350,000 people.

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As has been noted earlier, this was one of a series of exhibitions planned and organised by a private exhibition company, headed by Imre Kiralfy. He targeted Japan after the great success of the Franco–British Exhibition (1908) for several reasons. In general, Japan had provided popular content at various international exhibitions. In Britain, in particular, there was momentum in the 1900s to select Japan as the theme for highly commercialised – yet still meant to be educational – exhibitions. The timing was perfect for Japan, too. In 1910, Japan was expecting the conclusion to negotiations aimed at the restoration of their tariff autonomy, and, in 1911, the third revision of the Anglo–Japanese Alliance. An exhibition at which Japan could present themselves on an equal footing with Britain was an important diplomatic arena. Since there were some concerns that the proposed exhibition might end up being something like Japanese Village in the 1880s,32 the Japanese government paid great attention to preparing exhibits and designing buildings. As a result, the official exhibits were serious and scholarly, of high quality. At the same time, having been persuaded that the exhibition had to be attractive in European eyes, Japan reluctantly agreed to the erection by the company, in an area separate from the main site, of the Japanese Village and the Japan Fair. Education was again thought to be a convenient area in which Japan could stress its credibility as a modern nation, but the message expected to be transmitted was different. This time, it was used to show Japan’s uniqueness, through emphasising its ancient origins. The past was presented as a source of their national character upon which their present success relied, so that the progress of Japan into a modern nation was understood as a continuous development from ancient times. Reflecting the high expectations of the Japanese government, the scale of the Japanese education section at the exhibition site was large and prominent. It was positioned near the entrance in the left wing of the Great Industrial and Machinery Halls, the biggest building in the exhibition ground. The section was roughly divided into two: one relating to the present condition of education and the other dealing with the origins of Japanese civilisation. To illustrate these two aspects, the government published two volumes to supplement their exhibition: Education in Japan (1910) and History of Japanese Education (1910). The exhibits were composed of folios, charts, statistical tables, albums of photographs, copies, drawings, models, example of students’ work, school textbooks, annual reports of the Department of Education, together with reproductions of ancient coloured paintings, pictures of ancient schools for learning, and ancient printed materials. A separate subsection relating to moral instruction in elementary school, the national characteristics and bushido is noteworthy because it reflected the British interest in Japanese education of the day, as has been illustrated in the previous section. To highlight the long history of Japan’s development, the use of ‘tableaux’ was adopted: displays of scenes of epoch-making Japanese events, from the

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legendary period of 2,500 years ago to the present day. Dolls wearing real clothes and armour were arranged against a painted background. Most of the exhibits were models especially made for the exhibition with the careful guidance of experts. At the same time, authenticity was considered important, and thus the old fine art collections included many items of national treasure. Their quality particularly impressed the audience, attracting visitors to the art section not only from Britain but also from the Continent.33 All these efforts were made in order to demonstrate that the practice of assimilating foreign cultures was long rooted in the history of Japan, which was not merely a practice of imitation but indeed a practice of transformation into a new form of culture best suited to the people. In other words, the rapid modernisation of recent history was neither a mere imitation nor a sudden phenomenon but a natural consequence of the very unique national character of the Japanese. In contrast to the Japanese government’s seriousness, there was a singular silence in the press coverage of the Japanese education section. Although the exhibition itself was widely and favourably reported on by the press, only a few mentioned the educational exhibits, and these rather in passing. In fact, a booklet consisting of newspaper and journal articles relating to the exhibition was compiled by the Japanese Commission after the exhibition, but there was in its index only one direct entry on education.34 Among those very few instances, The Times Japanese Edition (1910), an extensive supplement to The Times, carried the most comprehensive account of Japanese education in relation to the educational section. In the volume, it was stated that ‘With the provision of every means for the diffusion of modern and Western knowledge and science, Japan also retains certain characteristic features of her ancient national and social life’.35 This view was in line with Japan’s claim for the cause of their recent success, which may have been largely influenced by the Japanese government, as their involvement in this publication is suggested.36 Another example is an article in The Scotsman. It noted that ‘the rearing and education of young children is better understood in Japan than it is England’ and explained that the reasons for this view as follows: They are kept happier, and taking things all round and especially in recent years, in better sanitary condition. Their school teaching excites more interest in the infantile mind, because it has more direct bearing upon their child and future adult practical life.37 As had been for the previous events, there were some commentators who referred to Japanese practice as a critique of the British condition like the above, but not so many on this occasion. Several educational journals also published articles about the Japanese education section at the exhibition, but only a few mentioned the educational exhibits. For example, The Educational Times reported on the arrangement of the section and its exhibits, but there were no comments on their thoughts about them.38 The School Government Chronicle, on the other hand, commented

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that the exhibition would ‘appeal to Educationists, and the conveyance of parties of school children will surely be undertaken and organised by the various Schol [sic] Managers and conductors of educational institutions’, but did not specifically mention the Japanese education section.39 Thus, although there were some British interpretations of Japanese education reflecting their own concerns, the number of such instances was much fewer, the announcements were less vocal and the use of Japan as a critique of their problems was less frequent than on the previous occasions which have been seen in this chapter. Furthermore, considering the press attention directed to the exhibition as a whole, and the Japanese section in particular, the number of newspaper and journal articles on Japanese education was strikingly few. After all, despite the seriousness of the Japanese government, Japan in the British mind was a source of entertainment,40 as can be seen in the postcard illustrating a reclining Western man being taken care of by three girls wearing Japanese style clothes.41 Even if evaluated most favourably, Japan hardly convinced the British public of their equal status. The Japanese emphasis on tradition actually attracted mass attention, but it also made Japan be ‘seen as not quite modern’, as Lockyer put it.42 It should also be noted here that there was a remarkable resemblance between the Illustrated London News illustrations of the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910 and the Japanese Village of 1885.43 This was exactly the situation which the Japanese government worried about, and the Japanese government, journalists and private visitors were not satisfied with the general representation of Japan at the exhibition (Figures 6.4–6.7).

Conclusion Having examined three exhibitions at which Japanese education was presented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Britain, two conclusions may be drawn in respect to curriculum history from the transnational perspective. First, in Britain, domestic concerns about their own education were always dominant. This is, to some extent, inevitable for anyone who encounters a foreign education system and there is nothing bad about this. In fact, Gary McCulloch notes in his chapter in this volume, the case of Eric Rogers, the organiser of the Nuffield Physics GCE O-level project, who compared general and physics curricula in England and in the United States during his stay at Harvard in 1930–1932. According to McCulloch, Rogers’ inspiration for comparison initiated the practice in England, seeking ways to improving it. In addition, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the period when investigation into foreign education systems was becoming popular, and international exhibitions were then a rare opportunity to access authentic information on foreign countries. Thus, the information on Japanese educational practices presented at exhibitions must have made some contribution to discussions on educational reforms in Britain, even though the attention was usually suferficial, directed to resembling aspects without serious consideration.

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Figure 6.4 ‘Japanese Educational Exhibit at the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910’ (Official Report, 1911, 251)44.

Second, Japanese government’s selection of and emphasis on the exhibits were very much affected by factors other than education: mainly their diplomatic concerns. Accordingly, the progress of the system in line with the Western model was stressed in the hope that they could gain access to membership of a group of modernised countries. This is very similar to the intention of the dictatorship government in Spain in accepting the concept of education system expressed by international organisations, which is well demonstrated by Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves in their chapter, because it

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Figure 6.5 ‘I was so tired after doing the rounds at the Exhibition!’ (Hammersmith and Fulham Archive, HC166.14).

came to be believed that education and economic development had a causeand-effect relationship, and would eventually lead the country to establish a higher status in international relations. Unfortunately, in the case of the Japanese educational exhibitions in Britain, British receptions rarely met Japanese expectations. This was partly because of the shifting ideas of what an exhibition should be. As the exhibition became more like a funfair, the audience wanted Japan to be a source of entertainment rather than of serious information, whereas the exhibitions organisers, in order to gain official patronage, did not give up on claiming their events to be educational, which in turn led the Japanese government to have high

Figure 6.6 ‘Leaves from an Artist’s Sketch-book: the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition, as seen by Frank Reynolds’ (Illustrated London News, 9 July 1910, 50–1).

Figure 6.7 ‘The Japanese Village’ (Illustrated London News, 21 February 1885, 203).

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expectations. Consequently, serious educational interests in Japanese education, as in the case of moral instruction, failed to take root in British education, while attention-grabbing messages tended to survive longer. In 1912, John Adams, a prominent educationist of the time and the first principal of Institute of Education, University of London, commented on what he had heard about Japanese education: Europe has not yet quite recovered from her surprise. … Baron Dairoku Kikuchi has done a great deal to explain what took place, but there is much that remains mysterious, and whets our curiosity in this remarkable phenomenon of national psychology.45 While Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout Movement, wrote in 1913 that: This bravery … which they practice is called Bushido or chivalry, and it has been handed down, just as our chivalry has, from their knights or samurai, and every Japanese boy knows the doings of their great Samurai better than our boys know the doings of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, or of the Knights in “Ivanhoe.” And they carry their chivalry into practice, just as the Boy Scouts do every day.46

Notes 1 Joice Goodman, Gary McCulloch, and Willam Richardson, ‘“Empires Overseas” And “Empires at Home”: Postcolonial and Transnational Perspectives on Social Change in the History of Education’, Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 6 (2009): 695–706, p. 700. 2 Ruth Watts, ‘Education, Empire and Social Change in Nineteenth Century England’, Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 6 (2009): 773–786, p. 786 3 Anthony David Edwards, The Role of International Exhibitions in Britain, 1850–1910: Perceptions of Economic Decline and the Technical Education Issue (Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008), 136. 4 Paul Greenhalgh, “Education, Entertainment and Politics,” in The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (London: Reaktion Books, 1989), 74. 5 Ibid., 97. 6 Rutherford Alcock, The Capital of Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in Japan (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863). 7 “Obituary. Sir Rutherford Alcock,” Journal of the Society of Arts 45 (5 November 1897), 1186. 8 Angus Lockyer, “Japan at the Exhibition, 1867–1877: From Representation to Practice,” in Civilization in the Modern World, xvii, Collection and Representation, vol. 54, Senri Ethnological Studies, eds. T. Umesao, A. Lockyer and K.Yoshida (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2001), 70; Takeyuki Kuni, Hakurankai to Meiji no Nihon [Exhibitions and Meiji Japan] (Tokyo:Yoshikawa Kobundo, 2010), 18–9. 9 Reports of the Commissioners of the United States to the International Exhibition Held at Vienna, 1873, vol. 2, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1873), 125. 10 International Health Exhibition Official Catalogue, International Health Exhibition Literature (Vol. 18) (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1884), xlvii–xlix. 11 Yuji Hirata, “Rondon Bankoku Eisei Hakurankai Niokeru Nihon no Kyoiku no Shokai [a Study on the Introduction of Japanese Education at the International Health

Japanese educational exhibits  129 Exhibition of London 1884],” Bulletin of Institute of Education University of Tsukuba 27 (March 2003), 66–7. 12 Ibid., 66. 13 Ibid., 63. 14 For more on Tokyo Educational Museum, see Kayoko Komatsu, “Formation and Transformation of Education in Japan through Exhibitions: Focused on the Educational Museum Founded in 1877,” in Modelling the Future: Exhibitions and the Materiality of Education, ed. Martin Lawn (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2009). 15 Department of Education, A Catalogue with Explanatory Notes of the Exhibits from the Department of Education, Empire of Japan, in the International Health and Education Exhibition, Held in London, 1884 (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1884), iii. 16 Ibid., iv. 17 Hirata, ‘Introduction of Japanese Education’, 69. 18 “Japan at the Health Exhibition,” The Times, 28 August 1884, 2. 19 “Japanese Education,” Nature 30 (18 September 1884): 490–1. 20 “From Our London Correspondent [the Health Exhibition],” Manchester Guardian, 18 October 1884, 7. 21 These are representative accounts of a certain length and published in well-known periodicals with fairly large circulation in those days. There are many more instances in less influential local and specialist newspapers and magazines. See Chapter Four of the present author’s unpublished PhD thesis: Mari Hiraoka, “A Modern Utopia? Images of the Japanese Education System in Britain, c.1860–1914,” (PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University of London, 2015). 22 “Education in Japan,” Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 25 September 1884, 6. 23 Kikuchi was the former President of Imperial University of Tokyo (1898–1901) and the Minister of Education (1901–1903). He was also a Cambridge wrangler, a graduate with the first class of the mathematical tripos. 24 “Japanese Educational Exhbn. –Temporary– [Circulation]” (Victoria and Albert Museum Archive, 1911–1920). 25 For details about the lectures, see Yuji Hirata, Kyoiku Chokugo Kokusai Kankeishi no Kenkyu: Kantei Honyaku Kyoiku Chokugo o Chushin Toshite [the Imperial Rescript on Education in International Perspective] (Tokyo: Kazama Shobo, 1997); and Noboru Koyama, Hatenko Meiji Ryugakusei Retsuden [Japanese Students Abroad in Meiji Period] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1999). 26 “The Soul of a Nation (by Our Military Correspondent),” The Times, 4 October 1904, 6. 27 For more information on Japanese educational exhibits at these exhibitions, see Hiraoka, ‘A Modern Utopia?’, 231–9. 28 Hiraoka, ‘A Modern Utopia?’, 226. Fujii also presents three points of the pamphlet’s interests, which is slightly different from what has been discussed. See Yasushi Fujii, “19–20 Seiki Tenkanki Igirisu Seifu no Nihon Kyoiku Shokai [a Study on Board of Education, Japanese Educational Exhibition: Notes on the Organisation of Japanese Education, HNSO, 1907],” Matsuyama University Review 16, no. 1 (2004), 232–3. 29 Board of Education, Japanese Educational Exhibition: Notes on the Organisation of Japanese Education (London: HMSO, 1907), 16. 30 “Japanese Education Exhibition,” The Times, 9 May 1907, 4. 31 Ibid. 32 Ayako Hotta-Lister, The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910: Gateway to the Island Empire of the East (Richmond, UK: Japan Library, 1999), 40–1; Mamiko Ito, Meiji Nihon to Bankoku Hakurankai [Meiji Japan and International Exhibitions] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2008), 174. 33 Daisuke Ito, “Nichiei Hakurankai no Hyoka Nitsuite no Ichi Kosatsu [A study on the Evaluation of the Japan-British Exhibition],” Kokugakuin Daigaku Hakubutsukangaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Museology, Kokugakuin University] 33 (2008): 99–100.

130  Mari Hiraoka 34 The British Press and the Japan-British Exhibition, vols. 1–4, (London (Vols. 1–3), Tokyo (vol. 4): The Imperial Japanese Commission, 1910–11), 27. 35 The Japanese Empire: A Reprint of the Times Japanese Edition July 19, 1910 (London: printed and published by John Parkinson Bland, at The Times Office, 1910), 38. 36 “Appendix Two: The Times 1910 Japanese Supplement,” in Culture and Commerce at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition: Centenary Perspectives, eds. Ayako Hotta-Lister and Ian Nish (Leiden and Boston, MA: Global Oriental, 2013), 223–5. 37 “The Japanese-British Exhibition. Fourth Article,” The Scotsman, 9 June 1910, 6. 38 “Summary of the Month: The Japanese Educational Exhibits in the Japan-British Exhibition,” The Educational Times 63 (1910), 223. 39 “The Japan-British Exhibition and the Educational Interest,” School Government Chronicle and Educational Authorities’ Gazette 83 (1910): 46. 40 Olive Checkland, Japan and Britain after 1859: Creating Cultural Bridges (London: Routledge, 2003), 181–2. 41 “‘I am so tired after doing the rounds at the Exhibition!’” [Photo] (Hammersmith and Fulham Archive and Local History Centre, HC166.14). 42 Angus Lockyer, “Japan at the Exhibition, 1867–1970,” (PhD Thesis, Stanford University, 2000), 171. 43 “The Japanese Village,” Illustrated London News, 21 February 1885, 203; and “Leaves from an Artist’s Sketch-book: The Anglo-Japanese Exhibition, as seen by Frank Reynolds,” Illustrated London News, 9 July 1910, 50–1. 44 “Japanese Educational Exhibit,” Official Report of the Japan-British Exhibition, 1910, at the Great White City, Shepherd’s Bush, London. (London: Unwin Brothers, Limited, 1911). 45 John Adams, The Evolution of Educational Theory (London: Macmillan, 1912), 89. 46 Robert Baden-Powell, Boy Scout Beyond the Seas: My World Tour (London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd, 1913), 90.

7

Local versus national history of education The case of Swedish school governance, 1950–1990 Johan Prytz and Johanna Ringarp

Introduction In this chapter we problematise the concepts of national curriculum and governance and the possibility of applying transnational perspectives, for instance when doing comparisons between countries in the search for patterns that transcend the national. We argue that local perspectives are necessary in order to understand how a school system was governed on the basis of a national curriculum or national school regulations in general. The term ‘local’ refers to geography, but also to school subjects. It is also shown how a lack of local perspectives compromises comparative research about how a school system operated, not least comparisons that involve the type of tests managed by the international organisations International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The case for our discussion is Sweden in the twentieth century, in particular the period from 1950 to 1990, and the governance of the school system. The standard narrative about governance during this period is that the Swedish system, as a whole, became very centralised, in a successive fashion, up to about the 1970s. Thereafter, it was successively decentralised. We challenge this narrative by studying different types of local practices of governance. One type of practice is how major national school reforms in the 1950s and 1960s were received and implemented in different cities and municipalities. The cities and municipalities differed with respect to basic geographic, economic and social factors. Another type of local practice is the governance of a single school subject, in this case mathematics. In both our cases, the main focus is on how national policy documents affected different parts of the school system.

A standard narrative about governance According to Swedish university textbooks on the history of education, but also curriculum theory, the development of governance of the Swedish school system in the twentieth century went through two phases.1 Up to about 1975

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the system was centralised and then it was decentralised. The process, in both directions, was wide-ranging in the sense that it concerned judicial and economic as well as ideological aspects of the system. The process was also protracted in the sense that all changes did not happen in a brief period of time. In the literature, the presented examples of judicial governance are laws, regulations and instructions which are all important components of legal management. Since the introduction of the comprehensive school in 1962 there have been five education acts; 1962, 1969, 1980, 1994 and the latest in 2011. Centralisation of economic management included the allocation of financial resources to certain ends; another example was the state-allocated financial resources to municipalities through a tax equalisation grant, which included funding for teaching.2 Until the introduction of management by objective (MBO) in public administration in 1980, Swedish schools were strongly regulated. That is, legal management predominated over financial and ideological considerations. After that, economic governance and a decentralisation of the school system increased. Examples of decentralisation were the removal of grants specifically destined for the school system. However, how the distribution of financial resources was made is usually associated with ideological governance, for example what politicians think the school is going to invest in.3 In the literature, examples of ideological centralisation are that the syllabi became firmer. In 1919, the syllabus of the elementary schools was the object of this type of change.4 Other examples of ideological centralisation are the large-scale, state-driven projects aiming at development of teaching in particular subjects in the 1960s.5 Examples of decentralisation of ideological governance are the briefer, less detailed and goal-oriented syllabi introduced in 1994.6 The latter contained, for instance, no guidelines about how to teach a subject, which was an innovation in relation to the previous syllabi. Thus far, we have accounted for a narrative found in several Swedish university textbooks. This justifies the notion of a standard narrative, and we see no reason to consider it outdated in the sense that a great number of contemporary researchers question it. On the contrary, this narrative is repeated in research papers and dissertations concerning the Swedish school system in the twentieth century.7 It comes as no surprise that this standard narrative about the governance of the Swedish school system appears in treatises on the history of education where a transnational perspective is applied. For instance, in the book by Andy Green – Education, Globalization and the Nation State – the governance of the Swedish school system by the 1980s is characterised as highly centralised.8 This characterisation is found also in a paper by Hofman et al. – ‘Institutional contexts and international performances in schooling: Comparing patterns and trends over time in international surveys’.9 They consider the time period of 1990 to 2010 and yet label the Swedish system as centralised. We believe the reason for this is the comparison with other countries and not how the Swedish system had changed since the mid-1970s.

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Both Green and Hofman et al. discuss in what respect different modes of governance have affected the outcome in terms of student results.10 In order to determine the latter, they use international tests organised by IEA and OECD. At the end of this chapter, we discuss the dangers of doing that type of transnational studies with nations as the basic unit. We suggest that such studies require a local perspective.

Methodology and sources This chapter is based on the authors’ previous research regarding different aspects of the Swedish school system. As to research on school governance on a local level, the material consists mainly of municipal school policy documents. The municipality archives include varied and detailed materials and are rich of content. This material contributes to a good picture of the different local educational situations and initiatives as well as the municipalities’ relation to national school policy. To get a broader picture on the national level, data from official and semi-official sources at the national arena, such as National School Agency (and its predecessor), Swedish Municipal Association and policy texts such as government committees (SOU) from the Swedish Department of Education have been used.11 The studies of school mathematics and how it was governed are based on textbooks; teacher journals; teaching literature; syllabi and other policy documents; national exams; and official reports about, for instance, development projects, the use of textbooks in schools and the economy of the publishing companies. Unpublished archive documents concerning development projects have also been studied. A basic methodological approach has been to consider not only the ideals about what mathematics education was supposed to be but how it was supposed to be governed. Equally important has been to consider how intentions were realised or implemented in, for instance, textbooks, and to what extent these textbooks became popular. Also, the students’ results in national and international tests have been included in the studies.12

Reception and implementation of major reforms, 1950–1990 Well before the Second World War, Swedish politicians were aware that the current school system was not adapted to meet a continued expansion of the number of students aiming for education beyond six years of primary school. The perceived urgency of the problem is reflected by the fact that planning began in the middle of the war. Eventually, this reform process ended in a completely new structure of the school system, which was implemented in the 1960s. The old system comprised several parallel school types in years 1–9. The great majority of the students went to Folkskolan (1–7, compulsory primary school) and those students aiming for more advanced studies transferred to

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Realskolan (4–9, lower secondary) in years 4 or 6.13 In years 9 or 10, students could transfer to Gymnasiet (9–12, upper secondary school). In the new system, all school types in years 1–9 were replaced by one compulsory school type named Grundskolan. The old Gymnasiet transformed into the new Gymnasieskolan (10–12).14 A difference between Gymnasiet and Gymnasieskolan is that a great number of vocational educations were integrated in the latter. Gymnasiet comprised only theoretical programmes. Important to note here is that the old secondary schools were state schools, except for a few private schools. Folkskolan, on the other hand, was, since its establishment in the middle of the nineteenth century, run by the municipalities. The standard narrative about how governance of the Swedish school system was reformed to meet this expansion of more advanced education is centralisation. However, if we look more closely at the decisions and their implementation, another picture emerges. Decentralisation and centralisation at the same time, 1950–1970

During the 1940s, the Swedish education system was subject to two major investigations: the 1940s school report and the 1946 school commission. Both of these inquiries had clear decentralisation ambitions. The introducation of a unitary nine-year compulsory scholl was seen as an “rural reform”, it would make rural schools and urban schools more equal. The point of departure in the reasoning was the increase in welfare services that had taken place in the country, which meant, among other things, that people’s education levels were higher than ever before in the twentieth century. As a result of this development, the state could take a step backwards and hand over more responsibility for, for example, schools to the municipalities.15 Even the former state-driven secondary schools, according to the investigators, would be run by the municipalities, and they would receive the same municipal benefits as the previous primary schools had.16 But there were also elements of centralisation, which in some degree was a matter of standardisation. A starting point in the 1940s school resolutions was the effort to standardise the schools and clearly compensate for the geographical differences in the country. The state’s goal was that the lower secondary schools, years 7–9, should have at least three parallel classes per year. The reason for this was that the schools needed a certain size to accommodate the alternative courses, for instance advanced and basic courses in mathematics, and other specialisations. This constituted a problem for small municipalities, i.e. municipalities with small populations and thus small economical resources.17 In this perspective, the municipal reforms of 1952 and 1971 became important elements in reformation of the educational system. In these reforms, small municipalities were merged into larger ones. Thus, the speed of the expansion of the school system beyond year 6 was dependent on how quickly municipalities could be reorganised. The new school required administrative units of a certain minimum size.18

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The standardisation also included a uniform school administration across the country, a process that began in the 1950s. First of all, in 1951, a school board investigation was commissioned, with the task of creating more uniform forms for the decision-making of governance at the state, regional and municipal levels.19 The 1956 School Board Act stipulated that there should be a school board in every municipality, with executive responsibility for almost all public schools, both mandatory and voluntary. In addition, it was decided that there should be a school director with educational and organisational responsibility for all municipal school activities.20 The pronounced direction during the 1950s meant that the municipalities had primary responsibility for the contents of the schools while the state decided on the forms and organisation of the schools. The instructions of the school board, in combination with the county councils’ supportive and inspective work and, not least, the strong economic regulation of the state, made it difficult to distinguish the boundaries between state and municipal responsibility over time. So, in that case, standardisation and centralisation became the norm, both for the state and the municipalities, although the guidelines for the organisation of the school were primarily decided by the state, not least through the instructions from the primary and lower secondary school curricula. Planning and implementation: An enterprise with local variances, 1950–1970

As a reflection of a very dominating belief in rationality and rational planning of society in the 1950s and 60s, the introduction of Grundskolan was prepared during the whole of the 1950s. This meant large-scale trials with test schools without the former differentiation between Folkskola and Realskola. The tests were geographically dispersed across the country and between municipalities of varying character and size. Both large cities and small sparsely populated municipalities participated. In total, approximately half of the 1037 municipalities (133 cities, 88 purchases and 816 rural municipalities) that had been formed by the 1952 municipal reform took part in the enterprise.21 Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, went to an early stage of the trials with the new type of school, during a period of strong population growth, mainly in the newly built suburbs in southern Stockholm, where the state, in consultation with the city, chose to locate most of the pilot schools. It reinforced a geographical divide between old and new, between the tried and tested, between the established and the experimental. This divide partly reflected and also reinforced the fundamental and ideologically charged issue about differentiation of students. In the 1950s, the national debate on this issue brought many arguments from the situation in Stockholm, which was not so strange. Most major newspapers were Stockholm-based; the parliament and the government were located in Stockholm, and many nationally prominent school leaders were municipal politicians in the capital. In addition, Stockholm’s experimental activities were far more extensive than elsewhere in the country.22

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In the rural areas, the situation and the problems were different. If we, for instance, consider Tierp, a small municipality just about 130 km north of Stockholm, the municipality could not be a part of the trials of the new school type. This was due to difficulties in concentrating enough students and economical funding. Typically, the critical aspect was years 7–9 and the standard of three parallel classes. 23 A similar type of time lag occurred in connection to the introduction of Grundskolan, which began in 1962. Despite the decade-long preparations, the introduction became a protracted process and not without complications. Many smaller municipalities had to wait for several years after 1962 on state clearance for the new type of school. The big stumbling block was the smaller municipalities’ premises for housing years 7–9. During the 1960s, the 1971 municipal reform was prepared and as a result, the municipalities formed a municipal block, where a number of smaller municipalities collaborate, including school issues.24 The municipality block thus became a way of solving the issue of the lower secondary school. But at the same time, we can see how a rigorous standardisation with respect to school size and study programmes contributed to the delay of the introduction of Grundskolan in several rural municipalities. Tierp got its Grundskola, comprising all nine years, in 1968. This required that seven smaller municipalities form a block. Later on, these small municipalities would form the new municipality of Tierp.25 This means that some rural parts of Sweden, like Tierp, were 15 or more years behind the southern parts of Stockholm in the introduction of the new type of school and its programmes, which is just a couple of years before the school system becomes a subject for further efforts of decentralisation. Decentralisation and continuing differences, 1970–1990

During the 1970s, relations between state, municipality and school were subject to several government investigations. In a report by the School, State and Municipal Investigation, the investigators described how the schools’ main manpower was, in practice, shared between state and municipality. The investigation found that the dual responsibility for organisation could be disadvantageous for economic, educational and municipal-democratic reasons. In the final report in 1978, the investigation proposed a clearer division of responsibility, explicitly linked to decentralisation.26 However, the investigation would maintain the dual control, despite the objections that existed. The reason was that equivalence throughout the country must be safeguarded. A clearer distribution of power over school issues was proposed, however, which made the municipality responsible for the activities of the school while the state was responsible for guidelines and laws. With a simplified state subsidy system, the investigation saw opportunities to reduce both county councils’ and municipalities’ administration and instead concentrate on pedagogically focussed local development work.27

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During the 1980s public administration at state, regional and municipal levels began to apply new management principles for streamlining operations and greater individual responsibility. And in the school sector, based on the principles of increased decentralisation, Grundskolan received a new curriculum in 1980, which, compared with the previous curriculum, gave more scope for the school to choose the content of the teaching and teaching methods. On the other hand, the regulation of teachers’ appointments and services remained at the state level. The basic problem, among other things, was that neither the state nor the municipality took overall responsibility for the school.28 In the year 1988, as part of the renewal and streamlining of the public sector, the next step in the decentralisation of school governance was taken, this time combined with an even stronger emphasis on goal management, coupled with demands for change and development. A committee found that the centralised governance model, which to a great degree concerned standardisation of schools and school governance, had been legitimate to drive through and anchor a unified national school system. But now, according to the reasoning of the committee, this model was no longer as functional as it had been. The change of course towards decentralisation had been necessary and had led to organisational changes in school work. The committee proposed further decentralisation measures, coupled with clearer goal and performance management so that a school would really live up to the demands of change without losing its equivalence. The lack of evaluation of goal achievement, according to investigators, had meant that much teaching in practice was based on goals other than the state-imposed ones.29 The increased criticism of centralised bureaucracy was also noted in the municipalities. In Stockholm, relatively early work began to decentralise administrative tasks to councils and departments. In addition, Stockholm was at the forefront with administrative computerisation, which led to decentralisation and a transition to more management-oriented organisation. Follow-up and evaluation is another aspect of the new goal and performance management that was introduced in Stockholm in the late 1970s and subsequently gradually gained momentum. Even when it comes to independent schools and the possibility to choose schools with other pedagogical orientations, Stockholm was ahead. At the beginning of the 1980s, most of the country’s independent schools existed in the capital. These schools also received a certain amount of municipal financial support.30 In contrast, Tierp was reorganised into a greater municipality, with six other small municipalities, in 1974, and during the 1970s and 1980s, much of the school administration’s work concerned this reorganisation. As a result, there were no major changes in school organisation during that period. Earlier research also points out that an unusually long unbroken Social Democratic majority may have maintained a status quo. To this day, independent schools have not yet been established in Tierp. On the other hand, some elements of profiling have occurred, for example the introduction of some special

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education programs in the late 1980s, including the possibility of combining certain sports education with regular school studies in 1986.31 As a very brief summary of the period of 1950–1990, we can see great local variations in when major reforms related to the introduction of Grundskolan were implemented. We can also see that the centralisation reforms concerned standardisation of the forms of the schools and their local governance to a great degree. But what about the teaching, and how was it governed? Let us have a look at school mathematics, one of the major school subjects.

Governance of school mathematics, 1910–1980 The standard narrative about the governance of Swedish schools in the period of 1910 to 1980 does to some extent apply to school mathematics (years 1–9), but only if we consider the development and establishment of more and more complex centralistic tools of governance. If we also take into account how these tools were used to achieve change, a different picture emerges. This is a picture with just minor centralistic attempts of change or major attempts soon given up. New tools, but not used (1910–1960)

A number of tools for governing school subjects in a more centralistic way were created in the period of 1910 to 1960. Naturally, this change also concerned school mathematics. We have already mentioned the more detailed national syllabus of Folkskolan (years 1–7) that took effect in 1919, which remained until 1955. The syllabi for the Realskolan (years 4–9) did not change much, both with respect to content and to level of detail.32 An innovation occurred in 1935, however, as the central school authorities issued a supplement to the Realskolan syllabus. This supplement concentrated on teaching methods, which until then had been treated only briefly in the syllabi. This development of more detailed syllabi and supplements continued and even accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s. This was the time period when Grundskolan (years 1–9) was prepared and implemented. If we consider the first mathematics syllabus of Grundskolan, it contained far more words than the previous ones. All these words were used not only for more detailed descriptions of what to learn, but also how to teach.33 Another type of centralistic tool for governing school subjects was a mandatory national textbook review, covering all primary and secondary school types (years 1–12) and all school subjects. The review was established in 1938 and the first list of approved textbooks was published in 1940.34 Only textbooks on this list should be used in teaching. Thus, new tools of governance were created or developed, but they were not used to achieve change in school mathematics. The mathematics syllabi from the period of 1910 to 1969 were quite similar with respect to the prescribed content and teaching methods. Moreover, until the 1960s, the formulations about content were quite brief. The most drastic change was the addition

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of percentages (year 6) and equations (year 7) in the syllabus of Folkskolan in 1919.35 The very first mathematics syllabus of Grundskolan was issued in 1962, but it contained few changes. The most drastic change was the great reduction of geometry in years 7–9, in particular theoretical geometry where students were introduced to the axiomatic-deductive method with, for instance, rigorous proofs and definitions. But apart from reducing a topic, nothing radically new was introduced.36 Nor did the syllabus of 1962 introduce new principles for teaching into school mathematics, even though the formulations in this matter became much more extensive than in previous syllabi. The essential methodological concepts were motivation, activity, concretisation, individualisation and cooperation. These were, however, not innovations; in particular not the first three, which had been central in discussions in teacher journals on the so-called åskådningspedagogik in the period of 1900 to 1960.37 Moreover, the relevance of these concepts was seldom questioned in those discussions. In addition, a great many textbook authors in the same period declared that they applied this pedagogy.38 Our point here is that the syllabus of 1962 mainly confirmed an established view on mathematics teaching. This standpoint is further supported by the first international study of achievements in mathematics, done by IEA in 1964. In the survey on the teachers’ (years 7–9) perception of freedom in relation to syllabus, textbooks and examinations, Swedish teachers felt very free. In fact, Swedish teachers scored highest on perceived freedom: 9.0 on a 10-point scale.39 This would not have been the case if the state had attempted to implement radically new content or teaching methods. As regards the textbook review, the ability to enforce innovations by means of the review depended on the syllabus. One of its explicit aims was to check compliance with the syllabus.40 Moreover, there is no evidence of the textbook review exceeding the mathematics syllabus and enforcing some sort of informal syllabus. Thus, the textbooks review was not used to enforce changes in school mathematics. Apart from the syllabi and the textbook review, a third type of governmental tool was created in the 1950s: a syllabus prepared via scientific methods. This notion refers to how methods from social sciences were applied in the preparation of the mathematics syllabus of 1962.41 Researchers made rigorous surveys about the need of mathematics in society. Various categories of people were given extensive questionnaires about what is necessary mathematics. People from universities, education, industry, but also common people, were included in the survey. But, the preparation of the syllabus of 1962 was only a prelude to what was about to come. The great push towards radical change (1960–1975)

Much of the progressive thinking about improvement of mathematics teaching in the world after the Second World War gathered together in the international

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New Math movement. By the late 1950s, the movement had a leading position in international discussions about school mathematics. Conferences and meetings included prominent people from mathematics as well as psychology, for instance the mathematician Jean Dieudonné (1906–1992) and the psychologists Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and Jerome Bruner (1915–2016). The conferences were financed by the international organisations United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and OECD. Originally, the ambitions of the movement were quite modest. Students in upper secondary schools were to meet more modern mathematics. The argument was that they should be better prepared for university mathematics in this way.42 However, the plans were expanded. Not only should the content of the teaching in lower years be more in tune with modern mathematics. Modern mathematics was also considered beneficial from a pedagogical point of view. It is here that Piaget and Bruner played an important role. Their view was that there are already in young children, similarities between mental structures and mathematical structures. They argued that this should be taken advantage of in teaching. The mathematics in question was set theory, a theory that had developed into a foundation for other topics in the scientific discipline of mathematics.43 But set theory was not primarily a new topic to teach. It rather had a central pedagogical function, ideas that were realised in the second syllabus of Grundskolan issued in 1969. Here set theory was integrated into several other topics, such as arithmetic and functions. The concepts, symbols and illustrations related to set theory were then supposed to be used in introductions and explanations of new concepts. In this way, set theory was used as a bridge between the other topics.44 Observe that these changes concerned all nine years of Grundskolan. But the syllabus of 1969 also introduced innovations that concerned the content. Trigonometry and vectors were new subtopics in geometry in years 7–9. Statistics and probability was a new topic in all years. Moreover, topics that previously only had been taught quite late were introduced in earlier years, for instance algebra and geometry already in year 1.45 Thus, the syllabus of 1969 was radical in two respects. One is that many new concepts, topics and subtopics were introduced in one single syllabus. This had never been done before. The second is the ambition to steer the teaching methods by means of relatively detailed recommendation about how to communicate the content, actually suggesting which type of concepts and illustrations to use regularly. Neither had it been tried before. Yet a third difference to the previous syllabi concerns preparation and its scientific character. The main problem was not to write a radically new syllabus, but to make sure it was possible to teach accordingly. To that end, new types of textbooks were developed and tested in teaching. About 30 authors were involved in the textbook production and 1,310 school classes were involved in

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the trials. The teachers submitted reports about how the textbooks worked and a number of researchers handled the reports, visited the schools and authored reports about the project. At the end of the project, comparisons were made between experimental classes and control classes; the former type of classes had used the new textbooks for two or three years.46 This major development project, which lasted for about eight years, beginning in 1960, was a joint venture between the countries of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.47 In summary, the New Math project is an example of a very centralised mode of governance. It was a large state-funded project which was supposed to result in a national reform, radically changing the practice of teaching in mathematics. Moreover, the level of detail of the reform was high since the reform concerned choices of concepts and illustrations for communication with students. The great push that never happened (1970–1980)

Despite all the rigorous planning of New Math, during almost the whole of the 1960s, much of it was soon abandoned as the implementation began – the great push for change never happened. As to the guidelines in the new syllabus of 1969 that were based on the New Math, the people in charge at the central school authorities decided, already in 1972 or 1973, to open up to alternative ways of teaching. Moreover, they laid emphasis on basic arithmetic, which had not been the key topic in the New Math movement. In part, these changes were concretised by the issuing of a supplement to the syllabus in 1973; a supplement that included few of the key ideas of the New Math.48 Important to note is that the syllabus of 1969 was introduced successively over three years. The reform started in 1970 in years 1, 4 and 7. Thus, only in 1972 did the syllabus concern all students and teachers.49 This means that important parts of the New Math reform were abandoned the year after it had taken full effect. Another change that drastically reduced the possibilities to implement New Math, was the decision to make the textbook review in mathematics, and some other subjects, optional from 1974 onwards. Making the textbook review optional, together with the central school authorities downplaying the importance of New Math, seems to have triggered the production of new textbooks, some of which clearly deviated from the New Math. A study of about two thirds of all textbook series published in the 1970s indicates that all series published before 1975 were in line with the main ideas of New Math. In the second half of the 1970s, however, a number of textbook series deviated from the key ideas of the New Math.50 This change in textbook production clearly shows what an efficient tool of governance a mandatory textbook review could be.

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There are several reasons as to why the New Math reform was abandoned, but there is no room to discuss this issue here.51 The important conclusion for this chapter is that centralised governance of Swedish school mathematics that aimed for broad and radical changes was planned for almost a decade, but that it was soon abandoned. Thus, if we consider the whole period from 1910 to 1980, it was only during a few years that the central school authorities tried to drive through radical and broad changes The role of textbook producers, 1910–1980

The absence of centralised attempts to change school mathematics prior to 1960 does not mean that there were no changes or that there were no groups of people interested in change. The important players in this respect were the textbook producers. Clearly, textbooks with a new type of content and design were published in the period from 1910 to 1960, both in Folkskolan (years 1–6) and Realskolan (years 4–9). This is shown in a major study on Swedish geometry textbooks.52 Notably, some of these new textbooks also became popular.53 In comparison, the changes in the textbooks were different in magnitude. In the Folkskolan textbooks in geometry, new explanations and exercises were less radical and introduced to a lesser extent,54 In the Realskolan textbooks in geometry, the new designs were more innovative and radical. The textbooks deviated from traditional editions of Euclid’s Elements in important ways, as new proofs, new concepts and new orders of the theorems were introduced.55 As to the geometry textbooks intended for Realskolan, the authors had a leading role in debates in the leading teacher journal for secondary school teachers in mathematics and science, in the sense that they initiated two major debates on geometry teaching and textbooks in the early 1920 and 1930s. In fact, all debaters were authors or editors of textbooks. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the quality of textbooks was an issue in these debates. Notably, both scientific and pedagogical aspects got a thorough treatment. And the tone was at times critical as the authors pointed to the weaknesses of each other’s textbooks.56 Mathematics education in the Folkskolan teacher journals was discussed in a different manner, as textbooks were not as prominent here as in the debates mentioned earlier. Often, textbooks were an indirect issue as choices of algorithms, their explanations, expressions and exercises were discussed; these are issues that are related to textbook design. Yet another difference is that there was also, in some articles, a more critical tone towards textbooks, with suggestions about textbooks being a hindrance in teaching and not just an asset.57 In this perspective, the New Math project in Sweden stands out as a clear break with the interdependence between producers and consumers of textbooks. Important to note here is that the New Math project to a great degree concerned textbook development. But not only that, the Swedish people

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recruited to author the new textbooks were all, except one, inexperienced as textbook authors for years 1–9.58 And the issue of quality was not primarily a matter of debate in teacher journals involving authors and teachers; quality was rather enhanced and determined through scientific-like procedures. The important aspect to see here is that the New Math project and centralised governance not only reduced the freedom of common teachers and reduced their influence regarding quality standards, but that the project also challenged the group of established textbook authors, as their opportunity to receive further recognition was severely limited.

Closing discussion In the previous sections, it has been shown that there are clear deviations from the standard narrative about how governance of Swedish school system has developed in the twentieth century. We find this standard narrative in Swedish university textbooks about history of education and curriculum theory; in dissertations and research papers; and in books and research papers with an international perspective on education. These deviations from the standard narrative concern the relation between the national and the local, but also the intended and the achieved. The standard narrative reflects the intentions of national politicians and the people in charge of national reforms. Our local examples, on the other hand, show how national attempts to reform governance were challenged; either by groups of people, for instance textbook authors with their own reform agenda, or quite concrete circumstances such as municipalities being too small to finance the implementation of a reform. We can also see that there was a difference with respect to big cities and sparsely populated rural areas. As to the reformation of the governance of the school system as a whole, the standard narrative fits Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, much better than the rural municipality of Tierp, about 130 km north of Stockholm. These types of circumstances need to be considered when making comparisons between Sweden and other countries. A basic question in that respect should concern what the matter of the comparison is. Is it the ideal or is it the achieved? And there are examples of when this type of question has been ignored and the comparison becomes less reliable. We find one such example in Andy Green’s Education, Globalization and the Nation State. Green presents a comparative analysis on the relation between modes of governance and outcomes.59 The comparison includes a number of countries. The two modes are centralistic governance and decentralist governance. As to outcomes, he considers results from international tests, mathematics included, from the period from 1980 to 1986. Sweden is characterised as a country with centralised school governance, which is in line with the standard narrative about Swedish school governance in the twentieth century. Obviously,

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Green’s analysis is weakened by the fact that Swedish school mathematics was subject to centralised governance only during a brief part of the period from 1910 to 1980. However, Green does point out that ‘Sweden has given more discretion to schools concerning the curriculum’.60 But on the basis of the sections in this chapter we would say that it was lots of discretion given to schools and textbook producers for a long time. However, Green’s general conclusion that more centralised systems perform better is saved by the fact the Swedish students in year 7 performed quite badly in the international test of 1980.61 They did so also in 1964. But, for anybody interested in the Swedish context, Green’s comparison can be quite misleading. Naturally, Green’s analysis is further compromised due to the geographic variances in centralisation of governance reported in this chapter. The geographic variance in school governance in Sweden is also a problem for the analysis presented in the paper ‘Institutional contexts and international performances in schooling: comparing patterns and trends over time in international surveys’ by Hofman et al.62 Sweden is a part of the analysis where institutional contexts and students’ results are compared. As to institutional contexts, the analysis concerns the factors of funding, governance and freedom of school choice, which are issues treated in this chapter. The problematic aspect is that Hofman et al. seem to consider Sweden as a homogenous country with respect to these factors. Indeed, that has not been the case. For instance, the opportunity to choose between different schools, both municipal and private, was quite different in Stockholm and Tierp; in the early 1990s there were few schools and no private schools in Tierp. We want to point out that Hofman et al. cover a different time period than the one we do – 1995 to 2010 – but we believe the differences between urban and rural areas has not shifted that quickly. Our suggestion is that transnational comparisons between countries should be focussed on corresponding localities rather than the national, at least if we want to consider actual situations rather than intentions. Our prediction is that this suggestion will be increasingly pertinent for historians of education since material originating from international tests such as TIMSS, PISA and PIRLS is very rich, and thus a seemingly attractive source material. The reports issued by IEA and OECD comprise much more than just tests and student results, for instance, information about students and teaching. However, the focus of these reports is clearly very national; local variations is usually not an issue. One could call it a national bias in the reports about the international tests. We wonder if this national bias is a reflection of how transnational organisations functioned in the involved countries during the Cold War era. Did they strengthen national institutions as they contributed with intellectual, technological and financial resources primarily controlled by the very same institutions? The international New Math movement, supported by UNESCO and OECD, is a good example of this. In Sweden, New Math not only challenged a traditional way of teaching mathematics, but also the traditional and decentralised way of driving through changes by way of textbook production. The

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important aspect here is that the international project was an integral part of the state-driven project of centralisation. We see the contours of a similar example in this book’s chapter about Spanish educational television during the Franco regime.63 UNESCO supported the push to introduce educational television, a part of a wider project aiming at eradicating illiteracy, but it was administered by state institutions. In doing so, UNESCO also helped the Spanish state to gain influence over a new and potentially efficient teaching tool, which otherwise could have been developed by local institutions or other actors. However, this book also contains an example of when informal transnational connections may have strengthened national institutions. The chapter on the development of the Nuffield physics course in the UK in the 1960s shows how new communication technology made it possible for the leader of the project to have frequent international contacts. However, airmail, telex and telegrams were not cheap; it was not for local school administrators or teachers to communicate in a transnational manner.64 Thus, in comparison, the new communication technologies seem to have strengthened national educational institutions and not local institutions. We believe that this state-strengthening function of transnational organisations and communications can be discerned more efficiently if national and local perspectives are applied.

Notes 1 For example Pia Skott, ‘Utbildningspolitik och läroplanshistoria’, in Utbildningshistoria: en introduktion, eds. E. Larsson and J. Westberg (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2019), 509– 13; Gunnar Richardson, Svensk utbildningshistoria: skola och samhälle förr och nu (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2010), 95, 159; Bo Lindensjö and Ulf P. Lundgren, Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning (Stockholm: HLS förl., 2000), 29, 81–2, 93–6. 2 Johanna Ringarp och Elisabet Nihlfors, Styrning och ledning av svensk förskola och skola: en introduktion (Malmö: Gleerups, 2017), 13–7. 3 Johanna Ringarp, ‘Professionens problematik: lärarkårens kommunalisering och välfärdsstatens förvandling’ (PhD diss., Lund University, 2011), 178–82. 4 Skott, ‘Utbildningspolitik och läroplanshistoria’, 509. 5 Lindensjö and Lundgren, Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning, 66–8. 6 Skott, ‘Utbildningspolitik och läroplanshistoria’, 511–12. 7 Mattias Börjesson, ‘Från likvärdighet till marknad: en studie av offentligt och privat inflytande över skolans styrning i svensk utbildningspolitik 1969–1999’ (PhD diss., Örebro univ., 2016), 30–1, 77–98, 218–20; Alfred Oftedal Telhaug, Odd Asbjørn Mediås and Petter Aasen, ‘The Nordic Model in Education: Education as Part of the Political System in the Last 50 Years’, Scandinavian Journal of Education, 50, no. 3 (2006): 248–50, 255–6; Christian Lundahl, ‘Viljan att veta vad andra vet: kunskapsbedömning i tidigmodern, modern och senmodern skola’ (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2006), 254, 277–83. 8 Andy Green, Education, Globalization and the Nation State (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 107, 116. 9 W. H. Adriaan Hofman, Roelande H. Hofman and John M. Gray, ‘Institutional Contexts and International Performances in Schooling: Comparing Patterns and Trends Over Time in International Surveys’, European Journal of Education, 45, no. 1 (2010): 167–9. 10 Green, Education, Globalization and the Nation State, 108–29.

146  Johan Prytz and Johanna Ringarp 11 The research regarding the governing of the Swedish school on a local level was done within the project ‘Who Governs the Swedish School? Municipality, School and State During 60 Years of Swedish School Reforms – In a World of Change’. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet. Project leader was Henrik Román, Uppsala University. 12 The research regarding the governing of the Swedish school mathematics was done within the project ‘The development of School mathematics and reforms of the Swedish school system in the 20th century. A comparative and historical study of changes of contents, methods and institutional conditions’. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet. Project leader was Johan Prytz, Uppsala University. 13 In fact, there was also a female version of Realskolan called Flickskolan (Girl school). It was open only to girls, while Realskolan was open to both boys and girls. But of course, there were a few schools that belonged to Realskolan that were open to boys only. 14 The technical programme at Gymnasieskolan comprised a 13th year. 15 SOU 1948:27, 1946 års skolkommissions betänkande med förslag till riktlinjer för det svenska skolväsendets utveckling (Stockholm: Ecklesiastikdepartementet, 1948), 16. 16 SOU 1945:60, 1940 års skolutrednings betänkanden och utredningar. IV. Skolpliktidens skolformer (Stockholm: Ecklesiastikdepartementet, 1945), 67; SOU 1948:27, 1946 års skolkommissions betänkande, 244–6. 17 Johanna Ringarp, Henrik Roman, Stina Hallsén and Andreas Nordin, Styrning och tillit i kommunal skolpolitik 1950–2000: några noteringar från ett pågående forskningsprojekt (Stockholm: Finansdepartementet, 2017). 18 Erik Wångmar, ‘Från sockenkommun till storkommun: en analys av storkommunreformens genomförande 1939–1952 i en nationell och lokal kontext’ (PhD diss., Växjö University, 2003). 19 SOU 1955:31, Skolväsendets lokala och regionala ledning samt lärartillsättning. Betänkande avgivet av 1951 års skolstyrelseutredning (Stockholm: Ecklesiastikdepartementet, 1955), 422. See also SOU 1945:60, 1940 års skolutrednings betänkanden, 67; SOU 1948:27, 1946 års skolkommissions betänkande. 20 However, it could differ depending on the size of the municipalities, see Elisabet Nihlfors, ‘Skolchefen i skolans styrning och ledning’ (PhD diss. Uppsala University, 2003). The model was originally launched by the 1946 school commission, which pointed out that larger municipalities might need more governing bodies. However, according to the Commission, the overall objective should be to ensure that it is as uniform as possible, SOU 1948:27, 1946 års skolkommissions betänkande, 433. 21 See e.g. Sixten Marklund Skolsverige 1950–1975. D. 2, Försöksverksamheten (Stockholm: Liber/Utbildningsförl, 1982), 471–5; Johanna Ringarp and Henrik Román, ‘25 år som förändrade skolan: Grundskolans införande 1947–1972 ur ett kommunalt perspektiv’, Vägval, 2/2016. 22 Ringarp et al., Styrning och tillit, 11–12. 23 Henrik Román, Stina Hallsén and Andreas Nordin, ‘Geografisk rättvisa i svenska skolreformer – ett kommunalt perspektiv’, in Att ta utbildningens komplexitet på allvar En vänskrift till Eva Forsberg, eds. M. Elmgren, M. Folke-Fichtelius, S. Hallsén, H. Román and W. Wermke (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2016), 348–50; Ringarp et al., Styrning och tillit, 13. 24 See e.g. Skolöverstyrelsen; ‘Försöksverksamhet vid nioårig enhetsskola 1952–1962’, (unpublished material, Riksarkivet, FV:1 (A–D)). 25 Román et al., ‘Geografisk rättvisa i svenska skolreformer’, 351. 26 SOU 1978:65, Skolan. En ändrad ansvarsfördelning (Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet, 1978). 27 Ringarp, ‘Professionens problematik’, 45–54. 28 Ringarp, ‘Professionens problematik’, 48–9, 67–8. 29 SOU 1988:20, En förändrad ansvarsfördelning och styrning på skolområdet (Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet, 1988).

Local versus national history of education  147 30 Henrik Román, ‘I valfrihetens tidevarv – Friskoledebatt i fullmäktige 1980–2000’, in Du sköna nya stad: privatisering, miljö och EU i Stockholmspolitiken, ed. T. Nilsson (Stockholm: Stockholmia, 2013a), 52; Henrik Román, ‘Stockholm – friskolornas huvudstad’, in Du sköna nya stad: privatisering, miljö och EU i Stockholmspolitiken, ed. T. Nilsson (Stockholm: Stockholmia, 2013b), 88–90. 31 Ringarp et al., Styrning och tillit, 20. 32 Johan Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish School Mathematics – Where and How Did It Happen? A Study of Different Modes of Governance in Swedish School Mathematics, 1910–1980’, Espacio,Tiempo y Educación 4, no. 2 (2017), 47–8. New syllabi for Realskolan were issued in 1905, 1928, 1933 and 1955. 33 Johan Prytz, ‘Swedish mathematics curricula, 1850–2015. An overview’, in ‘Dig Where You Stand’ 3: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the History of Mathematics Education, eds. K. Bjarnadóttir, F. Furinghetti, J. Prytz and G. Schubring (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2015), 312. 34 Anna Johnsson Harrie,‘Staten och läromedlen: en studie av den svenska statliga förhandsgranskningen av läromedel 1938–1991’ (PhD diss., Linköpings univ., 2009), 52. 35 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 47. 36 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 51. 37 There is no good English translation of åskådningspedagogik. The term åskådning is based on the verb skåda which means watch. The German equivalent is Anschauungspädagogik. 38 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 51. 39 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 51–2. 40 Johnsson Harrie, Staten och läromedlen, 115–6. 41 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 50. 42 Jeremy Kilpatrick, ‘The New Math as an International Phenomenon’, ZDM: The International Journal on Mathematics Education 44, no. 4 (2012): 564–5. 43 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 53. 44 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 53–4. 45 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 54. 46 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 53. 47 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 53. The New Math project was, however, not the only major development project devoted to school mathematics in Sweden during this time. Another project was the so-called IMU project. IMU stands for Individualised Mathematics teaching (Individualiserad MatematikUndervisning). For more details about the IMU project, see Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’. 48 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 59–60. 49 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 59. 50 Johan Prytz, ‘The New Math and School Governance: An Explanation of the Decline of the New Math in Sweden’, In Researching the History of Mathematics Education, eds. F. Furinghetti and A. Karp (Cham: Springer, 2018), 205–6. 51 For an analysis in this matter, see Prytz, ‘The New Math and School Governance’. This treatise includes also a detailed analysis of student results in the 1970s. 52 Johan Prytz, ‘Speaking of Geometry: a study of geometry textbooks and literature on geometry instruction for elementary and lower secondary levels in Sweden, 1905–1962, with a special focus on professional debates’ (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2007), 122–4, 158–61. 53 Prytz, Speaking of Geometry, 107, 126–7. 54 Prytz, Speaking of Geometry, 122–4. 55 Prytz, Speaking of Geometry, 158–61. 56 Prytz, Speaking of Geometry, 99–107. 57 Prytz, ‘Governance of Swedish school mathematics’, 50. Important to note is that the teachers’ journals for Folkskolan were not specialised in particular school subjects. This reflects the education of the Folkskolan teachers, which comprised all school subjects.

148  Johan Prytz and Johanna Ringarp 58 Prytz, ‘The New Math and School Governance’, 200. 59 Green, Education, Globalization and the Nation State, 108–29. 60 Green, Education, Globalization and the Nation State, 116. 61 Cf. Green, Education, Globalization and the Nation State, 128–9. 62 Hofman et al., ‘Contexts and International Performances’. 63 Mariano González-Delgado and Tamar Groves, “UNESCO Mediation in Francoism Curriculum Policy: The Case of Educational Television in Spain,” in Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History, eds. G. McCulloch and I. Goodson, M. GonzálezDelgado. 64 Gary McCulloch, “Physics for the Enquiring Mind: the Nuffield Physics Ordinary Level Course, 1962–1966,” in Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History, eds. G. McCulloch, I. Goodson and M. González-Delgado.

8

Curriculum history research in mainland China and Taiwan Its status and prospect1 Caixia Peng

Since the 1960s and 1970s curriculum history research has gradually become a particular field of curriculum scholarship as the paradigm of curriculum research transferred from ‘to develop’ to ‘to understand’. Its formation as a distinct area came from a self-examination on ‘ahistorical posture’ and ‘presentism’ of the curriculum field. In 1969, the American curriculum researcher Arno A. Bellack published the paper ‘History of Curriculum Thought and Practice’2 in Review of Educational Research, in which he pointed out ‘the pervasive ahistorical posture of the curriculum field’. Then, in 1976, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) dedicated its yearbook, Perspectives on Curriculum Development, 1776–1976, to the topic of curriculum history; and in 1977, the Society for the Study of Curriculum History (SSCH) was founded. Then interest in the contributions that history might make to the study of the curriculum started to develop, not only in the United States but in England as well. Generally, the start of the historical approach in the curriculum field can be attributed to the insight that curriculum studies tend to look for handy solutions to practical problems, seek high practicability, prefer emergency measures and expedients and have a passion for the replacement of the old by the new. So, curriculum theorists and practitioners need to engage in dialogue with their professional forebears to avoid the isolation of curriculum studies and reforms, to be familiar with the traditions of curriculum so as to rid themselves of some undesirable aspects or of unseen influence. The paths of dialogue have included literature method, oral history, biographical research, content analysis and so on. The dialogue has covered wide-ranging issues such as the growth of curriculum as a field of work and study, the evolution of school subjects, the development of curriculum organisations and institutions as well as of central figures and professional debates. With the influence of curriculum history study in Western countries, the field of curriculum history in mainland China and Taiwan also attracted more and more scholars to participate in it actively. In mainland China, actually, the study of curriculum history started before 1949: for example, The Historical Evolution of the School Curriculum in China (1929), which studied the curriculum history of ancient China; The Evolution of the Primary School Curriculum (1933);

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The Historical Evolution of the Primary School Curriculum in Modern China (1944), which studied the change and development of primary school curriculum during the Late Qing Dynasty and early Republic period. However, after the founding of New China in 1949, curriculum history research entered a very long period of stagnation because of various complicated social and historic reasons. Since the 1990s, as a result of some scholars’ efforts, curriculum history, as a paradigm of curriculum understanding, has attracted more and more researchers. In 1994, the book Curriculum History in Modern China was published, which broke the silent state of research on curriculum history in mainland China. In 1999, another book, Research on Curriculum History, was published. Then some books and papers about curriculum history were translated into Chinese and published: for example, the book History of the School Curriculum written by Daniel Tanner and Laurel N. Tanner in 2006, and Professor Goodson’s book The Birth of Environment Education; and the article by Thomas S. Popkewitz ‘Curriculum History, Schooling and the Current Situation’. In 2007, the paper entitled ‘The Research of Curriculum History: A Topic Cannot be Ignored and Slacked’ was published in one of the core educational journals, Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, and it launched an appeal. We also invite professors to give lectures in China, for example, Thomas S. Popkewitz from the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education and Gary McCulloch from University College London Institute of Education. So, in China this field is gradually gaining increased attention from curriculum scholars. Until now, this area has made some achievements but the area is still in frontier status.

The status of curriculum history research in mainland China and Taiwan This section will focus on the research contents of curriculum history in mainland China and Taiwan. So far, the main topics on curriculum history are as follows. The introduction of the research production from Western countries

During the development of curriculum history field in Western countries, a batch of important representative figures have appeared such as Herbert Kliebard, Daniel Tanner, Laurel Tanner, Ivor Goodson, Mary Louise Seguel, Dwayne Huebner, Arno Bellack, B. O. Smith, O. L. Davis, Jr., and Barry Franklin and so on. They provided different frameworks of explanation. For example, curriculum historian Ivor Goodson criticised the fact that the study of the school curriculum had maintained an obsessive contemporaneity, and argued that we need to develop our ‘sense of history’ about curriculum. His research topic focussed on the micro level of the change of school subjects,

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presenting the historical process of how specific subjects had been defined, identified and institutionalised. He intended to follow the evolution of thought and action through historical time in order to better understand ‘school knowledge’. To understand the practice of curriculum reform, he used studies of life histories to examine how teachers’ career and life experiences, as well as historical background, shaped their ‘classroom ideologies’, and he emphasised their difference, personalisation and initiative; while Herbert Kliebard, the famous critic and historian of the curriculum field in America, noted that the curriculum field, as a result of ahistorical posture and ameliorative orientation, has always been affected by fads and fashions while lacking knowledge accumulation and the dialogues across generations. The objective of historical inquiry is not for lessons and solutions, but to critically examine our heritage as a field of study, and to question the basic framework and criteria, thinking patterns and implicated assumptions which we have inherited from the past, and, ultimately, to get rid of the historical yoke. The historical inquiry should regard the curriculum as the arena of power, and record and interpret conflict and compromise among interest groups from the perspective of sociology of knowledge. With the wide spread of these representative figures’ ideas, the researchers in both mainland China and Taiwan initially discussed their key thoughts. In Taiwan, there are some papers on this, such as ‘H.M. Kliebard’s Curricular History Studies and their Implication’3 and ‘An Analysis of Theoretical Perspectives on Curriculum History: D. Tanner, L. Tanner and H. Kliebard’ (Sung Min-Chuan, 2007); and books such as A Critical Analysis of Goodson’s Curriculum History Research (Huang Yue-mei, 2004) and To Probe into the Viewpoints and Analytical Paths of Curriculum History Research: Taking Kliebard and Goodson as Examples (Yang Zhi-Ying, 2008). Some scholars did a comparative study on the different ideas of representative figures. In mainland China, there are also some papers on this topic such as ‘To Understand the Curriculum Reform through Historical Time: Social History of School Subjects: Goodson’s Research Approach of Curriculum History’ (Chen Hua, 2013)4, ‘To Reconstruct the Legacy of Curriculum: Based on Tanners’ Historical Exploration into American Curriculum’ (Peng Cai-xia, 2014), ‘To Understand the Curriculum Reform through Historical Time: From Ivor Goodson’s Studies and Inspiration’ (Peng Cai-xia, 2015), ‘Paths of Western Curriculum History: A Comparison and Enlightenment’ (Xia Ying, 2015), ‘The Reconstruction of Western Curriculum History by the Paradigm of Social History: Taking Kliebard and Goodson as Examples’ (Zhu Zhi-jun, 2018). The main purpose of these papers was to analyse the representative figures’ perspectives on curriculum history – such as their views on intention, values and the significance of historical inquiry for the development of curricula – and selected topics from their work concerning curriculum history were further explored.

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In this chapter we try to outline the overall picture of the field of curriculum history in Western countries and the implications for China; we explore the background and causes of the start of the historical approach in the curriculum field; we also summarise the historical evolution of this field in Western countries and the main achievements of these research work, for example, the key concepts and issues these researchers have raised, and the research methods. In Taiwan there were some papers on these aspects such as ‘The Curriculum History Research in Retrospect and the Analysis of Important Issues’5 and ‘The Development of British Curriculum Studies: Implications of Its Historical and Cultural Approaches’.6 In mainland China there were more papers on this, such as ‘The Orientation of the Research of American Curriculum History in the 20th Century’ (Ye Bo, 2012), ‘An Exploration to the Research Approaches and Meaning of Western Curriculum History’ (Chen Hua, 2014), ‘A Cultural Perspective: The Transformation of American History of Curriculum and its Significance’ (He Shan-Yun, 2014), ‘Maintaining the Dialogue with Professional Forebears: Based on an Analysis of Historical Approach of Curriculum Inquiry in America’ (Peng Cai-xia, 2015), ‘The Evolution of American Curriculum Histories’ (Wang Wenzhi, 2016), ‘The Development and its Characteristics of British Curriculum History Research’ (Wu Cui-hong, 2018), and ‘Historical Views on the Study of American Curriculum History’ (Li Qian-wen, 2018). Research on the historical development of specific subjects in domestic schools

We have published some books and papers focused on the development of specific subjects at different historical stages. For example, the series The Curriculum History of Primary Schools includes five books: The Sixty Years of Natural Science in Primary Schools, The Sixty Years of Chinese Language in Primary Schools, The Sixty Years of History, Geography and Society in Primary Schools, The Sixty Years of Mathematics in Primary Schools, and The Sixty Years of Ideology and Morality in Primary Schools. The series analysed the changes and causes of curricula from 1949 to 2006. We have other books which focus on modern times (1840–1919): for example, the book titled History of Moral Education Curriculum in Modern China from 1902 to 1927; or the book titled History of PE Curriculum in Modern and Contemporary China which was published in 2004. Some books explored even earlier times, for example, History of Vocational Education Curriculum in Late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China (published in 2009). Especially, Chen Hua’s PhD dissertation7 is very helpful for us to learn from the history of the curriculum for citizenship education through her analysis of the birth process of citizenship education in China from the perspective of curriculum history. She pointed out that as an independent curriculum research field, curriculum history has developed three kinds of classical path, and what she did was to explore the birth process of citizenship education in China with social history of school subjects’ research path, which is one of the three classical paths of curriculum history research. In her dissertation, she analysed

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in detail that as a school subject, Chinese citizenship education in the Late Qing Dynasty and the period of the Republic of China had experienced three development stages, which implied the dual logic of modernisation and education and the game of two main forces of society and the state. This research has enlightening significance for our understanding of the development and predicament of the curriculum objectives, contents and organisation of our citizenship education. The theoretical construction of the field of curriculum history in mainland China and Taiwan

We have not only focussed on exploring the classical viewpoints of Western curriculum historians, but have also tried to establish the field of curriculum history with Chinese characteristics. First of all, some scholars began to call attention to this field. In Taiwan, professor Bai arranged a chapter titled ‘It’s Time for the Curriculum History Research’ in his book The Theory and Practice of Curriculum History Research (Bai Yi-Fong, 2006). He pointed out that ‘it is regrettable that we can’t shed light on the historical perspective to treat those curriculum terms, concepts, metaphors, policies, practices, and theories properly, including academic and practical fields’. And one of the significant consequences for such treatment is the pursuit of brand new slogans, terminologies, organisations, labels, symbols and behaviours without any reflection. He concluded the chapter by discussing the meaning, the various forms and the importance of curriculum history research and emphasised the necessity and urgency of this research in Taiwan. In mainland China, some scholars also expressed similar ideas, for example, in the paper ‘A Topic Cannot be Ignored and Slacked: The Curriculum History Research’, the authors suggested that curriculum history research can be used to clarify and review the curriculum reforms of the past and present, and it is helpful to understand the historical context of curriculum reform so we can get some meaningful enlightenment with regard to current reform.8 Second, scholars started to explore some basic questions about curriculum history as a specialised field of study, such as what curriculum history research is, why we study, what we study and how to study. There were several papers on this kind of theoretical establishment such as ‘The Theoretical Construction about the Research of Curriculum History’ (Xia Yong-geng and Huang Yan-wen, 2013), ‘On Problems and Prospect of the Research on Curriculum History’ (Liu Zhi-jun and Wang Hong-xi, 2014), and ‘The Research of Curriculum History: History View, Topic and Puzzle’ (Wang Hong-xi, 2015). However, the introduction of the research production from Western countries still took up considerable space in these papers. There were only very few papers concentrating on the theoretical construction of the field of curriculum history with Chinese characteristics. So far, there is only one paper focussing on this aspect, which is titled ‘The Status and Prospect of Curriculum

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History Research in China’ (Li Mao-seng & Cao Dan-dan, 2016), whose authors intended to give an overview of the existing results of curriculum history research in China, and put forward some preliminary thoughts on the future growth point of curriculum history research in China. The other problem is that we have too few discussions about the research methods of curriculum history in China. How do we conduct curriculum history research and what are the methodologies? Quite often, we have adopted documentary analysis in curriculum history research in China. The researcher has often used abstract concepts to explain historical facts, or only gathered historical materials, so that the conclusions of the research was lacking in originality and just echoing what others have said.. We need more case study, oral history, autobiography and so on. We need more diaries, log books, photographs, letters, and more stories from specific individuals (teachers or students) who took part in the curriculum reforms. These stories about success or failure should be heard. At the end of this section, I would like to talk a little about the main researchers and their backgrounds in China. Based on the authors of the published papers and books, the main researchers are young researchers who are PhD students or doctors just graduated. Most of them study or work in the universities’ research centres for curriculum and instruction, for example, the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction East China Normal University. With regard to the professional strength of curriculum history research, similar to the lack of relevant training about curriculum among researchers of educational history, most of the curriculum history researchers have an academic background in curriculum but lack rigorous training in history, and the existence of this problem has seriously restricted the development of the research team of curriculum history in China. Historical research is often trivial and complicated. First, it should occupy a large amount of literature. It is difficult to find, classify and integrate these literatures. Second, historical research cannot be shaped boldly by our imagination and created freely as artworks, and it is restricted by the social circumstances, dominant ideology and value orientation. Obviously, it will demand much patience, hard work, expense and sacrifice. We urgently need researchers who can dig deeper with curiosity, great courage and determination, and who can contextualise events, reason logically and think critically as a historian. It is sad that our poor knowledge about the past is largely because the relative researches are insufficient.

The prospect of curriculum history research in mainland China and Taiwan To form the academic community of the study of curriculum history

In the development of curriculum history research in Western countries, the establishment of professional societies and the operation of periodicals and magazines gathered some professional researchers. This experience is worth

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learning. In China, in order to make greater achievements in curriculum history research, it is necessary to break the isolated state, and then condense the professional strength of curriculum history research and promote the construction of its system. Fortunately, at present, the academic community of curriculum history research has initially been formed in Taiwan. First of all, from the perspective of courses offered, many universities in Taiwan, for example, Taiwan Normal University, Zhong-zheng University, Taipei University of Education, Hualian University of Education and Pingtung University of Education have offered special courses such as ‘Curriculum History Monographic Study’ for doctoral students. Second, from the perspective of organisational activities, Professors Ou Yung-Sheng and Tsai Ching-tien organised the ‘Important Documents of Curriculum History’ reading club, which gathered together and nurtured some professional researchers of curriculum history. Third, in 2005, the Curriculum & Instruction Quarterly had specially published a series of papers on curriculum history. For this reason, this journal has become an important communication platform for curriculum history research in Taiwan. Finally, according to the research results, a group of scholars, such as Ou Yung-Sheng, Pai Yi-fong, Yang Chih-ying9 and Jong Hong-ming, have been doing research on curriculum history.10 They have published a number of periodical papers. Especially, in 2008, Professor Pai Yi-fong published a monograph on curriculum history titled The Theory and Practice of Curriculum History Research. In addition, some master’s and doctoral degree papers also focussed on the theme of curriculum history. These researchers have made some important academic achievements, expanded the influence of curriculum history research and shown a prosperous scene of vigorous development. The founding of The Society for the Study of Curriculum History (SSCH) in 1977 in the USA quickly gathered a group of talented persons who are interested in curriculum history research, and expanded the influence of curriculum history research. However, in mainland China, we only have The Society for the Study of History of Education, and the research on curriculum history basically depends on the field of history of education, and lacks its own opportunity to voice their own sound. We can try to set up a professional research society for the study of curriculum history, which could inject a new atmosphere and energy into curriculum history research. It will be very helpful for professional researchers to form a consensus on curriculum issues, to construct a new paradigm of curriculum history research and to promote the deepening of curriculum history research in China. To enhance the localisation of curriculum history research

With regard to curriculum research in China, it is almost a common phenomenon that theories are used for reference and then transplanted. Because of the limitations of this kind of theoretical transplantation, the local construction of curriculum research has become the direction of scholars’ unremitting

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efforts. For the current study of curriculum history we also need to deal with the dialectic relationship between globalisation and localisation, reference and innovation. However, from the point of view of the existing research results, the main purpose is to sort out and analyse the findings of curriculum history research in Britain and America, as well as to interpret the various curriculum events, representatives, key concepts, curriculum reform movement and other subjects in the Western curriculum field. Because curriculum history research combined with the local conditions in China is relatively limited, it shows a strong tendency of Westernisation or even Americanisation. But as Yang JyhYing (2006) emphasised, ‘Due to the different social system or cultural context, the focus of curriculum history research is also different’, so curriculum history research in China also needs to be closely related to the local cultural situation and realistic characteristics. After an analysis of the development of curriculum research in Britain since the 1970s, Wang Ya-Hsuan (2009) also emphasises that We need to go deep into the teaching field, collect curriculum practice materials as case studies from cultural orientation, and conduct Taiwan’s own curriculum research from the basic work of social investigation.11 In mainland China and Taiwan, there are still only a small number of attempts. For example, using the point of view of history of subjects from Goodson, Taiwanese scholar Wu Shu-ming12 explored the formation process of the policy for setting a subject of native curriculum after the period of the end of Martial Law in Taiwan in 1987. In the future research of curriculum history in China we need to master and more closely connect our own historical development vein in social, political, economic and cultural aspects, and start from the specific situation of China to carry out China’s own curriculum research so as to continuously improve the localisation level of curriculum history research. To enrich the methodology of curriculum history research

How do we carry out curriculum history research and what is its methodology? In Taiwan, most scholars mainly took theoretical speculation and the comparative method. Only a few scholars tried to adopt new methodology, for example, from the perspective of personal life history, Professor Ou13 used the autobiographical method to analyse the paradigm shift of curriculum research in Taiwan; Professor Zhou and Zhang14 used oral history to analyse the historical development of social science textbooks in primary schools before the lifting of the martial law in Taiwan, then to analyse the complicated space–time context, ideology, academic trend and interpersonal interaction in the development of textbooks. These research efforts have brought a fresh and vigorous atmosphere to curriculum history research in Taiwan.

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In mainland China, most scholars adopted an ‘objective’ and pure way of describing curriculum history, as in Chen Hus’s summary.15 The characteristics of the traditional model of curriculum history research in China can be summarised as ‘structured’, that is, to present curriculum history materials and describe them faithfully within the structured framework. This research path surely has its value, but compared with the critical and reflective writing techniques of Western curriculum researchers, its shortcomings are obvious. Meanwhile, the lack of reflection on and exploration of its own methodology in educational history research has resulted in various cognitive deviations. As Professor Zhang Binxian and Wang Chen pointed out, Many works of the history of education have no new ideas. Lack of conscious methodological consciousness and lack of motivation to construct its methodology and neglect of philosophical discussion of historical phenomena of education, have made the discipline of educational history remain flat growth for many years, i.e. horizontal expansion of research fields, without substantial breakthroughs and innovations.16 If we use this view to examine curriculum history research, we find that it is because of the lack of research methodology that current curriculum history research is in a dilemma, of mechanisation, disorder and simplification. Therefore, it is the most urgent task to construct a scientific, systematic and organic methodology of curriculum history research in China. With the current interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary discourses, in order to form its own research characteristics, curriculum history research needs to constantly strengthen intersection and mergence among different disciplines, and consciously draw on and apply the ideological nourishment of different fields such as philosophy, history, sociology, politics, culture and so on, so as to form the visions and methods of multidisciplinary research and to rediscover the past of curriculum history. With regard to the methodology, although Bellack, Kliebard, Franklin and Tanner have specified certain realms of curriculum history research, C. Kridel and V. Newman17 designate eight contexts for curriculum history research: curriculum history as an area in cultural, social and educational history; curriculum history as a subject area of research; curriculum history as a case study; curriculum history as a component of synoptic curriculum textbooks; curriculum history as memoir and oral history; curriculum history as archival and documentary editing; curriculum history as a biographical research; curriculum history as unsilencing voices. These contexts of curriculum history scholarship provide new methods for the study of curriculum history and broaden the collection of research materials on curriculum history. It is helpful for us to change the previous relatively simplified research methods and promote the diversified development of curriculum history research. We need to combine the actual situation of curriculum reform development in China and draw lessons from Western curriculum history research.

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The analytical approaches and methodologies can include selective use of critical discourse analysis, comparative study, folklore, biography and oral history etc. to carry out curriculum history research. To expand the themes of curriculum history research

Curriculum history needs to find appropriate research themes. It should focus not only on the faithful narration of some curriculum historical materials, but also on the diversified historical exposition and interpretation of various curriculum events, representatives, key concepts, curriculum reform movements and the evolution of curriculum policies. Ren Ping and Deng Lan once commented on the themes of curriculum history research in China: Currently, the curriculum history research mainly focuses on the review of the historical progress of curriculum theory field, the exploration of the origin of the curriculum filed, the description of curriculum movement and the visible changes in curriculum practice. However, we neglected the research on the value presupposition and value system hidden behind them as well as the historical context, course, characters, schools, evidence and dynamics emphasized by the curriculum history research.18 As a preliminary idea, in combination with the above views, we can consider enhancing the research on these themes in mainland China and Taiwan in the following ways: The history of curriculum debates

The inevitable occurrence of curriculum debates is due to the richness and complexity of curriculum and curriculum issues, the differences between subjects and methods of curriculum research, and the prosperous and open context. The contention and controversy among different schools of curriculum is an inherent motivating force for the development of curriculum thought and a basic way for the innovation of curriculum theory. In the last 70 years, debates involved many important curriculum issues, such as the choice of curriculum content, the type and structure of curriculum, and the implementation of curriculum and so on. Among them, the most noticeable was the debate on the eighth curriculum reform, and many scholars took part in this debate to discuss what the theoretical basis of the new curriculum reform is, whether the direction of the new curriculum reform is correct, whether the new curriculum reform is divorced from the national conditions of China, what the relationship between the curriculum reform and the teaching reform is. So how did these debates happen? Who were the main players? What is the focus, substance and impact of these debates? We should sort out and reflect on these debates through historical research.

Mainland China and Taiwan  159 The history of curriculum reforms

In mainland China, there has long been a lack of historical research of curriculum, and there is no ‘curriculum history’ in the school timetables of educational departments or in the teacher-training educational system. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, we have carried out eight national curriculum reforms. The eighth new curricula reform of the elementary education started in 2001 and aimed to change the curriculum content, structure and evaluation, and currently it is ongoing. Our tradition is to launch a lot of courses about teaching materials and methods, but to neglect the historical development of curriculum reforms. We never carefully sort out these reforms. What was the origin of each reform? What impact did each reform have? Which groups have benefited (or suffered) from the reforms, and how do we benefit (or suffer) from them? What can we learn from the successes and failures? In Taiwan, some scholars have studied the history of curriculum reforms in the United States. For example, Jong Horng-ming (2005) proposed that the metaphor of ‘pendulum’ or ‘cycle’ should be replaced by the viewpoint of ‘historical dialectic’, and the history of curriculum reforms in the United States in the twentieth century was a process of dialectical development among the four curriculum traditions of humanism, developmentalism, social efficiency and social meliorism. However, there are few studies on the local history of curriculum reforms in mainland China and Taiwan. So, it’s time for us to ask: What characteristic did these curriculum reforms have? What were the achievements and pities? We have never made a serious, rational and objective historical analysis. Educational practitioners and educational theorists – especially some educational theorists – have been keen to pursue new terminology, establish their own discourse system, and introduce innovative reform measures, hoping that these new concepts, discourses, and standards can deepen curriculum reform in primary and secondary schools. Facts have proved that our aims have not been achieved. There are many reasons for this phenomenon. The lack of deep research on the history of the curriculum reforms can be one of the important reasons. If we did this, we would get meaningful enlightenment from them. The historical analysis of important curriculum documents

With regard to this theme, some Taiwanese scholars have studied some important curriculum documents in American Curriculum History, such as the Yale Report of 1828 (Jong Horng-ming, 2014), the Report of the Committee of Ten (Yang Chih-ying, 2016), Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education of 191819, 26th Year book of 1927 and so on. For example, some scholars pointed out that the 26th Yearbook of NSSE had important significance in curriculum history in promoting specialisation of the curriculum field, guiding specialisation of curriculum personnel, trying to build consensus on curriculum

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concept, and preliminarily formulating the steps of curriculum-making.20 We can also do some research on the important curriculum documents of mainland China and Taiwan. The history of major curriculum events

These important events include the publication of an important book on curriculum, an important adjustment in the curriculum structure, the emergence of a new curriculum form and so on. The important impact of these events on the construction and development of curriculum theory and curriculum practice need to be analysed. Curriculum history at the school or individual level

Research can focus mainly on a school, a teacher and a student, and from a micro perspective examine the implementation of national curriculum policies at the school and individual levels. It can reflect the positive or negative effects on schools and individuals from all previous changes in national curriculum policies. It can also reflect the expected curriculum needs of teachers and students in grass-roots schools, and find some ‘silent voices’. The history of the curriculum management system

Research can mainly analyse the formulation of the curriculum management system at the national, regional and school levels, the development and evolution of the content and mode of management, and the value orientation reflected behind it from the macro or micro level. The historical role of some important institutions and associations

We can, for example, look at the institutes of curriculum and instruction of the central and local governments or normal universities, the professional committee of curriculum and instruction theory, and the current regular seminars on curriculum which the four places (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) take turns to hold. What role did they play in the construction and development of curriculum theory and practice nationwide and regionally? What were the limitations and problems? The history of curriculum figures

Who are they? What contributions have they made to the development of curriculum theory and practice? These specific characters can be those who have an important influence in the course of curriculum theory construction and development, the main flag bearer of a curriculum reform, the front-line teachers and principals who have actively explored the curriculum reform

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and development in the process of school practice and achieved important results, etc. Apart from all these themes, some scholar has proposed that the history of concepts could be considered as a new path of curriculum history research. Concepts will be replaced or redefined. This sudden change often means a significant moment of historical transformation. Compared with the succession and continuity of the ‘history of ideas’ in the interpretation of classical texts, the history of concepts highlights the fragmentation and historicity in the evolution of thoughts (Liu Hui, 2018).21 This proposal on a new path is creative and enlightening. Since the reform and opening up in 1978, we have achieved a lot in the field of curriculum research which has undergone profound changes in China. An important aspect of this change is the change in the use of concepts which have undergone a conceptual reconstruction in the field of curriculum in China. Specifically, it includes not only the change of original concepts, but also the fading out of some old concepts and the appearance of some new concepts on the historical stage. The alternation and continuance of these concepts provide us with an excellent perspective to examine the historical evolution of curriculum research in mainland China and Taiwan. After half a century’s development, the field of curriculum history in Western countries has covered wide-ranging issues and the research methods are varied. We can learn from the useful research experience of these countries, and establish an area of curriculum history with local characteristics according to the actual situation of curriculum reforms in mainland China and Taiwan, and then the field of curriculum scholarship and practice can be enriched and developed. Just as an old Chinese saying has it, ‘the burden is heavy and the road is long’.

Notes 1 This chapter is one of the research results of the project for young scholars of National Social Science Fund entitled ‘A research on the contemporary western studies of curriculum history’. It was also sponsored by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). 2 Arno A. Bellack, “History of Curriculum Thought and Practice,” Review of Educational Research 39, no. 3 (1969): 283–92. 3 Jong Horng-ming, “H.M. Kliebard’s Curricular History Studies and their Implication,” Bulletin of Educational Research,Volume 50, no. 1 (2004): 91–118. 4 Chen Hua, “An Exploration to the Research Approaches and Meaning of Western Curriculum History,” Global Education 41, no. 4 (2012): 10–15. 5 Yang Jyh-Ying, “The Curriculum History Research in Retrospect and the Analysis of Important Issues,” Curriculum & Instruction Quarterly 9, no. 2 (2006): 105–15. 6 Wang Ya-Hsuan, “The Development of British Curriculum Studies: Implications of Its Historical and Cultural Approaches,” Journal of Research on Elementary and Secondary Education 22 (2009): 1–23. 7 Chen Hua, “The Birth of Citizenship Education: a Curriculum History Research” (PhD diss., East China Normal University, 2012), 10. 8 Ren Ping and Deng Lan, “A Topic Cannot be Ignored and Slacked: The Curriculum History Research,” Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, no. 5 (2007): 44–7.

162  Caixia Peng 9 Yang Chih-ying, “A Study on the Implications of the Report of the Committee of Ten in High School Curriculum Reform History,” Curriculum & Instruction Quarterly 19, no. 4 (2016): 93–112. 10 Jong Horng-ming, “The Historical Implication of the Yale Report,” Journal of Education Research 238, no. 2 (2014): 20–34. 11 Wang Ya-Hsuan, “The Development of British Curriculum Studies: Implications of Its Historical and Cultural Approaches,” Journal of Research on Elementary and Secondary Education 22 (2009): 1–23, 17. 12 Wu Shu-ming, “The Analysis of Policy for Setting a Subject in Taiwan: Native Curriculum as an Example,” Journal of Educational Theory and Practice 29, no. 6 (2014): 59–89. 13 Ou Yung Sheng, My Trip of Curriculum: Paradigm Shift in Curriculum research in Taiwan (Taipei: Normal University Library, 2010), 217–38. 14 Zhou Shu-qing and Zhang Wu-qi, “An Inquiry into the Development of Elementary School Social Studies Textbooks before the Rescinding of Martial Law in Taiwan using the Oral History of Mr. Ping-Chun Tu,” Journal of Textbook Research 7, no. 2 (2014): 1–32. 15 Chen Hua, “An Exploration to the Research Approaches and Meaning of Western Curriculum History,” Global Education 41, no. 4 (2012): 10–15. 16 Zhang Binxian and Wang Chen, “Research on Educational History: Subject Crisis or Academic Crisis,” Educational Research 395, no. 12 (2012): 12–17, 15. 17 Craig Kridel and Vicky Newman, “A Random Harvest: A Multiplicity of Studies in American Curriculum History Research,” in William F. Pinar (ed.), International Handbook of Curriculum Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), 637–50, 47. 18 Ren Ping and Deng Lan, “A Topic Cannot be Ignored and Slacked: The Curriculum History Research,” Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, no. 5 (2007): 44–7. 19 Cheng Yu-Ching,“An Important Milestone in Curriculum History of the USA: Analysis of the ‘Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education’ Issued in 1918,” Journal of Education of Taipei Municipal University of Education 39 (2011): 105–27. 20 Shan Wen-jing and Jong Horng-ming, “The Significance of the 26th Yearbook of NSSE in History of Curriculum,” Curriculum & Instruction Quarterly 8, no. 4 (2005): 77–89. 21 Liu Hui, “Conceptual History: A New Way to Review the History of Contemporary Curriculum Research,” Global Education 37, no. 11 (2018): 22–7.

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Transnational colonial entanglements South African teacher education college curricula1 Linda Chisholm

Introduction In 1922 the Cape Education Gazette serialised a number of chapters on how to approach the teaching of various school subjects that were later published in book form as a Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers – one for white teachers destined to teach in state schools and another for black teachers mission schools.2 The Cape Education Gazette chapters and the handbook for white teachers were adapted for local use from various iterations of the London-based Board of Education’s similarly titled, Handbook of Suggestions for the Considerations of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools.3 The handbook for African primary teachers was in turn adapted from the version for white teachers. For two decades, the various versions of the Handbook seem to have dominated the preparation of teachers in colleges in which English was the dominant language – state and mission schools in the Cape Province and Natal, but most likely also in the Transvaal and Free State, which at this stage were still closely linked through examination systems to the Cape Province. The book was as popular in the preparation of black teachers as it was among white teachers. The Superintendent-General of Education reported in 1925 that ‘the book has been much sought after, not only in the Province but also in other parts of South Africa’.4 In 1927 and 1928 the Gazette issued further instalments ‘for the consideration of teachers employed in primary schools and departments for European pupils’. Robert Shepherd, Principal of Lovedale, a leading mission school in the Eastern Cape, described it as ‘a book which is the vade mecum of the Cape Native teachers’.5 A historian of the Gore-Brown Native Training School in far-flung Kimberley, wrote that Demonstration lessons given by teachers were usually the first step. This was followed by Criticism and later by the full Practice-teaching lessons. A general scheme of lessons in the primary school as a whole was drawn up by Mr Holloway. This, together with the book, Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers, largely provided the methods and means of instruction and education.6

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Albert Luthuli referred approvingly to the Handbook in his Presidential address to the Natal African Teachers’ Union in 1935.7 In 1949, the blueprint for the Bantu Education Act, the Eiselen Commission Report of 1949, also lauded it as having contained excellent suggestions in the light of the conditions then obtaining, but regretted that it was not regularly revised and had been allowed to go out of print.8 But how did the different versions of the handbook illustrate the differences between black and white curricula for teacher preparation? And what do we know about this from existing literature? An extensive literature on the history of schooling exists for this period in South Africa, showing how schooling for white children under a segregated state became free, compulsory and state-controlled, while that for black children remained the province of state-aided, largely impoverished mission schools. As state resources became concentrated on improving all facets of the system of education for whites, it continued the focus on manual and industrial education under the broad umbrella of ‘adapted education’ in black schools. This was a common colonial construct of the time, connecting education in South Africa with England, the American South and colonial British West and East Africa.9 As is to be expected, preparation of teachers was linked to these broader colonial purposes of keeping white and black societies unequal through segregated provision of schooling, and was similarly ‘adapted’ for black teachers. The historiography of teacher education for this period is less extensive and patchier than that for schooling. Teacher education usually forms a section within general works written within the dominant historiographical trends, differentiated into settler, liberal and radical perspectives. These provide insights into different aspects of the system, but relational histories linking both the transnational and the different segregated components of the system are rare. In the main, within all types of historiography, the focus is on teacher education for either African, or Indian or coloured or white teachers.10 And although social historians have focussed on the gradual feminisation of the African teaching profession during the early twentieth century and institutional histories have shown how gendered and racialised teacher preparation was during nineteenth and twentieth-century South Africa, the information about curriculum is sketchy, particularly for the inter-war period, and the focus remains either on black or on white teachers.11 Two studies are worth noting as they provide different conceptualisations of how a relational history might be approached. The first provides a broad contextual-analytical political and economic framework within which to understand a national history of teacher preparation and shows how this context created the conditions for the development of segregated policy and institutions.12 This necessarily schematic account cannot however pay too much specific attention to curricula, or their broader colonial connections, beyond showing that language issues were critical in white teacher preparation and, citing Hartshorne, that mission institutions provided a rich extra-curricular life for students within

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constrained conditions. A second, earlier study on history in teacher education curricula does emphasise the colonial character of curricula at this time, both in their adoption and reception, arguing that they ‘slavishly mimicked’ those in England and the United States throughout the twentieth century.14 This study, however, focussed mainly on university teacher education faculties training secondary school teachers, and not on curricula for black and white primary school teachers, the focus of this chapter.15 More recently, the turn to transnationalism has questioned both the boundedness of single nation-state studies and the hierarchical, top-down emphasis of colonial domination and adoption or borrowing and lending approaches, stressing instead the lateral, ‘criss-crossing’ transnational connections that emerge through the ‘entanglements’ of ideas, people and processes across boundaries.16 This approach ‘puts relationality at the center … and aims to surface the entangled complexity of sometime disparate educational actors, devices, discourses, and practices’.17 This chapter takes the centrality of the notion of ‘relationality’ from this approach, but in order not to dissolve the relations of power and political content of relationships within and between local, national and international contexts, it works with the notion of relationality with reference to colonial inequality.18 These need not be mutually exclusive approaches: colonial entanglements of and relations between those engaged in preparing teachers in particular national contexts elsewhere help explain the common but unequal world created in and through colonial teacher preparation. A history of curricula for teacher preparation would need to take into account the connections between all dimensions. So then what does a relational comparison of a segregated curriculum, of which the different versions of the Handbook of Suggestions was an example, show in a deeper investigation? And how is it to be approached? Curricula differed not only for black and white teachers but also between the four provinces of South Africa established after Union in 1910. I will focus primarily on the Cape Province, at that time the leading province, Natal, and to a lesser extent the Transvaal. A close reading of official sources can provide new and more precise insight not only into the nature of and relationship between curricula intended for teachers working in different contexts, but also the differential construction of the role of teachers, the relationship between curriculum in theory and practice and responses to it. The chapter will focus first on the way in which the Cape Education Gazette (1910–1945) and Natal Native Teachers’ Journal (1919–1954) constructed the role of teachers, and then on the meaning of curricular adaptation through a comparison of curricula. It will also draw on annual reports of the Cape and Transvaal Education Departments. The chapter makes four main arguments. The first is that whereas the Cape Education Gazette tended to construct all teachers as professionals, the Natal Native Teachers’ Journal along with the Handbook of Suggestions for Teachers in mission schools saw black teachers first and foremost as community change-agents. The second is that this had 13

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implications for curricula and black and white teachers’ respective exposure to, for example, languages and manual labour. Third, although all curricula shared the same subjects, when, how and for how long they were taught them (in theory and practice) differed from curriculum context to curriculum context. However, in practice and in combination with the informal curriculum and extra-curricular activities, mission curricula also constructed black teachers as an elite within their communities.

Teachers as professionals and community change agents Whereas the Cape Education Gazette addressed an audience of white, coloured and African teachers, the Natal Native Teachers Journal addressed only teachers in mission schools, who were both white and black.19 Whereas the Gazette tended towards co-constituting Cape white, African and coloured teachers as professionals first, the Natal journal constituted African teachers primarily as community workers. For the former, the teacher’s place is in the classroom; for the latter, in the community as well as the classroom. Although the Cape Gazette carried articles on manual and industrial education for African and coloured teachers, the main accent is on their role as professionals in the school.20 And, as the chapter will show, despite articles on the teaching of academic and professional subjects, the Natal journal is suffused with the weight of the role of teachers in the community. The Cape Education Gazette not only serialised chapters that became the Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers.21 It also published information relevant to all teachers. This included professional official information, such as on the supply of teachers, details about curricula and syllabi, vacation courses, the establishment of new colleges, college and training school enrolment and certification data, teachers’ examination results, schemes and records of work, official Ordinances, lists of Good Service Allowances, teachers’ conferences, lists of job vacancies and teachers looking for jobs and additions to the Education Library for teachers’ use. Central to the construction of teachers’ roles in this journal was the removal of the teacher from the sphere of politics. In 1925, the Gazette published a short notice pertaining to African teachers’ membership of general and district councils, declaring that this was no longer appropriate for teachers.22 The community and broader social role of African teachers is, however, underscored in the Native Primary School: Handbook of Suggestions. The Introduction begins with a quotation from a Memorandum of the Advisory Committee on Native Education in the British Tropical Africa Dependencies. It reasserted the need to adapt education ‘to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations and traditions of the various people, conserving as far as possible all sound and healthy elements in the fabric of their social life; adapting them where necessary to changed circumstances and progressive ideas’. It went on to state that education ‘should promote the advancement of the community as a whole

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through the improvement of agriculture, the training of the people in the management of their own affairs and the inculcation of true ideals of citizenship and service’. It should raise up leaders ‘belonging to their own race’ and it should ‘narrow the hiatus between the educated class and the rest of the community, whether chiefs or peasantry’.23 Within this framework it went out to outline an approach attuned to the activity and curiosity of children and the need for the teacher to ‘be an apostle of health and healthy habits in the community’. Wherever possible, the teacher was encouraged to link up instruction with the child’s everyday experiences in order to make instruction ‘living and real … no longer bookish, unreal and mechanical’.24 Within this overall framework, the Handbook attempted to situate content and examples within a local, South African context. However, chapters on manual training, handwork, needlework and housecraft all assumed the presence in the school of materials and tools – such as needles, thread, cloth, embroidery cotton, pins, scissors, thimbles, tape measures, buttons, rulers, saws, metal files and hammers – that many mission schools, especially outstations, simply would not have had. Recommended readers and textbooks were probably as unavailable to teachers and pupils as were the tools for these subjects. They were, as a result, actually seldom taught as intended. In practice, as both Gaitskell and Healy-Clancy have shown in writing about women teachers, curricula prepared women less for domestic service than to be Christian wives and mothers to leading men and to play ‘central roles in the social reproduction of an uplifting African elite’.25 In co-educational institutions, women students participated in all extra-curricular activities, but not as equals to men, who almost without exception occupied the leadership positions.26 The Native Teachers’ Journal was started in 1919 by C. T. Loram. Its aim was broader than mere information dissemination. One of its main aims, he said, was to break the isolation of African schools: we want the Teachers’ Journal to be a means of Department, grantees, teachers and others interested in Native education … to discuss matters with one another. At the same time it will be a channel through which the Department can issue its notices.27 As such, it became a vehicle for articles by Inspectors of Education, the Natal African Teachers’ Union, many teachers and principals at mission schools, as well as notable international and local liberal educationists passing through South Africa and connecting adaptationist philosophies in different parts of the colonial world and the southern states of America with South Africa. Between 1920 and 1940, the journal was a mouthpiece for the Booker T. Washington philosophy of adapting the school to fit Africans for the life it was anticipated they would have to live in the future. Agricultural and industrial education in the curriculum would achieve this and simultaneously be the source of African upliftment, development and growth. In this approach, the

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school and teaching in the school on its own was not enough. The school was an important means to an end; the role of the teacher could not stop here. The role of the teacher was pre-eminently in the community, the task being to change the condition of life of African families and communities. The school was conceptualised as a ‘community centre participating in the life of the village and not confining itself to ordinary school instruction.’28 The idea of the Jeanes teacher, promoted by the Phelps-Stokes Committee, West African educationist James Aggrey and C. T. Loram, was the embodiment of this idea. This philosophy was promoted through re-published addresses and articles by C. T. Loram, Maurice Evans, Thomas Jesse Jones, J. D. Rheinallt Jones of the Joint Councils movement, D. D. T. Jabavu, Albert Luthuli, Charles J. Mpanza and Robbins Guma, who all, among many others, addressed and apparently approved of the thematic. Key here were the various accounts including by Inspector McMalcolm of the Jeanes teachers’ movement in the United States and southern Africa and reports of the experiences of such teachers in southern and South Africa.29 The Natal African Teachers’ Union was at this time not unsympathetic to these ideas. Albert Luthuli, Charles Mpanza and Robbins Guma were all presidents of the Natal Native Teachers’ Union that by 1935 had changed its name to the Natal Bantu Teachers’ Union. Luthuli, who became ANC President in 1951 and winner of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize, had completed his Lower Teachers’ Certificate at Edendale before being granted a bursary by Loram to complete the Higher Primary Certificate at Adams College in 1920. He was offered a post in the Normal College at the Amazimtoti Institute, or Adams College. Here he taught singing, Zulu and eventually also School Organisation, before being put in charge of teachers-in-training at satellite schools. In 1928 he was elected secretary of the Teachers’ Union and in 1933 its President.30 According to his biographer, he was later very critical of the approach adopted, and indeed, lost faith in the Teachers’ Union, developing a more radical politics in the 1940s and 1950s.31 As represented in the pages of the Natal Native Teachers’ Journal, however, the Union cooperated with the Department, expressing the same accommodationist and assimilationist approach during the 1920s and 1930s as the majority of black teacher associations did at the time.32 The journal included numerous articles on different aspects of teaching particular subjects. These were shorter than those reproduced in the Cape’s Education Gazette, and covered the range of subjects on offer to African teachers, including English, Reading, Zulu, Geography, Physiology and Hygiene, Needlework, Home Economics and School Gardening. Significant however were the contributions by authors such as Bernard Huss of Mariannhill and various others on the role of the school and the teacher. The School-The Teacher-and Society was a topic in the January 1924 issue.33 Service to the community was also a central discourse of a series of articles that the journal ran on its Training Colleges – Adams College at Amazimtoti,

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the Nuttall Training Institute at Edendale near Pietermaritzburg, St Francis of Mariannhill, St Chad’s near Ladysmith and Umpumulo near Stanger – all of which extolled the idea that ‘merely to acquire book learning and European ideals of life without at the same time learning how to realise those ideals and use the head knowledge acquired is useless’.34 In this approach, service to one’s own community was central. Thus ‘the aim of the entire school,’ wrote W. C. Atkins of Adams College in 1921, is the training of leaders whose dominant ideal shall be to help their own people to a higher, happier and nobler life. … we aim to turn out capable and efficient working men and women whose characters shall speak even louder than their words. Selfish ambition is not encouraged, but a programme of service is the ideal constantly emphasised. Sectarian doctrines are not emphasised, but the spirit of the school is strongly Christian.35 In the Transvaal, the aims of teacher preparation for white teachers were clearly constructed not in terms of a broader community role in changing habits and values but in terms of their professional role as teachers. Thus, the Principal of the Pretoria Normal College presented the aims and functions of these institutions at the time as being: to give students intelligent ideas about ends and means in the three sides of their professional work – organisation, instruction and nurture of character; to demonstrate methods and to afford opportunities for properly supervised practice in the art of teaching. … This is a professional school in the sense that it assumes that the student has reached a certain standard of general education and may, therefore, give himself over more or less completely to the theory and practice of teaching.36 This underlines the primary difference between the curricula preparing black and white teachers across South Africa: curricula for black teachers were intended to equip black teachers pre-eminently for service and as change agents in their communities, addressing everything from health and hygiene to sanitation and agricultural development. The role of teachers was conceptualised rather more as social workers than as teachers schooled in ‘the theory and practice of teaching’.

Curricula in theory and practice: Comparing curricula across mission and state schools Following the abolition of the pupil–teacher system across the Union in 1920, all provinces undertook a revision of their teacher preparation syllabi. The Cape Education Gazette published syllabi for the European, coloured and African Lower and Higher Primary Teachers’ Certificates. What were their similarities

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and differences? To assess this, I look at the relative exposure of students to academic, professional and practical subjects, the curriculum in theory, on paper, and in the classroom, in practice, and responses to it. I conclude by examining how this shifted for African students over the period under discussion. A rough comparison of chapters in the handbooks for white and African teachers shows that curricula generally exposed students to the same academic and professional subjects – languages, arithmetic, geography, history, nature study, hygiene and health, school organisation and the infant method – but that they diverged along race and gender lines when it came to the quantity and quality of their exposure.37 On paper, white teachers were exposed to more ‘professional’ training in the course of their training than black teachers. This involved not only theory and practice of teaching, but also time spent on academic subjects, most notably on languages. Although curricula for coloured and African teachers also prioritised English rather than their home language, their time exposure to it was far less than it was for their white counterparts. Academic subjects were also taught at a more elementary level, probably linked to the fact that entry requirements for black and white teachers to the courses differed significantly. White teachers entered college with a Standard X, whereas black teachers required either a Standard VI or VIII. As far as practical subjects were concerned, both black and white aspiring female teachers took domestic science, housecraft and needlework. Manual training was expected of all males, but gardening and handwork (crafts) were required only of black male aspirant teachers. Lower Primary Teachers’ Certificates

In 1922 the Education Gazette published curricula for the European Primary Teachers’ Lower Certificate.38 This was a broad and crowded curriculum, covering all primary school subjects and teaching methods. The 1922 version included the same subjects for the first and second year. Languages and academic subjects each made up seven periods per week per year, but school management and class teaching, the professional subjects, took up ten subjects per year. Reading and recitation, composition and grammar and history of language and literature were the foci of English and Dutch or Afrikaans respectively, while the academic subjects comprised history, geography, nature study and arithmetic. Three periods per week were allocated to manual training, while music and drawing were accorded two each. One hour a week was spent in physical exercises and games. The latter took a gender-differentiated form. In some colleges, such as the Pretoria Normal College, the Defence Department took over the physical exercises part of the curriculum, and so military training became de rigueur for male students: the object was to prepare ‘the men students for their duties as cadet officers in the schools to which they are eventually appointed’.39 Given the prevalence of ‘cadets’ in white schools well after this period, it is likely that it was a common practice.

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The subsequent year, draft syllabi were published for the coloured Lower Primary Teachers’ Certificate.40 In the first year, instead of equal amounts of time being allocated to the first and second language, the first language (English, actually students’ second language in many cases) was given seven hours and the second, three hours. Students had no exposure to professional subjects. Academic subjects were reframed – as elementary science and nature study and elementary physiology and hygiene. Combined, the academic subjects, arithmetic and history and geography, took up 14 periods per week. After English, arithmetic and manual training were allocated the highest number of periods. Three and a half periods were given to music and drawing and one and a half to physical exercises and games. Professional preparation only came into play in the second and third years. The draft first year of the Lower Primary Teachers’ Certificate for Africans was published in 1921 and amended in 1923, while the second and third years was published in 1925.41 As with the curriculum for coloured teachers, most periods per week in the first year were allocated to the official language, manual and industrial training and arithmetic, one period more being allocated to manual and industrial training in this curriculum than in the one for coloured teachers. An African language was allocated three hours as opposed to the eight for the official language, English. Arithmetic was allocated five hours, and thereafter geography and history three each, elementary science and nature science two and elementary physiology and hygiene one. Music, drawing and physical exercises were allocated the same amount of time as in the syllabus for coloured teachers. The second and third years were also mainly devoted to professional preparation, with eight hours altogether allocated to class teaching, school management and writing, six to the official and two to an African language, five to arithmetic, two each to history and civics, geography and elementary science and nature study, one and a half to music and drawing and one to physical exercises and games.42 Thus, it appears that the main differences lay firstly in the treatment of language – equal time being given to English and Afrikaans in the curriculum for whites, and more time for English than the second language in those for coloured and African teachers. The emphasis on English and Afrikaans in syllabi for white teachers had much to do with the political purpose of uniting English and Afrikaans speakers through a bilingual policy. The second main difference lay in the treatment of academic subjects such as Nature Study and Hygiene: the syllabi for coloureds and Africans were adapted to elementary science and physiology. The third difference lay in the greater allocation of time to both manual and industrial training and arithmetic in the courses for coloureds and African courses. An analysis of time allocations across the different segregated syllabi in the early 1920s (identified earlier) shows that professional subjects were included in the first year for whites, whereas the first year was a mainly preparatory year for coloured and African teachers who entered their preparation as teachers only in the second and third years. Manual training

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was included in curricula for whites, coloureds and African, but whites had to spend much less time on it than Africans and coloureds. Music, drawing and physical exercises were also included in all curricula. The curricula for whites allocated only two hours per week to manual training, while the coloured syllabus allocated five and the African six. Five hours are allocated to music, drawing and physical exercises in the coloured and African curricula, while four were allocated to these subjects in the white curricula. The caveat expressed by the Department in 1922 when it published the syllabi for African teachers is important. It noted that while new curricula had ‘necessitated much thought’, ‘such subjects as handwork and other manual training, gardening and domestic subjects, by their nature and requirements, present many and various difficulties, difficulties which have been very greatly accentuated by the lack of funds for development’. In issuing these certificates, ‘it was recognised that the development of these branches of the work would take time’.43 The Department acknowledged that domestic science teachers had not yet been appointed in the majority of schools.44 The reality in the majority of mission schools, normally outstations, then, was probably that manual work entailed cleaning school grounds and classrooms and assisting with general maintenance. However, in the more well-off schools, such as Lovedale, which had agitated for a more practical bent to be given African teacher education and ‘rejoiced’ at the new curriculum, Lovedale ‘took immediate steps … to have it carried out at Lovedale’.45 In 1928, without financial help from the Department of Education, it started a Housecraft Teachers’ Course. By 1941, it prided itself on having taught ‘on the industrial side, agriculture, horticulture, carpentry, buildings and plastering, wagon-making, blacksmithing, printing, bookbinding, shoe-making, domestic science (housekeeping, cooking, sewing and laundry-work), nursing, telegraphy, basket and mat-making, rug-making, tinware, bee-keeping and poultry-farming’. By far the majority of its students, however, qualified as teachers. By 1941 these included a total of 479 Junior Certificate awardees and 77 Senior Certificate graduates.46 With some variation, these syllabi were also introduced in the other provinces. In the Transvaal, the first-year course in 1921 for Africans was mainly preparatory and non-professional, aiming at improving students’ general education. The second-year course was explicitly given to ‘training’ – religious, moral, social, physical, industrial and professional.47 In 1931 the Transvaal syllabus was modified so that the third year was focused mainly on professional subjects defined as languages, hygiene and elementary physiology, needlework and mothercraft, school management, botany, agriculture and gardening.48 Despite common syllabi, institutions sometimes used these merely as a guide. Thus, Botshabelo and Kilnerton in the Transvaal, for example, did not follow identical methods of training. Kilnerton devoted more time in the first two years to academic preparation, and used the third year for professional training. In the second year a small beginning was made with professional work. Botshabelo began immediately with professional training.49

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Here, as elsewhere, the implemented curriculum differed radically from the curriculum on paper, depending on both the available teachers and learning resources. In 1921 the Transvaal Director of Education commented that the scheme of training – manual, industrial, hygienic and moral – as distinct from instruction, provided for in the curriculum, that training (that) should occupy the largest part of the school day, is not being carried out anywhere or in any sense. A smattering of the three Rs, forgotten very quickly, is very nearly all there is to show.50 In 1925, Chief Inspector of Native Education in the Cape, W. G. (William Govan) Bennie, drew attention to how the lack of funds was limiting the possibilities of ‘furthering instruction in practical subjects’. The general poverty of Africans, he felt, made it even more difficult for them ‘to meet the added requirements in subjects such as gardening’.51 Stringencies imposed by the modalities for financing African education meant that this was the situation across the provinces right up to the end of the 1930s. The lack of resources and understaffing hit especially hard during the depression years. The result, as Inspector G. H. (Gottfried Heinrich) Franz noted, was the tendency to focus only on examinations and academic work, rather than on professional subjects and practice. The ‘overloaded’ academic curriculum was revised in 1932 so that more time could be devoted to professional training.52 When C. T. (Charles Templeman) Loram was appointed Chief Inspector of Native Education in Natal in 1918, one of his main priorities was to reorganise teacher education curricula in accordance with the adaptationist philosophy of which he was a major exponent. The visit of the Phelps–Stokes Commission and especially James Aggrey to Natal had given the approach a strong fillip. Natal published its certificate courses for teachers in 1924.53 It provided for first-, second- and third-grade certificates and a higher primary certificate. According to Emanuelson, the main changes were a stronger emphasis on English in the first year as well as on Zulu literature, but also a ‘more severely practical teaching of hygiene and physiology’ and nature study. Emanuelson, an Inspector of Native Education in Natal himself, was sceptical of the continued concern about ‘overloading’ of these syllabi despite the ‘tremendous amount of revision’ that they had already undergone.54 The first-, second- and third-grade certificates for Africans in Natal also included a diminished academic curriculum consisting in the first part of English and Zulu (with more time for English than Zulu), and time devoted to Arithmetic, and Physiology and Hygiene, Nature Study and either History or Geography. Part II consisted of professional subjects such as school method, practical teaching and blackboard work in the third-grade certificate; Principles of Education, Methods of Teaching, practical teaching and blackboard work for the second- and third-grade certificates. Manual training was included in all certificates in the second part, in addition to domestic science for girls and agriculture for boys.55

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Across the country, vacation courses became an important means for officials to supplement African teacher preparation. The governing philosophy permeated these highly popular events, attractive not only for their content but also for the opportunity they provided teachers for sharing knowledge and sociality. They were not compulsory, but attracted large numbers, up to 300 in the Transvaal vacation courses held at Lemana and Hebron in 1937.56 Normally the leading training schools would take turns in hosting courses during the summer and winter school holidays. These courses usually included lectures by leading authorities, especially inspectors, on a range of moralising, vocational and academic subjects. C. T. Loram was a popular and influential speaker and presence at these vacation courses.57 Higher Primary Teachers’ Certificates

Syllabi for the Higher Primary Teachers’ Certificate were published in the early 1920s.58 These showed similar patterns to those in the Lower Primary Teachers’ Certificates: relatively greater emphases on professional subjects and English for white teachers than for coloured and black, but now also a more substantial focus on professional subjects for the latter. Here the changes in the Natal syllabus between 1928 and 1945 are most illustrative of how the prevailing philosophy of community work had given way to an expanded professional/academic curriculum, albeit still with practical and religious elements, and how this in turn had narrowed again by 1954 with the advent of Bantu Education. Natal’s Higher Primary Teachers’ Certificate was introduced in 1928 for implementation only at Adams College. Students could choose two academic majors and a minor in the first and second years from the following subjects: English (Literature, Composition and Language), Mathematics (Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry), History, Physiology and Hygiene, Biology, Physical science, Geography, Bantu Studies, Arts and Crafts (Music, Specialised Craft and Decorative Work). At least a year’s study of Mathematics or one of the Sciences was compulsory. In the First Year, professional subjects included Principles of Education, Psychology, Organisation and Method, Drawing and Practical Teaching. In the second year, subjects included History of Education, Psychology, Drawing, Special Methods and Practical Teaching.59 A study of examination papers written at Umpumulo College in Natal between 1945 and 1954 shows that much of this broad emphasis remained in place. The Methods of Teaching papers during the war years still suggest the continued expectation that teachers were to play a role beyond the school walls in the community. This emphasis appeared to be much more muted, however, than in the earlier years. The teaching of Psychology and Principles of Education introduced students to the mental testing movement, with its origins in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States and United Kingdom, in all its dimensions.60 But the requirements

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of the English Language papers revealed a contrary thrust, requiring students, as they did, ‘to display a range of literary skills, including understanding of a text’s meaning as well as interpretive and analytical competences’ and to write and act from positions that assumed leadership roles.61 This was reinforced by extra-curricular activities. A professional emphasis marked the expectations of teachers in how they planned and executed their work, while the pedagogy underpinning Methods papers was generally a progressivist one, emphasising children’s activity, the uses of educational sources and aids, as well as experimentation and demonstration, play and memory work. By 1954, there were subtle shifts in examination papers suggesting the somewhat narrower expectations of teachers that would characterise the Bantu Education regime of teacher preparation. Mission school college courses played a critical role in preparing students not only for community but also political leadership in all black colleges. Hofmeyr’s work shows how students at Lovedale used their official curricula to pose broader political questions in Debating Societies.62 Alie Fataar’s trajectory from a mission school in Claremont, Cape Town, to Livingstone High and Zonnebloem Training College where he did his Higher Primary Teachers’ Certificate imbued him with not only a life-long love of Shakespeare, but also a passion for wider social and political change.63 Similarly, in Durban, Sastri College’s Social Club and Debating Society became a platform for nurturing teacher-leaders within the Indian community for protest against segregation and apartheid.64

Conclusion Curricula for the preparation of teachers in South Africa were thoroughly entangled with and drew their inspiration from wider colonial projects. Less well-known is how entangled they were with one another. This is not surprising given that the framers of curriculum for white and black teachers shared a common intellectual universe, and their paths ‘criss-crossed’ one another on numerous local and international platforms. Thus, teacher preparation curricula for coloured, African and white aspirant teachers were but versions of one another, the master template having been drawn from London and modified by adaptationist philosophies of education dominant in the colonial world and southern states of America finding a place in South Africa. Using an approach of relational comparison to analyse South African curricula for black and white primary and higher primary teachers, this chapter showed not only that they were different versions of one another but, in that process, positioned teachers differently – primarily as professionals if they were white, and primarily as community leaders and change agents if they were black. Lest this opposition emerge too starkly, it should be borne in mind that there were, however, academic, professional and practical elements in all curricula. What this positioning meant in curricular terms was

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that, overall, especially in the curricula for the lower primary certificate, white teachers were exposed to more language and method teaching than their coloured and African counterparts, who were exposed to more manual and industrial education. In both, these served broader political and social purposes. Arithmetic was important in all, but coloured and African teachers were exposed to it for five hours per week (as opposed to six for manual and industrial education) – it was their third most important subject, compared with another professional subject for whites. In other words, white teachers spent more time on language/bilingualism and professional subjects, whereas coloured and African teachers spent less time on languages, whether their first or second language, and more on manual and industrial education and to a lesser extent arithmetic in the case of the latter. When it came to higher primary preparation, there was a shift in all curricula to an emphasis on professional subjects, with accents on teachers as community change agents continuing but being of lesser importance for African teachers. The relative, racialised and gendered differences between curricula continued, but it is also clear that by the war years mission teacher training colleges were including expectations in their curricula of teachers that went well beyond the expectation that African teachers should serve their communities in narrow fields.This emphasis was ironically greatly facilitated by the lack of resources for the manual, industrial and agricultural elements of the curriculum – it enabled a focus on the academic and professional rather than the practical. This would have the effect of positioning black teachers both as leaders, community change agents and professionals. These differential curricular positioning of white and black teachers in South Africa would cast a long shadow into the future.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in Linda Chisholm, Teacher Preparation in South Africa: History, Policy and Future Directions (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 2019). 2 Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) Education Department, The Primary School: Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers (Cape Town: Cape Times Ltd., 1928); Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, The Native Primary School: Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers (Cape Town: Cape Times Limited, 1929). 3 See for example Board of Education. Great Britain, Handbook of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools. Board of Education (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1928). 4 Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, “Report of the SuperintendentGeneral of Education for the Years 1923 and 1924. C.P. 4-’25” (Cape Times Limited, Government Printers, 1925), 49, CCE 370.968 REP; Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, The Native Primary School: Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers (Cape Town: Cape Times Limited, 1929). 5 Robert H. W. Shepherd, Lovedale South Africa. The Story of a Century 1841–1941 (Lovedale: Lovedale press, 1941), 396–7. 6 Ernest, P. Lekhela, ‘The Origin, Development and Role of Missionary Teacher-Training Institutions for the Africans of the North-Western Cape. An Historical-Critical Survey of the Period 1850–1954,Vol I and II’ (D.Ed., UNISA, 1970), 158, 259.

Transnational colonial entanglements  177 7 Natal Education Department, Albert Luthuli, ‘N.N.T.U., Presidential Address’ Native Teachers’ Journal XV, no. 2 (January 1936): 75. 8 Union of South Africa, “Report of the Commission on Native Education, 1949–1951 (Eiselen Report). U.G. No. 53/1951” (Pretoria: The Government Printer, 1951), 118, para 648. 9 Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); R. Hunt Davis, Jr., “Charles T. Loram and an American Model for African Education in South Africa,” in Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans, ed. Peter Kallaway (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984); Rebecca Swartz, “Industrial Education in Natal: The British Imperial Context, 1830–1860,” in Empire and Education in Africa: The Shaping of a Comparative Perspective, ed. Peter Kallaway and Rebecca Swartz (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 53–81; Rebecca Swartz, Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019). 10 See for example E. G. Pells, The Story of Education in South Africa 1652 - 1938 (Cape Town: Juta & Co., 1938); Margaretha Emma Martinius McKerron, A History of Education in South Africa 1652–1932 (Cape Town: J. L. Van Schaik, 1934); E. G. Malherbe, Education in South Africa (1652–1922) (Cape Town : Juta, 1925); A. L. Behr, “Three Centuries of Coloured Education : Historical and Comparative Studies of the Education of the Coloured People in the Cape and the Transvaal, 1652–1952” (PhD, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 1952); A. L. Behr and R. G. MacMillan, Education in South Africa, 2nd ed. (Pretoria : J. L. van Schaik, 1966); Peter Kallaway, ed., Apartheid and Education:The Education of Black South Africans (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984); Peter Kallaway, The History of Education Under Apartheid 1948–1994: The Doors of Learning and Culture Shall Be Opened (Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 2002). 11 Deborah Gaitskell, “‘Doing a Missionary Hard Work … in the Black Hole of Calcutta’: African Women Teachers Pioneering a Profession in the Cape and Natal, 1880–1950,” Women’s History Review 13, no. 3 (1 September 2004): 407–25; S. E. Duff, “Head, Heart and Hand: The Huguenot Seminary and College and the Construction of Middle Class Afrikaner Femininity, 1873–1910” (M.A., University of Stellenbosch, 2006); S. E. Duff, “‘Oh! For a Blessing on Africa and America’ The Mount Holyoke System and the Huguenot Seminary, 1874–1885,” New Contree 50, November (2005): 95–109; S. E. Duff, “From New Women to College Girls at the Huguenot Seminary and College, 1895–1910,” Historia 51, no. 1 (May 2006): 1–27; Meghan Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013). 12 Maureen Robinson and Pam Christie, “South Africa,” in Teacher Education in the EnglishSpeaking World, ed. Charles Whitehead and Tom A. O’Donoghue (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub., 2008), 137–54. 13 Robinson and Christie, 142–43; Ken Hartshorne, Crisis and Challenge: Black Education 1910–1990 (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1992), 229, 231. 14 Peter Ralph Randall, “The Role of the History of Education in Teacher Education in South Africa, with Particular Reference to Developments in Britain and the USA” (PhD, University of the Witwatersrand, 1988). 15 Robinson and Christie, ‘South Africa’. 16 Noah, W. Sobe, “Entanglement and Transnationalism in the History of American Education,” in Rethinking the History of Education:Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods and Knowledge, ed. Thomas, S. Popkewitz (New York: Palgrave, MacMillan, 2013), 93–107; Noah W. Sobe, “Problematizing Comparison in a Post-Exploration Age: Big Data, Educational Knowledge, and the Art of Criss-Crossing,” Comparative Education Review 62, no. 3 (August 2018): 325–43; see also chapters in this volume by GonzálezDelgado and Groves and and Prytz and Ringarp.

178  Linda Chisholm 17 Sobe, ‘Problematizing Comparison’, 325; see also Gillian Hart, ‘Relational comparison revisited: Marxist postcolonial geographies in practice’, Progress in Human Geography 42, no. 3 (2018): 371–394. 18 Edward, W. Said, “Criticism between Culture and System,” in The World,The Text and the Critic (London, 1983), 221. 19 In the case of the Education Gazette, this is evident from the inclusion of various types of information, segregated according to the audience, such as curricula and certificates detailed below, for whites, coloureds and Africans in one journal. In the case of the Native Teachers’ Journal, the title of the journal makes explicit who the intended audience was. 20 See for example Anon, “Native Education: Manual and Industrial Education for Teachers,” The Education Gazette XXI, no. 23 (30 March 1922): 698. 21 The following chapters, for example, appeared in The Education Gazette of these respective dates: ‘Handwriting’, 10 November 1927; ‘Handwork for Boys’, 10 November 1927; ‘Domestic Science’, 10 November 1927; The One-Teacher School’, 24 November 1927; ‘Nature Study’, 24 November 1927; ‘Hygiene and Health in the School’, 26 January, 1928; ‘Singing’, 26 January, 1928; ‘The Teaching of Drawing’, 9 February, 1928; ‘Phonetics’, 23 February, 1928; ‘English as First Language’, 8 March, 1928; ‘Afrikaans as Second Language’, 8 March 1928; ‘Afrikaans as First Language’, 22 March 1928; English as Second Language’, 22 March 1928; ‘Organisation’, 12 April 1928. 22 Anon, “Native Education: Teachers’ Membership of District and General Councils,” The Education Gazette XIV, no. 23 (29 October 1925): 435. 23 Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, The Native Primary School, 1. 24 Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, 6. 25 Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education, 90; Deborah Gaitskell, “Race, Gender and Imperialism: A Century of Black Girls’ Education in South Africa,” in ‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism, ed. J. A. Mangan (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988), 150–74. 26 Linda Chisholm, Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2017), 110–12. 27 Natal Education Department,“The Aims of the Journal,” Native Teachers’ Journal, October (1919): 16. 28 Natal Education Department, “South African Native Education Vacation Courses: Report of the First Course Held at Mariannhill Training College, Natal, July 1st-July 20th, 1928,” Native Teachers’ Journal VII (July 1928): 243. 29 D.McK. Malcolm, ‘“Jeanes” Teachers in Texas’, Native Teachers’ Journal XI, no. 1 (October 1931): 33; D.McK. Malcolm, ‘The Jeanes Conference, Salisbury’, Native Teachers’ Journal XV, no. 1 (October 1935): 17–27; Anon, ‘Helpful Suggestions from the Jeanes Confernece’, Native Teachers’ Journal XV, no. 1 (April 1935): 157–8; A. Majonwe, E. Akapelwa,W. Pilime, ‘Jeanes Teachers at Work: Reported by Teachers in the Field’, Native Teachers’ Journal XV, no. 1 (October 1935): 197–207. 30 Scott Couper, Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010), 37–85. 31 Couper, 40. 32 See for example Mohamed Adhikari, ‘Let Us Live for Our Children’: The Teachers’ League of South Africa, 1913–1940, 1st ed. (Rondebosch: UCT Press, 1993); R. L. Peteni, Towards Tomorrow: The Story of the African Teachers’ Associations of South Africa (USA: World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession, 1978). 33 J.R. James,‘The School-The Teacher – And Society’, Native Teachers’ Journal IV, no. 3 (July 1924): 53–6. 34 Natal Education Department, “Our Training Colleges I: Amanzimtoti Institute, by W.C. Atkins,” Native Teachers’ Journal April (1921), 101. 35 Natal Education Department, Native Teachers’ Journal July (1921):102.

Transnational colonial entanglements  179 36 John McGregor Niven, “Teacher Education in South Africa: A Critical Study of Selected Aspects of Its Historical, Curricular and Administrative Development” (PhD, University of Natal, 1971), 91–2. 37 Although religious and moral instruction was a component of all primary schools, there were no curricular specifications for it in curricula for training white teachers.Those for coloured and African teachers specified that each training school was free to draft its own syllabus, which was, however, subject to departmental approval. The main requirement was that it should bear a close relationship to the curriculum followed in the primary school. 38 Anon, “Syllabus of Courses of Training for European Teachers,” The Education Gazette, 25 May 1922, 800–805. 39 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1927” (Pretoria: Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1928), 53. 40 Anon, “New Training Courses for Coloured Teachers,” The Education Gazette XXII, no. 40 (6 December 1923), 796–804 41 Anon, “Native Education: Primary School Course,” The Education Gazette XXI, no. No. 13 (1 December 1921): 410; Anon, “Courses of Training for Native Teachers,” The Education Gazette XXII, no. No. 19 (1 March 1923): 383–393; Anon,“Courses of Training for Native Teachers,” The Education Gazette XXIV, no. No. 4 (12 February 1925): 76–89. 42 Anon, “Courses of Training for Native Teachers,” The Education Gazette XXII, no. No. 19 (1 March 1923), 386. 43 Anon, “Native Education: The New Primary and Normal Courses,” The Education Gazette XXII, no. No. 9 (26 October 1922): 184. 44 Anon, ‘Courses of Training for Native Teachers’ (1 March 1923), 383. 45 Shepherd, Lovedale South Africa.The Story of a Century 1841–1941, 426. 46 Shepherd, 427, 477, 485. 47 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1921” (Pretoria: Government Printing and Stationery Office, 1922), 109. 48 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1931, T.P. No 3-’32” (Pretoria: The Government Printer, 1932), 15. 49 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1933, T.P. No 7-’34” (Pretoria: The Government Printer, 1934), 122. 50 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1921,”, 49. 51 Cape of Good Hope Department of Public Education, “Report of the SuperintendentGeneral of Education for the Year Ended 31st December 1925. C.P. 2-’26” (Cape Times Limited, Government Printers, 1926), 51, CCE 370.968 REP. 52 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1933, T.P. No 7-’34,”, 121. 53 Natal Education Department, “Native Teachers’ Certificates,” Native Teachers’ Journal IV, no. 2 (January 1924): 80–2. 54 Oscar Emil Emanuelson, “A History of Native Education in Natal between 1835 and 1927” (MEd, University of Natal, 1927), 284–8. 55 Natal Education Department, ‘Native Teachers’ Certificates’, 80–2. 56 Transvaal Education Department, “Report for the Year Ended 31st December, 1937, T.P. No 4-1938” (Pretoria: The Government Printer, 1938), 141. 57 Natal Education Department, ‘South African Native Education Vacation Courses: Report of the First Course Held at Mariannhill Training College, Natal, July 1st- July 20th, 1928’. 58 Anon, ‘Syllabus of Courses of Training for European Teachers’; Anon, “European Primary Teachers’ Lower Certificate Course,” The Education Gazette XXII, no. No. 36 (25 October 1923), 692-701; Anon, ‘New Training Courses for Coloured Teachers’; Anon, “Draft Primary School Course for Native Schools,” The Education Gazette XXI,

180  Linda Chisholm no. No. 3 (August 1921); Anon, “Courses of Training for Native Teachers,” 1 March 1923; Anon, “Courses of Training for Native Teachers,” 12 February 1925. 59 Emanuelson, ‘A History of Native Education in Natal between 1835 and 1927’, 295. 60 Chisholm, Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the Transition from Mission to Bantu Education, 108–9. 61 Chisholm, 106, 110–12. 62 Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of the Pilgrim’s Progress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 114–30. 63 Yunus Omar, “‘In My Stride’: A Life-History of Alie Fataar,Teacher” (PhD, University of Cape Town, 2015). 64 Pravindra Thakur, “Education for Upliftment: A History of Sastri College, 1927–1981” (MA, University of Natal, Durban, 1992), 87–8.

10 The failure of a pedagogical innovation Learning to write in Brazil and France at the end of the nineteenth century Diana Gonçalves Vidal The diffusion of primary school and the dissemination of laws of mandatory schooling in several Western countries during the 1800s brought with them the challenge of extending the school-based teaching of writing to the popular classes. Among the solutions emerged, first in England and then in France, the proposal of teaching stenography1. According to Delphine Gardey, Great Britain was the nest of this technology and its use dates back to the sixteenth century for hommes des lettres, people of the law, church and science for commercial, private or public purposes. However, only in the mid-nineteenth century, with Isaac Pitman’s phonography method, The Penny Plate, did stenography achieve a new role in British society, contributing to spelling reform and interfering in elementary school teacher practice. From existing sources, it is not possible to connect Pitman activities to the proposal of teaching stenography in French primary schools in the 1890s; nor is it possible to link the project fiercely defended by educators, inspectors and principals in the Journal des Instituteurs (JDI), between 1891 and 1894, with the Brazilian educational scenario at the time. Notwithstanding, England, France and Brazil shared the same concern of extending school-based literacy to the popular classes. Having failed in France, and being non-existent in Brazil, stenography as a pedagogical innovation can work as a motif for reflection about the dissimilarities between the realities of Brazilian and French school cultures,2 allowing us to understand the differences in the use of the pedagogical toolbox in the late nineteenth century in both countries, and instigating us to ask how the study of an unsuccessful proposal can illuminate the history of curriculum. These are the objectives of the present chapter, which is organised into four parts. In the first, we explore the possibilities of a study in which failure is the emulator of historical narrative. In the second part, we describe the proposal for the teaching of stenography in French primary schools. Next, we discuss the reasons for its failure, throwing light on the practices of French schools. The final part reflects on the absence of a similar debate in Brazil.

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Failure as a historical object The interest in failure is not a characteristic of most historical studies, particularly of those that venture into yesterday in search of explanations and solutions for today. Perceived as obstacle, the discontinuous is a fatality external to the historical discourse that needs to be reduced, since it denounces in reversal the limit of the power of history as explanation of the present in its tight and tangible bond to the past. Reader of Canguilhem and Bachelard, Foucault3 notices, however, in the discontinuous not the absence but the possibility of giving back to the enunciated the singularity of its emergence. Employing the concepts of discontinuity, rupture and series implies for Foucault4 a negation with the purpose of freeing the historian from four notions that diversify the theme of continuity. The first of them is the notion of tradition, which intends, by giving a singular temporal importance to a group of phenomena, at once successive and analogous, to diminish the difference characteristic of any start to hark back indefinitely in the designation of an ­origin, thereby reducing all novelty to a background of permanence associated to the merit or genius of individuals. The second notion is that of influence, which by attributing to facts a support of transmission and communication, establishes a causal process by similarity or repetition, linking through time units defined as individuals, works or theories. Evolution is the third notion to be negated, given that it allows regrouping in a succession the scattered happenings, related to a single organising principle, an outline of the future unity, and controller of time through a continuously reversible relation between origin and becoming. The fourth and last notion consists in the mentality or spirit that allows establishing between simultaneous and successive phenomena of an era a community of sense, making emerge as unity and explanation the sovereignty of a collective conscience. The first three notions, namely tradition, influence and evolution, are recurrently employed by studies in the field of the history of education. The tradition frequently associated to the teaching practice serves as explanation criterion to affirm the success of certain school procedures but, mainly, to accuse the teaching community of obstructing the changes proposed by educational reforms, attributing to the body of teachers the ambiguous property of being, sometimes, a keeper of the success of school, but often the reason for failure thanks to the conservatism of their attitude. This tradition, generally more negative than positive, is not, however, seen as an invented tradition, to use Hobsbawm’s phrase,5 which consists in the repertoire of practices regulated by tacit or openly accepted rules of a ritual or symbolic nature with the objective of inculcating values and norms of behaviour through repetition and continuity with the past, but which ensure certain corporativism, and confer on the teaching community an identity locus. Influence emerges, particularly in studies in the history of education in Brazil, also assuming the ambiguous position of reason for pedagogical progress, through the incorporation of foreign theories, and of the cause of failure in

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Brazilian schools, through the same incorporation being treated as acritical. The accusation comes connected to an alleged national incapacity of producing indigenous knowledge adequate to the Brazilian reality, remaining forever dependent on developed countries. Finally, evolution appears as justification for the current state of Brazilian education, referring to yesterday as the objective cause of the problems identified today, thereby collecting a succession of scattered events and delegating to the past the same group of worries identified in the present. In this sense, current school is identical to the past one in formal organisation, materials, knowledges and practices, and shares with it the same difficulties, clouding the singularity of historical events, and condemning yesterday to a reiteration of today. The innovations that achieved success and managed to resist historical time, leaving their marks, constitute a school memory, permanently investigated because it is conceived as founding pedagogical evolution. The study of projects that failed or did not leave marks in this memory is largely forsaken. It is not easy to find the traces of pedagogical failures, or to understand their reasons. Their investigation is not evident, since the past is looked upon from the viewpoint of the pressure of the present. But the study of the failure of some projects not only invites an exploration of the historical conditions of their happening, their genealogy, but also highlights irregularities, indexes of the contributions operated in the apparently homogeneous landscape of yesterday. It therefore allows seeing the past in its alterity to the present, and understanding different facets of the schooling process. Starting from the refusal of the notions of influence, evolution and tradition, such as they emerge in the Brazilian educational scene, we intend to see the history of Brazilian and French primary schools in their discontinuity. We seek to understand the circulation of cultural models as resulting from the passage of people and object between worlds, resorting to contributions from transnational history; and to conceive schools and their cultures as singular social historical realities constituted by the imposition of knowledges and prescription of practices, and by their creative appropriation by the different subjects of schooling.

Stenography and the teaching of writing in French primary schools The proposal of teaching stenography in French primary schools reached the pages of the JDI more forcefully in 1891. Created in 1858 and targeted at primary teachers, the journal proposed to compensate the exclusively pedagogical bias of publications by the Ministry of Public Instruction, offering teachers a journal of a political, pedagogical and practical nature.6 Published weekly on Sundays, each number was accompanied by a supplement called Pédagogie pratique. Devoir scolaires, solutions demandées, examens et concours, which brought indications of exercises in the various disciplines for use in the classroom.7

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The main disseminators of the teaching of stenography in the JDI were F. Fauconnier,8 public primary school teacher, stenographer and secretary of the Société Française d’enseignement par la Sténographie in 1897, and F. David,9 primary school inspector and president of the same society since 1891. At first, it was Fauconnier who carried forth the debate. After 1 October, with the launching of L’enseignement sténographique, a bimonthly journal dedicated to disseminating stenography as quick writing for the reproduction of words and as a phonetic script applicable to teaching at every level,10 F. David took on the preparation of articles for the JDI. The introduction of the theme of stenography on the pages of the JDI followed a carefully outlined logic. After the first articles of dissemination, in which the characterisation of the teaching of stenography was accompanied by the defence of its use in French primary schools, there followed texts in which the various stenographic methods were presented, and in which the schools and teachers then dedicating themselves to its teaching were listed. The idea was of building a consensus about the usefulness of stenography, and of providing its learning with a support network. Lastly, the pages of the journal brought models of lessons operationalising the previous discussion and offering elements to the pedagogical practice.11 The arguments in favour of the teaching of stenography in primary schools revolved around two core concerns: the organisation of the work of the teacher, and the systematisation of pupils’ exercises. Two other dimensions of the propaganda could be added to these aspects: the perspective of professionalisation in stenographic writing, both of teachers and of students, and the conforming to the pressing needs of modern society. The latter were more closely associated to the debate in secondary publications, such as conference reports and annals. Inside the JDI, however, they were seldom raised. It was as a support to the work of teachers and students that the argument in favour of the teaching of stenography revealed all its vitality, consolidating itself in the control of time. The expansion of programmes for primary teaching, the introduction of the preparatory course in elementary school, the various levels of student knowledge gathered in the same classroom, the encouragement of silence and discipline, were reasons frequently announced for the introduction of stenography in primary schools as an advantage to the teacher. Also, the speed of writing (copying), the expression of thought freed from the shackles of the concern with orthography (composition), and the individual rhythm in collective tasks (dictation), appeared as results expected from the learning of stenography by pupils. A primary teacher himself, Fauconnier built his rhetoric based on the common needs of teaching. The choice of the JDI as a vehicle for his ideas was not fortuitous. The journal was written by teachers, for teachers, publishing articles that tried to be in tune with the classroom daily life. Fauconnier shaped his arguments balancing theoretical reflection and practical sense, aiming at captivating readers and at responding to the various difficulties that the teaching of

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stenography presented. The first and more obvious of all was the disconcerting reaction of fellow teachers, who doubtless disturbed by the novelty of the stenographic arabesques, they would have been tempted to exclaim that this vermiform writing has no point to them, that neither they nor theirs could penetrate the mystery of the grimoire.12 Considering the existence, in French, of different spellings for the same sound, Fauconnier highlighted the difficult task of literacy, and condemned the reinforcement exercises that the school used to ensure the memorising of orthographic formulae. He particularly condemned the practice of copying, considered by him as wasted time and a source of fatigue for children, and pointed out that dictation was conducive to the reproduction of the false spelling more than to the emulation of the correct one. As a phonetic script, stenography would bring closer the sound and its graphical representation, facilitating the learning of a form of written record. Fauconnier laboured under the myth of transparent writing, of the perfect translation of the oral word, a dream of educators, since it circumvented the enormous difficulties of initiating pupils into the symbolisation of the linguistic code. He operated immersed in the absolute trust in the harmony between the graphic symbol and articulated sound, a characteristic of the time that constructed the representation of written language under the prism of phoneticism.13 The perfect translation of the sound was associated to the simplicity of the drawing of the 29 stenographic symbols, constructed with geometric elements of curves and straight lines. A simplified script, as presented by Fauconnier, it could be taught to six- or seven-year-olds even before orthographic writing. Such rapid initiation of younger pupils into writing offered the teacher the possibility of minimising new difficulties they had been faced with since 1887,14 when the sorting of children, previously associated to infants’ schools, was implemented in rural primary schools. The issue was particularly delicate for the multi-grade schools, in which a single teacher was responsible simultaneously for three or four student levels. Harmonising the time demands of each level of teaching emerged as a pressing problem to be faced. Since the sorting of children demanded more attention from the teacher, extending to the younger pupils exercises similar to those proposed to older children reinstated a kind of order in the workings of the classroom, helping to ensure silence. The redistribution of the teacher’s time could be perfected at the other levels – elementary, secondary and higher – by use of mute dictation and intelligent copying.15 Used as an element to memorise the correct spelling of words, dictation was a frequent exercise at primary schools. Its execution and grading absorbed considerable time in the daily school routine, and presumed the simultaneous engagement of teacher and pupils in conducting the task. Occupied in carrying out the dictation and grading it, the teacher was unable

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to share his/her attention with another division of the class. The grading by peers, through the exchange of notebooks between pupils, appeared as a temporary solution in optimising time in school. Not always recommended, it had the inconvenience of reinforcing mistakes, reviving the recurring accusations concerning the dangers of cacographic exercises. Mute dictation, in Fauconnier’s discourse, freed the teacher from the task of grading, and even of the act itself of dictating, bringing as an extra advantage the sparing of larynx, voice and lungs. Making use of the blackboard, the teacher would write in stenographic symbols the words of the dictation, and each pupil in his/her own rhythm, with the help of dictionaries and grammars, would translate them in their notebooks. Not having under their eyes an orthographically incorrect writing, the pupil would learn to spell words with precision. Working silently, they did not require the teacher’s attention, who could then dedicate themselves to another division of the class. The same happened with copying. Once the oral exposition about a given topic was finished, it was usually up to the teacher to summarise the lesson on the blackboard, and up to the pupils to copy the summary in their notebooks. With stenography, not only would the teacher be rid of the activity quickly, but pupils would have the possibility of executing the copying in their own rhythm, as in the case of the dictation. Working always with good models of orthographic writing, they would not incur the mistakes sometimes caused by the distorted view of words resulting from the distance between the school benches and the wall where the blackboard was located. Being now a translation, copying was no longer a monotonous exercise, and assumed the character of “intelligent work”. Stenography could also be beneficial to the other ordinary activities in the classroom. Describing arithmetic problems, summarising lessons from various disciplines, exercises of different subjects could be written in stenographic characters by the teacher and translated by the pupils. Time was saved by the teacher, who could then better manage the class in their several divisions, becoming able to cover the new syllabuses that the 1882 Ferry Act implemented. Primary teaching now comprised: moral and civic instruction; reading and writing; French language and literature; history and geography, particularly of France; common notions of law and political economy; elements of natural sciences, physics and mathematics and their applications to agriculture, hygiene, industrial arts, manual work, and to the use of utensils in the main professions; elements of drawing, modelling and music; military exercises for the boys and needlework for the girls.16 Stenography could still help in writing exercises. Embarrassed by difficulties with grammar and orthography, pupils failed to transform writing into an expression of their thinking. Compelled to search in compendiums for the right spelling of words, they let ideas escape and found themselves bound to form. With the use of stenography, the two stages of composition where kept apart. Initially, the student would focus on the manifestation of thought,

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writing down ideas in a sketchbook in stenographic characters. Later, they would translate it into a composition notebook, writing alphabetically. In the upper classes, stenographic writing could also be used to take notes of lessons, recording the oral words of the teacher. This was a veritable revolution, if to all those advantages we also add that students, after school, find employment in offices and commercial businesses thanks to the command of quick writing. Teachers, apart from having a better instrument for studying, for recording observations and notetaking, would also have the opportunity to increase their income with occasional jobs of transcribing conferences and other works during Thursdays and Sundays (days without classes), or improving their performance in activities in prefecture offices or in preparing pedagogical reports. These were powerful reasons for recommending the teaching of stenography in normal schools, according to school inspector David.17 Lastly, taught at commerce schools, stenography would open, in the words of Lourdelet, a member of the Commerce Chamber in Paris,18 a new career to all, particularly to women. Women were being more and more sought after as secretaries among businesses and industries in the United States of America, a trend that would possibly extend to France. The arguments in defence of stenographic writing were articulated to the challenges of modern life. The invention of the telephone, the bureaucratisation of the State and the consequent need for a qualified workforce, and the increase in commercial activity and of accountancy records, emerged as characteristics of the French and world society of the second half of the nineteenth century, and demanded new answers and the dissemination by the school of knowledges that, if not new – stenographic techniques were employed in Europe already in the sixteenth century19 – , at least were in tune with contemporaneity. The creation of the bureaucratic State – a hierarchical organisation in which each employee was selected based on their competence as attested by an exam, and followed the objective duties of their function, according to a professional career whose salaries were fixed on the basis of their position in the administrative scale – occurred only in the nineteenth century in France, as in the United States and England, according to Françoise Dreyfus.20 Commerce schools, and also public schools, were called upon to help form new State civil servants, recruited on the basis of merit. All that notwithstanding, the proposal for the introduction of stenographic writing in primary schools was not, with a few exceptions, victorious. The JDI, in an unsigned article, proclaimed that 4,000 primary teachers were making use of the Duployé stenographic method,21 a universe considered small but significant within the more than 100,000 teachers in French schools at that time. The bulk of primary institutions kept themselves, however, away from stenography. Even counting on the vigorous advertising in the pedagogical journal, on the support of prestigious educators, on the use of speedwriting contests,

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like the one that took place in 1894,22 and on expositions, such as the one in 1896,23 promoted by the Société Française d’enseignement par la Sténographie, or on the publication of children’s games for the use of mothers,24 the initiative did not lay down roots.

The failure of a pedagogical innovation Although Duploye’s was the most disseminated stenographic method in France, it was not the only one. Fauconnier25 listed others, such as those of Augustin Grosselin (phonomimique); Aimé Paris, Guénin, Ch. Delon, Goret (phonostenographique); Rion and Thierry-Mieg (metagraphique). Caught in the traps of a liberal discourse, Fauconnier refrained from a more effective action in the sense of instituting a single writing method and defended freedom of choice. He did little more than repeat his colleagues who, years before in the pages of the JDI, advocated the freedom of teachers in the selection of a calligraphic method. The similarity was, however, only apparent. The laissez-faire of the argument translated into a conception of stenography as a personal script, very much in tune with the fad that, valuing writing as an expression of oneself, stimulated in the late 1800s the explosion of romance, autobiographical writings, poetry notebooks and intimate journals. But it was a script that turned out to be much more impenetrable and indecipherable than scribbles or than the different calligraphic models. It was a different graphical design, non-alphabetic, whose code needed to be shared both in school and in the whole of society. The liberal argument unfolded also into the immense possibilities of the speed of tracing. To jot ideas quickly on paper was in consonance with the feeling of acceleration brought about by modernity. The proposal of a personal script, however, a preamble to a collective orthography, was contrary to the very principle of the teaching of writing as social communication. Although the invention of the telephone freed voice from its non-phonetic simulacrum, its dissemination was still restricted to a small segment of society. The introduction of letter writing as an exercise in elementary school in the 1890s26 was testimony to the social value of writing and laid bare the fact that its communication function for the working classes was beginning to be asserted. Invested with a great social and symbolic value, writing meant entering the writing-based world, amidst a graphical culture27 known and shared even by those who could not read or write, through the diffusion of written objects and of their derivative practices. Stenography, however, did not reproduce the same signical apparatus of the alphabet. It did not have the social prestige of orthographic writing, and it did not justify the family investment of removing children from productive work or from household chores to place them in school. Teachers could hardly augment parents’ appreciation for their work by the teaching of an unknown script. It would be more prudent and reasonable to

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direct children’s efforts to the lengthy learning of French orthography, capable of producing 52 different ways to transcribe the ‘o’ sound, as denounced by a model lesson published in the JDI,28 than to appear before the families to defend the investment of classroom time in the acquisition of a script of little social value. The issue of the calligraphic model was of a minor importance, circumscribed to the pedagogical debate. Perhaps that was the content of the criticism, countered by Fourès,29 that stenography was inimical to orthography and calligraphy; or of the countless letters received by Fauconnier that described it as a kind of cacography that hampered orthographic learning.30 Nevertheless, the fundamental argument that stenography would optimise the organisation of the work of teachers and students, with effects on the economy of efforts and on the increase of teachers’ health, remained viable. Considering such advantages, the public, free and mandatory school could leave to the diligent application of the Jules Ferry Act the control of school attendance, and teachers, in their own interest, would teach this stenographic script, facilitating their work in the classroom. But the question was not so simple. In 1893, in the pages of the JDI, one found an intriguing question: ‘By what means can the teacher, as far as he is concerned, ensure school attendance?’31 The answer started thus: ‘Everyone can notice that, despite the law of obligation, the good attendance of our primary schools is always a problem to be solved.’32 The author of the article proposed that in order to fight absenteeism, teachers should make themselves loved and the school attractive, bringing parents closer to their work. His argument paraded the poor parents that needed their children’s labour for the survival of the family, the indifferent parents that did not see school as necessary to economic success, and the apathetic parents that allowed their children to go to school but did not get involved in their offspring’s learning, advocating reduced homework. Converting parents to its cause was still an ongoing mission for Jules Ferry’s lay school, which disputed with the Catholic Church the influence on children’s education. The victorious end to those difficult years would only be announced in 1905 with the law separating State from Church. In the Catholic frontline, journals such as L’Éducation fought in defence of the Catholic Church orientation of children’s education, and of the power of the family to decide upon their children’s instruction. It remains to be determined whether or not the use of stenography actually made the distribution of school time more efficient for teachers and students. In the discourse of the defenders of stenographic practice, writing appeared as a high priority and a constant activity both for students and for their teachers. Was it actually the case? How much time did pupils really spend writing? Writing was performed daily in elementary classes between 9.30 and 10.00, as calligraphy. In reading classes, which extended from 8.30 to 9.30, it reappeared in the writing of some words through orthographic learning. Again, between 10.30 and 11.00, it was associated to the teaching of calculus, in

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writing down numbers. Lastly, in the afternoons, between 13.45 and 14.30, it was used in the study of French. Short dictations completed the daily written exercises.33 All this activity should not exceed half a notebook page in elementary classes.34 In secondary school, as orthographic and calligraphic training, writing was also conducted between 10.30 and 11.00. It was employed during reading and civic instruction, recitation or hygiene classes between 8.30 and 9.15; as dictation and writing in French classes between 9.15 and 10.00; and in writing down numbers and copying mathematics problems between 13.00 and 14.00.35 All these activities should cover approximately three quarters of a page. Lastly, in higher education, the additional tasks increased to one full page of written exercises36. Lessons of objects, pronunciation exercises, reading aloud, oral narratives and poems, apart from manual works, drawing, gymnastics and school games, filled the hours of a school day. Despite being constant in the school sphere and associated to various contents, writing took up only part of the daily routine, dividing with manual and bodily tasks and with oral expression the whole of daily activities. The gains from learning stenography might not compensate its cost. At any rate, the tedious task of correcting notebooks remained the same. The teacher could not get rid of it completely because, in the monthly notebooks, the bottom of each page should contain the name of the pupil and the teacher’s signature. Along the sides of the pages, the marks in red ink revealed the teacher’s corrections. Even if the daily notebooks could be corrected by the pupils themselves, the monthly notebooks required the teacher’s revision.37 As professional knowledge, stenography would not achieve significant dissemination. Whilst the surge in literacy of the nineteenth century can be associated to the modernisation of the State and to the acceleration of the economy in France, the rationalisation of state bureaucracy was made possible also by the standardisation of work, through the proliferation of printed forms, already present in the administrative culture since the sixteenth century as manuscripts, but which in the nineteenth century engendered the predominance of a particular administrative writing.38 The simplification of written records by the use of forms, and the introduction of the typewriter, invented in the 1870s, relegated stenography to a peculiar script difficult to decipher, chiefly disseminated in commercial schools as professional knowledge. And finally, with regard to the difficult learning of orthography, the issue involved two dimensions. On the one hand, the statement that stenography operated the perfect transcription of a sound into a sign, as proposed by Fauconnier, who confused letters with represented sound, was fallacious, neglecting numerous phonetic problems. First, it assumed that students did not have any difficulty in identifying words, distinguishing the liaisons, which was possible only for the older students, already accustomed to recognising semantic units. Second, it confused letter with represented sound. This was the case, for example, with the I, which could code both the [i] sound, as in fil, and the [j] sound, as in lièvre.

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Between 1830 and 1850, every primary school teacher in France had acquired a knowledge of orthography and grammar.39 The teaching of that knowledge in primary schools by the new generation of teachers had meant not only the beginning of lay education in France, but also the constitution of those disciplines as school disciplines. School learning tended to freeze orthography, giving it a pattern. At the same time, orthography achieved the symbolic status of a social distinction. In the latter half of the 1800s, ignorance of orthography became tantamount to lack of culture for French society. To make its acquisition easier, since French orthography relies on an understanding of grammar, a new grammar theory, created inside public schools, and not linked to linguistics, but related to a practical knowledge – functional theory – was disseminated, and eventually became hegemonic. It was, therefore, from within school culture itself that the solution to the problem of teaching orthography emerged. In this sense, the defence of stenography represented a movement contrary to the group of professional teachers who, by distinguishing themselves socially by their ability to write correctly, had not only achieved being recognised as an educated person, but sometimes had also been promoted to a post of secretary of the prefecture of small towns. In the invented tradition40 among French primary teachers, orthography was a sign of prestige and of sprit de corpus.

The teaching of writing in Brazilian primary schools: Similarities and contrasts Even if the discussion about the teaching of stenography in primary schools was not in the pages of Brazilian journals, it would not be correct to assert a distinction between the pedagogical debates in Brazil and in France at that time, concerning the learning of writing in schools. Recommendations about school furniture, the adequate positioning of the student’s body during the act of writing, the use of notebooks and, later, calligraphic models, as well as arguments in defence of analytical methods for the teaching of writing (and of reading), permeated French as well as Brazilian journals. Attention to school furniture more adequate to the body of pupils was exhorted in the Revue Pédagogique in 1879, appeared in the advertisements of objects and furniture in the final pages of the JDI in the 1880s and 1890s, and emerged in Rui Barbosa’s assessments41 in 1883, as well as in the textbook written by Camillo Passalacqua, a teacher from the Normal School of São Paulo, published in 1887.42 The discussion about the analytical method for the teaching of writing (and of reading) was announced in a similar fashion. Brazilian authors, such as João Kopke,43 as well as foreign ones, such as H. Kiddle, T. Harrison and N.A. Calkins,44 were published by the Revista Pedagógica between 1890 and 1891. The diffusion of the intuitive method was promoted in the A Eschola Pública, in models of lessons that intended to change the teaching practice through the offering of examples. In 1891, the JDI answered the question proposed to

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teachers about ‘what inconveniences are to be foreseen and what abuses are to be avoided in the use, so good in itself, of the lessons of things’.45 The defence of vertical calligraphy, present in the Annuário do Estado de São Paulo in 1910,46 but already current in 1906,47 was also thematised in various articles on the distinction of a French national writing existing in the Revue Pédagogique and in the JDI in the 1880s. The Manuel Général de l’Instruction Primaire, written by A. Chevallereau, in its 1910 edition, proposed vertical writing as the solution to the problems of myopia and scoliosis in students, along the same lines as those of the Annuário. The similarity between the debates circulated simultaneously in Brazil and in France indicated the parallel constitutions of primary school practices in both countries. Indeed, the 1800s had been prolific in inventions which, when introduced at schools, had produced new processes and constituted new knowledges; and particularly successful in their diffusion. The Universal Expositions, which had been organised since 1851 in various countries around Europe, and in the USA, served as a magnet for educators from all over the world, and as a showcase for pedagogical innovations.48 The schools opened themselves to the exhibition of school-related material, be it furniture, students’ productions or other materials. The documentation collected and produced for the 1878 Exposition in France gave origin to the Musée Pédagogique, conceived as a repertoire and storage for French school museums. The 1889 Exposition, also in France, served as a model for the establishment of the Pedagogium in Brazil in 1890, with its Pedagogical Museum, similar in all aspects to the French version: in its interest in the preservation of an archive about public school; for each association to have a library of support to teachers; for the publishing of the Revista Pedagógica, which took its name from the French Revue Pédagogique; and by the publication of the report Memórias e documentos, inspired by the Memoires et documents scolaires. These were ideas that had been collected by educator Joaquim Menezes Vieira, Brazilian delegate to the Congrès International de L’Enseignement Primaire and introduced in Brazil. More than an importation, the episode revealed the international circulation of ideas, as delegates, educators from various countries, visited the Expositions to get in touch with foreign novelties, and to exhibit national products. The visibility of education systems and the progress of each country in terms of instruction were the mottos of the spectacle. A vast showcase for nations, the Universal Expositions served both as demonstration of each country’s power and as praise to the human genius. The construction of the Tour Eiffel, built specifically for the 1889 Exposition, was a significant example. Other examples were the 16 rooms of the first floor of the Palais des Arts Libéraux solely dedicated by the Ministry of Public Instruction to an exhibition on the French primary school.49 Among the various objects exhibited therein were the monthly notebooks of pupils and the monograph La sténographie appliquée a l’enseignement primaire, published under the auspices of the Ministry.50 While the collection of

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monthly notebooks would inspire similar legislation in Brazil, the advantages of stenography would be relegated to oblivion. The January 1891 edition of the Revista Pedagógica brought the news about the proposal by Menezes de Vieira to the General Inspector of Public Instruction in Brazil of distributing to each pupil in public primary schools a notebook to be used for the first task of each month, during the period of the full course that they must attend. This work shall be written in the classroom, without external help, and will be used to demonstrate the sequencing of exercises and to evaluate the pupil’s progress. The notebook shall be archived at the school.51 Two months later, the same journal published the Regulations for public primary schools,52 establishing the distribution of the monthly notebooks to the students. At the time, public primary instruction in Brazil was carried out in multi-grade classrooms, in which a single teacher oversaw several levels of teaching. Single-grade classrooms would not reach São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro until two years later, in 1893. The introduction of the monthly notebook would therefore contribute not only as a record of students’ activities, but also as a control of teachers’ work, bringing together the scattered ruled pages in a single object that revealed the daily (weekly and monthly) sequence of the teaching dynamics (the subjects taught, the exercises supplied and the grading practices). The proposal of stenography did not have the same relevance. In a society in which the knowledge of writing was restricted to a particular social segment, either as consequence of the recently abolished slavery (1888) or of poverty,53 writing had a social and symbolic value even higher than in France. Command of writing, even if with orthographic mistakes, was a sign of social and political distinction. In 1881, with the Saraiva Act, later reiterated by the 1891 Constitution, illiterate people were forbidden to vote.54 Disseminating stenography appeared, therefore, inadequate in the mediation between school knowledge and social use. It also seemed unnecessary as a phonetic resource to orthography. Displaying a closer correspondence between grapheme and phoneme, albeit not a perfect translation of sound into sign, Brazilian orthography offered lesser challenges than the French one for the school learning of the linguistic code. Although grammar and the functional theory in Brazil also appeared as indispensable resources for the good performance of writing, it was with the care around pronunciation that lessons began. Making children pronounce syllables correctly was the first concern of the teacher. Without speaking within the standards of cultured language children could not establish the connection between sound and sign, nor could they write well within the framework of a phonetic understanding of the written language. But the correct pronunciation also served as social

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distinction. The marks of orality inscribed in the popular appropriation of language was associated to the stereotype of the uncultured Brazilian. The homogenisation of speech was also articulated with the affirmation of the national. The investment, therefore, included the growing contingent of immigrants arriving in Brazil since the mid-nineteenth century, intensified at the turn of the 1800s by the immigration stimulated for the replacement of the slave workforce in farms. Between 1884 and 1900, approximately 1,580,000 immigrants arrived in Brazil coming from Italy (73%), Spain (11%) and Portugal (10%), among other countries.55 Dealing with foreign students on the school benches raised concerns about the propagation of the Portuguese language, and about the dissemination of national values. The teaching of the language took centre stage among the repertoire of strategies implemented for the incorporation of the immigrant into Brazilian society. In an article published by the Revista de ensino in 1902, the school inspector Emilio Mario Arantes stated that in São Paulo, ‘It is known that there are entire streets here where one does not hear a single word in our language’.56 Among the consequences of the school teaching of good pronunciation by the end of the 1800s in Brazil, one can identify three effects concerning school culture in the constant movement that it made to appropriate and interfere in the social universe. The first, of a linguistic nature, signified the assumption of the cultured language, shared by the elite, as the standard Brazilian language. The second, cultural, implied the valuation of a correct speech, learned at schools and constituted in relation to the written culture, to the detriment of another speech, seen as incorrect, disseminated socially by an oral culture (attributing to the schooled child a higher social position in relation to the non-schooled child). The third, pedagogical, stimulated the propagation of the phonetic methods (of a synthetic character) of literacy in lieu of the celebrated analytical methods, and caused the creation of a new method of teaching the language in which the advantages of both methods combined: the analytical-synthetic. As learning disseminated by the primary school, stenography was never proposed in Brazil. However, in the 1910s, one can find traces of the teaching of tachygraphy in secondary education courses, such as the Secondary Normal School of São Paulo and the Anglo Brazilian Gymnasium, as well as the indication of the book by Andersen, Systema Tachigraphia in the 1918 Anuário de Ensino do Estado de São Paulo. It took the character of professional knowledge and aimed at education for a job in commerce (and in the state bureaucracy).

Final Comments At the heart of the discussion about the school teaching of stenography in France was the organisation and distribution of school time. The specifically linguistic question appeared as a side issue. Neither orthography nor grammar were in question, and stenography served as a transitory script that should facilitate the acquisition of alphabetic writing. The central point of the efficiency of

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schools seemed to emerge also in the Brazilian proposal of the monthly notebooks. It was the control of the work of the teacher and the verification of the adequate use of school time that raised the interest in the dissemination of this writing support. These observations bring the two education systems closer to each other, allowing us to see that they had a common set of concerns, whilst also stimulating the understanding of the different challenges primary schools underwent in those countries at the crossroads between the demands of teaching and social and political necessities. By analysing a project of innovation that failed, we intended to perceive how, within a given situation, educators addressed their colleagues and tried to respond to what they knew, which was their professional disquiet. We aimed equally at discerning the forces of resistance, material and ideological, theoretical or practical, that led the project to failure, in the certainty that the outlook that starts from successful innovations is not always capable of observing the dispersion of historical factors, understood in the singularity of the moment of their emergence. Lastly, we wished to understand the school based on its internal workings, in the practices it disseminated with the purpose of responding to the demands of the daily work in the classroom, and on the relationships it established with the society in which it was immersed. All of these issues concern directly the way curriculum is envisaged by each society and implemented in each country through history, taking into account the school cultures and the way subjects play with the theories and the materialities at their disposal. Throwing light on the failure of a pedagogical proposal may allow us to recognise aspects of the history of curriculum obliterated by the time and the analysis that focus only on the successful initiatives, minimising other dimensions of the debates and undervaluing projects that, sometimes, persist in latency, to reemerge later on.

Notes 1 Delphine Gardey, Ecrire, calculer, classer. Comment une révolution de papier a transformé les sociétés contemporaines (1800–1940) (Paris: La Découverte, 2008). 2 On the concept of school culture, see Diana Vidal and André Paulilo, School Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 3 Michel Foucault, A arqueologia do saber (Rio de Janeiro: Forense-Universitária, 1986). 4 Foucault, A arqueologia do saber, 23–4. 5 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introdução: a invenção das tradições,” in A invenção das tradições, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1997), 9–23. 6 Pénélope Caspard-Karydis and others, “La presse d’éducation et enseignement (XVIIIe siècle –1940),” in Répertoire analytique établi sous la direction, ed. de P. Caspard (Paris: Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique/Éditions du CNRS, 1984), 390. 7 The digitalised collection for the 1858–1940 period is available online: http://numerisation.bibliotheque-diderot.fr/R/2CK3RCB42YCQ4NS844V4N5IKYGXNXC UX9CA6PLJK99MRED7SJG-00036?func=collections&collection_id=1530&pds_ handle=GUEST. Accessed 28 June 2018. The JDI is still published. 8 The arguments publicised by JDI were organised in F. Fauconnier, Histoire et rôle de la sténographie à l’École primaire. Mémoire. Congress sténographique de 1897 (Arras: Impr. F. Guyot, 1897).

196  Diana Gonçalves Vidal 9 David also synthesised his arguments in F. David, La sténographie à l’École Normale (Arras: Impr. F. Guyot, 1893?). 10 JDI 34, no. 41 (11/10/1891): 720. 11 Other educational periodicals, such as the Journal de l’ensignement, Manuel Général de L’Instruction Primaire and the Revue Pédagogique, also joined the debate about the adequateness of the method, collecting articles and letters from their disseminators. However, the JDI was the privilege stage for the discussion – the reason why it became the main source for the present study. 12 Choquenet, Rapport, Exposition Sténographique d’Arras. Distribution des récompenses (23 août 1896) (Arras: Imprimerie Rohard Courtin, 1896), 4. 13 Anne-Marie Christin, Histoire de l’écriture (Paris: Flammarion, 2001), 9. 14 JDI, 36, no. 19 (7/5/1893): 292. 15 JDI, 34, no. 19 (10/5/1891): 363–4. 16 Ferdinand Buisson, Dictionnaire de pédagogie et d’instruction primaire. Établissement du texte, présentation et notes par Pierre Hayat (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2000), 186. 17 David, La sténographie à l’École Normale, 5. 18 David, La sténographie à l’École Normale, 6. 19 Roger Chartier, “Culture écrite et littérature à l’âge moderne,” Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 56e. année, nr. 4–5, juil./oct. 2001, p. 799. 20 François Dreyfus, L’invention de la bureaucratie. Servir l’État en France, en Grande-Bretagne et aux États-Unis (XVIIIe-XXe siècle) (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 2000). 21 JDI, 36, no. 25 (18/6/1893): 400. 22 JDI, 37, no. 28 (8/4/1894) : 447–8. 23 Choquenet, Rapport. 24 Émile Forlin Herrmann, Méthode d’Enseignement ante-scolaire. Sténographie des enfants (Paris: Livrairie de L’Enseignement Ante-Scolaire, no date). 25 JDI, 34, no. 27 (5/7/1891): 496–7 ; and JDI no. 29 (19/7/1891): 528–9. 26 Jean Hebrard, “La lettre représentée. Les pratiques épistolaires populaires dans les récits de vie ouvriers et paysan,” in La correspondance. Les usages de la lettre au XIXe siècle, ed. Roger Chartier (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 280. 27 Chartier, ‘Culture écrite et littérature à l’âge moderne’, 785. 28 JDI, 34, no. 39 (27/9/1891): 697. 29 JDI, 34, no. 29 (19/7/1891): 529. 30 JDI, 37, no. 12 (17/12/1893). 31 JDI, 36, no. 11 (12/3/1893). 32 Ibid. 33 JDI, 36, no. 22 (28/5/1893), 340, and JDI, 36, no. 23 (4/6/1893), 356. 34 JDI, 34, no. 47 (22/11/1891), 825. 35 Ibid, 825. 36 JDI, 34, no. 47 (22 November 1891). 37 JDI, 34, no. 47, (22 November 1891), 825. 38 Rita Martilhas, “‘A tantos dias do tal mes pasou tal mandado, ou tal dilligençia pera tal cousa’. Aspectos históricos da escrita administrativa,” in Literacia e sociedade. Contribuições pluridisciplinares, eds. Maria Delgado-Martins, Armanda Costa and Glória Ramalho (Lisboa: Caminho, 2000), 185–207. 39 André Chervel, La composition française au XIXe. siècle dans le principaux concours et examens de l’agrégation au baccalauréat (Paris:Vuibert/INRP, 1999), 186–7. 40 Hobsbawm, ‘Introdução: a invenção das tradições’; Agustin Escolano Benito, “Los professores en la história,” in Os professores na história, ed. Justino Magalhães and Agustin Escolano Benito (Porto: Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências da Educação, 1999), 15–28. 41 Rui Barbosa, Reforma do ensino primário e várias instituições complementares da instrução pública (Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Saúde, 1947 [1883]), vol. X, books I to IV, 144.

The failure of a pedagogical innovation  197 42 Camilo Passalacqua, Pedagogia e methodologia (theoria e pratica) (São Paulo: Typ. A vapor de Jorge Seckler & Comp., 1887). [Pedagogy and methodology (theory and practice)] 43 João Kopke, “O livro das Mães. Ensino da leitura analytica,” Revista Pedagógica 1 (1890): 78–86. H. Kiddle, T. Harrison and Norman A. Calkins, “Curso graduado de instrução e manual de métodos para uso dos mestres,” in Revista Pedagógica 1 (1891): 38–44. 44 H. Kiddle, T. Harrison and Norman A. Calkins, “Curso graduado de instrução e manual de métodos para uso dos mestres,” Revista Pedagógica (1891): 38–44. 45 JDI, 34, no 6 (1891): 166–7. 46 Annuário do Estado de São Paulo. São Paulo (1909–1910): 177. 47 Luciano Faria Filho, “Instrução elementar no século XIX,” in 500 anos de educação no Brasil, ed. Eliane Lopes, Luciano Faria Filho and Cynthia Veiga (Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2000), 135–50. 48 See also in this volume Mari Hiraoka, ‘Transnational information flow and domestic concerns: Japanese educational exhibits in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain’. 49 Congrès International de L ‘Enseignement Primaire, Mémoires et documents scolaires publiés par le Musée Pédagogique (Paris: CH. Delagrave, 1889). 50 JDI, 34, no 22 (31 May 1891). 51 Revista Pedagógica, Rio de Janeiro (1890), 248. (Our translation.) 52 Revista Pedagógica, Rio de Janeiro (1891), 386 and ff. 53 The 1872 census declared a slave population of 1,200,000 for an overall population estimated at 9,930,478 inhabitants. The same census revealed that the illiteracy rate for the whole of the country was of 82.3% for people five years old or older, a situation that remained unchanged at least until the second Census conducted in 1890 (82.6%). Alceu Ferraro and Daniel Kreidlow, 2004. “Analfabetismo no Brasil: configuração e gênese das desigualdades regionais,” Educação & Realidade 29, no. 2: 179–200, jul/dez, p. 182. 54 It was not until the 1988 Constitution that illiterate people had guaranteed the right to vote in Brazil. 55 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, ed., História geral da civilização brasileira (São Paulo: DIFEL, 1978), vol. 2, tomo III, 308. 56 Mario Arantes, “Obrigatoriedade do ensino da língua portuguesa nos collegios particulares II,” Revista de ensino 1, no. 4 (1902): 583.

11 The two faces of the same coin National and individual refraction in curriculum policies in Portugal Elsa Estrela

Introduction Knowledge has been assumed as a key resource of contemporary societies, as well as a form of capital, which has determined its production and the increase in structures and institutions that produce it. These structures and the knowledge-producing processes are continually analysed and assessed, considering that knowledge is also seen as a form of regulation and as a solution to social problems. We see knowledge as a continous social process which comprehends the construction of structures but also their reconfiguration, reinterpretation and the restructuring of the common representation of reality, where social and cultural contexts play a crucial role. This change in the concept of knowledge derives, above all, from the crisis of the model of scientific rationality which comes across as profound and irreversible, and builds both on different theoretical premises and on various social conditions, which include the complementary need for knowledge, that is to say, for the knowledge of things to be complemented ‘by the knowledge of our own selves’.1 In the last decades of the twentieth century we witnessed the emergence of a new mode of producing knowledge derived from the social changes that have given rise to new mechanisms and places of producing and disseminating knowledge, as well as the advent of new players. Indeed, what Dale2 describes as learning done today ‘anywhere, any time, by any provider’ will be based on the coexistence of two knowledge-producing modes – Mode 1 and Mode 2 – which, being distinct and contemporary, see today that the conditions have been created for new developments of Mode 2 of knowledge production.3 In Mode 1, issues are proposed and solved by a specific community and are related to traditional, disciplinary, homogenous and mainly cognitive knowledge, with a hierarchical and permanent organisation, controlled by peers. Conversely, the knowledge produced in Mode 2 has its problems proposed and solved in the context of application, it is transdisciplinary and heterogeneous, with a hierarchical and transitory organisation, controlled by different actors, which makes it more social, responsible and reflexive. In the context of the centrality of curriculum knowledge in individual development,4 we drew on a multilevel approach, enriched by the concept

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of refraction, bearing in mind that we understand knowledge and curricular policies as a process, a continuum, produced by multiple actors acting in various fields, part of an economic, political and social context which must take on an analytical form. On the other hand, we believe that educational change, and curricular change in particular, must be understood taking into account patterns and forces of change which provide different paths according to the historic and cultural reality of each region, country or even professional field. This implies that all curricular policies are refracted whenever there is a change of level or of players, and we must accept that this refraction occurs even at the level of the classroom with each one of the practitioners working in it. We therefore take into account not only national trajectories but also the individual trajectories of each education player being analysed. As identified in a previous publication,6 the OECD, international mediator of knowledge,7 has become the leading and most influential think tank on education and is widely acknowledged as such. From it emerges new forms of governance, which exclude actors and interests involved in the education contexts both from the process of designing and from the process of assessing policies, thus reinforcing a technocratic approach to education. In fact, different authors recognise its influence in the design and assessment of the public policies on education of participating countries8 and in the launch of education reforms.9 The education policies of Portugal, a semiperipheral country of the modern world system, where the crisis of mass school is simultaneous with its consolidation,10 have been successively marked by the intervention of the international organisations, not only within the scope of the World Bank, but especially of the OECD and the European Union, as it is located on a platform where the influences of international entities, with mandates that are not antagonistic but rather complementary, that intersect and blend. Although Pereyra11 claims that resorting to the studies carried out by these organisations is primarily used as a form of legitimising national policies, Teodoro12 emphasises that these projects play a key role in normalising national education policies, since they set an agenda which determines not only the priorities but also how problems are presented, thus constituting a way of defining a mandate. This study involved the analysis of the latest OECD projects to identify the curricular proposals presented therein. The analysis of the curricular policies developed in the last Portuguese constitutional government was carried out on the basis of three projects, as well as of an interview of the political actor responsible for them. In the follow-up process to the Project for Autonomy and Curriculum Flexibility that we carried out in two school clusters, their curricular options were analysed and the narratives of the professional lives of three teachers from different generations were constructed. The goal was to identify the relation between the policies proposed and the teachers’ work, especially regarding the processes of change and curricular innovation. These narratives are presented in portrayals which enable us to characterise each teacher’s work and understand its relationship with the global proposals. 5

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In this way, we completed our methodological approach with the histories of the teachers’ professional lives, pertinent in this context of individualised society, and a key tool to understand educational change, since they are taken as refraction of the history of the curriculum as well as of the social, political and economic changes.

The educational think tank: The OECD’s agenda The role of the OECD in education

The development project started after the Second World War, which had, in the Nation-State, its favoured space, shifted the economic integration to a global sphere, and this has resulted in a growing dependency of national economies vis-à-vis world markets. This project of hegemonic globalisation is anchored in neoliberalism13 and the global times in which we live represent a paradigmatic transition, characterised by the ultimate disappearance of the sociocultural paradigm of modernity before capitalism ceased to be dominant, meaning that regulation and emancipation nearly merged as a consequence of reducing modern emancipation to the cognitive-instrumental rationality of science and reducing modern regulation to the market principle.14 In this sense, and since knowledge is presented as the main driver of the economy, education was placed at the centre of public policies, and a profound transformation of the education systems was upheld so that the future could be assured.15 Thus, school systems are affected and suffer the impact of this project, insofar as it is underpinned by a new notion of development, qualified as sustainable, which again brings to the fore the theory of human capital. Dale16 argues that the more visible effects of globalisation in education policies are the consequence of the reorganisation of the state’s priorities focussing on increased competitiveness, attracting investment from transnational corporations into their territories. Nevertheless, its effects are indirect, given the different location of each nation in the world system. Considering, on the one hand, the existence of a ‘Common World Culture’17 and, on the other hand, a ‘globally structured agenda on education’,18 the crux of educational governance remains to a large extent under the control of the state, but new forms of reconfiguring it can be envisaged. The regulation mode is now strongly influenced by supranational forces, as well as by political-economic ones and it is the interests of the global economy which set the parameters for education and the curriculum, represented by such international organisations as the OECD and the EU. According to Teodoro (2001a), it is the large international statistical projects, particularly the project Indicators of Educational Systems (INES), of the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), that have fostered the development of a global rationalisation, as well as of an imperative of comparability and a new consensus on education policies.

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In this way, the assumptions on curriculum have been deeply challenged by the social forces associated with globalisation, and this has implications regarding its control. These changes are producing a significant transformation in the curriculum, since what becomes central is its form and place in educational processes and not so much updating its contents as recipient.19 The new narratives and the uncertainty which characterises today’s world have required the transformation of the concept of curriculum as a body of knowledge to be taught in a planned, sequential way, into a set of skills that must be developed ad hoc, as and when they become necessary. We thus now have personalised learning to be achieved through lifelong learning, ‘anywhere, anytime, by any provider’.20 The projects and their content

Confronted with a reality of quick changes and characterised by volatility, complexity and ambiguity, the OECD has undertaken projects that aim to rebuild a world education system capable of responding to the uncertainty of the future with some security, as well as facing the social, economic and environmental challenges that we have to take up. Above all, they aim to help each country define and organise knowledge, skills, attitudes and the values young people need to shape their world and thrive.21 In 1996, the OECD set out a global agenda for education defining knowledge as codified, flexible and transferable, based on competencies and built in a network. The Definition and Selection of Competencies: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations (DeSeCo) project, which started in 1997, seeks to define the concept of competency and what the relevant competencies are so that young people may face their challenges. It has defined three broad categories:22 (1) using tools interactively, which includes language, symbols and texts; knowledege and information and technology; (2) interacting in a socially heterogeneous group, meaning to relate well to ohers, to be co-operative and work in teams and to manage and resolve conflicts; (3) acting autonomously within the big picture; to form and conduct life plans and personal projects and to defend and assert rights, interests, limits and needs. This study was continued in the project The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030, which defines three further categories of competencies, called transformative competencies:23 (4) creating new value; (5) reconciling tensions and dilemmas; (6) taking responsibility.

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Besides defining competency as something which ‘implies more than just the acquisition of knowledge and skills; it involves the mobilisation of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to meet complex demands’,24 the OECD also explains the relation between competencies, skills, and attitudes and values, identifying cognitive and metacognitive skills (critical thinking, creative thinking, learning to learn, and self-regulation), social and emotional skills (empathy, self-efficacy and collaboration); and practical and physical skills (e.g. using new information and communication technology devices). This project targets school education, both general and vocational, while recognising the importance of learning progressions and a lifelong learning continuum. It still tries to identify the competencies that shape the future: it is about acting rather than being acted upon, shaping rather than being shaped, and choosing rather than accepting choices decided by others. Its second phase began in 2019, after co-creating a conceptual learning framework for 2030 and conducting an international curriculum analysis. In this new phase, the aims are to build common ground on the principles and instructional designs that can effectively implement intended curricula and to explore the types of competencies and profiles of teachers who can support all learners to achieve the desired outcomes for their future success. There is a similarity regarding the work methodology laid out by the Center for Curriculum Redesign25 since this centre has been engaging in the analysis of systemic education patterns and in assessments, so that it can then devote itself to redesigning curriculum and teachers’ professional development. The fact that these two institutions work together is not unrelated to this parallelism. The Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies project is based on the development, activation and effective use of skills that can contribute both to economic prosperity and to social cohesion.26 Indeed, skills are presented as the most important ‘currency’ of the twenty-first century and, although they are not confined to the space of formal education, their development is put forward as critical in the education system in that it will enable individuals not only to integrate the labour market according to their expectations, but also to evolve in the development of more complex skills. And these, too, are crucial for their future, as individuals and as members of a community. This is, above all, a project which sets up a very strong correlation between the development of skills and the attainment of better employment, which will ultimately allow each individual to live better, more content, happier. A set of cognitive (literacy, numeracy), social and emotional, physical and practice and ‘soft’ (communicating, influencing, negotiating) skills is identified and, within the scope of The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the so-called foundation skills are highlighted: problem-solving in technology-rich environments, literacy, numeracy and reading components. The third project, Innovative Learning Environments (ILE),27 has analysed contexts and dynamics all over the world to identify the innovative ones where students learn better. It comprises three strands: learning research, innovative

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cases, and implementation and change. The project aimed at producing informed knowledge to promote innovation at micro level, understanding the learning environment as neutral; to create a compound network of learning environments at meso level; and to develop a meta level as the aggregation of all learning environments and connected arrangements. These learning evironments result from a collaborative interaction of different stakeholders and work on complex systems that interlock with each other. A learning environment is presented as •• •• ••

an organic whole embracing the experience of organised learning for given groups of learners around a single ‘pedagogical core’ – larger than particular classes or programmes; including the activity and the outcomes of learning, rather than being just a location where learning takes place; enjoying a common leadership making design decisions about how best to optimise learning for its participants.

In addition to the three innovation dimensions – having a pedagogical core, becoming ‘formative’ organisations with a strong learning leadership, and being open to partnerships – the project also frames seven learning principles of these environments based on: •• •• •• •• •• •• ••

focus on learning social and collaborative learning attunement to learners’ motivations and their emotions sensibility to individual differences balanced performance standards regarding each student strong emphasis on formative assessment horizontal connectedness across learning activities/subjects in and out-of-school

All these projects have led to the OECD’s Learning Framework 2030 defining a set of competences based on knowledge, skills and attitudes that will generate action, reflection and anticipation in students in their relation with parents, community, teachers and peers, enabling them to create new value, take responsibility and reconcile tensions and dilemmas based on different kinds of literacy and numeracy. The curricular proposals emerging from these projects are based on the so-called active pedagogies, which imply a curriculum based on competences that will be developed in and outside the school environment. This curriculum will also be open to the participation of different educators, and fostering constant innovation. Subject knowledge is, therefore, organised in extremely diversified ways and combined with the development of skills and attitudes in students which will enable them to acquire the necessary competencies for this unknown, uncertain and fluid world.

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These proposals of an open curriculum, integrating various components, also imply the reorganisation of the school space and teachers’ work, assuming that the learner is placed at the centre, as an individual who possesses several needs, emotions and knowledge. On the other hand, this reorganisation, which may assume different forms, is equally central to promote interdisciplinarity and collaborative work. The concept of agency is crucial in these proposals, and it is assumed for all stakeholders and in all contexts, especially for students at individual, collaborative and collective level. Nonetheless, we stress the identification between the concepts of skill and competence, emphasising their characteristics of intertransferability and comutability, since they are combined in a single definition. The concepts of skill and competence are used interchangeably in the skills strategy. Skills (or competence) are defined as the bundle of knowledge, atributes and capacities that can be learned and that enable individuals successfully and consistently perform an activity or task and can be built upon and extended through learning.28

National curriculum policies Portugal’s 21st Constitutional Government, which took office in November 2015, has been developing a national programme for innovation and curricular change, especially emphasising three actions: •• •• ••

National Programme to Promote School Success (PNPSE). Students’ Profile by the End of Compulsory Schooling. Curricular Autonomy and Flexibility Project (PAFC).

The PNPSE began in 2016 and aimed, above all, that the school and its community develop strategies to promote school success, considering their contexts and based on different pedagogic practices. To this end, schools were invited to submit strategic action plans which included teaching and learning planning, teaching and learning practices, and assessment for learning. This programme is based on the principle of territorialising education policies, which advocates that local communities, with their own contexts and cultures, are the ones who can find other learning modes which, far from being remedial, will prevent failure and school dropout. This means that it is up to the peripheral players of the education system to provide responses to the challenges faced today by schools, which implies collaborative work among all, as well as the construction of an integrating curriculum and more decentralised teaching practices. These principles would enable the focus on the local dimension, with diverse and different responses that would comprehend the social dimension.

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Regarding the second measure, approved by the Ministerial Order nº 6478/2017, of 26 July, the students’ profile is set forward as the standard for decisions to be adopted by decision-makers and education actors at the level of education and learning institutions and the entities responsible for education policies. It is a common matrix for all the schools and educational offers within the scope of compulsory schooling, namely as regards curriculum, planning, performance as well as internal and external evaluation of teaching and learning. In it, ten competencies are defined,29 from which the key learning outcomes30 of each subject are addressed. The competencies are complex combinations of knowledge, skills and attitudes; their areas are complementary, and the list does not presuppose any internal hierarchy among them. On the other hand, none of them corresponds to a specific curricular area, having in each one multiple competencies, both theoretical and practical, necessarily involved. The development of multiple literacies is assumed, such as reading and writing, numeracy and the use of information and communication technologies, seen as pillars to learning and lifelong learning, and they are presented with descriptors and operational descriptors (Figure 11.1). These competencies, together with the key learning outcomes, constitute the curricular standards for the national curriculum of Basic and Secondary

Language and Texts

Autonomy and Personal Development

Scientific and Technological Knowledge

Information and Communication

Body Awareness and Domain

Critical and Creative Thinking

Interpersonal Relationship

Reasoning and ProblemSolving

Individual and Collective Well-being and Health

Aesthetic and Artistic Sensivity

Figure 11.1 Ten competency areas in Students’ Profile by the End of Compulsory Schooling.

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Education,31 from which teaching practice must develop, grounded on a transformational, integrating and collaborative rationale. Regarding the last measure identified above, launched in the 2017/2018 academic year,32 the PAFC states the following as its main goals: •• •• •• ••

to promote social justice and equality of opportunities; to develop a set of competencies which will enable young people to build successful citizenship in the context of contemporary challenges; to develop the pedagogic differentiation to manage a flexible, contextualised curriculum; to empower teachers and the school as agents of curricular development.

In this context, the curricular structure is based on the following features: •• •• •• •• •• ••

definition of the curriculum as a set of knowledge, skills and attitudes; introduction of the Key Learning Outcomes as a way of overcoming the prescriptive curriculum; contextualised flexibility and autonomy to manage the curriculum up to 25 per cent; integrated curriculum constituted by all the school projects and activities; promotion of citizenship education; promotion of collaborative and interdisciplinary work.

This was a project which 227 schools and school clusters voluntarily joined to claim up to 25% in autonomy to manage their own curriculum, which would imply introducing not only curricular but also organisational changes. Complemented by the previous measures, this project aimed above all to foster the deliberative curricular standard with a view to constructing a more guiding and less prescriptive curriculum and develop the decision-making ability in this school dimension which, being the defining centre of the school, would also imply changes in the remaining dimensions. ‘This required a very difficult first task of verifying the essential learning outcomes in which it is basically the maturation of other programmes to leave time for these dimensions,’ confirmed the Secretary of State,33 referring to the social and emocional dimensions. On the other hand, the underlying concept of curriculum focuses on interand transdisciplinarity, assuming not just the declarative knowledge of each disciplinary area, but also the ‘how’, the learning strategies and methodologies. In this sense, the collaborative work of teachers takes on special importance as a tool, not only of curricular integration, but also of professional development. This perspective is embraced by the Secretary of State for Education, when he claims that ‘flexibility is not an end, it is an instrument. And it is an instrument for two things, that students can learn better and it is an instrument of inclusion.’ Regarding the relationship between national curricular policies and the proposals stemming from the projects of transnational organisations, the Secretary

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of State asserted that ‘Our relationship with OECD is a relationship based on reciprocity. We believe in their methodologies because they are very stable and secure. But they only give the data.’ He also acknowledges that the ‘OECD is an organisation that gives data, isn’t it? They don’t make policies. But it’s because of the work of OECD and other organisations that we have been able to set up some national policies.’

Peripheral actors: The teachers Looking at the teachers, we aimed to identify not just the change process which each school cluster has built, but also how three teachers have assumed these changes and the consequences on their work and identity. We worked with two clusters of public schools both in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and with schools from the 1st cycle of Basic Education to Secondary Education: the Braamcamp Freire School Cluster, located in the parish of Pontinha, in the Odivelas county; and the Ibn Mucana School Cluster, located in the parishes of Estoril and Alcabideche, in the Cascais county. In a training workshop, we followed 42 teachers, distributed as follows according to their years in teaching: •• •• ••

10–15 years – 8 teachers 16–25 years – 13 teachers older than 26 years – 21 teachers

The figures representing these teachers about curriculum concept stand at two opposite ends: those that see the curriculum as a set of subjects and syllabuses hierarchically organised, with clearly-defined borders; and those that assume it as a path, a guideline that fosters students’ transformation, linked to the context and constituted by competencies, knowledge and attitudes (Figures 11.2 and 11.3). However, we highlight the representation which depicts the curriculum as confinement, both for students and teachers, restrictive of individual construction for the former, and of differentiation for the latter (Figure 11.4) Regarding the change process the Braamcamp Freire School Cluster is undergoing, adhering to the PAFC was the decision of the Pedagogic Council, and it involved only its members. This body decided to start the project in every grade of the 1st cycle and in the classes of the 5th, 7th and 10th grades, subsequently organising educational teams and allocating weekly time for work meetings in the teachers’ schedule. In terms of curricular organisation, a weekly morning was assigned for the project work, albeit with the different subjects identified in teachers’ and students’ schedules. The focus of the project was set, in particular, on encouraging collaborative work between teachers as a driver of change which was intended at curricular level, namely interdisciplinary work. Concerning the change process the Ibn Mucana School Cluster is undergoing, the decision to adhere to the PAFC was made with the participation of

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Figure 11.2 Teachers’ curriculum represented as the set of subjects and syllabuses hierarchically organised.

all the teachers and involved all the classes of the 1st, 5th, 7th and 10th grades; weekly time for work meetings was allocated in teachers’ schedules. Regular meetings with parents and guardians were promoted with a view to involving them in the process. Considering curricular organisation, changes were not introduced and the focus of the project was above all on promoting the methodology of project work, both in each subject and as a tool to develop interdisciplinary work. Individual refraction

Pertinent in this context of individualised society, the teachers’ life histories are a key tool to understand education change, since they are seen as a refraction of the curriculum history, as well as of social, political and economic changes. In current times, and as Goodson points out in this book, curriculum history should take a mixed methodological approach assuming that curriculum is not

Figure 11.3 Teachers’ curriculum represented as a path, a guideline that fosters students’ transformation.

Figure 11.4 Teachers’ curriculum represented as a jail.

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only a subject matter, but is also rooted in teachers’ identity construction and their life management. In this sense, the life stories of teachers reach the dimension of life histories when they are juxtaposed to the systemic narratives, enabling the identification of interactions between the global, the national and the local in the models of curricular definition and delivery. Nóvoa34 argues that the professional and the personal cannot be separated since the training process of teachers is part of their life’s journey, which also becomes their training journey. Assuming that the practice of the defined curricular guidelines shows close relation with the life histories of their authors, Goodson35 emphasises the thematic density present in the interviews carried out with teachers. Thus, he proposes drawing portrayals with the profile, characteristics and sensitivities of the histories to be studied. Life history interviews provide a wealth of data. … A large data bank of interview transcripts can be generated in this way and the process of analysing these data is inevitably painstaking and complicated. Having then identified the major themes at work in life narratives, and having begun to employ some of these themes to conceptualise narrative character, a new stage of work can be undertaken. In many of the research studies I have been involved in, I have advocated and employed the development of detailed personal case studies or “portrayals of the most thematically dense” life histories.36 The last part of this work addresses the presentation of the professional life histories of three teachers who work in the two school clusters identified above. The portrayals presented focus on the process of change they are undergoing and experiencing. Rosário, physics and chemistry teacher, lower secondary school, late 1990s

Rosário, a physics and chemistry teacher, who started in the profession in the late 1990s, was deeply marked by the school where she first worked and began teaching. A lot comes from the first year I taught. From the experience which marked me immensely. Because I had the Marianas neighbourhood [a slum] and another neighbourhood, in Parede, of posh kids, with lots of money. […] I was lucky enough to have a very bad class and a very good class. And a colleague of mine, who was my mentor and still is my mentor today. […] We have to teach physics and chemistry, the enjoyment of physics and chemistry and the uses they have in our society and in our life. But we don’t have to teach everyone in the same way because not

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everyone wants to learn in the same way, and not everyone will use physics and chemistry in the same way. It follows that the teacher does not feel she has been influenced by the political changes that have been proposed, assuming her convictions in a personality constructed particularly from her first year on the job. No, changes in policy haven’t made me change. We have always had flexibility. We have always worked like this. We have always stood before kids who were different. So, let’s change. Let’s gather the disciplinary area, let’s gather the department and change. […] For me, it’s extremely confusing, this kind of fluctuations, the obligation of “it must be like this”. […] They don’t format so much so that I still resort to materials from the time of flexible management, which were great because it had things where you intersected with several subjects. In this respect, it hasn’t changed much. This teacher believes that bringing the concepts closer to real life is crucial for the success of learning and seeks to foster this approach. This is how they will retain and use that information. In the issues that are of interest to them. How useful it may be in the future and how I approach it and if they will understand me. Therefore, it is the kids, ultimately, and if what I am telling them will be meaningful to them. […] This is crucial, taking the things kids do. Your language is getting further and further from the kids’. [...] I’ve always made sure that the focus is the pupils. And I’ve always had it so. On the other hand, she also appreciates interdisciplinary work and teacher cooperation, which has also made her learn concepts she did not know. It’s greatly enriching, and we talk about it even today. Last year, with that 7th C class, at one point there were six of us in the room teaching. There was the Spanish teacher, because of the island … and each of us taught our own subject. […] For example, it was hard for me in some way, when I taught secondary, which is more like that, but even then, I managed to turn things around

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because I was always lucky enough to be with Mathematics, Geology and Biology teachers that were very close to me and we articulated things. The teacher acknowledges coagency in students and the need for different learning environments. For example, that story now with pollution, there are kids saying recycling. The amount of ‘Rs’. […] I can’t remember what they said anymore, but they managed to understand that there were countless verbs for the fourth ‘R’. […] Maybe different learning environments. For exemple, creating structures, which we don’t have, to actually enable flexibility: fieldtrips, visits. […] Provide the kids, all of them, with experiences in various fields. […] That I find very cute, creating different leaning environments, in a factory … for relatively young kids. If kids start to go out more, to have other experiences, that is the kind of growth you can never give them in a classroom. Rosário sees herself as a processual teacher, that is to say, one who conceptualises learning as a process and not exclusively as a product, which involves the command of every stage of the process. Indeed, we must have procedures. This is the reason I’m always talking of observation grids. I must have those records. […] I think I’m much more … how shall I say … processual and I believe that it’s necessary to study each stage. She assumes the following as guide for the teacher’s work: “Teachers’ main aim is that students can learn, be happy and accomplish some dreams”. Sandra, Portuguese and English Language teacher; 2nd cycle; early 1990s

Although she began working in the early 1990s, Sandra is a teacher deeply marked by the four years she taught at a school in the late 1990s. The school director. And the time of flexible curriculum management. We were then in a period of launching flexible management, I often say

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that was my true internship, I had to work with someone who loves the profession more than anyone can ever imagine. He lives, he breathes school. He embraces the projects, provides input, has the spunk, and he wants us to be professionals with mental creation. However, this teacher thinks that, due to political changes, it has been difficult to keep a structure of professional and curricular development as the one she had in the school mentioned above, which has forced her to ‘go with the crowd’. In this sense, she believes that school culture can be an obstacle to curricular differentiation. Now, to me maybe it already is … if I didn’t have this type of goal, which is not my goal, it is the school’s goal, isn’t it? Maybe I would … […] That is why I keep saying that this whole inclusion thing is all very well, but with this culture and mindset we won’t get anywhere. Nevertheless, she has always tried initiatives, albeit quite limited, with other teachers of her disciplinary group, and continues to consider the curriculum in a flexible and interdisciplinary manner. On the other hand, she appreciates group work and the use of technologies in the classroom as motivation tools for learning and skill development. Because funny things would emerge. Because it made them think, and it made them less egocentric as well. […] And I think that has developed right there a momentum and a different autonomy. Because they knew what they wanted to work on. They knew they had to work on that, and that group needed to work on that. While the group next to them was working on something else. […] Yes, they work. For example, I really enjoyed using ‘WebQuest’, although I believe it isn’t used much anymore, these days. […] It fostered autonomy and it was great fun because it motivated them because it was on the computer. […] And, though it may not seem differently, they like it and they were working, because they have to address the contents, they have to do research. In English I used it a lot … and here too I’m going to try for study support.

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The teacher sees the student as a whole, integrating the cognitive, emotional and social dimensions, organising her work with a special focus on contents. I cannot be conveying knowledge or guiding my students without giving them some upbringing at the same time. I can’t replace the family, obviously, but nowadays we very often do replace the family. […] So, I think that the humane element, not just the professional […] because I can’t expect a student who doesn’t have breakfast at home and spends a whole morning without eating, for instance, to have the same kind of performance as another student who takes a hearty breakfast at home … […] It is basically what I have already realised is that what we are letting go of is what is embraced with great care. Therefore, as long as on the test day they know how to tell adjectives from names, from verbs, and know how to apply their knowledge, I’m happy. […] Why should I teach a literary work in a hurry, without exploring the humane element, right? Sandra acknowledges the need to motivate her students for learning, connecting learning outcomes with their interests. They must enjoy what they are learning. I must find a way to make that funny, to try “to keep something in their heads”, even if it is for the fun. First, they must be motivated. Sandra S., primary school teacher; early 2000s

Despite having finished her higher education and entered the teaching profession in 2002, in 2009 she transferred as teacher to the 1st cycle, where she remains. The organising principle of her classes is the discovery in differentiated learning environments, where knowledge is integrated and contextualised. Let them discover as if it were magic. I may provide them with clues, but if they discover it for themselves it becomes etched in their minds and I don’t need to do. […] Today it was a pomegranate. Never in their lives will they forget what a pomegranate is, because they ate it all. But [the important thing] is for them to discover it, to enjoy being there. […]

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I did the maths. They all tasted, smelled. Then we talked about autumn. It only made sense for me to talk about autumn today because it rained yesterday […] I have a fantastic space outside the school. I have three entryways. […] It is a fantastic place to learn. And this is what I believe in. Building not just inside, there, but also outside, here. […] And from the pomegranate we can go to the artists who depicted the faces and the human body using fruit. They have a huge gap regarding the human body. They don’t observe themselves. […] I turn my classroom into a learning stage. I place the chairs all around and the centre is our stage where anything can happen. Adapting classes to her students’ needs, ‘because things come to me in class. I can’t explain it. Everything I do comes to me there, because I’m feeling it …’, Sandra does not see herself as implementing the national curriculum, also because ‘what is in the syllabus, every once in a while, I go and peek what is there’. She acknoweledges that she knows the curriculum, ‘now, the when, the how …’, and that the proposed changes do not make her stray from her path. I know about it, as I must. I see if there are great … No. People see the changes “Argh!”. No! It isn’t that much, things are adjusted. She understands that learning is relational, and that teacher cooperation is crucial in didactics. We have, suddenly, there isn’t even a connection … and I don’t believe in learning without connection. […] So, most of it is emotional. […] It can’t be, things must be lived, and they must be felt. Only thus will I not forget them. Because they come into me. […] Working with other teachers is very important, but it must really focus on didactics. On experiences. What guides her work is, fundamentally, her students’ happiness and their future.

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I think six years from now. I know that some time from now my students, who were my students in the 4th grade, they will remember some moment in their lives when they have to make a decision. They’ll remember that they must take that path. […] First of all, because, if I am happy, I’m managing to acquire something. I’m there learning something, touching the curriculum a little bit. […] I have a circus tent inside the room. […] It doesn’t have to be that austere room … No! It must be fun, it must be a happy place, where they feel well. […] It doesn’t bother me. I am very certain of what I do. When they come to speak to me … parents and what-not … The father is free to take his son wherever he wants. I work like this, this is how I am, and this is what I believe in.

The process of curriculum change in Portugal Understanding curricular changes means embarking on a path that goes from the macro level, corresponding to the proposed policies, to the micro level, that of the classroom. Along this path, it becomes clear that there are various levels at which policies are refracted, since they are composed by different, specific actors who reinterpret them and give them new meaning, in a process of enrichment and reconstruction of the policies themselves. On the other hand, this process also shows new struggles, new ways of resistance, and new levels of negotiation, commitments and conflicts. The first highlight goes to the new process of governance in education. Indeed, there are new ways of making policies based on network concept, meaning that a constellation of international organisations participates in educational policies. In this context, we can consider that the OECD’s discourse and projects emerge as legitimation of the national curricular policies defined by this government, which has adopted a rationality which stems, above all, from the curricular proposals which emerge from the work carried out by the OECD. Actually, the national proposals of a flexible, integrative curriculum, based on competencies and developed in interactive learning environments, which favours interdisciplinarity and, consequently, teachers’ collaborative work, may be found in the three OECD projects presented earlier. We can also consider that the organisation itself has followed this process of curricular change,

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having produced reports on the process or conducted audits to the documents submitted, as was the case of Students’ Profile by the End of Compulsory Schooling. On the other hand, the national proposals reveal a degree of autonomy and flexibility lower than what can be found in OECD projects, since the margins for autonomy are merely 25% and there is a curricular matrix that schools cannot alter, beside a set of curricular documents inscribed in contradictory rationales because they were drawn up according to different political rationalities. In this sense, we can claim that the curriculum preserves quite a pronounced prescriptive logic and an assessment system that is external to the students, contrary to the suggestions of the OECD itself. If we consider the apropriation that schools make of the national proposals, the two school clusters have shown us different paths. On the one hand, this institutional differentiation is inherent to the political measures taken, since curricular territorialisation underpins the national curricular projects. On the other hand, these paths demonstrate how disparate the reality of these two school clusters is. Still, we find decisions that have a similar underlying concept, although the instruments are not the same. We are referring to the fact that curricular changes occur mostly at the organisational level of teachers’ work and to the fact that interdisciplinarity is assumed, above all, as a didactic recourse and not as a possibility of producing school knowledge, as Sandra S. does. At individual level, the portrayals of teachers showed a more intense refraction processes with the three teachers’professional lives histories, similar to Mikser and Goodson’s chapter in this book. Their narratives reveal the tensions between systemic narratives and their daily work mediating and delivering curriculum in the classrooms. Both Rosário and Sandra narrate the dificulties they experienced to appropriate the curriculum with a higher degree of autonomy and to see themselves as teacher-curriculum maker,37 with a curricular rationality.38 While the former points to problems of a processual nature, the latter identifies the school culture as the major obstacle. Sandra S., in turn, and although the school culture does not seem to be favourable, displays a narrative of teachermaker with a curricular rationality, managing the curriculum in a contextualised and integrative way. Moreover, the three teachers see students’ coagency in different ways, and only Sandra S. puts forward a notion that is similar to the national proposals. Looking to historical periodisation on teachers’ practices, it is itself an important part of curriculum history as ‘the definition of periods allows us to define the possibility for professional action and professional narratives at particular points in historical time’.39 In these three life histories we see younger teachers, like Sandra S., showing a lower level of resistance to the systemic narratives related to curricular changes as she got into education in times of transnational governance and global curriculum phenomena. Conversely, Rosário

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and Sandra, having more years in the profession, show greater resistance to curricular change, evidencing an identity characterised by classroom control and planning, although the former displays greater proximity with the presentday systemic narratives. What comes through as evident in the teachers’ narratives is the need to definitely adapt curricular organisation to the curricular conceptualisation underlying this change. Otherwise, the new concepts of curriculum will be reduced to the didactic perspective within each subject, or else a multidisciplinary approach to the curriculum will linger. In fact, teachers with different, divergent curricular conceptions seem to coexist, and a large number of them follow the traditional teaching-learning paradigm, reflecting a larger reactive strategy to the global curriculum patterns. To conclude, we can state that this analysis not only demonstrates the existence of agency in teachers, as a way of resisting and surviving, but it also reveals the imperative need for change at the level of teacher training so that the potential of their work can be effective; likewise the need to look ‘inside the box’ if research wants to know ‘what counts as education’.40

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, under the project A Success Story? Portugal and the PISA (20002015) (PTDC/CED-EDG/30084/2017).

Notes 1 Boaventura Sousa Santos, A Crítica Da Razão Indolente, Contra o Desperdício Da Experiência (Porto: Edições A. Porto, 2000). 2 Roger Dale, “A Globalização e o Desenho Do Terreno Curricular,” Revista Electrónica Espaço Do Currículo 1 (2008). 3 Michael Gibbons, Camile Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow, The New Production of Knowledge:The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemproray Societies (London: Sage, 1994). 4 Antonio Magalhães and Steve Stoer, “Performance, Citizenship and the Knowledge Society: A New Mandate for European Education Policy,” Globalization, Societies and Education 1 (2003): 41–66. 5 See Note 2 above. 6 António Teodoro and Elsa Estrela, “Curriculum Policy in Portugal (1995–2007): Global Agendas and Regional and National Reconfigurations,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 42, no. 5 (2010): 621–47. 7 Miriam Henry, Bob Lingard, Fazal Rizvi and Sandra Taylor, The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy (Amsterdam: International Association of Universities Press, Pergamon and Elsevier Science, 2001). 8 Martin Lawn and Sortiria Grek, Europeanizing Education: Governing a New Policy Space (Didcot, UK: Symposium Books, 2012). 9 Nathalie Bulle, “Comparing OECD Educational Models through the Prism of PISA,” Comparative Education 47, no. 4 (2011): 503–21. 10 Steve Stoer and Helena Araújo, Escola e Aprendizagem Para o Trabalho Num País Da (Semi) Periferia Europeia (Lisboa: Escher, 1992).

Two faces of the same coin  219 11 Miguel Pereyra, “La Comparación, Una Empreza Razonada de Análisis. Por Otros Udos de La Comparación,” Revista de Educación. Extraordinario: Los Usos de La Comparación En Ciencias Sociales y En Educación, (1990): 23–76. 12 AntónioTeodoro, “Organizações Internacionais e Políticas Educativas Nacionais: A Emergência de Novas Formas de Regulação Transnacional, Ou Uma Globalização de Baixa Intensidade,” In Transnacionalização Da Educação: Da Crise Da Educação à “Educação” Da Crise, ed. Steve Stoer, Luíza Cortesão and José Alberto Correia (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 2001), 125–61. 13 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 14 Boaventura Sousa Santos, Toward a New Legal Commom Sense (London: Butterworth, 2002). 15 Susan Robertson, “Professoras/Es São Importantes, Não? Posicionando as/Os Professoras/Es e Seu Trabalho Na Economia Do Conhecimento Global,” Revista Electrónica Espaço Do Currículo 1 (2008). 16 Roger Dale, “Globalização e Educação: Demonstrando a Existência de Uma Cultura Educacional Mundial Comum ‘Ou Localizando Uma’ Agenda Globalmente Estruturada Para a Educação?” Educação, Sociedade e Culturas no. 16 (2001): 133–69. 17 John Meyer, “Globalization,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 48, no. 4 (2007): 261–73. 18 See Note 19. 19 See Note 5. 20 See Note 5. 21 OECD, The Future of Education and Skills 2030.The Future We Want (Paris: OECD, 2018). 22 OECD, “The Definition and Selection of Key Competencies,” in The Definition and Selection of Key Competencies (Paris: OECD, 2005). 23 See Note 24. 24 Ibid., 5. 25 Charles Fadel, Maya Bialik and Bernie Trilling, A Educação Em Quatro Dimensões (Boston, MA: Center for Curriculum Redesign, 2015). 26 OECD, Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: A Strategic Approach to Skills Policies (Paris: OECD, 2012). 27 OECD, Schooling Redesigned: Towards Innovative Learning Systems, Educational Research and Innovation (Paris: OECD, 2015). 28 See Note 29. 29 Guilherme de Oliveira Martins, Carlos Gomes, Joana Brocardo, José Vítor Pedroso, José Carriho, Luísa Ucha Silva and Maria Manuela Encarnação, Perfil Dos Alunos à Saída Da Escolaridade Obrigatória (Lisboa: Minsitério da Educação/ Direção Geral da Educação. Ministério da Educação, 2017). 30 Isabel P. Martins, Helena Peralta and Maria do Céu Roldão, “Para a Construção de Aprendizagens Essenciais Baseadas No Perfil Dos Alunos, 2017.” Key learning outcomes are defined as the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes that specify (a) what students must know; (b) the cognitive processes they must activate to acquire that knowledge; and (c) the practical expertise associated. www.dge.mec.pt/sites/default/files/Curriculo/ Projeto_Autonomia_e_Flexibilidade/ae_documento_enquadrador.pdf. 31 The national curricula of Basic and Secondary Education was published in the DecreeLaw 55/2018, of 6 July. 32 Ministerial Order nº 5908/2017, of 5 July. 33 Interview given by the Secretary of State for Education, João Costa, on 8 November 2018. 34 António Nóvoa, Vidas de Professores (Porto: Porto Editora, 1995). 35 Ivor Goodson, Developing Narrative Theory – Life Histories and Personal Representation (New York: Routledge, 2013). 36 Ibid., 40–1.

220  Elsa Estrela 37 Miriam Ben-Peretz, “Teoría y Prática Curriculares en Programas de Formación Del Professorado,” in Conocimiento, Creencias y Teorias de Los Professores, ed. Luís Miguel Villar Angulo (Alcoy: Editorial Marfil, 1988), 214–48. 38 Miguel Zabalza, Diseño y Desarrollo Curricular (Madrid: Narcea, S.A. Ediciones, 1987). 39 Ivor Goodson, “Times of Educational Change: Towards an Understanding of Patterns of Historical and Cultural Refraction,” Journal of Education Policy 25, no. 6 (2010): 767–75. 40 Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961).

Conclusions Transnational perspectives on Curriculum History Gary McCulloch, Ivor Goodson, and Mariano González-Delgado

There is no doubt that the history of education in recent years has placed a notable emphasis on introducing the transnational dimension as a perspective that opens up new research lines in the field.1 This has produced, among other things, the need to rethink how these factors have affected both the research we develop and the spaces where they are centred.2 The transnational dimension is currently an aspect that sustains interesting debates within the educational field.3 This emergence, as we have seen in this book, is also present in Curriculum History. To a certain extent, the developed research examines the influence that global phenomena have had on the social construction of the national state curriculum. In this sense, this book has not focussed on indicating the need to analyse the curriculum through the prism of Global History. The transnational dimension from which the presented research is addressed is seen as an extension of national history within a broader context; in other words, how the curriculum has been affected by this transnational factor and, therefore, must be understood within such relationships, dependencies, entanglements and connections. As according to what John Meyer explained,4 this work allows us to observe how there are transnational forces that act in the construction of the curriculum that go beyond the mediations of national states. To a certain extent, a wide degree of homogeneity can be observed in curricular policies throughout the world. In fact, the research developed by González-Delgado and Groves makes this aspect clear. We tend to think that the national political mediation or the different national political government models are fundamental to understand the proposals on the curriculum that are developed. This is true. But it is no less true that educational TV in Spain cannot be understood without the transnational factor described. The type of curricular policy proposed in Franco’s Spain was the cause of a conception of the educational model that became popular in Western countries during the second half of the twentieth century. The Modernisation Theory and its vision of economic development allow us to understand the origin of such curricular models as well as their subsequent evolution. What is important at this point to understand the curricular policy of the Iberian country during the dictatorship is the very conception of the model of society that was to be implemented. This is proven by the fact

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that similar models could be seen in Italy, France, Portugal, El Salvador or American Samoa. However, the influence that transnational connections could have on curricular policy and school disciplines is not observed exclusively in projects proposed by international organizations. McCulloch has shown in his research how the transnational dimension can also be pursued through the personal or biographical connections established by the main educational actors of the Nuffield Physics Curriculum Project in the UK. The training trips to the USA of one of the main protagonists of the physics curriculum in Great Britain, tells us about the importance of following such a story. This aspect can allow us to better understand to what extent the construction of the curriculum is attached to the transnational phenomenon not only on the institutional side. Educational flows, influences and transfers, therefore, do not occur exclusively as a top-down phenomenon. The transnational dimension speaks of the construction of the curriculum as a much more complex space. In many ways it is important to distinguish between vertical, top-down and bottom-up transferences and horizontal-transnational transferences. Goodson and Rudd have developed the concept of horizontal and vertical refraction to distinguish and delineate these different modalities of implementation and transference.5 The focus on the transnational, quite rightly prioritises the horizontal nature of flows and transferences and in the new globalised world this horizontal dimension is often of equal, if not superior, capacity to the top-down national and governmental pronouncements. Hence it behoves us to examine closely how this transnational perspective works and continues to modify the curricular policies that are implemented. The work of King, Murray and Woyshner gives rise to several vital arguments in this regard. An important part of the black curriculum has been built in the context of the black diaspora. This fact shaped the black curricula in the US as an element different from that of white groups and endowed these teaching models with a universal meaning;6 so much so that several of the proposals initiated originated in the need to see black groups in their transnational space as emigrated groups that helped to build different social, cultural and economic spaces of different countries worldwide. On the other hand, observing the transnational dimension of the curriculum as a relational space influenced by different social, cultural and even diplomatic devices has been a conclusion that has been widely drawn from several works in this book. Hiraoka, for example, shows us how the educational and curricular themes presented to international exhibitions were mediated by these transnational factors. Such phenomena do not only refer to the importation of educational proposals. We refer here to the importance that the diplomatic and control strategies of the world geopolitical board had in the educational space. Japan, since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, modified the curricular proposals presented to the different international exhibitions based on these criteria. Its objective was to manage a diplomatic negotiation with Great Britain. This opens up a new way to understand the historical construction of the curriculum. In this way, the curriculum is not only developed

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around the decisions that are established in national spaces. The mediation exercised by public diplomacy, the need to present itself as a modern country before the world, seem to be central aspects for understanding the origin and change of curricular policy. In any case, in the process of the social construction of the curriculum it should be noted that transnational phenomena are not a recent issue nor are they only detached from the centre towards the periphery. The flows, as Hiraoka points out, have gone both ways. In this same line sits the work of Chisholm. The author focusses on indicating how the transnational factor has to be understood as a relational phenomenon. Through the study of a case in South Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century, it can be observed how the construction of the curriculum is actually a space of constant hybridisation between different educational proposals. In other words, the curriculum can be understood as an element mediated by multiple factors in which even the transnational dimension must be seen as being in its own relational complexity. This fact is also highlighted by the work developed by Peng. In it, the author demonstrates how Curriculum History as a research field in mainland China and Taiwan was revitalised after a long period of stagnation thanks to the reception of a series of Anglo-Saxon studies. The international dimension also affected their own research lines opened up in this region. To some extent, the field of Curriculum History in China has tended towards a strong Westernisation and Americanisation in its lines of research and theoretical approaches. All this makes us see the importance that transnational phenomena and academic transfer can have when it comes to shaping a field of study and even school discipline. However, this has not produced a forgetting of local contexts. Precisely the latter is another of the main and most striking conclusions that can be established in this book. In some cases, different previous investigations that have been established since the transnational turn have tended to leave in the background the importance still played by national spaces in the historical construction of the curriculum. It is true that the transnational dimension speaks of understanding curricular policy from a broader framework to that of national states. However, it may be more important to see the curriculum as a relational phenomenon as well. For example, the work of González-Delgado and Groves has also shown that the model called TV Escolar (School TV) proposed during the Franco dictatorship had some differences from those in other countries. In this case, the local actors played a fundamental role in understanding the variations suffered during their implementation in Spain. However, other investigations have shown this reality in a much more accentuated way. For example, Goodson’s work points out the importance of still observing the actual implementation of the curriculum through the teachers’ life histories. This aspect indicates the importance of school actors in the construction of their own curriculum. We must not forget that during these transnational exchange processes there is a refraction progression on the part of those who are going to implement the curricular policy that is to be applied.

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This same factor has also been studied in other investigations of this book. Very notable are the conclusions reached by Goodson and Mikser. With their research on the life stories of teachers in Estonia, this fact becomes clear. It is true that neoliberal policies have been constant since the disappearance of the USSR in countries such as Estonia. However, in this research another constant is observed. We refer here to the phenomena of refraction generated by the teachers themselves when it comes to launching the type of curricular policies of a transnational nature. On the other hand, Estrela has pointed out the importance that the OECD has had in promoting national curricular policies, focussed on performance indicators. In this sense, it is true that the curricular policies launched by nation states have been profoundly challenged by the mediation exercised through international organisations, so much so that this process of transfer comes to affect the identity of teachers. On different occasions teachers identify directly with the proposals promoted by international organisations. In any case, the curriculum is refracted at different levels. It never arrives in its pure state along the hierarchical path it must travel. From its promulgation or promotion by international organisations to the classroom, the curriculum undergoes a significant amount of mediation processes. In this sense, we can find the conclusions established in the work of Prytz and Ringarp. This research explains how the results and evolution of the mathematics curriculum in Sweden throughout the twentieth century must also be understood within local spaces. Sometimes, the origin of the causes that initiated certain curricular policies is established without analysing these policies in a more concrete and profound way. It is true that there are certain international institutional arrangements that made several mathematics curricula in Sweden during the second half of the twentieth century. However, the authors point out, not only the nation category, but the local aspects are central to understanding the construction of the different curricular models in Sweden. In this way, the transnational perspective could improve in its analysis if we were to attend to these type of aspects that are not usually taken into account. Even another aspect to highlight is that the transnational dimension can not only be studied as an element of successful educational transfer between countries. The failure of such reforms, as Vidal points out, can also inform us about the mediation that local actors can exercise in this process. But not only this; failure also informs us about the circulation of pedagogical ideas between countries and different contexts. To some extent, failure also constitutes a category of analysis of interest for the transnational turn within Curriculum History. We hope that the research discussed in this book will be useful to continue with the debate of the transnational turn in analysis and case studies on the curriculum. As we can see, a perspective that tries to know the curriculum more broadly has to attend to different factors such as international, national, cultural, social, school and conceptual. All of these can exercise at different times a mediation on the construction of the curriculum. In this sense, this work is intended to unite History, Social Sciences and Education with the

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firm purpose of providing new directions of study that help us to profile and introduce new debates within the fields of Curriculum History and History of Education.

Notes 1 David Crook and Gary McCulloch, “Introduction: Comparative Approaches to the History of Education,” History of Education 31, no. 5 (2002): 397–400; Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin, eds., Gender, Colonialism and Education:The Politics of Experience (London: Woburn Press, 2002). Gita Steiner-Khamsi and Thomas S. Popkewitz, eds., The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending (New York: Teachers College Press, 2004); David Phillips, Educational Policy Borrowing: Historical Perspectives (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2004); Phillip W. Jones and David Coleman, The United Nations and Education: Multilateralism, Development and Globalisation (London: Routledge, 2005); Eugenia Roldán Vera and Thomas Schupp, “Bridges over the Atlantic: A Network Analysis of the Introduction of the Monitorial System of Education in Early-Independent Spanish America,” Comparativ 15, no. 1 (2005): 58–93; Karen Mundy, “The Evolution of Educational Multilateralism from 1945 to 2005,” in Bildung International: Historische Perspektiven und aktuelle Entwicklungen, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs (Würzburg: Ergon, 2006), 181–99. Kevin Myers, Ian Grosvenor and Ruth Watts, “Education and Globalisation,” History of Education 37, no. 6 (2008): 737–41; Gabriela Ossenbach and María del Mar Del Pozo Andrés, “Postcolonial Models, Cultural Transfers and Transnational Perspectives in Latin America: A Research Agenda,” Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 5 (2011): 579–600; Gary McCulloch and Steven Cowan, A Social History of Educational Studies and Research. Foundations and Futures of Education (London: Routledge, 2017); Gary McCulloch, “Educational Research: Which Way Now?” British Educational Research Journal 44, no. 2 (2018): 175–90. 2 Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann. “Global History and the Spatial Turn: From the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization,” Journal of Global History 5 (2010): 149–70. 3 See as example William F. Pinar,“Toward the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies,” in The Internationalization of Curriculum Studies: Selected Proceedings from the LSU Conference 2000, eds. Donna Trueit, William E. Doll, Hongyu Wang and Willam F. Pinar (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), 1–13; Daniel Tröhler, “Curriculum History or the Educational Construction of Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century,” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 279–97; Daniel Tröhler, “Curriculum History in Europe: A Historiographic Added Value,” Nordic Journal of Educational History 3, no. 1 (2016): 3–24; Kristen Sivesind and Ninni Wahlström, “Curriculum on the European Policy Agenda: Global Transitions and Learning Outcomes from Transnational and National Points of View,” European Educational Research Journal 15, no. 3 (2016): 271–8. 4 John W. Meyer, “Introduction,” in School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and National Primary Curricular Categories in the Twentieth Century, eds. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens and Aaron Benavot (Washington, DC: Falmer Press, 1992), 1–16. 5 Ivor Goodson and Tim Rudd, “Developing a Concept of ‘Refraction’: Exploring Educational Change and Oppositional Practice,” Education Practice and Theory 34, no. 1 (2012): 5–24. 6 See also Christopher M. Span and Brenda N. Sanya, “Education and Teh African Diaspora,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Education, eds. John L. Rury and Eileen H. Tamura (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 399–412.

Index

Page numbers in bold indicate tables. Page numbers in italic indicate figures. Adams, John 128 Advanced Training Programs (ATP) 86, 96 Africana Studies 66, 74, 77, 81n57 Afrocentrism 63, 66, 74, 77 Aggrey, James 168, 173 Aldridge, Derrick 65 Anderson, James, D. 65 Anglo–Japanese Alliance 121 Arantes, Emilio M. 194 Archer, Margaret S. 23 Argles, Michael 28 Armstrong, H. E. 29 Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) 149 Atkins, W. C. 169 Attucks, Crispus 69, 72 Australia 2 Baden-Powell, Robert 128 Badley, John Haden 27, 31, 36 Bai Yi-Fong 153, 155 Ball, Stephen J. 21 Barraclough, Geoffrey 13–15 Bellack, Arno A. 7, 149–50, 157 Ben-David, Joseph 16 Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) 71 Bennie, William G. 173 Bernstein, A. 99 Bernstein, Basil 12, 19 Birzea, Cesar 46 black curricula 5, 63–5, 67, 70, 73–4, 77–8, 222; alternative 66–7, 69, 73, 78 Blumer, Herbert 14–15 Boulind, Henry 34 Bousquet, Jacques 86, 96, 96

Brazil 7–8, 69, 181–3, 191–5, 197n54; see also primary schools British Educational Research Association (BERA) 3 Brown v. Board of Education 66 Brown, Anthony L. 64–5 Brown, Keffrelyn 65 Bruner, Jerome 140 Bucher, Rue 16 Burroughs, Helen 65 Butchart, Ronald E. 65 Butterfield, Herbert 15 Calkins, Norman A. 191 Canada 2, 72, 97 CENIDE Network of Institutes of Educational Sciences (CENIDE-ICEs) 95, 99 Centre for Documentation and Teaching Guidance in Primary Education (CEDODEP) 90–3 Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 200 Chen Hua 151–2 Chevallereau, A. 192 China 7, 112–14, 149–50, 152–9, 151, 223; mainland 6–7, 149–61, 223; New 150 Chisholm, Linda 7, 42, 223 classroom 2, 14, 17, 21–3, 51, 75, 86, 90–4, 151, 166, 170, 172, 183–6, 189, 193, 195, 199, 212–13, 215–18, 224 closed-circuit television (CCTV) 92, 94–7, 96–7, 99, 101, 106n100 Collins, Randall 16 Comiran, J. 96

228 Index Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) 96, 97, 99 Cook, C. H. 99 Coombs, Philip H. 94 Cooper, Anna Julia 65 Coppin, Fanny Jackson 70 cultural backwardness 45–7, 51, 55, 57 Curricular Autonomy and Flexibility Project (PAFC) 204, 206–7 curriculum transition 45, 48 Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo 65 Dale, Roger 18, 198, 200 Dalton plan 29, 31 Danns, Dionne 70 David, F. 184, 187 Davis, Brian 12 Davis, O. L. Jr 150 Deng Lan 158 Dieudonné, Jean 140 Douglass, Frederick 72 Dreyfus, Françoise 187 Drummond, Janet 29 Du Bois, W. E. B. 64–5 Dunbar, Paul L. 72 Duploye, Emile 187–8 East China Normal University 154 educational: research 1, 16, 18, 90–1, 94; television 84, 92, 95, 96–7, 145; see also Japanese elks 71–3; black 71–2; junior 72, white 71 Esland, Geoffrey M. 18 Estonia 4, 42, 44, 49–54, 57–8, 224 Estrela, Elsa 8, 84, 224 ethnography 21–4 European Union 8, 46, 53, 199–200 Evans, Maurice 168 Fauconnier, F. 184–6, 188–90 Ferry, Jules 189 France 7–8, 68, 72, 86, 95, 97, 181, 186–8, 190–4, 222; see also primary schools Franklin, Barry M. 63, 150, 157 Franklin, John Hope 76–7, 82n67 Franz, Gottfried H. 173 Gaitskell, Deborah 167 Garcia, Juan M. M. 92 Gardey, Delphine 181 Garvey, Marcus 64 General Directorate of Information’s Study Group on Audiovisual Techniques (GESTA) 90–1

globalisation 3, 12, 24, 83, 109, 156, 200–1 González-Delgado, Mariano 5, 96, 124, 221, 223 Goodson, Ivor 1–4, 7, 43–4, 51, 84, 150–1, 156, 208, 210, 217, 222–4 Green, Andy 132–3, 143–4 Groves, Tamar 5, 96, 124, 221, 223 Guma, Robbins 168 Hammersley, Martin 21 Hardley, J. R. 99 Harper, Francis Ellen Watkins 70 Harrison, T. 191 Hazlett, Stephen 22 Healy-Clancy, Meghan 167 Hilliard, Asa 64 Hiraoka, Mari 5, 222–3 History of Education 2–3, 83, 100 Hobsbawm, Eric 182 Hofman, W. H. A. 132–3, 144 Hoz, Víctor García 91 Huebner, Dwayne 150 Huss, Bernard 168 Ibars, Raquel Payá 90 Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World (IBPOEW) 71–2 Indicators of Educational Systems (INES) 200 Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) 202 Institute of Curriculum and Instruction 154 Institute of Education 12, 128, 150 International Advisory Committee on Reform 94 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) 6, 131, 133, 139, 144 International Health Exhibition 109, 112, 116 Italy 194, 222 Jabavu, D. D. T. 168 Japan Fair 120–1 Japan–British Exhibition 109–10, 120, 123, 124, 126 Japanese: Commission 122; education 108–9, 112–18, 120–3, 128; educational exhibits 109, 114, 119, 120, 124, 125; Education Exhibition 116, 118; government 112–13, 121–5; Ministry of Education 117; Village 116, 120–1, 123, 127

Index  Jefferson, Thomas 70 Jenkins, Edgar W. 28 Jenkins, Robert E. 77 Jiménez, Jesús García 89, 93 Jones, J. D. R. 168 Jones, Thomas J. 168 Jong Hong-Ming 155, 159 Journal des Instituteurs ( JDI) 181, 183–4, 187–9, 191–2, 195n8, 196n11 Kallen, Denis 46 Kiddle, H. 191 Kikuchi, Dairoku 117–18, 120, 128, 129n23 King, LaGarrett J. 5, 64–5, 222 Kiralfy, Imre 110, 121 Kitaevich, Jane 48–9 Kliebard, Herbert M. 7, 150–1, 157 Kopke, João 191 Kridel, C. 157 Kuhn, Thomas S. 16 Layton, David 1, 16, 28 Levey, R. M. W. 74 Lewis, John 34, 36 Ley General de Educación (General Law of Education, LGE) 93–5, 100 life history 15, 21–2, 24, 28, 156, 210 Loram, Charles T. 167–8, 173–4 Lowe, Roy 28 Luthuli, Albert 164, 168 McAnany, Emile 92 McCulloch, Gary 4, 123, 150, 222 Macdonald, Bob 16 McGill, Donald 34 Maddox, John 36 management by objective (MBO) 132 Marx, Karl 15 Meyer, John W. 221 Middleton, Sue 29 Mikser, Rain 4, 217, 224 Ministry of National Education (MEN) 85, 87–8, 90–1, 93 Minkwitz, Earl 76 Mitter, Wolfgang 45 Mitzel, H. E. 99 Modernisation theory 3, 5, 88, 100–1, 221 Mpanza, Charles J. 168 Murray, Alana D. 5, 67, 78, 222 Musgrove, Frank 18 narratives: counter- 66–7, 69; dominant 49, 52, 55, 57, 66, 68–9, 74, 79n15;

229

generational 49; historical 3, 77, 79n15, 181; individual 49, 57; life 21, 210; national 9; personal 44, 56, 58; professional 44, 58, 217; standard 131–2, 134, 138, 143; systemic 24, 43–9, 51–2, 55–9, 210, 217–18; teacher 21, 46, 49–52, 56–7, 218; work-life 44–5, 51, 57, 59 National Center for Research and Development of Education (CENIDE) 86, 95–7, 96–7, 99, 101 National Programme to Promote School Success (PNPSE) 204 neoliberalism 3–4, 41–3, 53, 56–8, 200, 224 New Math 140–4 Newman, V. 157 Norway 2, 141 Norwood, Cyril 16 Nóvoa, Antonio 210 Nuffield: approach 28, 37; chemistry 28–9; physics 4, 27–30, 33–5, 37–8, 123, 145, 222; science 16, 28–9 Nuffield Foundation Science Teaching Project (NFSTP) 27–8, 34, 36, 38 Odd Fellows 71 Office of Ibero-American Education (OEI) 91 Ogden, Peter 71 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 5–6, 8, 84, 87–9, 100, 131, 133, 140, 144, 199–203, 207, 216–17, 224 Ou Yung-Sheng 155–6 Pachociński, Richard 48 Passalacqua, Camillo 191 pedagogical innovation 181, 188, 192 Pendleton, Leila Amos 66–70, 80n35 Pendleton, Robert 68 Peng, Caixia 6, 151–2, 223 Pereyra, Miguel 199 Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) 30, 33–5 Piaget, Jean 140 Pinar, William F. 24 Pitman, Isaac 181 Popkewitz, Thomas S. 7, 150 Portugal 8, 29, 194, 199, 204, 216, 222 primary schools 27, 90, 133–4, 150, 156, 163, 170, 179n37, 181, 184–5, 187, 189, 191, 193–5; Brazilian 183, 191–2; French 181, 183–4, 191–2; teacher 163, 165, 184, 191, 214

230 Index Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 202 Prytz, Johan 6, 224 Purdy, Michelle A. 70 Reagan, Ronald 20 Reddie, Cecil 31 refraction 3, 8, 24, 84, 93, 199–200, 208, 217, 222–4 Ren Ping 158 Riggs, Arthur 71 Ringarp, Johanna 6, 224 Rogers, Eric 4, 27, 29–38, 123 Rubene, Zanda 47–8, 54 Rudd, Tim 222 Rudolph, John L. 3 Sadler, Michael 120 school: governance 133, 137, 143–4; knowledge 2, 4, 13–17, 19–20, 151, 193, 217 Schramm, Wilbur 92, 94 Seeley, J. 22 Seguel, Mary L. 150 Shepherd, Robert H. W. 163 Shipman, M. 17 Simmons, Crystal 64–5 Simon, Josep 33 Slew, Jenny 69 Smith, B. O. 150 Snyder, Jeffrey 65 Society for the Study of Curriculum History (SSCH) 149, 155 South Africa 7, 72, 163–5, 167–9, 175–6, 223 Soviet Union 4, 33–4, 41, 50, 52, 59n2 Spain 5, 84–96, 96, 99–101, 103n41, 124, 194, 221, 223; Francoist 5, 84, 221 Span, Christopher M. 70 Spanish Society of Pedagogy (SEP) 86, 91 Spiller, G. 120 Stenhouse, Lawrence 21 stenography 181, 183–91, 193–4 Strauss, Anselm 16 Sweden 131, 135–6, 141–4, 147n47, 147n52, 224 Swedish: school system 131–4, 143; university textbooks 131–2, 143 Swedish Municipal Association (SKL) 133 Taiwan 6–7, 149–56, 158–61, 223 Tamayo, Manuel Lora 88, 90

Tanner, Daniel 150–1, 157 Tanner, Laurel N. 150–1 Tejima, Seiichi 113–15 Televisión Española (TVE) 87, 92–3 Teodoro, António 199–200 Thatcher, Margaret 20 transnational: perspective 3, 5–6, 8–9, 108, 123, 131–2, 222, 224; turn 3, 8, 223–4 Tricker, R. A. R. 33–4 Tröhler, Daniel 3 Truth, Sojourner 70 Tsai Ching-Tien 155 Tubman, Harriet 70 TV Escolar 93–4, 101, 223 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 95–6, 97–8, 99 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 5, 34, 83–7, 89–96, 96–8, 99–101, 101n1, 140, 144–5; Courier 86 United States Agency of International Development (USAID) 83 USA 1, 3–5, 7, 20, 22, 27, 29–38, 54, 63–4, 66–9, 71–2, 74–5, 77, 83, 95, 97, 109–10, 112–13, 123, 149, 151, 155–6, 159, 165, 167–8, 174–5, 187, 192, 222 US Civil Rights Movement 66, 73–4 van Praagh, Gordon 28–9 Vidal, Diana G. 7–8, 224 Vieira, Joaquim M. 192–3 Vivian, Charles 71 Walker, Rob 16 Wang Chen 157 Wang Ya-Hsuan 156 War: of 1812 69; Boer 117; Civil 64, 69–71, 76; Cold 3, 5, 33, 46, 83–4, 89, 100, 144; First World 72; Revolutionary 69; Russo–Japanese War 117, 120; Second World 33, 109, 133, 139, 200 Waring, Mary 16, 28 Washington, Booker T. 167 Washington, George 70 Watkins, William 63–5 Watson, Foster 12, 18 Watts, Ruth 108 Wenham, Ted 36 Westbury, Ian 46

Index  Wheatley, Phillis 70 Williams, Raymond 19, 23 Woolnough, Brian E. 28 World Bank (WB) 83, 85, 88–9, 96, 97, 100, 199 Woyshner, Christine 5, 71, 222 Wu Shu-Ming 156

Yang Chih-Ying 155, 159 Yang Jyh-Ying 156 Young Michael F. D. 12, 15, 19–20 Zhang Binxian 157 Zhang Wu-Qi 156 Zhou Shu-Qing 156

231