School Memories. New Trends in the History of Education

This call for papers is part of the research activities envisaged for the project of significant national interest entitled School Memories between Social Perception and Collective Representation (Italy, 1861-2001). The intention is to continue the line of research inaugurated by the international symposium on School Memories. New Trends in Historical Research into Education: Heuristic Perspectives and Methodological Issues, which took place in Seville in 2015. The research project focuses on forms of school memory, understood as the individual, collective and public practice of remembering a common school past (Yanes-Cabrera et al., 2017). Individual school memory consists of self-representation supplied by former teachers, members of the school administration, and pupils through oral and written testimonies (e.g., diaries, autobiographies and memoirs in general). Ego-documents have also been widely used as historical sources in the field of historical-educational research (Viñao Frago, 2005) to reconstruct the history of schooling using the lived experiences of its protagonists rather than legislative and institutional sources, in an attempt to open what has been defined as the “black box of schooling” (Julia, 1995). Collective school memory, on the other hand, is composed of the many ways in which the culture industry (literature, cinema, music, etc.) and the world of information represent school time, teachers and pupils, and it is subject to appreciable transformations. These representations of school past become layered from generation to generation, partly superimposing themselves on personal memories, corrupting factual reality and consolidating themselves into stereotyped narrations. They may also alter our awareness of the past, which is thus transformed into a real space in our imagination that cannot be separated from scientifically-based historical reconstructions (Alfieri, 2019). Finally, public school memory consists of how schools and teachers are represented in official contexts and public commemorations promoted by local and national institutions based on a precise policy of memory, or public use of the past aimed at gaining consensus and reinforcing the feeling of belonging to a specific community (Yanes-Cabrera et al., 2017). Unlike individual school memory, collective memory and public memory have barely been touched on in historical-education research as they have not been considered a subject of historiographic importance for some time. In recent years, however, school memory – in its various meanings – has been included in international historiographic thought and has become the subject of studies of notable interest in the field of the history of education both in Latin-American countries and in the Anglo-Saxon world. The study of memory allows us to define how the present looks at the past and interprets or reinterprets it. In this sense, school memory does not interest us merely as a channel to access the schools of the past, but as a key to understanding what we know today or believe we know about schools of the past and how far what we know corresponds to reality, or whether our understanding is merely the result of prejudices and stereotypes that have become ingrained in the common sentiment, and difficult to uproot. The subject of this historical research therefore, does not consist simply of exploring school environments as they once were but consists instead of exploring the complex process of defining the sentiment that has developed over time regarding schools at an individual and collective level, based initially on lived school experiences, followed by other social and cultural agents which have contributed in part to redetermine it. This new research perspective allows us to address an aspect whose historical dimension has up to now escaped the attention of experts in the field: the evolution of the perceived social status of the various professional profiles involved in the processes of schooling and the public status of education within a community, as well as the public image of schools and the national school system. Studying the methods of collective symbolic representation of schools and teaching over time will help to define the origin of certain burdens that continue to weigh on the public image of schools, as well as making us aware of the overall cultural dimension of these historical phenomena. In addition, studies will restore awareness to all actors in public education of themselves and their roles. There is no unique, unequivocal school past. There are many of them, which often coexist and alternate with one another. They may conform more or less to historical reality, but they are nevertheless real and influence the views individuals or communities have of that past. This international conference aims to discover these school pasts.

In: Cristina Yanes-Cabrera, Juri Meda & Antonio Viñao (eds.), School Memories: New Trends In The History Of Education Research , 2016

History of Education, 2017

This introductory essay to the 2017 Virtual Special Issue of History of Education, focused on 'Commemoration, Memory and Remembrance in History of Education' discusses the ways in which the topics of commemoration, memory and anniversaries have been approached by historians of education over the last thirty years.

In 1986, Chad Gaffield challenged historians to go "back to school" in order to better understand children's experiences. This article addresses the historiographical approaches historians have used since 1986 to elucidate continuity and change in the contexts and cultures of schools and the content of instruction. The history of schooling contexts reflects increasing efforts to use resources efficiently and to make schools more comfortable places to be. Studies of school and classroom culture have revealed a shift away from the centrality of teacher authority. Research on curricular change describes a process characterized by renovation rather than transformation. To what extent have historians been successful in meeting Gaffield's challenge? Historians have sought out rich and diverse sources that illuminate how adults' concerns and priorities shaped students' educational experiences. Now they need to find sources that better reveal children's voices. The article argues for attentiveness to the achievement of a multifaceted understanding of students' experiences of state schooling over time. In 1986, Chad Gaffield challenged historians of education to go "back to school." 1 In a thorough review and critique of Canadian educational historiography, he argued that "current analysis still fundamentally ignores the largest group involved in education, the students. 2 Curriculum historian George Tomkins agreed, arguing we have "little knowledge of school processes, or of the details of life in Canadian classrooms." 3 In the decades since, Canadian educational historians have tried to address this gap. A review of this historiography should acknowledge the importance of historical perspective on school and classroom culture and on students' experiences in state schooling. It should provide insights that can inform contemporary efforts to redesign curriculum and transform students' learning experiences. The central challenge for historians researching questions about students' schooling experiences is, of course, the scarcity of primary sources that meaningfully and authentically convey those experiences. In this review and analysis of English-language accounts of compulsory state schooling, we see that historians have been critical and creative in interrogating official sources such as department of education policy documents, programs of study, and school inspectors' reports, as well as textbooks and other teaching materials, in their attempts to uncover the experiences of children through sources created by, and often intended for, adults. Increasingly historians have paid attention to other sources, such as memoirs, oral histories, and survey data, all of which can be used to probe respondents' memories in order to enrich our understandings of children's perspectives on their school experiences. In analyzing and interrogating these sources, historians strive to demonstrate what Mona Gleason calls "empathetic inference" -"the ability to imagine and to interpret historical events and sources from the point of view of young people." The purpose of this essay is to explore what historians have discovered about children's experiences of state schooling. It will address the historiographical approaches historians have used to elucidate continuity and change in the contexts and cultures of classrooms and schools and the content of instruction. It will promote a multifaceted understanding of students' experiences of state schooling over time. Context refers to the physical and organizational aspects of classrooms and schools, as well as attendance and retention and the broader geographical (rural/urban) and cultural milieux in which they were located. This section also considers non-traditional contexts of public schooling. Culture refers to the quotidian experiences of children in schools, for example, routines, norms, expectations, discipline, hierarchies, and organized extracurricular experiences. Content includes curriculum, both formal and informal, as well as textbooks and other materials. This review is limited to historians' accounts written since 1986, which examine aspects of English-Canadian schooling within the time frame of the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s. It was in the mid-nineteenth century that provinces began to establish formal, compulsory, state-supported school systems, and it was the mid-1960s when neo-progressive measures began to transform classrooms and schools. Although neo-progressivism was short-lived, with, for example, the announcement of new core curricula in Ontario and British Columbia in 1976, there was no going back to the formalism of the past.