Between Educationalization and Appropriation: Selected Writings on the History of Modern Educational Systems

19. Demythologizing the Educational Past: An Endless Task in History of Education

19 Demythologizing the Educational Past: An Endless Task in History of Education* M. Depaepe “My life in the history of education” – to borrow the title of a recent British series of scholarly autobiographies1 – began with a lively interest in educational practice. I became interested in the organization of the subject-based grade-school system and wished to find its origins. This was an organizational form introduced for reasons not particularly educational, and it persisted chiefly because of the order and efficiency to which it gave rise.2 My work was both a form of educational criticism and a demonstration of the relevance of the history of education to educational science, practice, and policy. In light of developments in the theory and practice of education history,3 I was not surprised afterward to find pitfalls in an educationally “relevant” historiography.4 A purely “extrinsic” relationship between educational * Originally published in: M. DEPAEPE, Demythologizing the Educational Past: An Endless Task in History of Education, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation, IX,2 (1997) 208-223. Reprinted in R. LOWE (ed.), History of Education: Major Themes, vol. I: Debates in the History of Education (London/New York, Routledge, 2000) 356-370 (Major Themes in Education). 1 See History of Education Bulletin 51 (Spring 1993) et seq. 2 For an English .summary of this work see M. Depaepe, “The Development of Classes in the Belgian Primary School in the Nineteenth Century,” Rozprawy z Diejów Oswiaty 25(1983): 167–78. 3 See S. Cohen, “The History of the History of American Education, 1900–1976: The Uses of the Past,” Harvard Educational Review 46 (1976): 298–330; M. Heinemann (ed.), Die historísche Pädagogik in Europa und den U.S.A. Berichte über die historische Bildungsforschung, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Klett Cota, 1979 and 1985); M. M. Compère, L’histoire de l’éducation en Europe. Essai comparatif sur la façon dont elle s’écrit (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995). 4 M. Depaepe, “L’Apport dc l’histoire de 1’éducation à la définition des politiques éducatives . Quelques réflexions méthodologiques,” in L’Offre d’école. Eléments pour une étude comparée des politiques éducatives au dix-neuvième siècle/The Supply of Schooling: Contributions to a Comparative Study of Educational Policies in the Nineteenth Century, ed. W. Frijhoff (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1983), 15–31; M. Depaepe, “Some Statements About the Nature of the History of Education,” in Why Should We Teach History of Education?, ed. K. Salimova and E. V. Johanningmeier (Moscow: International Academy of Self-Improvement, 1993), 31–36; M. Depaepe and H. Van Crombrugge, “Using or Part V: The Self-Concept of a Demythologized ‘New Cultural’ History of Education 436 history and utility, present or future, endangers the “scientific” claims of history. In education systems founded explicitly in one or another ideology as, for example, Marxism-Leninism5 or dogmatic Catholicism,6 not only was history used (casu quo abused) politically, but required also to support a theory of education. This same tendency is still with us. We find it in, among other things, attempts to make good use of the “democratic heritage” of progressive education7 in former communist countries, in nationally orchestrated attempts to bring Pestalozzi’s thought to bear on Chinese literacy campaigns,8 and in some conservative (White) educational circles in South Africa, where “historical pedagogy” is still used to legitimate traditional educational values.9 On the other hand – and leftist revisionism in the United States is a case in point10 – the question remains whether a neutral and value-free reconstruction of the past is possible. Rather than a methodological fault, “presentism” is supposed to be an unavoidable condition of historical Abusing the Educational Past? Some Methodological Reflections on the Place of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in the Educational Historiography,” in Pestalozzi in China: International Academic Symposium on the Occasion of the Publication of Pestalozzi’s Selected Works in Chinese, Beijing, 10–14 October 1994, ed. H. Gehrig (Zürich: Pestalozzianum, 1995), 51–62. 5 Sec also B. Rang, Pädagogische Geschichtsschreibung in der DDR. Entwicklung und Ent­ wicklungsbedingungen der pädagogischen Historiographie 1945–1965 (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1982). 6 See, for example, M. Depaepe and F. Simon, “The Conquest of Youth; An Educational Crusade in Flanders During the Interbellum Period,” in Liber amicorum Karel De Clerck ed. F. Simon (Ghent: C.H.S.P., 2000), 19-42. 7 For example, K. Salimova, “Educational Wisdom of the Past: A Message for...