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

21. The Ten Commandments of Good Practices in History of Education Research

21 The Ten Commandments of Good Practices in History of Education Research* M. Depaepe 1.  Thou shalt remember that the history of education is history; 2.  Thou shalt write about the educational past; 3.  Thou shalt not fret excessively about presentism; 4.  Thou shalt not write a history of the present, nor for the present; 5.  Thou shalt discourse about discourses; 6.  Thou shalt demythologize former narratives and discourses about the history of education; 7.  Thou shalt interpret multi-perspectively; 8.  Thou shalt develop theoretical and conceptual frameworks from within the history of education; 9.  Thou shalt strive for pure wisdom within the context of a cultural approach; 10.  Thou shalt teach people and especially teachers in that spirit. ❙ ❙ Explanation At the request of the editors, I am stating here briefly what are, for me, the most important rules of thumb of good practices in the history of education research. This I am doing on the basis of my many years of research experience as well as, on the basis of what I have published in several theoretical, methodological, and historiographical articles. I have called these guidelines, set down concisely in the form of propositions, somewhat provocatively «ten commandments» in the hope of stimulating a fruitful discussion. You can find these «commandments» as such at the beginning of the article. * Originally published in: Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Historiographie, XVI,1 (2010) 3134 Part V: The Self-Concept of a Demythologized ‘New Cultural’ History of Education 464 ❙ ❙ Proposition #1: The History of Education is History Historical research, including research into the history of education, can be nothing other than «historical». That is by far not so obvious as it may appear. Since the history of education arose in the late 19th century in educational training institutes, its objectives were far from the purely historical. History was used primarily for practical educational purposes, such as drawing inspiration and motivation from the examples of the past, as well as theoretical purposes, for example, by providing ideas and conceptions to be used as building blocks for a contemporary theory of education. This «educationalizing» dealing with history led to a kind of«historical pedagogy» [histoire de la pédagogie], conceived as history of educational thought and ideas, and being marginalized in the institutional field with respect to cultural and social historical research. Historians, therefore, generally looked down on the history of education and left it to «pedagogues», with the exception of the history of universities, history of science, and/or history of knowledge, certainly when it concerned the history of primary and pre-school education. Over the last few decades, research in the history of education has become noticeably more «historical», but the differentiations and tensions in the field – often the result of factors external to the science, such as the striving for prestige, status, and power – have, nevertheless, continued. That several historians have been employed over the years in educational institutes has, ultimately, not changed very much. Moreover, being an historian, as such, offers no guarantee at all for the quality of the research nor would it be a conditio sine qua non for it. Good research is assessed not so much by the a priori qualifications of the researcher but rather by the results. And they are generally related to the meaningfulness of a well-nuanced statement of the question, which, by means of its possible operationalization in complex sub-questions, is best dealt with in an interdisciplinary team. ❙ ❙ Proposition #2: Its Content is the Educational Past What is «educational» in the educational historiography – a term I prefer, also in line with the name of this journal, to the old-fashioned «historical pedagogy» (which could be erroneously read as the striving for an educational theory or practice on the basis of history) – is thus not so much the research method but the content of the specialty. The material object (to express it in the already somewhat older history of science terminology) 465 The Ten Commandments of Good Practices in History of Education Research of our discipline obviously concerns the educational past (while the formal object – see proposition 1 – is precisely «historical» in nature). But since that past took place in a broader social context, the researcher may also not be blind to these wider social and cultural contexts. Education is, as a social institution, interwoven in so many ways with the ideological (by the values, norms, images of man) and...