After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

"The Peckham Experiment" (Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985) is a book about the Peckham Health Centre (1935-1950), which was a scientific experiment and community centre set up to identify and foster conditions of good health for local working-class families in South London. The book was…

This article analyses the schooling process in rural areas of Galicia (Spain) from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, considering educational initiatives promoted by both the state and the rural population. The former, which were governed by the official school culture, were driven by a moralistic approach; the latter, within the…

Finnish school teachers are unlike their colleagues in many countries, for their ethos and skills have traditionally formed the basis for a profession which has been very loyal to the state and to the changing educational ideologies of the government. Critical historical periods of wars and social revolutions have, however, produced--to a small…

To date, the historical entanglement of disability and happiness has not been considered an object worth of historical inquiry. Nor has the intersection of disability and emotions been used as a lens to examine the history of disability. Our paper aims at filling this academic void by analysing a wide range of philosophical, anthropological,…

In this article we will contribute to the contemporary theoretical debate about film by considering, from a history-of-education perspective, the film "Zéro de conduite" by Jean Vigo (1905--1934). This film is classified under the umbrella of "poetic realism": a product of "cinéma de gauche" and an avant-gardist,…

In Europe, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are characterised not only by processes of secularisation, but also by religious reactions to the perceived secularisation of society. In the Catholic Church, the rise of active congregations constitutes a prominent part of this reaction. With their work "in the world", the members of the…

We evoke here events that took place in an ordinary school, the Teacher Training College in Coimbra (Portugal), during the on-going revolutionary process ("processo revolucionário em curso"; PREC), in an attempt to understand people's actions within the collective becoming of a certain time and place, and to grasp how memory works as a…

This paper addresses the question of dissemination of nutritional knowledge in textbooks of household schools between 1890 and 1940. It starts by considering the nature of food recommendations in manuals that are used in Belgian household schools, and then deals with the sources that are referred to by those who give food advice, comparing the…

This paper concentrates on a seminal figure in the history of Canadian education who has never previously been the subject of historical examination: Duncan McArthur. As Deputy Minister, then Minister of Education, in Ontario between 1934 and 1942, he guided the province's public schools during a period of dramatic reorganisation within a context…

One of the most popular Dutch educational enlightenment authors was Hieronymus van Alphen. His three volumes of "Little Poems for Children" published in 1778 and 1782 were extremely successful, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Inspired by the German poets Christian Felix Weisse and Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann, Van Alphen brought about an…

Over the past two decades there has been a growing interest in the exploration of "transnational history". This work has focused in general on understanding the "movement, ebb and circulation" of ideas across borders and in particular on the introduction, transmission, reception and appropriation of ideas through the process of…

From 1870 until the outbreak of the Second World War there were various attempts at educational reform in Greece, one of the most significant being the intention to establish a national technical-vocational education. The aim of this study is to examine why such a reform was deemed necessary and yet failed to be implemented. The first part…

This research explores political-educational debates regarding the concept of women's emancipation in women and family programmes on Belgian television between 1954 and 1975. From the very beginning, the women's episodes were regarded as explicitly educational. The episodes were created to increase women's participation by means of their…

Michel Jeanneret's "A Feast of Words. Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance" (1987; English translation published in 1991) highlighted the celebration by Renaissance humanists of food and drink as catalysts of intellectual exchange. The author convincingly argued that Renaissance banquets served as a paradigm for the humanist body…