Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 26 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 27 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

All days
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Wednesday 24 March 2004 8:30
O-1 EDU10 Youth, Culture and Modernity 1
Room O
Network: Education and Childhood Chair: Ning De Coninck-Smith
Organizers: - Discussant: Eva Jeppson Grassman
Tom Ewing : Constructing Gender in Post-War Soviet Society: Boys and Girls in Single-Sex Schools, 1943-1954
“Where does the idea come from that girls are worse than boys at math, physics, and chemistry?” This question, asked in 1950 by a young engineering student named Liudmila Chernogubovskaia, referred to gender-segregated schools in the Soviet Union. Answering her own question, Chernogubovskaia complained that schools adhering to “masculine and ... (Show more)
“Where does the idea come from that girls are worse than boys at math, physics, and chemistry?” This question, asked in 1950 by a young engineering student named Liudmila Chernogubovskaia, referred to gender-segregated schools in the Soviet Union. Answering her own question, Chernogubovskaia complained that schools adhering to “masculine and feminine profiles” assumed that “boys understand technology better than girls.” After recalling pre-war coeducational schools, where girls were challenged by their teachers to study as hard as boys while also developing “good, true friendship and respect for each other,” Chernogubovskaia urged educators “to listen to our voice, to the voice of the former pupils of the coeducational school, who have now become adults and have some life experience.”

Chernogubovskaia’s letter appeared seven years after the Soviet government abruptly announced in July 1943 that coeducation would be eliminated in urban schools. A quarter-century after the revolution brought equal educational access for all children, the Soviet government now proclaimed that coeducational instruction did not prepare male and female pupils for future roles as soldiers and mothers respectively. For eleven years, most boys and girls in major Soviet cities attended separate schools. In July 1954, one year after Stalin’s death, the Soviet government changed course again by reinstating coeducation for all grades. As before, the policy change was justified in terms of the interests of children and the needs of the Soviet system. Single-sex education had apparently failed to raise academic achievement to desired levels, while classroom discipline and pupils’ conduct seemed to be worsening. Moreover, the restoration of coeducation brought schools back into line with promises of women’s equality central to socialist ideology.

Chernogubovskaia’s intervention introduces this study of the Soviet effort to use sex-segregated schooling to recognize and even reinforce differences between boys and girls. This paper examines policies and practices in schools as a way to explore broader processes of constructing gender identities in postwar Soviet society. Gender is recognized as a constructed identity, in which structural forces (such as policies and institutions, but also collective memories and hegemonic ideologies) shape and are shaped by agents (acting as individuals—like Chernogubovskaia—and as collectives—such as teachers or pupils). Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper contrasts single-sex schools with long-term processes of gender integration in modern Russian education, with contradictory efforts in postwar Germany to maintain gender separation (in the west) and enforce coeducation (in the east), and with recent efforts in the United States and elsewhere to “bring back” separate schools in the name of improving instruction and discipline. Through a careful examination of original source materials, this study argues that even though single-gender schools failed to (re)construct gender identities along clearly defined lines of differences, separate schools were shaped by, and thus confirmed, underlying concerns about the blurring of gender lines caused by official policies and everyday practices before, during, and after the war. (Show less)

Riyaz N. Massalimov : Youth Movements in Northern Eurasia in the Middle of the 20th Century
The social problems of young generations of Northern
Eurasia (Scandinavia, Great Britain, Germany, Russia) were
investigated and are still being investigated rather intensively.
All the same, the Juvenology at present does not touch enough
upon the history of the youth movements of several north-
Eurasian nations in the middle of ... (Show more)
The social problems of young generations of Northern
Eurasia (Scandinavia, Great Britain, Germany, Russia) were
investigated and are still being investigated rather intensively.
All the same, the Juvenology at present does not touch enough
upon the history of the youth movements of several north-
Eurasian nations in the middle of the 20th century. The social
history of the youth of non-Russian nations in Russia-USSR
and the history of the youth leagues in Ural-Volga region, in
Kazakhstan, in Caucasian region, in Central Asia and
Mongolia, which together make an enormous party of Northern
Eurasia, are hardly studied at all.
I have recently renovated the methodological basis of the
research in the history of the youth movements. Considerable
theoretical innovations and new assessments of the role of the
society have been introduced by serious changes in Russia and
neighbour countries within the recent 10 year period. The
education and profession have lost the basic social
characteristics as the principles determining the self-
conscience and the attitude of the youth towards the world. The
whole complex of class-forming characteristics have retreated
to the background, whereas the problem of the generations gap,
the glaring differences between generations have turned out to
be in the focus of the public and scientific attention, being most
important factors of the social grouping.
Young generations of Northern Eurasia nations in 20th
century endured many social catastrophes, revolutions and
wars. The nations of the continental Europe underwent
revolutions and civil wars in the period from 1905 to 1945, and
their youth faced many problems. The establishment of
totalitarian regimes in Russia, Germany and some other
countries had totally transformed the life of these nations. It
was the way to democracy, to contemporary civil society and
social state, full of hardships, violence and bloodshed. (Show less)

Ulrika Norburg : Educating the delinquent boys and citizenship in the welfare state 1920-1945
tba

Rosemarie Schade : Understanding Adolescent Girls in the 1920's: Youth Movement and Psychological Perspectives
This paper proposes to examine the attempts made by leading members and commentators of the Wandervogel and Buendische Jugend on issues concerning desirable female adolescent identity. The efforts made by Dr. Charlotte Buehler, a contemporary psychologist working in Vienna to document and develop a theory of the stages of female ... (Show more)
This paper proposes to examine the attempts made by leading members and commentators of the Wandervogel and Buendische Jugend on issues concerning desirable female adolescent identity. The efforts made by Dr. Charlotte Buehler, a contemporary psychologist working in Vienna to document and develop a theory of the stages of female adolescent development will also be considered in an attempt to compare and contrast the self-definitions arrived at by members of this movement and the understanding of "female adolescent identity" arrived at by professionals in the new field of adolescent psychology. An attempt will be made to contextualize these discussions into aspects of the debates around the "New Woman" which pre-occupied the youth movement at various moments during the 1920's. (Show less)



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