Preliminary Programme

This paper focuses on how math education became highly nationalized in Switzerland in the nineteenth century. Its research questions are the following: What was taught in math education and how did this content change in the course of the nineteenth century?
At the dawn of the 19th century differing understandings of math education were to be found in Switzerland. Some educators embraced a textbook by the French mathematician and philosopher Condorcet written in 1793 (Condorcet, 1800). In this book Condorcet sketched a math education that was meant to teach the children “pure” (i.e. scientific) mathematics (Schubring, 1989), which also meant to teach them the language of science and ultimately the language of nature itself.
The majority of educators however, favored a different idea. They wanted to tie math education to people’s everyday needs. Neither nature nor God were in the focus of such an education but the needs and the logic of local economies (Boser 2015). In this context the nation became a central point of reference. The national economy, national industry, national history, national territory, and national identity all became major elements of math education (Boser 2016). In fact, within half a century math education had become highly nationalized. Math education in Switzerland is therefore an excellent example to study the “alchemy” that turns (scientific) knowledge into nation-building subject material (Popkewitz, 2004).

References:

Boser, L. (2016). Meßen ist Wissen. Die Verwendung von Maßen und Gewichten im Primarschulunterricht im 19. Jahrhundert in der Schweiz. In Götz M. and M. Vogt, (eds.), Schulwissen für und über Kinder (pp. 143–161). Bad Heilbrunn, Germany: Julius Klinkhardt.
Boser, L. (2015). Taking the Right Measures – The French Political and Cultural Revolution and the Introduction of New Systems of Measurement in Swiss Schools during the 19th Century. Tröhler, D. and Lenz, T. (eds.), Trajectories in the Development of Modern School Systems: Between the National and the Global, (pp. 73–84). New York, NY: Routledge.
Condorcet, J.-A.-N. de Caritat, Marquis de (1800). Moyens d’apprendre a compter surement et avec facilité. Paris, France: Bachelier.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2004). The Alchemy of the Mathematics Curriculum: The Inscriptions and the Fabrication of the Child. American Educational Research Journal 44, 3–34.
Schubring, G. (1989). La réforme du savoir savant: la contribution de Condorcet au premier concours des «livres élémentaires». In Crépel P. and Gilain, C. (eds.), Condorcet – mathématicien, économiste, philosophe, homme politique, (pp. 44–51). Paris, France: Minerve. (Show less)

Using the example of Switzerland, this paper analyses how medical knowledge was transferred into the classroom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In the course of the hygiene movement, physicians discovered the significance of public schools as the place where the future citizens should learn the importance of health and how to keep well and fit (Meckel, 2013; Hofmann, 2016). As of the late 19th century, medical knowledge became more and more part of the elementary school curriculum (Popkewitz, 2011). In order not to “overburden” the children (see Balcar, 2017) this knowledge was mostly integrated into existing subjects such as history, geography or mathematics, instead of creating a separate subject called “hygiene”. Hygiene knowledge was based on universal scientific findings that should know no national limits. However, in the process of curricularization, this knowledge was nationalized (Marten, 2009). One aspect that is particularly interesting in this regard is anti-alcohol education that became part of the hygiene instruction in Swiss schools around 1900 in the wake of an international temperance movement (Hofmann, 2015). Initially, the teetotalers wanted the children to learn about the devastating effects of alcohol (crime, illness, mortality). With this demand, they found little acceptance. However, the champions of anti-alcohol education gained attention by focusing on milk and fruit and advocated the teaching of these topics in the schools from the 1920s onwards. Here, the international anti-alcohol endeavors found a specifically national manifestation. Milk and fruit lent themselves to be advertised as typically Swiss. Hence, the teetotalers received the support of the strong agricultural lobby. This cooperation proved to be very productive: Countless lesson planning ideas were published and school campaigns were initiated. What had started out as a great international social reform movement eventually turned into a national measure for promoting the economy. In addition, by focusing on milk and fruit, a belittlement or trivialization of the alcohol issue took place, which stands in sharp contrast to the initial portrayal in the context of criminality, illness, and mortality.

References:

Balcar, N. (2017). “Psychopathische” Schuljugend in Deutschland – eine Debatte zwischen Psychiatern und Pädagogen im späten Kaiserreich. Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 7 (2), 157–172.
Hofmann, M. (2015): From Abstinence to Economic Promotion, or the International Temperance Movement and the Swiss Schools. In D. Tröhler & T. Lenz (eds.), Trajectories in the Development of Modern School Systems: Between the National and the Global (pp. 98–110). New York, NY: Routledge
Hofmann, M. (2016). Gesundheitswissen in der Schule. Schulhygiene in der deutschsprachigen Schweiz im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript.
Marten, J. A. (ed.) (2009). Children and Youth in a New Nation. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Meckel, A. (2013). Classrooms and Clinics: Urban Schools and the Protection and Promotion of Child Health, 1870–1930. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Popkewitz, T. S. (2011). Curriculum History, Schooling and the History of the Present. History of Education, 40 (1), 1–19. (Show less)

In research on nationalism there is a debate about to what degree the idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism are something modern (Anderson, 1983; Hroch, 2007) or something primordial (Hastings, 1997; Grosby, 2003). Within this debate, it seems to be accepted that the idea of the modern nation-states had been fueled by the ideology of nationalism, synthesizing the idea of the nation with the idea of the modern state, and it seems to be accepted, too, that this synthesis occurred first either during the French Revolution (Hobsbawm, 1990) or as a consequence of industrialism (Gellner, 1983).
As this session argues, in research on nationalism (too) little attention has been given to education as a perceived means to naturalize or “internally colonize” (Hechter, 1975) inhabitants of a nation-state. This may be the reason why one of the early attempts of connecting nation-state-building and education has been neglected, namely Jacques Rousseau’s treatise On the Government of Poland in 1771/72 (2005), in which he declares education to be the prime element in providing the individual’s soul with national power and patriotism and where he advocates compulsory and free schooling for all and a state-designed curriculum that is aligned along national idiosyncrasies (and greatness), national literature, history, geography, physical education and public games in order to acquaint the younger generation with the customs of the older: that is to make the national genius of free Poland the second nature of the younger Poles.
The paper reconstructs Rousseau’s essay in the light of both, the current research on nationalism and the educational preoccupation with Rousseau’s Emile (1762/1979) by providing alternative readings to unclear passages found in the very beginning of his famous novel and offering a new integral reading of Rousseau’s plea to de-naturalize human nature in order to re-naturalize it in a free republic.

References:

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, UK: Verso.
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Grosby, S. (2003). Religion, Ethnicity and Nationalism. The Uncertain Perennialism of Adrian Hastings. Nations and Nationalism, 9 (1), 7–13.
Hastings, A. (1997). The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. J. (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hechter, M. (1975). Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hroch, M. (2007). Comparative Studies in Modern European History: Nation, Nationalism, Social Change. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1979). Emile or on Education (A. Bloom, trans., ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books (first published 1762)
Rousseau, J.-J. (2005). Considerations on the Government of Poland and on its Planned Reformation. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Plan for Perpetual Peace, on the Government of Poland, and Other Writings on History and Politics (Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 11) (pp. 167–240). Hannover, NH: Dartmouth University Press (written in 1771/72). (Show less)