Session Information
Session 2, The Making of Educational Sciences
Papers
Time:
2005-09-07
17:00-18:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Frank Simon
Contribution
Public health care became one of the major social issues in modern society at the end of the nineteenth century. As an important part of a broad social reform movement it included the medical protection of children. The school became the central focus point in this discourse. Already in the middle of the nineteenth century many European countries had established regular school inspections. While in the beginning physicians dominated the debate on school hygiene and focused almost exclusively on its medical aspects, soon educationalists, psychologists, and pedagogical reformers claimed the social relevance of a public school hygiene. Around the turn of the centuries one can observe a discursive transformation from the medical focus to the pedagogical and social aspects of school hygiene. Linked to this transformation were demands for a reorganization of the medical education and special teacher training in hygiene. Although the various participants of these debates followed their own professional interests, they were united in their goal to foster the improvement of the mental, physical, and medical situation of school children. The reform of hygienic conditions as well as mental and physical health not only aimed at the protection of the physical body of the student, such as avoiding "overburdening;" in addition, the reformers also emphasized the eugenic dimension of school hygiene and correlated the student's health with the well-being of the whole social organism. Soon an international network was created, at the center of which belonged international congresses and associations. Although school hygiene was first discussed at various international medical congresses, such as the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography and the International Medical Congress, the initiative to found a separate International Congress of School Hygiene was actually started in Germany. In 1904 the first of these congresses took place in Nuremberg; three more followed before 1914. Additionally, the International Society of School Hygiene and an International Archive were established. Among the major topics that were discussed internationally one could find the architecture of school buildings, the mental hygiene and physical health of students, sexual education, pedagogical psychology, and health care. In my talk I will investigate the structure and mechanics of this network and will also consider the highly complex context of its genesis, development, and representatives. I will show how the actors with their different professional and social backgrounds shaped the work and the outcome of the school hygiene movement before the outbreak of World War One.
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