At the end of the nineteenth century Aimé Bogaerts, a Socialist primary school teacher at a Ghent municipal school and from 1901 on the chief editor of the Socialist newspaper “Vooruit”, started with a new educational initiative: “the children of the popular classes from Ghent” (“De GentscheVolkskinderen”). Children from the working class were invited to sing, to dance, to recite, to do gymnastics, and to play theatre. At the same time, short and longer holiday trips to France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, England and Germany were organized. Bogaerts was inspired by the Ghent Liberal workers’ societies who already started in 1869 with organizing all different kinds of games and gymnastics for pupils and former pupils (young workers) of the Ghent municipal schools. Next to this, Paul Robin’s concept of an integral education (“l’éducation intégrale) was seen as the guiding pedagogical principle. Robin was the head of the well-known orphanage Prévost at Cempuis (France). Bogaerts’ dead in 1915, conflicts within the Ghent section of the Socialist Party, the German occupation, and new youth initiatives immediately after World War I (the Red Falcons) meant the fading away of the “Gentsche Volkskinderen”.

In this paper, based on different written primary sources (letters, diaries, the writings of Bogaerts, and the newspaper Vooruit) and visual sources (photographs), we will analyze Bogaerts’ “Gentsche Volkskinderen” from a double ‘child at risk’ perspective.

First, there is the child at risk on a political-ideological level. With his initiative Bogaerts wanted to convince working class parents to withdraw their children from the activities organized by the Liberal workers’ societies as he strongly disagreed with the central Liberal idea of “moralizing the workers by enlightening them”. Bogaerts ideal existed of creating the political-ideological pillarized (Socialist) child. Secondly, there is the child at risk on an educational level. Bogaerts wanted to put forward a rationalistic educational project, characterized by a scientific and rational basis rejecting every supernatural intervention. This double analysis will reveal an interesting educational paradox: integral rationalistic educated children appear as Socialist propaganda tools.