Felicity Jensz, Cluster of Excellence Religion and Politics and Daniel Gerster, Department of History, The University of Münster, Germany

Venue: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Time: 05.-06.11.2020
Proposals by: 15.07.2020

Since the 19th century, many countries have striven for universal education as a means to ’shape‘ people into loyal and obedient citizens; a process which can be seen as part of ’social engineering‘. One particular form of education is the boarding school. Various forms of boarding schools existed: from ‚elite‘ institutes providing the offspring of high-class people an education and consolidating the social status of the pupil, to boarding schools for indigenous children in (former) settler colonies in which an European episteme was forced upon the pupils. A commonality within the broad spectrum of boarding schools was the assumption that through the isolation from some aspects of society, such as parents or peers, pupils would be molded into subjects that would easily be assimilated into a section of society that their education ‚prepared‘ them for.

This conference (and resulting publication) aims to understand the mechanisms and outcomes of boarding and residential schools in the socialization of children and youth during the 19th and 20th centuries from different backgrounds, social status, age, gender, nationality, religiosity, and ethnicity within a global perspective.

The primary focus of the conference will be on the participants of boarding and residential schools, and the social and/or pedagogical processes resulting in inclusion and/or exclusion. The organizers are particularly interested in analyzing processes such as those: which led to the participation of teachers and pupils in schooling; or, the shaping of instruction by headmasters, politicians, or parents; or, the manipulation of educational environments to suit participants’ needs; as well as those processes that facilitated the resisting of the imposed episteme and/or material constructs. Building from the focus upon individuals, the organizers will examine through historical examples to what extent the processes of exclusive inclusion succeeded/failed in practice. In this regard, thea are particularly interested in how daily practices and personal experiences corresponded with or differed from normative concepts of … read more and source (Web).