Images of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as a Liminal Space for Educating a Workers’ Elite in 1920s Luxembourg

in History of Education (2019)

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper ... [more ▼]

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper draws on a collection of 2,251 glass plate negatives (re)presenting ARBED’s industrial cosmos, including its vocational school the Institut Emile Metz. The roughly 160 images of apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and a variety of activities in different contexts. The images’ contents testify to the institute’s programmatic hybridity and the constant (re-)mix of formal and semi-formal learning activities intended to educate natural, urban, mobile and communal men and future workers. Our focus is on Boy Scouts activities in a variety of different environments, which have functioned as a liminal space for educating a workers’ elite, mitigating the risks of industrialization and fostering social harmony and cultural belonging. [less ▲]

Body_Machine? Encounters of the Human and the Mechanical in Education, Industry and Science

in History of Education (2016)

This paper unveils the body-machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the ... [more ▼]

This paper unveils the body-machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the mechanical encountered each other in metaphorical, material and visual forms, thereby blurring to some extent the boundaries between them while capturing and mobilising specific forms of knowing and acting. The paper studies firstly, how certain ‘orienting frames of reference’ and associated ‘experimental systems’ managed to materialise around the body-machine and penetrate theory and praxis; and, secondly, what visual and textual sources related to a vocational school may reveal about where and how the body-machine has come to operate in education, industry and science. The paper centres on early twentieth century photographs and analyses these not only as media presenting, representing and interrogating common thought and practice but also as agents of meaning-making around the body-machine. [less ▲]

Forging Harmony in the Social Organism: Industry and the Power of Psychometric Techniques

in History of Education (2014), 43(5), 592-614

This article analyses the initiating role of the steel industry in educational selection by means of psychometric techniques used in the psycho-physiological laboratory associated with a vocational school ... [more ▼]

This article analyses the initiating role of the steel industry in educational selection by means of psychometric techniques used in the psycho-physiological laboratory associated with a vocational school in Luxembourg founded in 1914. It first considers the origins of, and initial meanings bestowed upon, this first (and perhaps also last) Luxembourg Laboratory of Psychophysiology. Second, it investigates whether and, if so, to what extent psychometric techniques developed in this laboratory for vocational orientation were used strategically to foster an ethic of individual harmony by means of objectified observation and categorisation of the aptitude. What hidden agendas underpinned the industry’s rhetoric regarding the rebirth of the individual and the empowerment of personal vocation through science-oriented processes like quantification, measurement and rational assessment? Did such rhetoric legitimise the industry’s self-image as a privileged force in structuring the social fabric as well as individual lives? [less ▲]

The school desk: from concept to object

in History of Education (2011), 40(1), 97-117

In the authors’ aim to go beyond the ‘silent’ school desk they returned to sources such as public contracts, photographs, advertising leaflets and (the often neglected) patents kept in the municipal ... [more ▼]

In the authors’ aim to go beyond the ‘silent’ school desk they returned to sources such as public contracts, photographs, advertising leaflets and (the often neglected) patents kept in the municipal archives of Brussels. In this article, they focus on the first half of the twentieth century and two phases of the ‘life-cycle’ of the school desk, namely the design phase on the one hand and the production phase on the other hand. What desks were designed and by whom (cf. patents)? Which desks were effectively produced for use in the municipal schools of Brussels? The transition between these two phases – the place where only some designs were brought to ‘life’ – occupies a special place. The paper concludes with a case study on the school furniture of Oscar Brodsky, a designer who kindled the authors’ interest through his publicity campaign of the 1920s and 1930s. [less ▲]

Remembering the schoolmaster's blood-red pen. The story of the exercise books and the story of the children of the time (1950-1970)

in History of Education (2008), 3(2), 351-375