2021-12-15, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

As for the research on nations and nationalism, there are two observations that can be made. First, in academic discourses, the topics of nation, nationalism, and the nation-state experiencing a revival. This is true for the cultural and social sciences in general, as it is for educational studies. Second, this recent research on nation, nationalism, and nation-states often make use of theories and concepts that are at least several decades old (such as the “civic nationalism” by Renan (1882), the “imagined communities” by Anderson (1983), or the “banal nationalism” by Billig (1995)). And the explicitly educational-historical research that is readily referred to in connection with the study of nation, nationalism, and nation-states is also somewhat older, as the example of Harp (1998) shows. The fact that contemporary research on the nation still and repeatedly refers to these works was recently described by German professor Aleida Assmann as a degeneration "into a zombie discourse." Based on more recent work in the field of nation, nationalism, and nation-state studies this lecture will discuss possibilities of “dancing” with the “Walking Dead”, that is, dealing with the question of how research on nation, nationalism, and nation-states (especially in the field of history of education) becomes unstuck and alive. Acknowledging the concept of “national literacy” for being one such possibility, the lecture will explore alternative, or maybe better, further ways of doing original and up to date research. Thereby, the lecture will explore how concepts such as Billig’s “banal nationalism” or Anderson’s “imagined communities” can be developed further, for instance by adopting concepts that originate in recent “turns” in cultural and social sciences, such as the “linguistic turn”, the “emotional turn”, and the “material turn”.

2021, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2021, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2020, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2021-09-30, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2021, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2020-12-10, Boser Hofmann, Lukas, Tröhler, Daniel

In early modern Europe, relatively few people received a formal education, let alone higher education. This was not only due to the lack of schools—actually, schools existed in most cities and in many a rural parish—but mostly because many people left school as soon as they had obtained basic reading and writing skills. The generally low level of formal education led nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians to believe that literacy and numeracy rates in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe were considerably low, especially among the rural population. However, in early modern times, education was not only taught in schools. Noblemen and noble women were taught at home by private tutors, and learned societies, emerging in cities all over Europe, launched prize questions and printed the incoming treatises in order to enlarge their members’ knowledge. They also took measures to enlighten the rural people. City dwellers sent their children to private teachers who advertised to teach the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Farmers taught their children themselves, and for many, self-education was the method of choice to obtain useful knowledge and valuable skills. The biographical sketches of three women and four men presented in this chapter illustrate how those different forms of education and enculturation shaped the lives of people born in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2021-03-25, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2021, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

2020, Boser Hofmann, Lukas

One of the central elements of the nation-building process in the 19th century was the attempt to homogenize the citizenry, i.e., to fabricate national citizens. Besides the military and church, schools were considered to be the main agencies capable of achieving this national homogenization. In this paper, focusing on the education in Switzerland and France, I argue that elementary mathematics education was also used for this particular purpose. I make the case that throughout the 19th century mathematics education became a way to familiarize the people with a standardized language – a language that was supposed to help them master their specific social, cultural, and political realities.