The Dessau Generations: influences from the Reformpädagogik of the german philanthropists

Cet article propose de détailler le parcours de trois élèves formés aux méthodes des philanthropinistes à la fin du XVIIIe. Il s’agit du négociant Nikolaus von Böhl, du géographe Carl Ritter et du comte Ernst Friedrich Herbert zu Münster. Cela permettra une analyse sociologique: quelles professions, quelles ouvertures intellectuelles, quels engagements civiques, politiques ont-ils été rendus possible par l\u27enseignement? Les parcours des élèves sont variés. Mais, bien souvent, au-delà de professions, on observe une survivance des formes d\u27humanisme philanthropique. Et on peut répertorier quelles sont ces formes et comment elles s\u27ajustent aux nouvelles conjonctures politiques, militaires, sociales, économiques. En somme, il s’agira d’étudier quelles valeurs sont ainsi transmises. (DIPF/Orig.)Philanthropism is a well-known educational reform in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century. The Philanthropinum of Dessau served as a model for the institutions founded after him, such as Salzmann’s school in Schnepfenthal or Campe’s pension in Hamburg. In the context of this topic "Learning together, in and between generations", we are focused on the career of three pupils from these schools. We intend to answer these questions. How do we learn generationally? Which is the influence on the relationship of learners and teachers? Through a sociological analysis, we will underline the values that connect across generations. (DIPF/Orig.

Elternbriefe an das Dessauer Philanthropinum (1774‑1792)

In diesem Artikel werden unveröffentlichte Elternbriefe analysiert, die aus den Dessauer Archiven stammen. Unter diesen Briefen werden im ersten Teil die Elternbriefe erläutert werden, in denen es um die Aufnahme eines Sohns als Zögling geht. Dabei werden die erwünschten Anforderungen der Eltern berücksichtigt. Was zog sie nach Dessau? Aus welchen Gründen trafen die Eltern den Entschluss, ein 8-12jähriges Kind von seinem Zuhause zu entfernen und darüber hinaus in jene ganz neue „experimentale“ Schule zu schicken? Weiterhin werden die Briefe derselben Eltern untersucht, seitdem deren Kinder Zöglinge in Dessau geworden sind. Werden die Erwartungen erfüllt? Werden neue Prioritäten festgelegt? Sind sie mit der philanthropischen Methode zufrieden? Welche Beziehung haben sie zu der Schule? Haben sie andere Forderungen?Es gilt also zu zeigen, dass Eltern wie Lehrer bestrebt waren, die Lernerfolge der Zöglinge zu kontrollieren und zu regulieren, dass dies aber nicht immer mit derselben Absicht erfolgte.Cet article se propose d’étudier des lettres non publiées de parents de pensionnaires de l’établissement de Dessau, le Philanthropinum. Ces lettres proviennent des archives de l’école. Dans une première partie, il s’agit d’examiner les motivations qui poussent les parents à envoyer leur fils, souvent très jeune, dans une école expérimentale qui vient d’ouvrir ses portes. Puis, nous analyserons les lettres de ces mêmes parents après que leur enfant est devenu pensionnaire. Sont-ils satisfaits ? Ont-ils des revendications ? Quelles relations entretiennent-ils avec l’école ? Il s’agit de déterminer si les objectifs des enseignants de l’école et ceux des parents sont identiques. Même si les deux tendent à vouloir contrôler l’éducation des enfants, on peut s’interroger sur les finalités de ce contrôle.The aim of the article is to study unpublished letters from parents whose children were boarders at the Philanthropinum in Dessau. The letters come from the archives of the school. In a first part, we will examine parents motivations to send their sons, often at a very young age (aged 8-12), to an “experimental” school which had just opened. Then we will analyse those parents letters once their children had been accepted in that school. Were they satisfied? Did the school meet their expectations? Were they satisfied with the philanthropic method? Did they have any claims? What kind of relationships did they have with the school? To what extent did the school teachers and the parents share the same objectives? Even if both wanted to control the children’s education, it seems necessary to analyse the goals of such control

Effects of Mothers\u27 and Preschoolers\u27 Communicative Function Use and Demographics on Concurrent Language and Social Skills

Purpose: Achievement gaps exist between children from racial/ethnic minority and low SES homes and their peers, yet clear explanations for the gap have been elusive. In addition to vocabulary, some are examining pragmatics to help understand the gap, as functional language can a) reflect how caregivers stimulate language; b) show how preschoolers communicate and; c) affect academic performance. The purpose of this study was to examine links between linguistic performance and the communicative functions (CFs) of typically developing African American, European American, and Latino American preschool boys and girls and their mothers. Method: CFs were coded from one learning and play mother-child interaction (N=95) from the National Center for Early Development and Learning’s (NCEDL, 2005) study of Family and Social Environments. Relationships among CFs, demographics and performance on standardized language, receptive vocabulary, and social competence measures were analyzed. Results: Mother Reporting, mother Reasoning, mother Total Utterances, gender, and poverty predicted performance, while Predicting was the only child CF to predict performance. Conclusion: Associations between gender, poverty, and mothers’ CFs suggest that lower performance for boys and children who are poor may reflect a lack of experience rather than a lack of basic communicative competence, as few child CFs were related to performance. By implication, determinations of language deficits in CLD children should consider that observed difficulty may be due to differences in early exposure to some CFs by their mothers or how teachers are measuring performance

Communicative Function Use of Preschoolers and Mothers from Differing Racial and Socioeconomic Groups

Purpose: This study explores whether communicative function (CF: reasons for communicating) use differs by socioeconomic status (SES), race/ethnicity, or gender among preschoolers and their mothers. Method: Mother-preschooler dyads (N=95) from the National Center for Early Development and Learning’s (NCEDL, 2005) study of Family and Social Environments were observed during one structured learning and free play interaction. CFs were coded by trained independent raters. Results: Children used all CFs at similar rates but those from low SES homes produced fewer utterances and less Reasoning, while boys used less Self-maintaining and more Predicting. African American (AA) mothers produced more Directing and less Responding than European American (EA) and Latino American (LA) mothers, and LA mothers produced more utterances than EA mothers. Mothers from low SES homes did more Directing and less Responding. Conclusion: Mothers exhibited more socio-cultural differences in CFs than children; this suggests that maternal demographic characteristics may influence CF production more than child demographics at school entry. Children from low SES homes talking less and boys producing less Self-maintaining coincided with patterns previously detected in pragmatic literature. Overall, preschoolers from racial/ethnic minority and low SES homes were not less deft with CF usage, which may inform how their pragmatic skills are described

Correlation between communicative functions of mothers and preschoolers of different racial and income groups

While language differences by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) have been identified, the domain of pragmatics, specifically, communicative functions (CF) has been understudied. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate mothers’ CF use with African American, European American, and Latino American boys and girls of middle and low SES. CFs were coded from each dyads’ (N=95) learning and play interaction from the National Center for Early Development and Learning’s (NCEDL, 2005) study of Family and Social Environments (Aikens, Coleman, & Bryant, 2008). Demographic factors were correlated with talkativeness, and Directing and Mother Directing, Responding, and Projecting were important predictors. Gender predicted child Self-maintaining and Predicting, and limited child demographic predictors suggest that they might not affect CFs as directly as mother CFs. Identification of associations among mother demographics and CFs can enhance comprehension of home communication styles for researchers and clinicians to better understand referral decision-making based on pragmatic indices for diverse preschoolers

Archive of Darkness:William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noire

Situating itself in histories of cinema and installation art, William Kentridge's Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005) raises questions about screens, exhibition space, site-specificity and spectatorship. Through his timely intervention in a debate on Germany’s colonial past, Kentridge’s postcolonial art has contributed to the recognition and remembrance of a forgotten, colonial genocide. This article argues that, by transposing his signature technique of drawings for projection onto a new set of media, Kentridge explores how and what we can know through cinematic projection in the white cube. In particular, his metaphor of the illuminated shadow enables him to animate archival fragments as shadows and silhouettes. By creating a multi-directional archive, Black Box enables an affective engagement with the spectres of colonialism and provides a forum for the calibration of moral questions around reparation, reconciliation and forgiveness

Neurophysiological evidence for rapid processing of verbal and gestural information in understanding communicative actions

During everyday social interaction, gestures are a fundamental part of human communication. The communicative pragmatic role of hand gestures and their interaction with spoken language has been documented at the earliest stage of language development, in which two types of indexical gestures are most prominent: the pointing gesture for directing attention to objects and the give-me gesture for making requests. Here we study, in adult human participants, the neurophysiological signatures of gestural-linguistic acts of communicating the pragmatic intentions of naming and requesting by simultaneously presenting written words and gestures. Already at ~150 ms, brain responses diverged between naming and request actions expressed by word-gesture combination, whereas the same gestures presented in isolation elicited their earliest neurophysiological dissociations significantly later (at ~210 ms). There was an early enhancement of request-evoked brain activity as compared with naming, which was due to sources in the frontocentral cortex, consistent with access to action knowledge in request understanding. In addition, an enhanced N400-like response indicated late semantic integration of gesture-language interaction. The present study demonstrates that word-gesture combinations used to express communicative pragmatic intentions speed up the brain correlates of comprehension processes – compared with gesture-only understanding – thereby calling into question current serial linguistic models viewing pragmatic function decoding at the end of a language comprehension cascade. Instead, information about the social-interactive role of communicative acts is processed instantaneously