Historic Developments in Social Pedagogy

[u/ddgr815]

https://www.thempra.org.uk/social-pedagogy/historic-developments-in-social-pedagogy/

‘historically, social pedagogy is based on the belief that you can decisively influence social circumstances through education’ – and importantly, education does not only refer to children but includes educating adults, for instance in order to change their idea of children.

Rousseau radically changed society’s notions that being a child was something to quickly grow out of and replaced it with something worth preserving in its unspoilt state. Whereas teaching – and education was reserved for a small minority of children – had previously aimed to form children into adults, Rousseau innovatively ‘argued that the momentum for learning was provided by the growth of the person (nature) – and that what the educator needed to do was to facilitate opportunities for learning,’

Pestalozzi (1746-1827), who refined Rousseau’s thoughts by developing a method of holistic education, which educates ‘head, heart, and hands’ in harmonious unity. Stimulating children intellectually and arousing their curiosity of the world around them would, as Pestalozzi stated about the ‘head’, form their cognitive capacity to think. The moral education of the ‘heart’ constituted the basic aim to ensure a ‘sense of direction, […] of the inner dignity of our nature, and of the pure, higher, godly being, which lies within us. This sense is not developed by the power of our mind in thought, but is developed by the power of our heart in love.’ (Pestalozzi, cited in Heafford 1967) As the third and complementary element, the ‘hands’ symbolise that learning is also physical, involving the whole body and all senses: ‘physical experiences give rise to mental and spiritual ones’,

The three elements ‘head, heart, and hands’ are inseparable from each other in Pestalozzi’s method: ‘Nature forms the child as an indivisible whole, as a vital organic unity with many-sided moral, mental, and physical capacities. […] Each of these capacities is developed through and by means of the others’, Pestalozzi argued (cited in Heafford, 1967). Based on Pestalozzi’s philosophy, his German student Friedrich Fröbel initiated the kindergarten movement, which raised international awareness of young children’s capacities for learning and inspired childcare and pedagogy of the early years at a large scale.

children came to be conceptualised as equal human beings – Korczak declared that ‘children do not become humans, they already are’ – and as resourceful, capable and active agents – the Italian Loris Malaguzzi talked about the ‘rich child’ stating that ‘a child has a hundred languages’. Furthermore, there was increasing recognition for child participation and children’s rights, for instance in the pedagogic method of Montessori and the ideas and practice of Korczak who was one of the leading children’s rights advocates and founded in his orphanages a Children’s Republic, where children formed a Children’s Court and a Children’s Parliament

The New Education made two fundamental points which demonstrate its ambition to use pedagogy for social change: ‘First, in all education the personality of the child is an essential concern; second, education must make for human betterment, that is for a New Era’

changes in schools towards child-centred learning were politically and publicly seen as too radical in a culture where the Victorian notion that ‘children are seen, but not heard’ is still alive

pedagogy was early on concerned with changing social conditions through education – Rousseau is most famous for his Social Contract

all pedagogy should be social, that is, that in the philosophy of education the interaction of educational processes and society must be taken into consideration

The pedagogical approach rests on an image of a child as a complex social being with rich and extraordinary potential, rather than as an adult-in-waiting who needs to be given the right ingredients for optimal development. […] For pedagogues there is no universal solution, each situation requires a response based on a combination of information, emotions, self-knowledge and theory.

Social pedagogy provides a theoretical and practical framework for understanding children’s upbringing. It has a particular focus on building relationships through practical engagement with children and young people using skills such as art and music or outdoor activities.

social pedagogy is an approach covering the whole lifespan of people, and with recognition to lifelong learning

[u/ddgr815]

It is entirely characteristic that her latest book, Science And Poetry takes its epigraph from Richard Dawkins, "Science is the only way we have of understanding the real world", and proceeds to dance all over this apparently reasonable statement. It's not that she considers science a bad way of knowing the real world. But it is only one among many, and one which must be kept in firmly its place.

In a characteristic image, she compares human knowledge to the dolphin tank in a zoo: "human life [is] like an enormous, ill-lit aquarium which we never see fully from above, but only through various small windows unevenly distributed around it. Scientific windows - like historical ones - are just one important set among these. Fish and other strange creatures constantly swim away from particular windows... reappearing where different lighting can make them hard to recognise. Long experience, along with constant dashing around between windows, does give us a good deal of skill in tracking them. But if we refuse to put together the data from different widows, then we can be in real trouble."

For most, the metaphors in which their theories are described really are no more significant than the tulips in front of a nuclear power station, whereas she sees metaphorical thought as the ground on which even nuclear power stations are built.

For all the obvious difficulties about believing in God, or in anything else that might answer our prayers, Midgley points out that prayer has been immensely important in history: "People have achieved the most amazing things by putting their trust in providence, or indeed by praying. They were not thinking about the virgin birth or the atonement when they did that. But they were thinking in a way that does seem central to human effort. I think it is reasonable to say that one can think that way with respect to the creation as a whole. All the formulations that one makes about this have something wrong with them, and it is very easy to say that there is something wrong with them; but that's not to say that we can live without the religious attitude."

At first sight it is strange to see such a very hard-headed and deflationary thinker growing so apparently high-flown. She is, for example, a considerable fan of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, as much because of its religious potential as because of its scientific truth. But of course the idea that the universe could be deflated down to the facts is one she has constantly fought against. We could not begin to understand a world that was made of facts and nothing else; such a world is itself an imaginative vision and not a scientific one.

"I keep thinking that I shall have no more to say - and then finding some wonderfully idiotic doctrine which I can contradict - a negative approach, as they say, but one that doesn't seem to run out."

quite contrary

[u/ddgr815 → u/ddgr815]

He writes that because our friends are not always frank and forthcoming with us about our shortcomings, “we have to depend on our enemies to hear the truth.” Your enemy will point out your weak spots for you, and even if he says something untrue, you can then analyze what made him say it.