Dear colleagues:
Many months ago some of you contributed useful suggestions in
reaction to a question of mine, how to use "new media" in a history of
education & childhood course for a very great number of students. I
then promised to let you know my experiences. So after a long period
of absence from this list, let me briefly relate the results of my teaching
experiment.
I had the students use materials from the Internet (both from sources
already available, and several texts that I put online specifically for
this course) and I had them send in regular assignments by email. All
emailed student assignments, some with my comments inserted, were
put online in the course webpages, so in our general meetings we
could compare and discuss what was sent in.
All this went very well, although for me it was of course rather time-
consuming... Once students were accustomed to the new approach,
which also involved a lot more discussion, they seemed to have little
trouble with it. In fact the main problems I encountered were purely
technical. For example, to be able to refer to online resources in the
meetings, I had a computer with projector installed in the auditorium;
after three weeks I came in to find the computer was stolen... A main
problem was that each time I had a few students who claimed to have
emailed their assignment, while it was nowhere to be found. So next
time I'll have to devise some kind of solution where students can
check back that their own assignment has indeed come across --
which is not as easy as it seems, because this should be done before
the deadline (after which they're allowed to read the assignments send
in by others).
Perhaps the most amazing result of this redesigned course was the
final exam. In previous years, some 20 to 30% of all participants used
to flunk the first time and had to try again. This year, I had exactly the
same kind of questions (for example, about the social motives of the
first child protection laws, or about Dewey's vs. Key's view of the
educational role of parents) and to my great surprise, 95% of all
students made it the first time! I'm still wondering for an explanation,
because I cannot believe the course was THAT much more efficient...
In all, everyone (including myself) was reasonably satisfied with this
course as a learning experience.
Regarding abandonment, Cathy asked "how to present the material
powerfully and strongly without representing the subject as victim,
vulnerable, weak." My first reaction here is: why shouldn't children in
this context be represented as victims or vulnerable? Would this
somehow affect their dignity? If in particular situations in the past
children actually were victims, then why shouldn't we present them as
such?
Anyway, I think a balanced representation of children in such
situations in the past might be helped by quoting, as much as
possible, from available egodocuments -- perhaps we ought to try to
find and use more memoirs, etc. by people who as a child were subject
to abandonment themselves. I come to this because a colleague of
mine, Jan Noordman, in one of his articles very effectively quoted from
the memoirs of Neeltje Doff, who many years afterwards vividly
described her reactions when as a child in the 1880s one night she
overheard her poor parents discussing the possibility of abandoning
the children. By quoting from a primary source like this, in his article
he achieved the effect of putting things in a proper perspective.
Best wishes to all, Henk
Henk van Setten
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University Nijmegen,
dept. Algemene Pedagogiek,
PO Box 9104,
6500 HE Nijmegen,
Netherlands
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Editor, The History of Education Site:
http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/
Website email: [log in to unmask]
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