Cathy Burke has just signed me onto this group, so Hello to you all from
Ohio, U.S.A.
For a number of days now, I have been looking at the photographs that Cathy
posted from her class-- looking at them both on the computer screen and
then printed out beautifully in black and white on our printer paper. And
as I have been reading your comments I've been thinking that we seem to
look for different things in these images.
Some of us look at historical photographs as additional data for our
understanding of history-- new information about design, classroom
practice, architecture. We are concerned about dates and locale and
clarifying what might be going on in the image.
A second group of us seems to look at the images in a more aesthetic, less
technical way. I'll speak for myself here in that my work with images has
been based on my personal response to the images more so than looking at
them as a historian in search of data. It's the mood and feel for the
images that strikes me: I think about the children pictured here and about
my own childhood in schools; I imagine the noises and smells in the
classroom, the giggles, the shoves, the twitches, the litle boy turning his
head to look at his friend, the little girl scratching her knee, the smell
of the clay, the dollup of clay that falls on the floor.
For me, these images conjure up the "feel" of schooling in the past more so
than any document, or even any oral history can. For me, this "feel" gives
me a deep sense of what classroom life was like in the past, and only later
do I wonder if these classrooms are British, are pre or post war, and so
on.
Looking at images has helped me loosen up my way of thinking about history.
Even when I conducted oral histories, I seemed obsessed with facts and data
(often interrupting my subjects, stupidly, to try to get that kind of
detail). Looking at images has allowed me to move into a less rigid way of
thinking about histry and trying to re-envision classrooms in the past.
* * * * * * *
Impeachment Psalm:
I lie in the midst of lions that freedily devour the sons of men:
their teeth are spears and arrows, their tongues sharp words.
They set a net for my steps; my soul was bowed down.
They dug a pit in my way, but they have fallen into it themselves.
(Psalm 57)
Kate Rousmaniere
Associate Professor
Department of Educational Leadership
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio 45056
513-529-6843
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