Is there a Rosenberg school?

Since his first book The Cholera Years appeared in 1962, Charles Rosenberg has had an enormous influence on the history of medicine. Not the least of that influence has been exercised through his role as a graduate teacher, advisor, and mentor. This article compares Rosenberg's work with that of his students, to see if there is such a historiographic identity as the "Rosenberg School." The authors, two Rosenberg students from different generations, conclude that there is not such a school, at least in the classic sense of the term. Yet they argue that certain common assumptions, or "Rosenberg Rules," have been passed on from Rosenberg to the other scholars he has influenced. They also discuss the challenges they have encountered in applying Charles's conceptual framework, worked out primarily in pre-1920 terms, to the late twentieth-century history of American medicine.     

‘Favourite places in school’ for lower-set ‘ability’ pupils: school groupings practices and children’s spatial orientations

This paper contributes to the recent turn within Children’s Geographies concerned with understanding and illuminating educational inequalities. The focus is upon pupils assigned to lower ‘ability’ groupings, in a school under pressure to raise attainment. The objective of the paper is twofold, firstly to consider how school grouping practices affect children’s sense of belonging in lessons, and secondly, to contextualise these findings against children’s spatial orientations within the broader school environment. It is argued that a spatial focus may shed light upon the educational policy drivers that contribute to the exclusion of disadvantaged children. Neo-liberal imperatives of accountability and performance can be seen to shape hierarchies of belonging, where pupils’ positioning in ‘ability’ groupings enables/limits the spatial agency that they can exert. Macro policy concerns are mapped onto micro school processes concerning the construction and governance of school spaces, using theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and R.D Sack.     

Excessive rightsizing? The interdependence of public school closures and population shrinkage

Shrinking cities have, by definition, lost population. Rightsizing is a strategic planning approach to mitigate the challenges of population loss by adjusting a municipality's services, amenities, or even footprint to fit a new demographic reality. While studies have documented the unacceptability and ineptitude of municipality-driven rightsizing, public school closures have proliferated and quietly become a noteworthy material manifestation of population change. However, as public schools are widely considered to be a foundational component of community cohesion, identity, and prosperity, it begs the question of whether their closure may accelerate the decline feedback mechanisms already present in many shrinking cities. Our study examines public school closures in Ontario, Canada, from 2011 to 2016 to determine the relationship between municipal population trajectories and size and public school closures, and to explore the prevalence of school closures and the community context in shrinking Ontario municipalities. We find that public school closures occurred disproportionately in shrinking and smaller municipalities. Furthermore, public school closure prevalence is associated with low income, low ethnoracial diversity, and low educational attainment.     

Still the English patient? Closures and inventions in the English school

Books reviewed in this article:
Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International systems in world history: remaking the study of International
Tim Dunne, Inventing international society: a history of the English school
V, The global covenant: human conduct in a world of states
Maurice Keens-Soper, Europe in the world: the persistence of power politics     

Children with mind–body differences: performing disability in primary school classrooms

There has been a significant geographical shift in the primary school education of children with mind–body differences in England. Emphasis is increasingly placed upon the ‘inclusive’ education of ‘disabled’ children in mainstream schools (DfES, 2001 Department for Education and Skills (2001a) Special Needs and Disability Act London: HMSO  [Google Scholar]a, 2001 Department for Education and Skills (2001b) Special Educational Needs, Code of Practice London: DFES  [Google Scholar]b), and children with a range of mind–body abilities are currently educated within mainstream primary school classrooms. This paper prioritises children's experiences in examining how (dis)ability is reproduced heterogeneously through everyday practices in ‘inclusive’ classrooms. The discourses of disability which circulate through classroom spaces are influenced by wider societal representations of disability and childhood, albeit often interpreted in specific ways within the context of the education institution. This demonstrates that classroom micro‐spaces are porous, specific institutional spaces.     

‘Territorialising’ the primary school playground: deconstructing the geography of playtime

UK primary school playgrounds differ in architecture, size and presentation. Some are bleak and empty; others are crammed full of colour and exciting play equipment. Overall, however, the assumption is that it is a dedicated play space that promotes children's social and physical freedom. This paper, using Sack's (1986) notion of ‘territorialisation’, deconstructs the contemporary playground space and examines the spatial strategies invoked by those in charge of playground supervision and management. It also presents the children's territorialisation of the playground and their reactions to, and transgressions of, the adults' spatial control.     

Excluded citizens? Participatory research with young people from a ‘failing’ school community

This paper examines a participatory community research project with young people from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ in a provincial New Zealand town. This school-based project aimed to celebrate the expertise and insights of these young citizens by profiling their digital stories to their community. However, the failure to achieve this goal compelled the researcher to confront the ‘presentist’ assumptions underpinning this project. A re-analysis of the lingering impact of historic processes and practices of exclusion in this divided town drew attention to the temporal, spatial and relational nature of citizenship. The paper proposes that deeper recognition be given to the ‘webs of social relations’ (Arendt, Hannah. 1968. Between Past and Future: Eight Excercises in Political Thought. New York: Viking Press) that citizenship acts are constituted within, alongside the lingering impact of historical legacies of socio-spatial exclusion. Recognising these aspects will enrich our understandings of citizenship as well as enhance the transformative potential of participatory community research.     

Girls’ perspectives on the ideal school playground experience: an exploratory study of four Australian primary schools

ABSTRACT

Based on research conducted as part of the Sydney Playground Project, this paper provides an exploratory investigation of the perspectives of girls relating to the ideal school playground experience, and whether their perspectives are influenced by a loose-parts playground intervention. The focus is on the play behaviours of 22 girls aged 8–10 years, from the perspective that school playgrounds are generally designed in ways that are more suited to the play behaviours of boys. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of children’s drawings, interviews and focus groups, exploring meanings associated with desired play experiences. Findings indicate that girls’ views of the ideal school playground are influenced by the geographies of the spaces they play in, and that girls highly valued changes provided by a loose-parts intervention.     

‘The races and conditions of men’: women in nineteenth-century geography school texts in the United States

Geography schoolbooks published in the United States were important opinion makers in the nineteenth century, often joining the Bible as the main source of information about the world outside North America. The texts examined here are noteworthy for their static and pejorative treatment of non-American cultures and may be seen as playing a key role in forming isolationist and chauvinist American public opinion. They also played a role in reinforcing ideas about the proper niche for women in American society, even though it may seem at first that these books could not have had much influence on ideas about American women because they barely mentioned women, almost always relegating them to illustrations and captions. The few women depicted were usually characterized as ‘poor souls’ in distant lands worthy of pity. We discuss the national political context in which these writers (many of whom were women) were producing geography school texts, the social roles they were fulfilling by reinforcing such limited images of ‘foreign’ women, and the sources they may have used in their research. Furthermore, we demonstrate that much more could have been drawn ethnographically from the illustrations of women. The images of women in these geography schoolbooks reinforced the marginalization of women, particularly non-white and non-western women.     

‘There's only so much money hot dog sales can bring in’: The intersection of green school grounds and socio-economic status

In the interest of enhancing children's environments, many school grounds around the world are being ‘greened’ as asphalt and manicured grass are replaced with a diversity of elements and spaces, such as trees, shrubs, gardens, art, and gathering areas. Despite a growing body of research from a number of disciplines that is exploring the potential of these spaces, very little is known about how issues of socio-economic status (SES) influence school ground greening initiatives. In this paper, I explore what (if any) relationship exists between school ground greening and SES in a Canadian school board where approximately 20% of more than 500 schools have begun the greening process. A mixed methods approach was used: (1) 149 questionnaires were completed by administrators, teachers, and parents associated with 45 school ground greening initiatives; and (2) 21 follow-up interviews were conducted with administrators, teachers and parents at five greening projects across a range of SESs. Three significant, and arguably troubling, patterns emerged as a function of socio-economic status of the school community. Participants associated with schools across a range of SESs had different: (1) perceptions as to the importance/adequacy of green school grounds; (2) access to adult support; and (3) access to funding. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Laïcité as assimilation,laïcité as negotiation: Political geographies of secularism in the French public school

Laïcité, France's idiosyncratic form of secularism, is a complex concept that is dense with historical genealogy, practical contradictions and – crucially – political geographies. In particular, contemporary laïcité is characterized by a state-sponsored model of universal citizenship that regards French Muslims' identity claims with mistrust. This tension, always latent, was brought to the fore by a series of attacks perpetrated self-styled jihadists in January 2015, centered on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo notorious for its provocations against Islam. The attacks and their aftermath also highlighted a key space where conflicts over laïcité often play out: the French public school, the école républicaine. This institution was conceived in its modern form as a mechanism to assimilate through laïque pedagogy. Today it is a highly visible space where the optics of race and gender contribute to a narrative of Muslim communautarisme, a willful and defiant communalism that rejects the republican community of citizens.Following a handful of incidents in which students refused to participate in a moment of silence for the victims of the January 2015 attacks, the Ministry of Education undertook an initiative involving disciplinary and pedagogical supports for laïcité in the schools, called the Great Mobilisation for the Republic's Values. Like other past interventions in this area, it operationalizes an assimilating vision of laïcité to bring recalcitrant peripheries into compliance with republican norms. At the same time, though, it reveals the agency of the peripheries to negotiate the terms of laïcité according to local knowledge and needs. On the basis of interviews with educators serving in schools where elements of the Grand Mobilisation were carried out, I show how they push back against the overarching narratives that characterize the initiative and in so doing construct localized and nuanced understandings of the laïque social pact.     

Nationality and children's drawings — pictures ‘about Scotland’ by primary school children in Edinburgh,Scotland and Syracuse,New York State

The way that children perceive and understand places and locations is an area of geographical research that had an intermittent history until the 1990s saw a sustained interest in ‘children's geographies’. Here I build upon these studies and those of spatial cognition, developmental psychology, constructions of nation and nationality, by asking children to draw pictures about a nation. I review this methodology and analyse drawings collected from work with children in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Syracuse, New York State. I obtained 127 pictures ‘about Scotland’ drawn by six to nine year olds. These drawings reveal a range of stereotypical images of Scotland that are learned, both nationally and internationally, by this early age. They also suggest that knowledge and experience of Scotland varies by school district in each location and that these children often intertwine personal and national narratives when representing Scotland.     

‘The fieldworker not in the head's office’: an empirical exploration of the role of an English rural primary school within its village

This paper presents the findings of a project exploring the role of an English primary school inside its rural village. The fieldwork discovered that the school had lacked a full-time head teacher for a number of years and the paper explicates three dynamics to unravel why: (1) interpersonal issues (high staff turnover and the legacy of a former head); (2) the political–economic development of the village and its shifting local ‘squirearchy’; and finally (3) the construction of the spatial environment of the village (post-war expansion and the situation of amenities). These three dynamics possessed a synergy and this was key in seeing the complexities of this rural environment and its bearing upon social relations such as the absent head. It therefore supports recent theorising positioning interpersonal power alongside the temporal and spatial character of a local environment. The paper concludes by using this insight to consider what problems the school—and any new head teacher—might face in the immediate future. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2009–2011.Using a multi-strategy research approach, the paper draws upon participant observation, interview, documentary, visual and historical material in support of its analysis.     

Bridging between “here/now” and “there/then”: guiding Japanese mainland school “peace education” tours in Okinawa

Anthropologists and geographers have pointed out an inherent dilemma in educational tours, such as fieldtrips and educational “dark” tours, which bring tourists to the places where a tragic event befell. While these tours emphasize a difference between the learner-tourists’ home and their travel destinations as a source of great pedagogical potential, the learner-tourists must also bridge the gap for their educational experience to be meaningful. The article examines “peace education” school tours from Japanese main islands to Okinawa, the site of the tragic Battle of Okinawa in 1945 and the host of massive U.S. military bases today, guided by local peace activists who view tour-guiding, or what they refer to as “peace guiding”, at the sites relevant to the past war and current militarization as a means of political activism. Through two ethnographic snapshots of tour-guiding for the school tours by these “peace guides”, the article demonstrates how the educational tours’ spatiotemporal dilemma can be mediated by engaging and thought-provoking narrative performances by tour guides.     

‘Ellie is the coolest’: class,masculinity and place in vehicle engineering students’ talk about literature in a Swedish rural town school

This article aims to show how boys in a vehicle engineering programme at an upper secondary school in Sweden use their reading and literature discussion in their identity construction and how the classroom is converted into a place where the boys create the social space that they are a part of. This article is written in the intersections between different disciplines, research fields, and theoretical and methodological perspectives, and it is argued that this approach makes it possible to exceed each respective limitation and present a more nuanced and far-reaching discussion about how children use literature discussions in the construction of identity and place.