‘Human potential’ and progressive pedagogy: a long cultural history of the ambiguity of ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’

Abstract

This article examines the cultural constructs of progressive pedagogy in Danish school pedagogy and its emerging focus on the child’s human potential from the 1920s to the 1950s. It draws on Foucault’s notion of ‘dispositifs’ and the ‘elements of history,’ encircling a complex transformation of continuity and discontinuity of progressive pedagogy. The Danish context is identified as being part of an international and scientific enlightenment movement circulating in, e.g., the New Education Fellowship (NEF). The cultural constructs embedded in progressivism are clarified in the article: the emergence of ‘intelligence’ and life as a biological phenomenon from the 1920s is illustrated; the emergence of ‘Black culture,’ ‘Negros’ and ‘races’ from the 1930s is depicted, and the emergence of ‘national cultures’ from the 1940s – enhanced by UNESCO after World War II – is demonstrated. Although race somehow is replaced by culture, it is suggested that progressivism, unintentionally, exhibits a racist discourse.

Keywords:

• progressivism
• intelligence
• historiography
• racial constructions

Acknowledgements

The research was conducted as part of a research grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research, Section of Humanities, associated with the Education Section, University of Copenhagen (2008–2011). A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Symposium State, migration and pedagogy, held August 27 and 28, 2009, in Tisvilde, Denmark. I would like to thank the discussant of my article, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen, University of Roskilde, Denmark, for her valuable comments, and Vibe Larsen, University College Capital in Copenhagen, for useful interpretations of my work.

Notes

1. Signed by Georg Christensen, literary historian and principal of a teacher training college; Inger Merete Nordentoft, school head-mistress and later an MP for The Communist Party; and C.F.Vorbeck, a high school teacher.

2. Signed by Georg Julius Arvin, head of The Royal Danish School of Educational Studies and chairman of the NEF Denmark; and Jens Rosenkjær, head of a section of the Danish State Radio and former principal of the Borup folk high school.

3. Georg Julius Arvin was chairman of the NEF Denmark from the time of the conference (1929).

4. Torben Gregersen was part of the NEF Denmark from 1940, and from 1940 until 1980 he was the representative of Denmark in the NEF international as well.