Odorous childhoods and scented worlds of learning: a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives in Western Europe (1900s-1960s)

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a sensory history of health and outdoor education initiatives which featured (non-)formal schooling, analyzing these as belonging to (a) scented and more generally sensed world(s) of learning. Working with photographs as sensory objects of affect, and using as examples Belgian and Luxembourg open-air schools and associated sanitary and social welfare provisions, the paper explores issues that have gone under-researched in sensory scholarship internationally: those of precise educational purposes, methods, processes and effects of sensory engagement, particularly pertaining to “smell”. Sensory practices and experiences and uses of senses generally are thereby traced in/as “situated, embodied” movements inextricably “enmeshed” with symbolism. The paper argues that while the educational goals underpinning the initiatives investigated and the approaches and practices characterizing these have changed, some (un)intended effects still have an impact today, for instance through Forest School as given shape in the United Kingdom. The concept of “odorous”, or rather “sensuous childhoods”, is proposed to denote ways that particular target groups have come to be imagined as in need of explicitly sensorial health and outdoor education.

KEYWORDS:

• Smell
• embodied practices and experiences
• open-air schools
• holiday camps
• sensuous childhoods
• Forest School

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank first of all Lynn Fendler for providing the impetus for this article (via Karin Priem, who is thanked for this); I further owe gratitude to Ian Grosvenor for offering helpful comments throughout and joining me as co-editor of the special issue of which it is part, and to David Howes and the blind reviewers for their insightful and encouraging suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thyssen, G. (2009).

2. For seminal work on the senses in psychology and the biosciences, see: Wilson and Stevenson (2006).

3. Non-representational theory places anything from experience to culture on the same epistemological plane; in variants of such theory, Fendler (2014) notes, “there are no longer signs or symbols that represent concepts or realities”.

4. On (a) slum sense(d) world(s), see: Grosvenor and Hall (2012).

5. Histories of non-Western, colonial and anti-imperialist education add different scent(ed) layers. See, e.g.: Grosvenor (2012).

6. Derived from classical Newtonian and quantum physics, and previously used by Donna Harraway as a metaphor to denote “critical difference within”, Barad adopts diffraction as a method of “attending to entanglements (…) in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how those exclusions matter” (Barad 2007, 30).

7. For Barad, intra-actions are entangled, that is: mutually constitutive, agencies. Intra-acting, therefore, denotes co-constitutive emerging (Ibid., 33).

8. Benedict A. Morel, (1857).

9. Also elsewhere, for instance in South America, such initiatives emerged (Châtelet 2011; Thyssen 2018).

10. See: Staar 1936.

11. Relatedly, Grosvenor (2012) cites, among others, Smith (2005).

12. Onderwijsvereeniging “Diesterweg”, Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen, Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Calmpthout. Schoolsoep-Schoolkoloniën. Verslag over de werkzaamheden 1906, Antwerpen, 1907: 3.

13. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse der ärmeren Arbeiterbevölkerung in Luxemburg zusammengestellt vom Vorstand des Vereines für die Interessen der Frau und hrsg. in Verbindung mit dem Verein für Volks- und Schulhygiene. Luxembourg: Huss, 1907.

14. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 4.

15. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 5.

16. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 10.

17. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse.

18. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 11.

19. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 12–13.

20. Einiges über Wohnungsverhältnisse, 13.

21. Ligue Française pour l’Éducation en Plein Air. 1925. Premier Congrès International des Écoles de Plein Air en la Faculté de Médecine de Paris (24–25–26–27–28 Juin 1922). Paris: Maloine, 144.

22. Ewert and Urbany (1914), 4, 8.

23. Heirens, N. (1930), 5. See also: Diesterweg[’s Hulpkas], Feestnummer, 2; Ewert and Urbany, Die Waldschule der Stadt Düdelingen, 4.

24. Diesterweg[’s Hulpkas], Feestnummer, 2.

25. Ons Woord 13 (1), 1906: 6.

26. Serneels, H.(1914), 5.

27. François, C. (1982), 10, 11.

28. Archives Nationales de Luxembourg (ANL), file IP 1438 (Enseignement primaire, Ecoles en plein air, Dudelange – Esch/Alzette, 1913–1933), folder “Ecole en plein air”, “L’école en forêt de la ville de Dudelange. Rapport du Médecin de l’école, Dr. med. A. Urbany, Exercice 1918”, typewritten report, April 30 1919, 5.

29. Ewert and Urbany (1914), 14.

30. See Lewis (2017). “So Clean”: Lord Leverhulme, Soap and Civilization. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Sunlight soap originally was laundry detergent brown in color. In Belgium, Sunlight “family soap” and Lux toilet soap, white multipurpose bars both produced by Lever Brothers, became popular. The photograph may still trigger memories of their distinct perfumes, with hints of citronella and flowers, respectively.

31. Serneels, Het 20-jarig bestaan, 5.

32. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen, Schoolsoep-Schoolkoloniën.Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Kalmthout, Jaarverslag 1947. Antwerp: Diesterweg, 1948, 13.

33. Ons Woord 17 (11), 1910: 351.

34. Ons Woord 36 (7–8), 1929: 194.

35. “Diesterweg”. Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen, Schoolsoep-Schoolkoloniën. Bestendige Schoolvilla te Heide-Calmpthout. Jaarverslag 1930. Antwerp: Diesterweg, 1931: 11.

36. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen 59 (11), 1952: 2.

37. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen 56 (10), 1949: 1.

38. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen 41 (10), 1934: 1.

39. “Diesterweg”. Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen. 1931. Schoolsoep-Schoolkoloniën. Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Calmpthout. Jaarverslag 1930. Antwerp: Diesterweg, 11.

40. “Diesterweg”. Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen. 1950. Schoolsoep-Schoolkoloniën. Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Calmpthout. Jaarverslag 1949. Antwerp: Diesterweg: 19.

41. In Dudelange, target groups seem to have included a high number of immigrant children. See, e.g.: Weber, (1982), 8; Heirens, (1930), 5.

42. Ewert and Urbany, (1914), 4–5, 10, 28.

43. ANL, file MEN-1652 – Ecoles de plein air [Division de L’Instruction Publique], Organisation et Programme de L’Ecole de plein air de Dudelange. Eté 1964.

44. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas 58, January 1, 1951: 1–2.

45. Ons Woord 36 (7–8), 1929: 194.

46. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor de Bestendige Schoolkolonie. 1914. Feestnummer, uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van haar 20 jarig bestaan op 5 juli 1914. Antwerp: Diesterweg: 3.

47. Diesterweg’s Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Camlpthout. Leerprogramma. Antwerp: Diesterweg. 1908: 12.

48. Ibid., 13. Sight and touch were explicitly mentioned in a comparison with the Charlottenburg open-air school, founded also in 1904 as one of the first internationally; not so smell.

49. Diesterweg’s Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Camlpthout. Leerprogramma, 16.

50. H. Méry “Une école de plein air pendant la guèrre.” In L’école de plein air et l’école au soleil, edited by P.-F. Armand-Delille and P. Wapler. Paris: Maloine, 1919, 7.

51. Diesterweg’s Bestendige Schoolkolonie te Heide-Camlpthout. Leerprogramma, 13.

52. Buitenleven 7 (1), 1938: 7–8.

53. See, e.g. Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen 46 (11)[December] 1939; Ewert and Urbany, Die Waldschule der Stadt Düdelingen.

54. Ons Woord 17 (11), 1910: 351; Het schoolblad voor Vlaanderen: Tijdschrift voor onderwijs en opvoeding 6 (18): 214; Diesterweg’s Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen 61 (2)[February] 1954: 6; Ewert and Urbany (1914), 17.

55. Ons Streven, June 1914, 1; Escher Tageblatt, July 15, 1914, 3.

56. Onderwijsvereeniging “Diesterweg”. Hulpkas voor Behoeftige Schoolkinderen, o. c. [1912], p. 22.

57. For instance, Italian immigrant families in Dudelange attached importance to maintaining their own eating customs in Luxembourg: “Migration in Luxembourg,” http://www.cecinestpasluxembourg.eu/, accessed September 22, 2011, 52.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geert Thyssen

Geert Thyssen is Senior Lecturer at the School of Education, Liverpool John Moores University. His interests are in the social and cultural history of educational reforms, health education, body-sensory education, nutrition education, and modes and aspects of sense-making in education. He is convenor of Network 17, Histories of Education of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) and a scientific board member for two peer reviewed history of education journals. His work has received several awards. Forthcoming (co-)authored work centres on time, food, and senses of belonging.