Educating for ‘world-mindedness': cosmopolitanism, localism and schooling the adolescent citizen in interwar Australia

Abstract

This article examines citizenship education and pedagogies for learning to be a citizen in the interwar years in Australia. These discussions bore the influence of progressive education and its emancipatory promises. Against this, I explore the ‘dividing practices’ of citizenship education and the ways normative descriptions of the desired cosmopolitan student-citizen simultaneously constructed a non-citizen, the problematic student excluded from recognition, in this case Aboriginal students. These arguments are developed by comparing discussions at two international educational conferences: Education in Pacific Countries (1936, Hawaii), also referred to as Education of Native Races in Pacific Countries, and the New Education Fellowship-sponsored Education for Complete Living: The Challenge of Today (1937, Australia). These two conferences conveyed significant differences in understandings of adolescent capacity, the relative salience of local and international contexts, and the hopeful possibilities for future education and social citizenship. Contradictory dimensions to the political and educational catch-cry of internationalism are identified in relation to the question of educability of all or some students. Preliminary questions are raised about the colonising and racialising effects of progressive education, and its privileging of cosmopolitan ideals in the education of new citizens is examined in order to begin the groundwork for a post-colonial account of progressive education.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• cosmopolitanism
• Aboriginal students
• progressive education
• adolescence

Acknowledgements

This article draws from a larger historical study of Australian adolescence and citizenship education, 1930s–1970s: Educating the Australian adolescent: an historical study of curriculum, student counselling and citizenship, 1930s–1970s, Australian Research Council Discovery Grant 2009–2012. The principal researchers are Julie McLeod and Katie Wright with research fellows Sari Braithwaite, Sophie Rudolph and Amy McKernan. Project website: http://www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/eaa. The author acknowledges with thanks the contributions of all team members, and also thanks Katie Wright for her helpful suggestions in the development of this paper.

Notes

For a biographical note on Keesing, see the entry for his papers at the archives of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa: http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/archives/univarch/faculty/indiv/keesing.htm

For further discussion on the organisation and impact of this and related conferences and the role of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in supporting these transnational networks, see Lawn (2004), White (1997) and Glotzer (2009).

Cunningham (1938b); attendance numbers were: Brisbane 1343, Sydney 1847, Melbourne 2302, Hobart 677, Adelaide 1175, Perth 1374.

The conference proceedings are organised according to the following sections: Education and world affairs; The new outlook in education; Education and social problems; Education and rural life; Educational administration, research and teacher training; Examinations; The school curriculum; Special aspects of education; Adolescent and adult education; The university; and The psychological and mental life of the school child. See also Campbell and Sherington (2006) for a synopsis of conference themes.