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praktiskegrunde
Praktiske Grunde . Nordisk tidsskrift for kultur- og samfundsvidenskab
Nr. 1-2 / 2010 . ISSN 1902-2271 . www.hexis.dk
A state ethnography of
progressivism: Danish school
pedagogues and their efforts to
emancipate the powers of the child,
the people and the culture
1929-1960
Trine Øland
Abstract: New education or progressivism challenged the educational orthodoxy of schooling from the
1920s. It attempted to emancipate and unfold the potential of the universal and natural child, the family
and the nation, using school pedagogy. It introduced child-centered reforms into the existing state
sector school in Denmark. In this article, these developments are constructed theoretically as historical
processes of welfare state formation, instituting mental and social categories about the child and the
social world, employing prescriptive pedagogy in an emerging field of school pedagogy. Furthermore,
the network of the ‘significant school pedagogues’ that were involved in these endeavors from 1929-
1960 are encircled. This group of school pedagogues is characterised as a plurality of disciplines and
professions, i.e., teachers, psychologists, artists, philosophers etc., which is conceived of as a sign of
an emerging field of school pedagogues. Finally, it is indicated which societal powers that are
involved in the making and remaking of this welfare state progressivism, i.e., an upcoming bourgeois
and heterogeneous culture: the main figures of the school pedagogues are originating socially from
environments of teachers, farmers and small scale trade, grocers and merchants. These social groups
are able to reproduce their positions relatively, conquering school pedagogy. At the same time the
article describes them as conquered by the state’s universalising mechanisms and social ordering
devices.
Key words: Progressivism, school pedagogy, state formation, universalisation, hybridity, social history