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Øland: A state ethnography of progressivism 83
was submitted on the state of the art and how to move forward. 27 Five departments
were suggested: a department for didactic investigations, a department for pedagogi-
cal-psychological basic research, a department for tests and assignments, a depart-
ment for experimental pedagogy and a department for statistics. These departments
were installed, and a board of representatives and a professional advisory board were
established as well (DPI 1975: 5-8). Among the members of these boards, and among
the employees from 1955-1960, were psychologist and professor Franz From, medi-
cal doctor Villars Lunn, psychologist Henning Meyer, philosopher and professor Jør-
gen Jørgensen, philosopher and professor Knud Grue-Sørensen, psychologist Jesper
Florander, psychologist Thomas Sigsgaard, literary historian Georg Christensen, psy-
chologist P. W. Perch and psychologist Carl Aage Larsen. 28 Most of these members
were trained in the milieu of school pedagogues just described.
In closing this section, it can be concluded that during the 1930s and onwards,
psychologists etc. delivered arguments about the universal child that were absorbed
and reproduced by school pedagogy. The child was ascribed pure biology, i.e., inner
directors, instincts, intentions, needs, interests and motives – as if these phenomena
were universals. Furthermore, ‘outer’ signs and the child’s acts and movements (refer-
ring to the inner child) called forth intervention, reform and civilising practices. In the
Emdrup plan for schooling of 1945, the child’s human and natural potential were
furthermore assumed to be accessible for rational planning of society and the nation.
Thus, the cultural politics of progressive school-pedagogues from 1929-1960 served
to legitimise social differences, explaining differences by reference to natural gifts:
psychological and biological powers within the child. Slowly, this universal way of
thinking was universalised through the categorizing practices that went along with
the universal child, and gained state support, officialising the universal child, circula-
ting and spreading the universal child via the ideology of the comprehensive school.
School pedagogy, inspired by child pedagogy, social psychology and a focus on
the development of the (child’s) human potential, is pointed out as a welfare state
developmental area that should expand. During the 1950s, experimental and re-
search institutions to form the teacher and school-pedagogy surfaced according to
this image. The teaching manuals that in 1960 and 1961 went along with the Educa-
tion Act of 1958, as well as the Edcucation Act, were visible signs of institutionalisa-
tion and universalisation of the assumptions developed since the 1920s (cf. Nørr
2008: 225), e.g., that focusing on social studies, individual instruction, group work
and international understanding were important means in the construction of de-
mocratic and productive citizens (Undervisningsministeriet 1960 and 1961).
Furthermore, the manuals emphasised the importance of an undivided and expanded
school system, although the Education Act only concerned five years in primary
27 Report on the foundation of an Institute of Education (Betænkning angående oprettelse af et Pædagogisk
Institut), submitted by a committee appointed by the Ministry of Education August 28, 1953.
28 Archives of The Danish National Institute for Educational Research, The Danish State Archives (Arkivet
for Danmarks Pædagogiske Institut, Rigsarkivet), minutes from board of representatives, meetings 1-8,
and from the professional advisory board, meetings 1-35.