International Standing Conference for the History of Education - 26-29 July 2011, San Luis Potosí (Mexico)

INTERNATIONAL STANDING CONFERENCE
FOR THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION (ISCHE 33)
July 26 – 29 de 2011, San Luis Potosí, México

http://www.colsan.edu.mx/investigacion/historia/ISCHE/EN/introduction.htm

STATE, EDUCATION AND SOCIETY
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON AN OLD DEBATE

The Bicentenary commemoration of the Independence movements of Latin American nations, and more broadly of the Atlantic World, frame the theme of ISCHE 33. Latin American realities and debates challenge the image of Nations as “Imagined Communities” and of States intent upon forging a citizen body. For over two centuries of political upheaval, civil war and revolutionary movement, both political and civil groups recovered cultural traditions that predated formal Independence and generated new initiatives and cultural movements that shaped the educational legacy of the region.

Research in the history of education has questioned long-standing certainties, including the weight of the State as sole bearer of power, able to provide and regulate a nation’s education. Studies show that educational systems, far from guaranteeing uniform schooling, have organized diversity and reproduced inequalities, by channeling economic and symbolic capital through different institutions, separating categories of class, region, gender, religion, ethnicity, race, generation and ability. Recent perspectives further reshape official history by incorporating the multiple cultural and social movements that either buttressed or defied hegemonic projects. Research uncovers an array of actors—civil, religious and economic corporations, families, communities and parties—as they have converged or contended around the social construction of education. New studies highlight national and international organizations that provided resources and models for education, in a tense system of unequal exchange and unforeseen appropriation.

As a result, we may regard educational institutions as nodes in a dynamic network, embedded in unequal power relationships and transformed through processes of imposition, exchange, negotiation and resistance among multiple social and political actors. Through these networks, pedagogical theories, methods and technologies are mobilized and combined to regulate and rationalize educational processes, but also to produce new forms of organization and liberation of societies. This perspective may thus redress the imbalance in understanding the distribution of knowledge and power among both the governing and the governed.

General coordination of ISCHE 33 Conference

Dra. Luz Elena Galván Lafarga,

Área de Antropología e Historia de la Educación,
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social CIESAS- Ciudad de México.

Dra. Oresta López Pérez,

Programa de Historia
El Colegio de San Luis AC. San Luis Potosí, México.

Information to: ische33@gmail.com