Retreat into the “pedagogical province”? Boarding schools and the changing perception of “nature” in German secondary education around 1900

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe article explores how different concepts of “nature” were applied in secondary education in Germany around 1900 by examining the discussions on and practices in particular boarding schools. It will first scrutinise Enlightenment debates on “human nature” and how they were perceived in German secondary education in general and boarding schools in particular. While Goethe’s term of a “pedagogical province” was central to the debates, the utopian concept had only low impact on social reality. Second, the paper will examine how the growing criticism of bourgeois urban culture and traditional education at the end of the nineteenth century was associated with a different perception of “nature” as natural environment and how newly founded boarding schools played an important role in promoting such perception amongst the middle class. In a third section, it will illustrate how this development did not stand in contrast to major social trends. It was rather, as will be argued in the conclusion, part of a more general transformation in educational discourse and practice in Germany around 1900. It can first and foremost be characterised in a shift from an inward-looking understanding as “human nature” to an outside focus on “natural environment” and “authenticity”.