The silent child: Reform pedagogy, the self and the problematization of shyness in the classroom

Abstract

In the existing historical and sociological studies devoted to shyness scholars have identified the second half of the Twentieth century as an important period in which shy feelings have become a problem for Wes­tern societies. On the basis of the work of the American cultural histo­rian Warren Susman, and especially his ideas about the move from a character society towards a personality society, it is argued that the turn of the nineteenth century also played an important role in the emergence of negative interpretation of being and acting shy. In this article Susman’s attention for what happened at the start of the twentieth century is being taken up by examining the ideas about timidity in the work of one of the most important reform educators at that time, namely Maria Montessori. Montessori’s ideas are being contextualized by referring to the more en­compassing culture of personality and the self that paralleled the progres­sive era in education. By contraposing Montessori’s ideas to an eighteen­th-century ego-document written by someone who identified himself as a shy person we’d like to plea for a nuanced account with regard to the history of the problematization of shyness in general and shy children in particular.