MNEMOS

ISCHE 39 in Buenos Aires will take place in the middle of the bicentennial of Latin American emancipatory processes. Nevertheless, the struggles toward emancipation is a worldwide topic. From Ancient history to nowadays, movements throughout the globe, of individuals, groups or societies have fought against domination. In the context of these struggles, there were important debates about how to modernize society to form part of the “civilised world”; thus, different ways of building modern nations as well as different ways of relating to the colonial past emerged around the world.

Education has played a major role within these processes: through instruction in the arts of war, through mass schooling or through the social transmission of values and behaviours. It often was perceived as a key instrument in the formation of new and emancipated citizens. Educational processes changed the relationship between centre and periphery and produced a vivid flow of social, political and pedagogical ideas that were inspired by universal trends and values as well international reform movements, while often adopting local perspectives.

This interplay of circulating ideas characterizes post-colonial pasts and their different histories of education. Dynamic developments of transculturation, hybridization and acculturation meanwhile have resulted in global and multifaceted debates. ISCHE 39 will be a powerful platform for historicizing the present and for exploring the theoretical and empirical richness of history of education as a field.