DFG project "Education and vulnerability - Punishment in the educational dispositive of the 19th century"

Project Details

In educational science, at the beginning of the 21st century the historiographic awareness of the significance of the child has resulted in a changed view at the history of education. Now, the conditions for constituting violent behaviour in educational relationships are increasingly taken into consideration. The danger that educational behaviour might become violent can particularly be demonstrated by the punishment discourse, whose historiographic discussion, however, results most of all in thinking in terms of progress, in the sense of the educational practice having been made more humane, and is limited to those 'classical' works as being construed by reception history.

The project pursues the goal of reconstructing, by the 'power/knowledge constellation' (Foucault) of the educational dispositive, the discourse on educational punishment during the 'short 19th century', from the end of the expiring `saddle period´ (Koselleck) in the late 1820s to the beginning of the Fin de Siécle in the late 1880s. It is supposed to contribute to an educational historiography which asks about the historical conditions for giving reason to violent educational behaviour and critically reflects on the latter.

In this context, reaching back to literature beyond the `peak´ of the classical works on education, that is to texts belonging to a medium level of documentation, allows for new perspectives on the justification and perfecting of educational punishment. While connecting to Michel Foucault, the analysis is oriented at a dispositive analysis by way of which a strategically motivated 'network' of discourses, institutions, objects, practices and power effects is described. The focus will be on analysing the possibility conditions for creating oneself as a subject within the 'power/knowledge constellation' of the educational dispositive.

The analysis of knowledge will attract attention to education-theoretical as well as practical debates on the way of working and the legitimation of educational punishment in the context of the social knowledge order. One focus in this context will be on the exploitation of the child´s vulnerability, which must be considered the core of the action logic of educational punishment.

Project team: Prof. Dr. Carsten Heinze; Stefanie Jäger, Mag. PhD

Project-related publications and lectures

• Jäger, S./Heinze, C. (2025): Strafkritik als ‚Aktivismus‘? Heinrich Stephanis Konzept der ‚Schulzucht‘ im Strafdiskurs der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Lecture (acctepted), Jahrestagung der Sektion Historische Bildungsforschung „Aktivismus als Gegenstand der Historischen Bildungsforschung“, 8.9.–10.9.25, Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau.

• Jäger, S./Heinze, C. (2025): Punishment Practice and Professional Behaviour. Ambivalent Qualification Requirements for Teachers in Germany at the Beginning of the 19th Century. Lecture, International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) 46, „Teachers and Teaching. History on the move”, 7.7.–11.7.25, University of Lille.

• Heinze, C. (2024): Education and Vulnerability. On the Historiographical Analysis of the German Educational Discourse on Punishment in the „Short“ 19th Century. In: Historia scholastica, Vol. 10, No. 2, 107–130, https://doi.org/10.15240/tul/006/2024-2-005