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“The Berlin Wall” in the History of Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Sterling Fishman
Sterling Fishman*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin at Madison
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Extract

A short time ago, when I began to write this piece on the historiography of education in the German Democratic Republic, i.e., East Germany, I intended to describe the research and writing of the history of education in that country, but also to criticize the intellectual isolation and ideological narrowness of East German scholars. The GDR remains one of the most impregnable bastions of firm ideological control and rigid censorship in a part of the world where free thought and expression are as rare as water in the Sahara. Marxism still stands for more than a slogan in East Germany. Indeed, the texts, articles and journals reflect this deep ideological commitment. For example, John Dewey receives considerably less attention than such Marxist heroes as W. G. Belinski, N. G. Tschernyschewski, and N. A. Dubroljobow, in the standard East German text. This, of course, reflects the Eastern (or Russian) orientation of East German scholarship as well as its ideological stance. In addition, articles invariably deal with a social class analysis of education. One finds virtually no mention of recent Western scholarship in either bibliographies, footnotes, or book reviews. In general, an apparently stultifying situation.

Type
Discussion
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , Fall 1982 , pp. 363 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Gunther, Karl-Heinz et. al. eds., Geschichte der Erziehung, 12th edition (Berlin, 1976).Google Scholar

2. For an excellent summary of the history of the GDR see Smith, Jean Edward, “The German Democratic Republic and the West,” in The Yale Review, 58, 3 (March. 1969):372–387.Google Scholar

3. For a good description of the educational system of the GDR see Bodenman, Paul S., “The Educational System of the German Democratic Republic” published by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Washington, 1975).Google Scholar

4. Geschichte der Erziehung, p. 18.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 18.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 148.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., pp. 384–387.Google Scholar

9. “Kritik und Bibliographie Zur “Geschichte der Erziehung” in Pädagogik Organ des Deutschen Pädagogischen Zentralinstituts (1958):231–240.Google Scholar

10. Ibid: 232.Google Scholar

11. In Jahrbuch fur Erziehungs- und Schulgeschichte (Jhrg. 9, 1969), pp. 151–231.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., pp. 131–150.Google Scholar

13. Alt, Robert, Bilderatlas zur Schul - und Erziehungs Geschichte, Vols I and II, Berlin, 1966 and 1971).Google Scholar

14. For an excellent summary of Alt's work as well as a complete bibliography, see the volume published on the occasion of his retirement; Alt, Robert, Erziehung und Gesellschaft. Pädagogisches Schriften (Berlin, 1975).Google Scholar