Teachers College’s Contributions to Globalizing Education: Kandel’s Doctoral Advisees

• In Event: The world in Teachers College, Teachers College in the world

Proposal

This paper aims to highlight three Ph.D. dissertations produced under the guidance of Prof. Kandel from 1920 to 1926 at Teachers College: “The Education of Girls in China”, by Idabelle Main; “Education in Porto Rico”, by Juan Osuna, and “Bilingual Education and Nationalism with Special Reference to South Africa”, by Anna Aucamp. The studies called attention to the situation of China, Puerto Rico, and South Africa in terms of social and political issues and their impact on the educational systems. Main’s work was published in 1920 when China was facing great challenges with the formal establishment of the Chinese Communist Party. The emergence of the Party defied the power of the Nationalists and reflected the worldwide emergence of political ideologies and movements with direct anti-imperialist platforms. Idabelle Main was an American Christian missionary in China, whose dissertation focused on girls in China, which seems unusual for the time period. Main discussed the relationship between the educational program and life in the nation at that time, and the general lines of change and experimentation that would make the system more efficient. The study concluded that the majority of women in China have known little of the world outside of their homes and that education implied obedience to older members of the family and self-training to compliance in all requests.

“Education in Porto Rico” by Osuna, and “Bilingual Education and Nationalism with Special Reference to South Africa”, by Aucamp, pointed out some aspects of these two colonized countries, which dealt with two educational proposals and also with a bilingual system. The first colonizers in Puerto Rico were the Spanish, followed by the US. Thus, Puerto Rico had an American school system with 400 years of Spanish background. Osuna’s study looked at these transitions as a way of understanding current affairs. Aucamp’s study aimed to analyze the difficulties inherent in the system of bilingual education in South Africa compared to other countries such as Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Canada. The main purpose was to present the reader with the general environment in which the specific bilingual issues in each country arose. To a certain extent, the historical aspect of the situation in each country was also given as a background for the discussion of the specific educational and national problems in South Africa. Thus, we highlight that all these theses help us to think about the contributions to education in terms of nationalism, internationalism and democracy at that time, rising themes related to the right to education, cultural differences and language. These topics continue to be central in our field, especially when we think about power dynamics inherent to the educational process and, at the same time, the disruption of the modern nations in relation to cosmopolitanism. The disruption brings challenges to education as a complex movement that is immersed in – and must consider – the global/local movements which expand the margins of Nation, the conception of a homogeneous, static culture, equity, and knowledge.

Author

• Ana Paula Pereira Marques de Carvalho, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro