Mobilisering af barnets potentiale for en bedre fremtid:Opdragelsestænkningen i Torben Gregersens vurderinger af børnebogsmanuskripter i perioden 1942-1954

Children's books were one of the scenes where ‘progressive’ professionals - mostly teachers, psychologists and artists - around WWII fought the battle to change society through changed educational thinking. Especially after WWII it was acknowledged that children's books could contribute to the forming and education of the child, mobilising the child's potential to secure the future and promote peace and international understanding. This article examines so far unexamined sources, i.e., 89 assessments of children's book manuscripts from the private archives of Torben Gregersen (1911–1994): a teacher and prominent ‘progressivist’ hired by different publishers in the period 1942–1954. Using a descriptive and sociological approach, the article identifies the educational way of thinking imbedded in these assessments, which predominantly represents elements of developmental psychology, moral development and national culture, and literary and aesthetic-artistic elements to a lesser extent. Thus, the article shows that the emergence of ‘progressive’ elements which in research on children's literature normally are dated to the late 1960s, are not only present in the 1940s and 1950s in the assessments of Torben Gregersen; they are present with noteworthy nuance

Progressivismens barnecentrering, hvide børn og ikke-hvide voksne: Review-essay i anledning af Thomas D. Fallaces bog Race and the Origins of Progressive Education, 1880-1929

This essay expose and discuss Thomas D. Fallace’s explorations of the intellectual history of early US progressive education in order for Danish welfare professions to think about what referencing progressivism and Dewey may be associated with. Despite of pluralistic openings, it is depicted how the assumption that all human beings and all societies go through a development from savagery to civilization, and that non-white groups are stuck in early stages of that development, still haunts progressivism. The ethnocentric and racial assumptions were at first operative in the quest to optimize schooling for non-white pupils, e.g., in the colonies. Later on, progressivism concentrates on white middle class pupils in the private sector of schooling, although non-whites appear as a target group later in history

Gendered racism

This article examines the intersecting oppressions of Danish welfare politics and its emerging interest in emancipating ‘immigrant’ women and girls. It draws on Patricia Hill Collins’ notion of controlling images and, based on a documentary text corpus, it identifies how the images of the unfree immigrant housewife and the inhibited immigrant girl are formed through oxymoronic liberal arguments of care and control. The article demonstrates how this plays out in an assemblage of policy documents and suggests why welfare professionalism is called upon to ‘rescue’ ‘immigrant’ women and girls, situating welfare politics and professionalism within the racial welfare state and its racial capitalist and Orientalist logics. The analyses demonstrate how gendered and racialized signifiers help to structure welfare politics and professionalism, and how a space of emancipation is intertwined with a global economic division of labor. The article suggests that racialized welfare politics and professionalism are permeated by the desire to emancipate women, which remains a powerful impulse within Danish welfare state capitalism, liberalism and social-democratic reasoning.

Raciale vragrester i velfærdsprofessionelt arbejde

Exploring four key points, this article develops a methodological analytical eye sensitive to race and racialization. The four points are: 1. Race is a social construct with racializing effects, 2. Race is not an individual characteristic and ethnic background is not an innocent variable, 3. Race is a relational phenomenon and intrinsic to European and Danish colonial thinking as debris rumouring in the welfare professional soil, and 4. Post-ethnic, post-national and post-migrant perspectives are possible. The purpose of the article is to provide research in welfare professions with an analytical eye that may function as basis for future collective discussions of this awkward matter, which is charged with affectivity and difficult to acknowledge

Politi- og gadeplansarbejdets forebyggelsesprojekt med ’indvandreren’

Tim er politibetjent og har igennem mange år lavet kriminalpræventivt arbejde. Han fortæller, at denne del af politiarbejdet har fået flere og flere økonomiske ressourcer gennem årene og tilmed er vokset i omfang internti politiet. Men han fortæller også omen mere omfattende faglig optur, hvor andre faggrupper som socialarbejdere og lærere ønsker at samarbejde med dem i kriminalpræventiv afdeling. Tim definerer kriminalitetsforebyggelse i modsætning til politiarbejdets ’brandslukningsopgaver’ og ydermere som det at arbejde med bekymrende adfærd generelt, samtidig med at ’indvandrergruppen’ er overrepræsenteret i arbejdet