the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive by Melina Scheuermann

"the archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive" is both a research output and a method. Driven by the idea of unlearning as a transformative, post-colonial pedagogical practice, I began to think about whether and how an archive could become a site for critical knowledge production in arts education and in the history of education, rather than just documenting my research process. There is a slight irony, seemingly a paradox in the title of this archive: "the archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive". Unlearning while practising it? The idea is not repetition, unless it is considered repetition in variance, never settled, never fixed. It speaks to my attempt to unlearn hegemonic ways of seeing and educating and to provide pedagogical encounters that foster such unlearning in the fields of arts education and history of education. the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive makes a contribution to research that interrogates the archives that we as arts educators inherit and raises questions about the purposes and ways of doing histories. I developed a performative-archival practice as a research methodology that combines visual culture inquiry, post-colonial pedagogy and arts-based practices. "the archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive" departs from two series of object lesson picture books of the so-called object lesson method (Pt. lições de coisas, Germ. Anschauungsunterricht) from the long 19th century that circulated across Imperial Europe as performative scores. The archive is invested in the study of visual representations of modern/colonial Nature and childhood, in the history of visual pedagogies and in how reform education was involved in producing the imperial citizen “at home”. This work was supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P. under the project with the identifier DOI https://doi.org/10.54499/2022.12937.BD.

The archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive departs from two object lesson picture book series as archival scores. What I mean by archival scores and how I mobilise them, you can find out here. On this page, you find contextual information on the materials that triggered this archive, which are two series of picture books for children from the so-called long 19^th century.

The object lesson method

The object lesson method was a popular method amongst reform educators in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries across Europe. In Portuguese, we find the translations lições de coisas and ensino intuitivo for the term object lesson, emphasising respectively the object-based learning and the notion of intuition and sensibility. In German, the corresponding concept of Anschauung and the deriving method of the Anschauungsunterricht conjure a similar articulation between the vivid and sensual qualities of materials, illustrative descriptions of those and the constructing of an inner sensibility – or intuition. We come to understand that educating through images and materials was deeply entangled with notions of how senses and mind work together in the process of learning, on how experiences are being made. Various versions of the method and its practice manifested.

As such, the object lesson is a manifestation yet productive force in the emergence and consolidation of the Western idea of the ‘scientific method’ that moves from observation of objects and images towards categorisation, description and abstraction (Sengupta, 2003). Through the directed seeing, not only the objects themselves could be known, categorised and described, but also the ideas, values and cultures they were made to represent (Carter, 2018; Sengupta, 2003; Valdemarin, 2000). The sensorial, often mainly visual input, could lead, if correctly processed, to abstract and rational thinking as well as to moral and “well-tempered” emotional judgment.

The idea of human development is deeply embedded in the object lesson method and informs the content, aesthetics and arrangement of pictures. The object lesson method usually proceeded from what was known and proximate to the child towards what was foreign and new. Knowledge was assumed to be accumulated, and the volumes would usually be built upon each other in expanding topics gradually, and the complexity of discussions. Empiricism informed notions and practices of sense education, and it was widely assumed that images would leave imprints on the child´s mind and literally form it. This belief raised the necessity and concern about “good images” and what criteria would be employed to define those in educational discourses.

The educational reform movement was heterogeneous and with divergent philosophical and political affiliations; nonetheless, a couple of core ideas linked the different actors and pedagogical approaches, such as the importance of child-centred education, developmental theory and an education that occurs according to Nature. All these threads make up the tissue of the object lesson and its teaching materials. You can learn more about those core ideas and their implications with the coloniality of thought by digging into the archive and the concepts it mobilises.

Staub's picture book series in the German (1st row) and Portuguese (2nd row) version.

This archive departs from two picture book series as part of the visual and material history of education.

The picture book series A instrucção da creança. Album Illustrado. 1°-4° Caderno [The instruction of the child. Illustrated album. Books 1-4] was published between 1904/5 in Portugal by the editors Livraria Magalhães & Moniz, Porto. The series comprised four books, authored by Swiss educator Johannes (sometimes referred to as Johann) Staub and published first in Switzerland in 1875/6. The series was a costly project, and only after passing through several hands of editors, the Gebrüder Künzli [Brothers Kuenzli] managed to turn the picture books lucrative, also through translation of the series and international sales. Later, in 1923, the series was extended by two more volumes by Ulrich Kollbrunner, but only the first four picture books have been translated into Portuguese.

The second series of picture books was published by the J.F. Schreiber Verlag based in Esslingen/Stuttgart, Germany, between 1889 and 1891. The teacher and scholar Eduard Walther re-edited previous versions of Bilder für den Anschauungsunterricht [Pictures for Object Lessons]. The editor’s program listed many similar titles over the years; some of them have been republished in different formats at a much later moment. I study in particular the following four books: Bilder zum Anschauungsunterricht für die Jugend. Teil I [Pictures for Object Lessons for the Youth. Part I] and Teil II [Part II] (Walther, 1889a, 1889b), Bilder zum Anschauungsunterricht. Teil II: Tiere und Pflanzen [Pictures for Object Lessons. Part II: Animals and Plants] (Walther, 1891a), and Teil III: Geographische Charakterbilder [Part III: Geographical Character Images] (Walther, 1891b).

The series are linked by sharing the same methodical principles and recurring motifs and imaginaries of Nature and childhood threading through their pages. Circulating at the same time across imperial Europe, Walther’s Bilder für den Anschauungsunterricht and Staub’s Bilderbuch/A instrucção de creança are manifestations of an educational discourse invoking Nature and the notion of the child in a modern/colonial logic, employing concepts such as development and the nature/culture binary. Yet, their stories are distinct and require us to think about the production of imperial subjectivity, the modern/colonial gaze in its variable, complex and interlocked facets.

Two picture book series

The four selected picture books re-edited by Eduard Walther, published between 1889 and 1891.

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Melina Scheuermann - the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive - 2025