TY - JOUR
T1 - The formation of impartiality
T2 - late nineteenth-century attention training and bureaucratic ethos
AU - Ljungdalh, Anders Kruse
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - By analysing late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century psychological and pedagogical recommendations to teachers, focusing on exercises for developing students’ voluntary attention, this article investigates how such recommendations intended to develop a bureaucratic ethos, and more specifically the ability to be impartial. Key components in the attention training were memory, perception and reasoning skills, significant elements in the formation of a bureaucratic persona, which were thought to make it possible for a student to solve a task in a disinterested manner. The psychological literature on attention training thereby reflects key elements in the general transition from the old class-based school to a new meritocratic organisation of school systems.
AB - By analysing late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century psychological and pedagogical recommendations to teachers, focusing on exercises for developing students’ voluntary attention, this article investigates how such recommendations intended to develop a bureaucratic ethos, and more specifically the ability to be impartial. Key components in the attention training were memory, perception and reasoning skills, significant elements in the formation of a bureaucratic persona, which were thought to make it possible for a student to solve a task in a disinterested manner. The psychological literature on attention training thereby reflects key elements in the general transition from the old class-based school to a new meritocratic organisation of school systems.
KW - Attention training
KW - bureaucratic ethos
KW - impartiality
KW - psychology of attention
KW - voluntary attention
U2 - 10.1080/0046760X.2021.1900405
DO - 10.1080/0046760X.2021.1900405
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0046-760X
VL - 50
SP - 764
EP - 783
JO - History of Education
JF - History of Education
IS - 6
ER -