Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T06:40:52.666Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Modernization of Colonialism and the Educability of the “Native”: Transpacific Knowledge Networks and Education in the Interwar Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Julie McLeod
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne (jemcleod@unimelb.edu.au)
Fiona Paisley
Affiliation:
Griffith University in Australia (f.paisley@griffith.edu.au)

Abstract

This article focuses on a seminar-conference held in Hawaii in 1936 on the “educability” of native peoples. The seminar-conference was convened by New Zealand anthropologist Felix Keesing and Yale education professor Charles Loram and supported by the Carnegie Corporation, among other organizations. Conference delegates-who came from across the Pacific, including the U.S. mainland, Australia, and New Zealand, and from as far as South Africa-joined to discuss the future of colonial education. The residential conference, which lasted several weeks, resulted in published proceedings and the establishment of extensive transpacific networks. One in a series of international congresses on education that took place during the interwar years, the 1936 Hawaii conference offers unique insight into the transnational dialogue among academics, education practitioners, colonial administrators, and, in some cases, Indigenous spokespeople, concerning the modernization of colonialism and new forms of citizenship in the era of progressive education and cultural internationalism.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Keesing, Felix Maxwell, Education in Pacific Countries: Interpreting a Seminar-Conference Conducted by the University of Hawaii and Yale University, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1936 (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1937), 31. The same publication was published in 1938 by Oxford University Press, and this article references both issues. While the published report written by Felix Keesing appears in many libraries around the world, the full proceedings have been much harder to locate. Special thanks to Rozz Evans, Head of Collections, Newsam Library, Institute of Education, University College of London, for her determined and ultimately successful search for these volumes. Keesing, Felix and Loram, Charles, eds., Papers and Addresses Presented at the Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, held under the auspices of the University of Hawaii and Yale University, with financial assistance from the Carnegie Corporation, Honolulu, July 3–August 7, 1936, SB12621 (hereafter cited as Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries). Google Scholar

2 The total cost to Carnegie for the conference was under U.S.$11,700 (in present day terms slightly over U.S.$200,000). “Financial Statement,” Felix Keesing to Frederick Keppel, November 2, 1936, Felix Keesing Papers, Special Collections, University of Hawaii at Manoa (hereafter cited as Felix Keesing Papers, UHM); and Education in the Pacific and Report, September-December 1936, folder 2 Felix Keesing Papers UHM.Google Scholar

3 Paisley, Fiona, “Applied Anthropology and Interwar Internationalism: Felix and Marie Keesing and the (White) Future of the ‘Native’ Pan-Pacific,” Journal of Pacific History 50, no. 3 (2015), 304–21.Google Scholar

4 Jenkins, Celia, “New Education and Its Emancipatory Interests (1920–1950),” History of Education 29, no. 2 (2000), 139–51; McLeod, Julie and Wright, Katie, “Education for Citizenship: Transnational Expertise, Curriculum Reform and Psychological Knowledge in 1930s Australia,” History of Education Review 42, no. 2 (2013), 170–84; and Howlett, John, Progressive Education: A Critical Introduction (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 141–76.Google Scholar

5 Akami, Tomoko, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–45 (London: Routledge, 2002); and Anderson, Warwick, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

6 Berman, Edward H., “American Influence on African Education: The Role of the Phelps-Stokes Fund's Education Commissions,” Comparative Education Review 15, no. 2 (June 1971), 132–45.Google Scholar

7 During his early career he had been a member of the Phelps-Stoke Commission (1920–1921 and 1924–1925) that investigated education in British East Africa in relation to its activities in promoting education for African Americans in the southern states of America. See “C. T. Loram Memorial Fund, Public Library,” pamphlet, series 111A, box 206, folder 2, CCNY. “Dr. Loram was director of the Yale University Summer Seminar on Education and Culture Contact in 1934,” newspaper clipping; and “Dr. Loram Dies: Yale Expert on Race Relations,” Herald Tribune, 7 October 1940, Charles T. Loram, 1929–1941, Carnegie Corporation of New York Records, Rare Book and Manuscripts Collection, Columbia University, series 111A, box 206, folder 2 (hereafter cited as CCNY); Arthur Mayhew to Sir John Shuckburgh, Deputy Under-Secretary of State, February 8 1933, Yale University Conference on the Education of Non-Western Peoples, Records of the Colonial Office, Commonwealth and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices, Empire Marketing Board, and related bodies, The National Archives, UK, CO 323/1208/11 (hereafter cited as NAUK); Loram's discussion with Mayhew about the 1934 conference is noted in Heyman, Richard D., “C. T. Loram: A South African Liberal in Race Relations,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 5, no. 1 (January 1972), 47. As well as editing Oversea Education, Mayhew had published on education in previous years. See Whitehead, Clive, “The Concept of British Education Policy in the Colonies 1850–1960,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 39, no. 2 (August 2007), 161–73; and Whitehead, Clive, “Oversea Education and British Colonial Education 1929–63”, History of Education 32, no. 5 (September 2003), 561–75.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Jones, Ross L., “Macaws, Elephants and Mahouts: Frederic Wood Jones, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Human Biology Project,” Australian Historical Studies 44, no. 2 (2013), 189205; Darian-Smith, Kate, McLeod, Julie, and Sluga, Glenda, “Philanthropy and Public Culture: The Influence and Legacies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in Australia,” Dialogue 29, no. 2 (2010), 85–90; and White, Michael, “Carnegie Philanthropy in Australia in the Nineteen Thirties-A Reassessment,” History of Education Review 26, no. 1 (1997), 1–24.Google Scholar

9 Mayhew, Arthur to Mr.Beckett, , Advisory Committee, Colonial Education Office, Series of Internal Memoranda, , “Yale University Conference on the Education of Non-Western Peoples,” CO 323/1208, NAUK, 4 September, 1933.Google Scholar

10 “Advance Notice-Conference and Seminar on Education in Pacific Countries. Honolulu, 1936,” no date, 2–3. NAUK.Google Scholar

11 Laqua, Daniel, “Transnational Intellectual Cooperation, the League of Nations, and the Problem of Order,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 2 (July 2011), 223–47.Google Scholar

12 Pedersen, Susan, “Settler Colonialism at the Bar of the League of Nations,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century, eds. Elkins, Caroline and Pedersen, Susan (New York: Routledge, 2005), 113–34.Google Scholar

13 Kramer, Paul A., “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World,” American Historical Review 116, no. 5 (December 2011), 1349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 On questions of educability and Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, see McLeod, Julie, “Educating for ‘World-Mindedness’: Cosmopolitanism, Localism and Schooling the Adolescent Citizen in Interwar Australia,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 44, no. 4 (2012), 339–59. For a discussion of the influence of conceptions of race and racial categories that underpinned progressive education in the United States in the immediately preceding era, see Fallace, Thomas D., Race and the Origins of Progressive Education, 1880–1929 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2015).Google Scholar

15 Fuchs, Eckhardt, “Educational Sciences, Morality and Politics: International Educational Congresses in the Early Twentieth Century,” Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 5–6 (October 2004), 757–84; and Brehony, Kevin J., “A New Education for a New Era: The Contribution of the Conferences of the New Education Fellowship to the Disciplinary Field of Education 1921–1938,” Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 5–6 (October 2004), 733–55.Google Scholar

16 Fuchs, Eckhardt, “The Creation of New International Networks in Education: The League of Nations and Educational Organizations in the 1920s,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (April 2007), 199209; Hofstetter, Rita and Schneuwly, Bernard, “The International Bureau of Education (1925–1968): A Platform for Designing a ‘Chart of Word Aspirations for Education,’” European Educational Research Journal 12, no. 2 (2013), 215–30; McCallum, David, “Educational Expansion, Curriculum Reform and Psychological Theory: Australia in the 1930s,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 22, no. 2 (1986), 225–37; Watras, Joseph, “The New Education Fellowship and UNESCO's Programme of Fundamental Education,” Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 1–2 (February 2011), 191–205; and Gupta, Nikhil Das, “The Educational Activities of the League of Nations,” The New Review ii, no. 7 (1935), 59–63.Google Scholar

17 Lawn, Martin, “The Institute as Network: The Scottish Council for Research in Education as a Local and International Phenomenon in the 1930s,” Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 5–6 (October 2004), 719–32; McLeod, and Wright, , “Education for Citizenship”; Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989); Parmar, Inderjeet, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations and the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); and White, , “Carnegie Philanthropy in Australia in the Nineteen Thirties.” Google Scholar

18 Brehony, , “A New Education for a New Era”; Middleton, Sue, “Clare Soper's Hat: New Education Fellowship Correspondence between Bloomsbury and New Zealand,” History of Education 42, no. 1 (January 2013), 92–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 McLeod, , “Educating for ‘World-Mindedness,’” 339–59.Google Scholar

20 Conference brochure, “Education for International Understanding,” NEF conference held in Australia, 1946, Archives of the World Education Fellowship (WEF), UCL Institute of Education (IOE), Newsam Library and Archives, University of London, WEF/A/111/201; see also, Goodman, Joyce, “Education, Internationalism and Empire at the 1928 and 1930 Pan-Pacific Women's Conference,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 46, no. 2 (2014), 145–59.Google Scholar

21 See also Howlett, , Progressive Education, 144–45.Google Scholar

22 Malherbe, Ernst Gideon, with the assistance of Carson, John Justin Godfrey, Jones, John David Rheinalt, eds., Educational Adaptations in a Changing Society: Report of the South African Education Conference held in Capetown and Johannesburg in July 1934, Under the Auspices of the New Education Fellowship (Capetown: Juta, 1937). For further discussion see Kallaway's valuable account of the 1934 conference in comparative perspective: Kallaway, Peter, “Conference Litmus: The Development of a Conference and Policy Culture in the Interwar Period with Special Reference to the New Education Fellowship and British Colonial Education in Southern Africa,” in Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Tolley, Kim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 123–149.Google Scholar

23 “Education as a Re-Integrating Agency,” in Malherbe, et al., Educational Adaptations in a Changing Society, 424–25.Google Scholar

24 Malherbe, et al., Educational Adaptations in a Changing Society, v.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., vii.Google Scholar

26 Keesing, Felix, “Introductory” and “The Seminar-Conference ‘Who's Who,’” in Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937) 1–5, 195–99.Google Scholar

27 Journal of Anthropological Visit to the United States and Europe, 1936–1937, Tindale Papers, South Australian Museum Archives, AA 338/1/46/1 (hereafter cited as Tindale Journal), 97.Google Scholar

28 For discussion of Ataloa's life and work, see Neuman, Lisa Kay, Indian Play: Indigenous Identities at Bacone College (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013). We thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting us to this book. Ataloa is not only unusual as a woman among Indigenous spokespeople, but is also remarkable for winning a Rockefeller grant to write a book on the American Indian; the grant is mentioned in The Rockefeller Foundation Annual Report 1936 (New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1937), 299. For a discussion of Native American women on the world stage, see Hoxie, Frederick E., “Denouncing America's Destiny: Sarah Winnemucca's Assault on U. S. Expansion,” Cultural and Social History 9, no. 4 (December 2012), 549–67; and Paisley, Fiona, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women's Pan-Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009), 85.Google Scholar

29 Ataloa, M. A., “A New Program of American Indian Education,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 321.Google Scholar

30 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1938), 10, 84.Google Scholar

31 Similar sets of contradictory effects can be seen in the League of Nations, for example, where colonized peoples petitioned the Permanent Mandates Commission directly but to varying success. See Pedersen, , “Settler Colonialism at the Bar of the League of Nations.” Google Scholar

32 Mayhew, , “Seminar-Conference on Education: Review by Mr. A. I. Mayhew,” 11; folder 1 Felix Keesing Papers UHM.Google Scholar

34 Akami, , Internationalizing the Pacific, 200–1.Google Scholar

35 Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 19.Google Scholar

36 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), 15.Google Scholar

37 Paisley, , “Applied Anthropology and Inter-War Internationalism.” Google Scholar

38 Mayhew, Arthur, “Obituary: Charles Loram,” series 111A, box 206, folder 2, CCNY.Google Scholar

39 Loram, Charles T. to Keppel, F., 7 October 1934, series 111A, box 206, folder 2, CCNY.Google Scholar

40 The range of participants was also, of course, limited in other respects, and the nomination of them dependent on national and international networks and in their having access to funds, often, but not only, philanthropic, such as via Carnegie, as well as via government support (colonial and education). The nomination of Australian participants is a case in point, as discussed below.Google Scholar

41 Loram, Charles T. to Keppel, F., 4 July 1933, University of Hawaii, series 111A, box 206, folder 2, CCNY.Google Scholar

42 For correspondence between Keesing and the Carnegie Corporation to secure funding for the Honolulu conference and documentation of other sources of support, see “University of Hawaii Conference and Seminar on Education in Pacific Countries,” 1934–1938, CCNY, series 111A, box 168, folder 3; for Keesing's correspondence with the Rockefeller Foundation regarding payments for a fellowship he held 1928–1930, see Rockefeller Archives, NY, RAC RF RG1.1, series 418S, box 2, folder 14, New Zealand Social Sciences, Keesing, Felix, 1930–1934.Google Scholar

43 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1938), 1.Google Scholar

44 White, , “Carnegie Philanthropy in Australia in the Nineteen Thirties-a Reassessment”; and Glotzer, , “A Long Shadow.” Google Scholar

45 “The Schools: Educational Research,” Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1936, 16; “Education Conference at Honolulu: Representatives of Australia,” Canberra Times, 3 June 1936, 4.Google Scholar

46 Elkin, A. P., “Education of Native Races in Pacific Countries: Report of a Conference,” Oceania 7, no. 2 (December 1936), 145–68; Elkin, A. P., “Native Education, with Special Reference to the Australian Aborigines,” Oceania 7, no. 4 (June 1937), 459–500.Google Scholar

47 Elkin, A. P. to Paterson, T., Minister for the Interior, quoted in Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 220.Google Scholar

48 “Native Education Problems,” The Argus, 16 January 1937, 16.Google Scholar

49 Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries.Google Scholar

50 “Revised Program Covering Morning Sessions: July 15–July 24,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 27.Google Scholar

51 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), 31.Google Scholar

52 “Revised Program Covering Morning Sessions,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 27.Google Scholar

53 “Proposed Syllabus of Study,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 20.Google Scholar

54 Program in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 20, 27.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., 21.Google Scholar

56 “Revised Program of Study” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 27.Google Scholar

57 “Proposed Syllabus of Study” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 23.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 23.Google Scholar

59 “Revised Program of Study” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 27.Google Scholar

60 Our larger project is addressing issues raised at the 1936 conference from the perspective of those coming from beyond the Anglo-American world, including those from Latin America and Asia as well as European colonial powers. For the significance of such two-way transnational exchanges about the recontextualization of progressive ideas, see Flores, Ruben, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico's Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).Google Scholar

61 “Revised Program of Study” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 28.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., 29.Google Scholar

63 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), 31.Google Scholar

65 Appendix B, “The Day to Day Program,” in Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), 200–12.Google Scholar

66 Dr. Jones's performance on the evening of Tuesday, July 7 was reported favorably in the Honolulu Star Bulletin on the following day, Tindale Journal.Google Scholar

67 Keesing, , “The Day to Day Program,” 200–12.Google Scholar

68 Anderson, Warwick, “Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States,” Current Anthropology 53, no. S5 (Suppl) (April 2012), S95S107.Google Scholar

69 Loram, Charles, “Forerunners of the Hawaii-Yale conference Seminar,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 48.Google Scholar

70 Anderson, Warwick, “Liberal Intellectuals as Pacific Supercargo: White Australian Masculinity and Racial Thought on the Border-Lands,” Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 3 (September 2015), 425–39.Google Scholar

71 According to Tindale's obituary, he was funded by Carnegie to undertake a world tour to study anthropology and museums. See Jones, Philip G., “Norman B. Tindale-An Obituary,” Records of the South Australian Museum 28, no. 2 (December 1995), 159176.Google Scholar

72 Tindale Journal, 125.Google Scholar

73 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), vii.Google Scholar

74 Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Keesing, 12 March 1937, Correspondence, Education in the Pacific Conference and Report, September-December 1936, folder 2, Felix Keesing Papers UHM.Google Scholar

75 Correspondence, Frederick Keppel to Felix Keesing, August 19, 1938, University of Hawaii Conference and Seminar on Education in Pacific Countries, 1934–1938, series 111A, box 168, folder 3, CCNY.Google Scholar

76 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1937), 31. Google Scholar

77 Exact attribution is difficult to make, as Keesing does not name each speaker he quotes. Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1938), 56 and quote on 57.Google Scholar

78 “Seminar-Conference on Education Review by Mr. A. I. Mayhew,” Felix Keesing Papers UHM; and Correspondence, August 1936, folder 1, typed sheets, no date, no page.Google Scholar

79 Tindale Journal, inserted note between pages 123 and 125.Google Scholar

80 Keesing, , Education in Pacific Countries (1938), 23.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., 41.Google Scholar

82 Ball, D. G., “New Zealand Native Policy in its Educational Aspects,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 208.Google Scholar

83 Williams, F. E., “Rival Aims of Education,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 2, 289–90.Google Scholar

84 Loram, Charles T., “Forerunners of the Hawaii-Yale Conference Seminar,” in Keesing, and Loram, , Seminar-Conference on Education in Pacific Countries, vol. 1, 42.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., 43.Google Scholar

86 Ibid. Google Scholar

87 Ibid. Google Scholar

88 Ibid., 44.Google Scholar

89 Coloma, Roland Sintos, “Empire: An Analytical Category for Educational Research,” Educational Theory 63, no. 6 (December 2013), 643.Google Scholar