Disability, Rehabilitation and the Great War: Making Space for Silence in the History of Education

Abstract

Pieter Verstraete’s chapter focuses on ‘Disability, Rehabilitation and the Great War: Making Space for Silence in the History of Education’ (Chap. 7). Although silence can be considered a widespread educational instrument, until now historians of education have not devoted much research to the historical use made of it for educational purposes. In this chapter, he puts forward the fruitfulness of a historical exploration of the manifold and complex connections between silence and education. In particular he demonstrates how within a particular neglected subfield of the history of education, namely, the rehabilitation of Belgian disabled soldiers from the First World War, the silence or quietness one can encounter in particular spaces was thought to leave a stimulating impression on the mind of the mutilated soldiers. For those responsible of realising the rehabilitative measures towards (Belgian) disabled soldiers, silence was considered a pre-eminent educational tool that was intimately connected to the often heard pedagogical ambition of ‘The right man on the right place’. However, by including the voices of the disabled soldiers themselves, it is also shown how silence at the same time was turned by the mutilated men themselves into a meaningful instrument, one that enabled them to resist the educational regimes of rehabilitation. The narrative enables us to steer away from the traditional interpretation of silence as being the opposite of language—and thus of the political. Silence, as will become clear, can and should be considered as something serving—whether intentionally or unintentionally—particular educational goals and bears in itself the outlook of particular world-views. Demonstrating this instrumentalisation, therefore, should be considered an important task to be carried out by historians of education in the twenty-first century.