Microbial metaphors: teaching ‘familiar science’ at a Kent sanatorium, c.1905–1930

TY - JOUR

T1 - Microbial metaphors

T2 - teaching ‘familiar science’ at a Kent sanatorium, c.1905–1930

AU - Newman, Laura

PY - 2017/3/4

Y1 - 2017/3/4

N2 - This article seeks to explore the ways in which education functioned as a core tenet of the anti-tuberculosis (TB) movement in early twentieth-century Britain. Education can be seen to have taken on a unique role in the therapeutic regimes for TB from the late 1880s with Robert Philips’s Edinburgh Dispensary system. The focus on the ‘social management’ of the disease, however, continued to evolve throughout this period as it interacted with a broad and varied landscape of therapeutic provision for TB. By looking at the case of the Post Office Sanatorium Society (POSS), this article brings to light the ways in which themes of working-class sociability, respectability and autonomy created and sustained a unique system of therapeutic pedagogy for the tuberculous worker. Such pedagogy was emblematic of what Melanie Keene has termed ‘familiar science’, a mode of scientific education with its origins in early nineteenth-century educational practice.

AB - This article seeks to explore the ways in which education functioned as a core tenet of the anti-tuberculosis (TB) movement in early twentieth-century Britain. Education can be seen to have taken on a unique role in the therapeutic regimes for TB from the late 1880s with Robert Philips’s Edinburgh Dispensary system. The focus on the ‘social management’ of the disease, however, continued to evolve throughout this period as it interacted with a broad and varied landscape of therapeutic provision for TB. By looking at the case of the Post Office Sanatorium Society (POSS), this article brings to light the ways in which themes of working-class sociability, respectability and autonomy created and sustained a unique system of therapeutic pedagogy for the tuberculous worker. Such pedagogy was emblematic of what Melanie Keene has termed ‘familiar science’, a mode of scientific education with its origins in early nineteenth-century educational practice.

KW - Education

KW - science

KW - therapeutic pedagogy

KW - tuberculosis

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85010636134&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/0046760X.2016.1273403

DO - 10.1080/0046760X.2016.1273403

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85010636134

SN - 0046-760X

VL - 46

SP - 242

EP - 255

JO - History Of Education

JF - History Of Education

IS - 2

ER -