Session Information
Contribution
What exactly makes a school to a school? Trying to bring back memories of our school years, we might refer to all kinds of objects (school desks, blackboards, wallcharts, textbooks, computers, and so on) and rooms (class rooms, stairs, corridors, canteens, chapels, and the like). The dominance of visual and material representation in the process of recording school life is remarkable. Although the lack of typical schoolish 'sound-and-smell' representations might be obvious - after all, how can we catch and preserve these representations (both literally and figuratively)? - we will try to go beyond this 'visual approach' and to explore the school experiences by 'remembering through the body', with particular focus on the 'senses of hearing and smelling'. These senses are merely a small component of the memories of one's life as a pupil. We do not pretend to give a complete picture - an exhaustive enumeration - of all the reported school smells and reverberations; we only want you to 'taste' some of them… " Elle sentait bon, mon école! Au matin, l'odeur de propre des planchers brossés à grand renfort d'eau de Javel se mêlait à celle de la craie, de l'encre violette que l'on versait d'une bouteille à bouchon-doseur dans les encriers de porcelaine blanche qui faisaient comme de petits puits sur le rebord de nos pupitres. "Our data resources consist of oral and written testimonies obtained by interviewing adults (born in 1956 and attending primary school during the 1960's), walking in their former school building, and looking for 'school-sound-and-smell-stories' (e.g. the voice of the teacher, the school bell, the chattering and shouting of children during recreation time - the smell of chalck, ink, typical cleaning products, of school meals in the cantine, and so on) appearing in novels and other literature, memories publicly available under the form of newspaper articles, archives, interviewed people, read autobiographies, school magazines, and so on. What are frequent recurring topics and are there sounds and smells we have rarely heared about so far?Can we conclude something about the grammar of schooling, overviewing those accounts about aromas and noices?
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