The adventure (sex)pedition: revisiting Kurt Hahn's educational aims
ISSN: 0819-8691
Article publication date: 27 April 2020
Issue publication date: 30 June 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Discourses celebrating Kurt Hahn's practical and intellectual contributions to the field of progressive education are ubiquitous. However, the centrality of sexuality in Hahn's educational aims is often misrecognized in contemporary accounts. The purpose of this paper is to provide an historical and historicized contextualization of Hahn's hypervigilance on young male sexuality as it pertained to his educational aims.
Design/methodology/approach
This is an historical analysis of sexuality in Kurt Hahn's educational aims and practices. It draws on Hahn's own writings and speeches, coupled with documents from his students and colleagues, educational historians, German historians and historians of both world wars. The paper is informed by critical theory as well as critical approaches to gender, sexuality and pedagogy.
Findings
Contrary to contemporary accounts, Kurt Hahn was neither a liberal nor modernizing progressive educator, nor was he interested in generalized sexual repression. Hahn developed a homophobic pedagogy due to his belief that inside all young males were the latent capacities to either be homosexual or contribute societal value. His political-aristocratic allegiances, desire to identify and educate future ruling classes and fear homosexuality was the death of social value led to the use of adventure as a form of preemptive conversion therapy.
Originality/value
This paper links several historical threads and analyses to provide a unique vantage point for understanding the origins of adventure as pedagogical intervention and Kurt Hahn's aims of education.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author owes a great debt to Dr Jayson Seaman for sharing several insightful documents from UK and German archives and discussing this work while on sabbatical to conduct his own historical analyses of Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound and to Outward Bound communities for continuing to welcome the author as a peer despite his insistence on disrupting and reimagining the trajectories of outdoor adventure education.
Citation
Vernon, F. (2020), "The adventure (sex)pedition: revisiting Kurt Hahn's educational aims", History of Education Review, Vol. 49 No. 1, pp. 101-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-08-2019-0031
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited