The Curriculum of the Body and the School as Clinic (Critical Studies in Health and Education)

This collection brings together cutting-edge research on the history of embodiment, health and schooling in an international context. The book distinguishes a set of educational technologies, schooling practices and school-based public health programmes that organise and influence the bodies of children and young people, defining the curriculum of the body.

Taking a historical approach, with a focus on the period in which mass schooling became an international phenomenon, the book is organised according to four major themes. The first positions the school as a modern clinical space, followed by the second that explores programmes and curricula which influence the discipline of and care for the body. The third section examines the role of the built environment on the organisation and experience of children’s bodies, and the final section outlines the pedagogies, rules and routines that determine how the body is treated and experienced in school.

International and multidisciplinary in scope, this unique collection is of interest to postgraduate students and researchers in education and public health, as well as history, policy studies and sociology.

Kellie Burns is a historical sociologist at the University of Sydney interested in the intersections of gender, sexuality, health and schooling. Her research investigates the socio-historical role of schools as public health spaces across the late 19th and early 20th centuries, examining how ideas about childhood disease and health were constructed. She is also engaged in various projects about vaccination literacy and school-based vaccination clinics, historically and contemporaneously.

Helen Proctor is a professor of education at the University of Sydney, who uses historical methods and perspectives to examine the making of contemporary educational systems. She is interested in the history of how schools have shaped social and cultural life beyond the school gate, and how a range of relationships between schools, families and ‘communities’ have formed and changed from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries.