Polytechnic under Palms

In the project "Polytechnik unter Palmen" (Polytechnics under Palm Trees), the myth of "education for all" is refracted in the context of processes of unacknowledgeg socialist elite formation. The transnational attractiveness of the notion of a socialist-formed version of the modern idea of 'education for all' was the focus of the first funding phase in a project on GDR educational cooperation with Finland, Mozambique and Nicaragua. In both postcolonial Mozambique and postrevolutionary Nicaragua, other needs of education were on the agenda that could not be easily integrated into a linear narrative on 'education for all'. Both countries were particularly interested in a core concept of socialist education policy, that of polytechnic education, and thus in a specific institution of the GDR education system. The refraction of the universalising educational programme of a polytechnic upper school in its peripheral versions and the counter-narratives associated with it are to be analysed. Thematically, the focus is on the construction of the respective polytechnic schools with model character in Matola and Jinotepe in the 1980s, their students and graduates. On the basis of archival materials and on-site interviews, the project will reconstruct the advisory activities, planning, equipment and teaching programme of these schools as well as the narratives of the local actors involved as possible counter-narratives.