Touching materiality: Presenting the past of everyday school life

Material and sensuous dimensions of memory

In the following, I wish to show how memories of different material objects – such as ink and pen, painted beer crates, classroom pets and vegetable pots – have a surprising and highly significant impact on the interviewees and their recollections of school life. As we shall see, my observations clearly substantiate archaeologist Marisa Lazzari’s claim that material objects quietly dominate the pre-discursive and pre-reflective experiences of everyday life (Lazzari, 2005). Supported by the anthropologist Daniel Miller’s notion of ‘the humility of things’ – i.e. that objects are important ‘because we often do not “see” them in the first place’ (Miller, 1987, 2005) – I wish to show how easily overlooked objects from school life may act as valuable catalysts for the analysis of the material and sensuous dimensions of school life. This section also demonstrates how the notions of presence and metonymy, as defined by Eelco Runia, can be used to lift the analysis of material objects in school memories to a more general level. They come to reflect the material, sensuous and relational dimensions of everyday school life (Runia, 2006a, 2006b) – and my interviews show how these dimensions change during the course of four decades (1950s–1990s).

Without rejecting the value of narrative analysis, I do question the epistemology that views language as constitutive of the world per se (cf. Bruner, 1987). In the analysis at hand, I take my point of departure in established approaches within anthropology and archaeology that perceive materiality to be part of non-verbalized memories that often carry their own logic (see e.g. Bender, 2006; Butler, 2006; Connerton, 1989; Hoskins, 1998, 2006; Howes, 2006b; Küchler in Ingold, 1996: 227; Kwint, 1999; Mellion and Küchler, 1991; Papoulias, 2003; Rowland and Tilley, 2006, etc.). The anthropologist Janet Hoskins discusses the entanglement of histories of objects and life stories and shows how memory is not necessarily exclusively tied to words and spoken narratives (Hoskins, 1998). Anthropologists Susanne Küchler and Michael Rowland’s writings also give way to an understanding of how materiality exceeds the definition of memory as purely linguistic and restricted to mental processes (Küchler, 2002; Rowland, 1993). The turn away from language – and the preoccupation with material culture as text – is further developed in more recent studies (Henare et al., 2007; Jones, 2007; Keane, 2005; Lazzari, 2005). Several of these studies share a critique of the Saussurean understanding of the sign by downplaying and nuancing the role of language. The archaeologist Andrew Jones argues that objects evoke meaning linguistically but also non-linguistically in codified and non-codified ways (Jones, 2007:15). Webb Keane demonstrates how the practical character of things is neither subordinated to, nor isolated from communication and thought (Keane, 2005). Likewise, Susanne Küchler contends that thoughts do not always equal words, concepts or categories; they can also be conducted in things (Küchler, 2005: 226). Meanwhile, Lambros Malafouris draws our attention to the fact that memory is not just cognitive storage. Memory is situated, enacted, distributed, mediated and extended (Malafouris, 2004). As memory is stretched out and cognition becomes interwoven with material objects, spaces and bodies, we reach the end of the Cartesian division of body and mind. In the reframing of the notion of memory, the importance of language is not completely ruled out; rather, it paves the way for new understandings of memory in which materiality is given a more active role.

This article also expands on the more sensual aspects of memorizing material school objects. In dealing with aspects of touch, smell, sound as well as abstract feelings the analysis integrates the growing body of literature on the study of the senses (Bull et al., 2006; Classen, 1997, 2005; Howes, 2003, 2006a, 2006b; Paterson, 2007, 2009). These studies also reflect the attempt to overcome the Cartesian split, thus establishing an obvious link to studies on material culture and memory. Lambros Malafouris, for instance, draws on studies of the senses when using the notion of ‘grasping’ to exemplify the interrelation between cognition and culture and the strong ties between memory and materiality (Malafouris, 2004). In his extensive work on tactility, philosopher Mark Paterson underscores the tactile, sensory and embodied character of memory as it relates to material objects (Paterson 2007). The inseparability of material objects, their sensuality and the issue of embodiment is central to the analysis presented in the following.

Memory objects of everyday school life

Interview-based memories of three generations of former school pupils constitute the empirical material for the analysis of memory objects in the recollections of school life. The interview-based approach was chosen as a way of exploring the former pupils’ perspectives on everyday school life – a perspective that, to a large extent, has been ignored in the writing of educational history (Rosén Rasmussen and Bjerg, forthcoming). Teachers and bureaucrats are the authors of most of the archival material and written sources, and, being unable to rewind time, I obviously had to rule out ethnographic fieldwork. Approaching the past through spoken memories produced in the present enables us to engage in a continuous dialogue between past and present (Cunningham and Gardner, 2004). In the case at hand, the interview conversations with former pupils demonstrate how material objects conflate with more sensuous dimensions in the pupils’ recollections – and probably also in their experiences – of school life. In this way, the analysis supplements existing historical accounts of school objects – particularly since these accounts typically disconnect these objects from the pupils who used them (Lawn and Grosvenor, 2005).

Between 2005 and 2008, I carried out 23 individual life story-inspired interviews (Plummer, 2005[2001]) with former school pupils that had attended the same comprehensive school (Gladsaxe School) during the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s, respectively. ¹ With Gladsaxe School as the shared point of reference, it became easier to recognize the teachers, objects and situations that recurred in the pupils’ recollections. I also took a group of pupils from each generation to their old school and asked them to give me a guided tour of the school. The tour was followed by focus group interviews (Demant, 2006). The two interview techniques – individual life story interviews and group interviews – complemented each other by situating the memory processes differently (Rosén Rasmussen and Bjerg, forthcoming). The role of memory objects was important in both cases, but it became particularly explicit in the group interviews. Not only did materiality become an issue when, during their visit to their old school, the interviewees were confronted with the changed or worn down facilities; each person’s sudden recollection of material objects was also thrown into the collective process of recollection.

With memories of material objects as its point of departure, the analysis gives insight to the three generations’ memories of everyday school life. The three generations were chosen to cast light on political and pedagogical developments in Danish education over the past 60 years. The 20-year gap between the three generations allows us to identify discursive continuities and discontinuities between the generations. As we shall see, the interviews from the three decades reflect the political and pedagogical history of the Danish school system: the 1950s mark the reframing of the post-war school; the 1970s reveal a wide range of pedagogical changes and experiments; and finally, the 1990s reflect a school keen to match the individualizing processes in society in general (Hermann, 2007) Situated on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Gladsaxe School belongs to one of the few municipalities that have a richly documented history of their comprehensive schools (de Coninck-Smith 1991). Throughout the period under scrutiny, Gladsaxe School’s pupil population has come from a middle-class background and the school has enjoyed the benefits of being situated in a municipally with a strong tradition for school development. Although the interviewees and Gladsaxe School itself are unique and not to be read as representative, each generation of former pupils inevitably reflects broader changes in the Danish school system in general. Inspired by histoire croisée (Werner and Zimmermann, 2006), generational portraits are formed by reading the pooled memories in relation to, or through, each other. The analysis of the memories of the 1990s is carried out in the light of the memories of the 1950s and 1970s, and vice versa. It might have looked slightly different if memories of the 1960s had been included. Also the proclaimed change in form and content of the memory objects across the three generations are constituted in this relational approach.

1950s: Ink and pen

One might think that simple writing tools such as ink and pen would be seen as so ordinary that they become almost invisible in the memories of everyday school life. But that is not the case. The historian Henry Petroski has devoted 400 pages to the study of this mundane object (Petroski, 1990). And in the interviews, pen and ink turn out to be pivotal points of reference in many of the often fragmented school stories told by the 1950s generation.

Kirsten is in her 60s and has just retired after 45 years of unskilled work. ² Before our interview, she tried to convince me that she really did not have much to tell me about her school years. During the interview, it became very clear that she was not used to reflecting on her school days, nor to narrating her memories in general. Kirsten’s reluctance to narrate and the fragmented nature of her stories indicate the limitation of the narrative approach and its built-in risk of bias. However, the two-hour interview contains important perspectives on school life in the 1950s that become more distinct when paying attention to matters of materiality. An example was Kirsten’s reflections on ink and pen:

What does Kirsten’s recollection of ink and pen tell us? According to her, writing with ink and pen was a challenge – controlling the ink and mastering the neatness demanded by the writing discipline was not easy. Moreover, Kirsten’s description of ink and pen versus the introduction of new types of pens includes memories of class divisions. If your family were better off, you would be one of the lucky ones who had a fountain pen to write with. In this way, the fountain pen became an object of distinction, drawing lines of social difference. Kirsten also draws attention to the impact of technological innovations, and how new writing objects changed the discipline of writing.

Similar descriptions occurred in the interview with Anne (65 years old), where the mention of ink and pen even draws her husband into the conversation:

In this quote we see how the pen instigates the process of recollecting school life. Through the pen, Anne and her husband relate, playfully, how abstract ideas and strategies materialized in the context of everyday school life – and how these materializations also gave shape to the prevailing learning strategies. Ink and pen trigger memories of submission in the disciplining subject of writing. In their recollections, the schoolmistress is an unnamed and unquestioned authority, and the descriptions of ink and pen also involve the specific seating order in the class – with desks where two pupils sat next to each other, sharing the same inkpot. The interviewees remember the struggle to prevent the ink from dripping and the efforts to get the letters right in the collective instruction of ‘down stroke, down stroke, down stroke’. The small material changes, e.g. the new types of pens, seem to have brought about new issues of discipline, with demands to master new writing skills under the same collective instruction. In the childhood memories of Kirsten and Anne (and Anne’s husband), the excitement related to the introduction of new pens, the risk of trouble if you did not master ink and pen, and the matter of economic inequality merge in their recollections of the discipline of writing. As a memory object, the pen made past experiences of school life materially and sensually present in the interview.

In the interviews, the recollections of the pen generally took the form of a non-verbalized memory, which the interviewees found difficult to describe with words. The interviewees would weigh an invisible pen between their fingers and their hands would move in neat motions, after which stories about the teaching of writing, lack of neatness and comparisons of social backgrounds slowly took form. The memories of ink and pen seemed to include feelings of loss – the obsolete ink pen and all the different brands of ballpoints that arrived on the market. During the course of the interview, the past seems to become a familiar and tangible place for the interviewees. This was evident in a group interview carried out with three other informants from the same generation:

In this exchange, the collective recollection includes not just the materiality of blackboards and books, but also aspects of sound and touch from the discipline of writing. In the collective memory work, the memory objects evidently trigger shared but non-verbal experiences from the discipline of writing, connecting the physical aspects of the learning processes with the materiality of school life in general.

1970s: Painted beer crates

In the memories of school life in 1970s, a completely different object comes to the fore. In this generation’s school memories, painted beer crates were continuously brought up – in a way similar to the older generation’s reference to ink and pen. This is Connie’s description of her school memories from the 1970s:

The Danish breweries replaced their wooden beer crates with plastic ones between 1968 and 1972. Collaborating with different charities, the breweries sold their stock of beer crates during this period (Carlsberg-Bryggerierne, 1974). The cheap beer crates soon became a desired item used for various purposes – often furniture. And, according to the school memories, they even made their way to the classrooms.

In the interviews, the beer crates are described along with tie-dye curtains and bright wall colours as the interviewees attempt to recollect the atmosphere of their old school. The beer crates are part of the active transformation of the school space, used in the creation of ‘cosy corners’, which the pupils could use during as well as after lessons.

The beer crate is a recurring element in the interviews with the pupils from the 1970s generation. They are integrated into memories of the laid-back atmosphere of the period, where pupils were invited to take part in the interior decoration of their school – often, according to many of the interviewees, precipitated by the motto: ‘What do you feel like doing today?’ The interviewees from this generation do not remember school as being about grammar or nice handwriting, but rather about getting actively involved. As Connie reflects: ‘We painted a lot of beer crates, I remember, wooden beer crates. The bookcases of that time. I remember getting completely smeared with paint’. For the 1950s generation, the dripping ink was described as a no-go – something to avoid – but Connie recollects paint on the skin in positive terms. The physical encounter with the beer crates and the wet paint resemble the bodily experience of music classes, the tie dying of curtains and t-shirts, and even the project of building real chimneys, which this generation also refers to in the interviews. The pupils were invited into creative processes – moving, decorating and building their surroundings – with the intention of involving their bodies as well as their minds in the learning process. When discussing the introduction of new practical subjects such as cooking, tie-dying etc., and how these subjects were organized in rotas based on pupils’ choices, the beer crate is mentioned again as an object connected to the teaching experiments of a new generation of teachers:

The interviewees are consciously aware that the painted beer crate is a somewhat peculiar, but nevertheless a central object of their school past. The beer crate is also connected to how the pupils of this generation remember the way a new generation of teachers put their mark on school space. As expressed by Susanna: ‘Well, our class teacher was fantastic. It was probably because of her that we had beer crates’.

Gladsaxe School is located in a municipality known for its support of progressive pedagogy in the 1970s (de Coninck-Smith, 1991). The interviews reflect how individual teachers put these progressive ideas into practice in their teaching. In this way, abstract ideas of freedom, creativity and equality materialized in the school experience of the pupils of the 1970s. Central to our discussion here is the way in which school experiences and the peculiarity of the memory object (the beer crate) were recollected by the former pupils:

The beer crate also marked out the difference between school and home. As one woman said: ‘We certainly didn’t have those at home’. In fact, the painted beer crates became a physical manifestation of the new ideas of the time. As the interviews clearly document, the crates are concretely involved in the middle-class children’s exposure to the new generation of teachers and their progressive ideas – which the pupils could not avoid being influenced by (‘I had paint all-over’).

1990s: Classroom pets and vegetable pots

Classroom pets – turtles, in fact – were the first, rather unexpected memory that cropped up in the minds of a small group of pupils from the 1990s generation as we entered their former classroom. The memory of turtles was distinct and seemed to encompass the general experience of going to school in the 1990s for this specific group of pupils.

The mentioning of the classroom pet plunged the two pupils right back into the differences between girls and boys, which apparently governed their school life at the time. Memories were faint when the interviewees were asked how the classroom pet idea was introduced. However, they did refer to ‘some kind of nature project’ and mention a short experience of caring for stick insects. Instead, the classroom pet project was associated with memories of troublemaking and chaos for most of the pupils. The early 1980s promoted the pedagogic project of bringing living animals and plants into the classroom; it was said to freshen up dull classrooms and foster feelings of care and solidarity among the pupils (Larsen, 1980). In the late 1980s, aspects of responsibility and the stimulation of emotional attachment were added to the rationale for integrating animals into children’s learning processes (Madsen, 1988). But what might have been a project about care and shared positive experiences in the classroom was remembered in adulthood as part of the chaotic atmosphere that dominated school life.

Although the tone is ironic, the latter part of the interview illustrates how memories of the same object can be radically different, depending on whether it is recollected by a boy or a girl. However, that is not the case for the vegetable pot project. Here, the former pupils were unanimous in their recollection of the atmosphere that surrounded the growing of vegetables in pots on the school’s roof terrace.

In the recollection of the vegetable pot project, the former pupils stress the freedom, joy and sense of responsibility generated by the project. Something that temporarily made bullying and troublemaking recede into the background. Thus, the garden project becomes a pause, a welcome distraction in what is otherwise recalled as a chaotic school atmosphere: ‘I don’t think many of us succeeded in making things grow, but it was the feeling of expectancy when seeing a small shoot’ (Anders). The pupils recall how the vegetables pots was linked to feelings of excitement and expectancy in what was often a chaotic and monotonous school day.

The classroom pets and the vegetable pots both reflect the ideals of the 1990s, which believed in the merit of creating microcosms within the macrocosm of the school itself and changing the anonymous classrooms. But these two activities certainly triggered very different memories for the former pupils. The pet experiment was associated with chaos whereas the vegetable pots generated memories of harmony and good relations. In the school memories, the classroom pets and vegetable pots are intertwined with the social relations among the pupils. This was accentuated in the way the sudden recollection of the classroom pets reactivated a friendly banter between women and men in the 1990s group. These objects opened up to stories of social dynamics (trouble-making and chaos contra teamwork and anticipation), which the interviewees agreed were representative of their school experience. Even though the classroom pet and vegetable pot projects seemed to have been initiated by the teachers, the teachers are conspicuously absent in the pupils’ recollection of these events. The vegetable pot project in particular evokes memories of teamwork and taking responsibility for the process of learning.

The presence of the past – getting in touch with everyday school life

The memories of material objects from school life worked as catalysts for storytelling in the interviews (cf. Kwint, 1999). But they also proved to be more than random artefacts in the former pupils’ narratives. Eelco Runia’s notion of presence gives way to a theoretical understanding of the material objects in the school memories that go beyond their narrative function. Runia defines presence in the following way:

‘Presence’, in my view is ‘being in touch’ – either literally or figuratively – with people, things, events, and feelings that made you into the person you are. It is having a whisper of life breathed into what has become routine and clichéd – it is fully realizing things instead of just taking them for granted. (Runia, 2006a: 5)

Runia is interested in how history – in our case, school life in the past – affects us as individuals and societies, and, more specifically, how the past and the present interweave (Bencard, 2007: 201; Runia, 2006a, 2006b). The notion of presence underlines the importance of the people, things, events and feelings that surface in the interview-based memories. It grants significance to the descriptions of the material objects in the memories, seeing them as cavities through which the interviewees can get in touch with everyday school life in the past. In the context of the school memories, Runia’s notion of presence allows us to reflect on the objects presented in the recollections, leaving the narrative itself and the logic of its storyline, behind for a moment:

Instead of being contained in the meaningful content (the ‘storiness’) of stories, presence resides in what a story inadvertently has to be – in, that is, the things a story has to present in order to present a story. (Runia, 2006b: 305)

The main concern is no longer the individuals’ linguistic meaning-making process, which tends to reduce the objects involved in the narrative to occasional artefacts necessary for the story to work. The concept of presence gives the objects of the past value in their own right. Besides evoking the past experiences of school life, ink and pen, painted beer crates and vegetable pots become objects to which the presence of past school life is tied.

It is worth dwelling on Runia’s use of the word ‘touch’. It alludes to the physical sensation of touching as well as the more abstract experience of making a connection or being touched emotionally. Tactility is an emerging domain of scholarship that seeks to unravel the complex quality of touch involving a physical encounter with an object, the connection to sensations of pain, pleasure, etc., as well as culturally constructed experiences of feminine and masculine touch (Classen, 2005; Paterson, 2007, 2009). These studies relate the often ignored sense of touch to the entire sensory pallet (vision, hearing, olfaction, etc.). In a recently published paper, the cultural geographer Paul Obrador-Pons also underlines the significance of touch to the production of feelings (Obrador-Pons, 2009). As such, the notion of touch creates the basis for considering the sensuous dimension of material objects in school memories. Archaeologist Andrew Jones discusses the role of the physical and sensual dimensions of material culture for the re-experience of the past. He argues that objects impress themselves perceptually and sensually upon human beings – and vice versa (Jones, 2007: 26). Jones also draws on the issue of embodiment introduced by Paul Connerton in How Societies Remember. In this famous study, Connerton argues that remembering is a process of recall rather than cognitively stored representation; it is just as much a bodily activity as a cognitive one (Connerton, 1989; Jones, 2007: 31). The present analysis is not just concerned with the symbolic aspects of recollected objects. The sensual aspects of the memories analysed seem intrinsically linked to the very materiality of the objects. For the 1950s generation of interviewees, for example, the pen triggered many memories of school days: The sensation of holding the pen between the fingers and the sound of the teacher beating the time of the writing rhythm suddenly became vivid to the pupils of this generation during the interviews. For the 1970s generation, the sensation of wet paint on the skin (from painting the beer crates) also implies a sensuous relation with materiality.

As the analysis of the school memories elucidate, materiality is often not only about something physical (the memorized pen, classroom or vegetable pots). Physical things tend to be linked to the more immaterial side of memory, especially in cases where materiality is related to sensations or moods. This is where the theoretical discussions of the relation between materiality and immateriality become highly relevant to the analysis at hand (Jones, 2007; Keane, 2005; Küchler, 2005). Following the German philosopher Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, the western conception of the materiality–immateriality relation is dominated by a Cartesian dualism, involving a hierarchical perception of the two dimensions in which the immaterial predates the material (Gumbrecht, 2004: 24). Gumbrecht describes this dichotomy as an expression of the subject/object paradigm that has dominated western philosophy for centuries. It is from this dichotomy that the notion of the material signifier as surface and immaterial meaning as depth evolves. This easily leads to a perception of materiality as pure representation of the immaterial (thoughts, ideas, feelings, etc.). Gumbrecht tries to overcome this dualism by adopting an Aristotelian approach, arguing that the meaning of the immaterial cannot be detached from its material sign (the material signifier) (Gumbrecht, 2004: 29). It follows, according to Gumbrecht that human existence does not exclusively depend on the movements of the human mind. In other words, materiality is given a more active and independent role in the making of the world (Gumbrecht, 2004: 17).

In sum, the analysis uses the term ‘material objects’ to refer to the materiality as a specific characteristic of the memory objects in question. The material (memory objects) is not just a representation of moods, interpretations and stories about school life but is something in its own right. On the contrary, the objects involved in the school memories are distinguished by the way they refer to concrete material objects whose physicality merges with sensuous experiences of school life. Woven into the recollections of ink and pen were the pupils’ struggle as well as joy of mastering the demands of writing – the more intangible aspects of the discipline of writing. As well as the more subtle and emotional aspects of learning, the memories of ink and pen expanded to include the physicality of the classroom (for example desks and seating order). In this way, the materiality of the memory objects becomes crucial to the recollection of the past; it acts as a spearhead for the presence of history.

Memory objects as metonymies

The notion of presence directs our attention to what is brought out in the former pupils’ stories. But it also highlights what makes us capable of rewriting our stories (Runia, 2006a, 2006b). This is more specifically designated with a notion from Walter Benjamin as mémoire involontaire: things we take for granted and for that reason unsaid in our communication (Runia, 2006b: 311). As in the school memories, the often overlooked materiality of school life suddenly emerges, surprising not only the interviewer but also the interviewees (cf. Runia, 2006a: 6–7), who are prompted to think and rethink their stories. An example of this is the sudden recollection of the classroom pets that cropped up in the minds of the 1990s generation when walking into their old classroom. The memory object (classroom pet) touched the interviewees with a sense of presence, and an immediate connection to the experience of school life in the past was created.

The objects involved in the three generations’ school memories bring to life the non-verbalized, mundane aspects of school life. In their important work on memory, David Middleton and Steven Brown define objects as mediational means for connecting with aspects of our past. Objects lend their apparent stability to the fluidity of memories (Middleton and Brown, 2005). In this process, objects provide the means for recreating the past in the present. The valuable analyses produced within this approach, inspired by actor-network theory, tend to work horizontally unravelling a dispersed network of things and people (see also Kontopodis, 2009a). Thus, in the alignment of things and people, tactility, embodiment and other sensuous dimensions are often granted a secondary position in the analysis. The role of material objects in the school memories is better captured by the notion of metonymy as framed by Runia. Metonymy is described as a usual form of the mémoire involontaire and is said to connect to the common knowledge of the past (Runia, 2006a: 15). According to Runia, a metonymy is an element that is somehow broken off from its context, transferring presence rather than meaning. A metonymy not only interacts with our conscious recollection of an earlier event; it imposes itself on our unconscious life (Runia, 2006a: 17). Metonymies link up to common or implicit knowledge, whereas metaphors involve the communication of ‘something already comprehended’(Runia, 2006b: 313). Understood in metonymic terms, the pen – an element out of the school context – forms a passageway to the interviewees’ experiences of the writing discipline, recapitulating the authority of the teacher and the relations between the school friends.

The notion of metonymy offers an interesting approach to memory and the interconnectedness of different periods in time. It may be used to illustrate the way in which objects may evoke the simultaneousness of past and present – as well as the perception of time as spatial rather than chronological (Runia, 2006a: 6). When the 1970s generation visited Gladsaxe School, the former pupils noticed that the vivid colours in the corridors and the beer crates had been replaced by plastic-moulded artworks created by the present children. But it was the very absence of the painted beer crates that led them to revisit a past era, thus bringing the past to life in the present (cf. Runia, 2006a: 17). Parallel perceptions of time are found in the archaeological and anthropological studies on materiality and memory, where objects and bodies also become contact zones or knots for re-experiencing or recreating the past in the present (Alcock, 2002; Jones, 2007; Kontopodis, 2009a, 2009b; Kontopodis and Kozin, 2009; Kontopodis and Matera, 2010; Sanders, 2009). Consequently, the analysis of school memories enters the discussion of how memory, time and matter interrelate (e.g. Kontopodis, 2009b), adding to this discussion the importance of the sensuous dimension, as suggested by Andrew Jones and Karin Sanders (Jones, 2007; Sanders, 2009).

Using the notion of metonymy allows us to examine more closely the memory objects that occurred in the interviews, rather than dismissing them as random and insignificant. Enlisting the notion of metonymy as a reason for dwelling on the memory objects already in the interview situation also changes the position of the interviewees. Instead of being the authorities of the storytelling, the interviewees can be seen as co-interpreters that help to unravel the metonymies. The painted beer crates evoked the presence of the 1970s, more specifically the world of school. The interviewees helped the analysis on its way by explaining how the crates were painted, and how they were used for books and coffee tables in the cosy corners. Subsequently, the interviewees tried to explain the role of the painted beer crate in the classroom by linking them to the progressive pedagogy of the times, thus transferring physical objects from the classroom interior to an entirely different plane.

Generational embeddings

Comparing the memory objects across generations shows how ink and pen, painted beer crates, vegetable pots and classroom pets were woven into a time-specific context of everyday school life. Ink and pen were closely linked to classroom processes (learning how to write), stressing the importance of the relation between teachers and pupils. A recurring motif in the school memories of the 1950s generation is the clear division between school and home. The beer crates, on the other hand, show how elements from everyday life outside the school were brought into the school environment as functional as well as decorative objects. The attempts to create a homely atmosphere at school indicated a softening of the school environment, the doing away with the notion of school as a closed, institutional space. The beer crates also manifest the experimental initiatives of the teachers – a moving away from authoritative relations between teachers and pupils. In the memories of the 1990s generation, inanimate objects were substituted for animate ones – animals and plants – stimulating an emotional relation to the objects (e.g. tension/trouble or anticipation/joy), as well as encouraging pupil-to-pupil relations (rather than only pupil-to-teacher). This shows how the objects of materiality have changed and generated new relations across the three generations. It tells us something about more profound changes in the very role of material objects in everyday school life across the three generations.

Interestingly, the memory objects tended to be fewer in the interviews with the 1990s generation, which in turn tests the relevance of the notions of presence and metonymy. An explanation could be that material objects at school are ascribed a different role by this generation but it might very well be that aspects of materiality stand out stronger over time by taking the form of metonymies. The interviewees in the younger generation were still involved in the educational system; school life was still part of their current life phase and their ongoing self-constructions. When the younger generation told the stories of their school life, they did not have to dig deep into their memory. Likewise, bits and pieces from school had not turned into metonymies as strongly as was the case for the 1950s and 1970s generations. It might very well be that aspects of materiality stand out more strongly over time by taking the form of metonymies.

Metonymic resonance and the sensation of everyday school life

It is in the sense of metonymies that the memory objects first appeared in the interviews. These objects as well as other aspects of materiality acted as entries to the experiences of school life – cavities through which the non-verbalized experiences of the past were transferred into the present. It was the sensation of holding the pen in your hand, getting wet paint on your skin, or taking care of the plants in the pots that was important; these sensations allowed the interviewees to get in touch with the moods, people and objects that constituted the physical and sensuous space of school and learning.

Metonymies and metaphors may interact, or, as Runia suggests: ‘metonymy works as a metaphorical bridgehead, perhaps born out of a metaphor. Metonymical presence and metaphorical meaning are locked in an evolutionary dance’ (Runia, 2006a: 21–2). This reflects how the metonymic memory objects of everyday school experiences are connected to the more abstract discourses that constituted the school system in the particular era. The above analysis takes as its starting point the metonymic memory objects, but through the processes of analysis and reflection the memory objects take on the character of metaphors. It explains how the examples given also fit into the more general and discursive history of the Danish comprehensive school system. Ink and pen represent the authoritarian school system of the 1950s; the beer crates become symbolic of the experimental spirit of the 1970s; and, finally, the classroom pet and vegetable pot projects fit perfectly into the pedagogic discourse of the 1990s, where the pupils’ ability to be responsible and self-governed are highlighted (Hermann, 2007). As we have seen, there seems to be a connection in the interviews between the dominating discourses of the time and the everyday experiences of school life. However, the focus on the metonymic memory objects is more than a shortcut for creating meaningful metaphors of discourses in the past. What is fascinating is the actual concretization of the more abstract visions and strategies for school life in mundane objects from school life. It tells us about the concretization of everyday school life from the perspective of the pupil. The interviews show that it is not just academic proficiencies but also more subtle material, sensuous, non-verbalized experiences of school life in the past that become significant to the extent that they play tricks on us later in life.

Conclusion

Focusing on materiality – memory objects – in the recollections of the past allows us to uncover the silent memories of schooling. To understand the memories of schooling through material objects involves more than making these objects visible to educational history. It is a way of making the non-verbalized experiences and processes of school life present in the writing of history. Tracing the memory objects in the individual and collective interviews about school life gives us an idea of the physical aspects of learning, and how it changes over time. Bound up in different forms of materiality we find significant aspects of school life – material and immaterial – that indicate that school life from the perspective of the pupil certainly exceeds the written curriculum.

The notion of presence allows us to understand the dual role physical objects play: they are active in the actual production of memory-based material, and at the same time they are connected to the processes of past school life. The way materiality (memory objects) crops up in the memories of former pupils illustrates the way in which the past is forced upon us, entering the present via memory objects. In the interviews, ordinary objects such as pens, beer crates, pets and pots appear as metonymies. But in the processes of interviewing and the analysing, the metonymic objects are connected to broader processes of school life and the changes this institution has undergone over three generations. In fact, these memory objects transcend their metonymic status and become metaphoric. The interviewees as well as the interviewer contribute meaning to ink and pen, painted beer crates, classroom pets and vegetable pots to such an extent that these objects act as metaphors, transferring presence as well as meaning of past school life and pupil identity – and this transferral of meaning and presence takes place across several decades, allowing the past to interact with the present.

In conclusion, the article raises questions about the complex relations between the sensual, emotional, material and metonymic aspects of memory and also the educational implications of these relations. Combining individual and collective interviews interviewees from three generations offers valuable insights, but the research design and methodology could certainly be developed further. As an example the apparent generational specificities could be explored further by comparing the Danish case to the development in other countries (e.g. Tobin et al., 2009). Furthermore, old school photos were actively used by several of the interviewees in the study. The use of photos could easily be expanded, more deliberately employed and supplemented with concrete material objects. Video recordings might prove useful too; it would be interesting to film pupils from the 1970s as they were presented with an old painted wooden beer crate. This could be a way to fuel a further discussion of the beer crates as a specific memory catalyst. Obvious choices for inclusion in future work would in addition to video recordings be more detailed observations of the interview situation, not least to support the investigation of embodiment and the non-verbal aspects of memory. Literature from Science and Technology Studies and discussions on performativity could in general inspire such further investigations (e.g. Bjerg and Rosén Rasmussen, 2008; Bowker, 2005; Counsell and Mock, 2009). A complementary idea is to expand the interdisciplinary approach introduced in this article where ideas and techniques from philosophy, anthropology, archaeology and history are combined for the work on memory in educational history.