Public Pedagogy and the Wagner Free Institute of Science in Progressive-Era Philadelphia

Abstract

abstract:Unless collapsed into what we call public space or the public sphere, public pedagogy has been infrequently studied in geography. As with all forms of the public, its emergence and form vary greatly across time and space, and must be understood in its particular invocations. This article contributes to a historicized understanding of public pedagogy by analyzing the pedagogical activities of the Wagner Free Institute of Science in North Philadelphia in the Progressive Era. Incorporated in 1855, the Wagner Institute continues to this day as a center of free science education for children and adults, while also serving as a museum of nineteenth-century science. This article, based on research in the Wagner Institute's archives, focuses on the manner in which institute officials sought to make their pedagogical aims public. This not only sheds light on the cultural politics of education in the Progressive Era but also helps ask important questions about the public forms pedagogy has taken and might continue to take. The purpose is not to ask what public pedagogy necessarily is but how it has been enacted in a certain time and place, to what ends, and with what constraints.