ABSTRACT

Before and during the era when mass elementary schooling took off, children populated classrooms in many roles and not only as learners. The traditional teaching situation was actually full of children in roles as instructors, inspectors, and helpers, among others. In this contribution, the dichotomisation of expected classroom roles, being a central aspect of the grammar of schooling, is in focus. This dichotomisation resulted in one adult and trained teacher controlling all relevant activity in the classroom and children being confined to only one function: learning. On the basis of teaching manuals for school management and the organisation of teaching from four European countries, the article presents evidence of the slow process of the marginalisation of children from other roles than learning. Children as “learners only” was a relatively late reality for elementary and primary classrooms in Western Europe. The article proposes an interpretation of these trends as being an estrangement of classrooms from other fields of practice, particularly concerning the increasing division of labour in the modern world and the activities of children as workers and carers outside classrooms.

摘要

在大规模小学教育起飞之前和期间，孩子们在教室里扮演着许多角色，而不仅仅是学习者。传统的教学环境实际上充满了儿童作为指导者、检查员和助手等角色。在这篇文章中，作为学校教学语法的核心方面的预期课堂角色的二分法是重点。这种二分法导致一名成人和训练有素的教师控制课堂上的所有相关活动，而儿童仅限于一项功能：学习。根据来自四个欧洲国家的学校管理教学手册和教学组织，本文提出了儿童被除学习之外的其他角色边缘化的缓慢过程的证据。在西欧的小学和小学课堂中，儿童作为“仅限学习者”是一个相对较晚的现实。本文建议将这些趋势解释为课堂与其他实践领域的疏远，特别是关于现代世界日益增加的劳动分工以及儿童在课堂外作为工人和照顾者的活动。