OM AT VENTE OG IKKE VIDE: Tid og disciplin i en engelsk primary school

Resumé

Anna Lærke: Waiting Patiently: Time

and Discipline in an English Primary

School

In 1994-96, the author conducted fieldwork

among young children in an English village.

The article focuses on local notions and

practices of discipline in the village primary

school, specifically on the use of time as a

disciplinary technique. The term “discipline”

is used, in a broad sense, to denote practices.

strategies, and ideas involved in children’s

and adults’ demarcations of one another’s

identities. Thus, it is argued, adult and child

notions of age as a naturalized measure of

children’s (but not adults’) identity, and adult

time-controlling practices such as timescheduling

and pausing, play into, and in tum

construct, notions of “the Child” as more

“biologically determined” and less socially

skilied than “the Adult”. With reference to

examples from the field, the author asks to

what extent one can theorize child practices

such as “disruptive behaviour” and “slowness”

as expressions of pupil resistance to

teacher domination in the school. It is

tentatively suggested that adult-child relations

be viewed not as simple dominationsubordination

relations, but rather as complex

and continuous negotiations of relative

values.