TIMING AND THE SCHOOLING PROCESS IN KINDERGARTEN AND FIRST GRADE

Abstract

In the school context there exist social relationships shaped by a pedagogical  device that is interpreted in its own code, that of society. When children start school they learn certain space-temporal codes conceived in modern times. However, children learn how to decode them, from the very beginning of their schooling experience, in a context of contemporaneity.
This article aims to analyze the temporal regulation of the body in the schooling process of kindergarten children and first grade in the current primary school.
Data are supported by a qualitative methodology with ethnographic features achieved in the field work in an urban school located in the city of El Carmen, in the province of Jujuy. Classroom observation constitute a relevant source of information.
Results show the school is organized in production, uniform, varied, personalized, cooperative, etc. times, and remedial times, which  learning represents the  “how to” access to school knowledge. In this process rituals and routines are also highlighted.
The obtained results have also permitted to see that the way in which the disciplinary pedagogies expected children to adequate to a temporal order in class situations, is not totally present in contemporary classes. The child´s temporal experience happens within the regularity the teacher imposes to subject him/her to a univocal time; and within the child´s own pace which makes the adult adequate himself/herself to the simultaneity, contingency and acceleration of the child´s use and handling of timing.