Schooling the Family

Abstract

This paper explores the pre-conditions of the images of normal family relations which inform contemporary discourse on truancy. It locates these pre-conditions within state intervention into nineteenth century schooling. This structured the kind of school relations which were to become fundamental to state-authorised schooling. It illustrates the way in which this intervention fostered the generation of one particular model of family relations as `normal' and rendered alternatives deviant. It argues that a theory of correct family relations was embedded in the model of good schooling which was being structured by the state. Any given social division of labour involves a particular scheduling of social identities. A division of labour involving the family as a unit of production meant a scheduling of identities such that schooling and work would intersperse with each other. State intervention into schooling undermined social relations of families in occupations characterised by this form of organisation. It is argued that both the form and the content of schooling were implicated in fostering a particular scheduling of social identities and in marginalising alternative patterns of living.