Children and their educators: Changing relations in a meritocratizing world

Abstract

Children growing up today in meritocratic post-industrial societies encounter a variety of socialization regimes. The socializing tasks formerly mainly undertaken by parents have become differentiated and re-allotted. Nowadays these tasks are performed by a variety of people: a host of caretakers, counselors, teachers and educators. The appearance of each new specialized regime coincided with a transformation of the existing ones, resulting in a concomitant shift in the division of tasks and the hierarchical position of each participant. The more educators, the less room for maneuver each of them have, and the more limited their influence on the socialization regime as a whole. This article focuses on the differentiation and stratification of these regimes in the first half of the twentieth century during the early stages of the expansion of the schooling regime. While aiming to view socialization regimes at home and at school as a whole, it describes and analyzes the changing relations between home and school, and attempts to unravel the complex, multifaceted relations between children and the people around them. Dutch 'classical' fiction is used to provide a picture of the educational regimes of both parents and teachers. The child's point of view is investigated by researching autobiographical recollections of people born between 1813 and 1933.