The Grammar of Schooling in the Making - The Emergence of Age as the Central Category for Grading Pupils in U.S. Compulsory Public Education, 1860-1930 (working title)
(PhD Project by Fanny Isensee, supervised by Prof. Dr. Marcelo Caruso)
Project Description
Perusing the academic literature on age and aging shows that despite its fabricated nature and assignment to human bodies from the outside, chronological age serves a key role to determine transitional phases, rank individuals on a scale based on the number of candles on their birthday cake, and define whether certain rights and abilities can be granted or forfeited. Not only does it place an individual along a specific scale that seemingly captures their essence, chronological age also entails that all members of the community have a shared understanding of what it means to be of a certain age or how e.g. a ‘typical’ forty year old would look, think, and act.
Focusing on the category of age allows for an examination of the genealogy of the age-graded classroom in the USA while at the same time providing the opportunity to conduct an in-depth analysis of how the category of age emerged as the defining basis for classifying children in schools. My dissertation explores how age emerged as a fundamental category for classifying pupils and which underlying presumptions and ascriptions concerning age can be discerned. Since certain perspectives on age were favored in the institutionalization of grading, my thesis also examines which of these perspectives were preferred and if their implementation can be interpreted as an amalgamation of different age notions or if a predominance of a specific perspective can be made out.