Danish University Colleges
Learning to Care About Time
Temporal Norms and Socialization in Schools Nissen, Stine Karen
Publication date:
2021
Document Version Other version Link to publication
Citation for pulished version (APA):
Nissen, S. K. (2021). Learning to Care About Time: Temporal Norms and Socialization in Schools. Abstract from The IX Conference on Childhood Studies, Tampere, Finland.
General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.
• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal
Download policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Download date: 24. Mar. 2022
Stine Karen Nissen Ph.D.-fellow Department of Educational Anthropology Aarhus University, Denmark
Learning to Care About Time: Temporal Norms and Socialization in Schools
Being concerned with time and regulating yourself accordingly is considered, as Norbert Elias has argued, a key element in taking up the position of an adult in Western contexts (Elias, 2007). In this sense, temporal norms are fundamental aspects of the cultural values learned, interpreted and transformed by children. Although temporal norms are often naturalized and less visible aspects of our mundane practices, they are related to significant distinctions, power relations and classifications of normalcy (James et al. 2016, Bourdieu 2000, Zerubavel 1985, Frykman & Löfgren 1979), e.g., not being able to master the use of clocks, schedules and calendars can be perceived as a lack of maturity, commitment or even sanity. In this paper I draw upon the institutional setting of Danish schools to explore how schooling provides an arena for what Darmon (2018) has called a ‘temporal socialization’. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among first, sixth and ninth grade students in two Danish schools, I examine what, how and why certain temporal norms are made more significant and age appropriate than others. By looking into the practices, perceptions and struggles between students and teachers at different grades, it is possible to see how students construct and engage in the social, moral and temporal order of the institution, and how certain attitudes towards time are being produced and reproduced. This temporal socialization of learning to care about time in certain ways entails an active work on the bodily needs, emotional desires, and classifications of time use. Not all students shared the same experiences and strategies for handling the temporal regiment of the school. However, especially towards the higher grade levels most students expressed a common need for their own ‘free’ time to relax on one hand, and on the other hand, a strong ‘bourgeois’ notion of the autonomous individual who is not only concerned with the endurance and punctuality of temporal regularity, but who also feels an urge to control life by planning, coordinating, prioritizing and optimizing the near and distant future.
