Male learning times – female learning times: equal, more equal, unequal? Gender-specific differentiations of school knowledge

Abstract

For a long time, boys’ and girls’ curricula and learning times differed. So far, this phenomenon has been linked to norms about the duality of gender: since politicians and pedagogues assumed that men’s and women’s dispositions differed, and that school should perfect them, they designed differentiated curricula. However, according to our analysis, curriculum documents for Swiss primary schools since 1830 do not present such a dualistic engendered structure. Therefore, the allegedly stable, class- and timeless, and non-regional norms about the dual nature of gender cannot fully explain gender-specific differentiations of school knowledge. In fact, curricula also have to fulfil needs that are very specific to regional, economic, institutional, and pedagogic-practical contexts.