From grading system to organization of schooling in cycles: More of the same

Abstract

This historical study undertaken elucidates the conditions by which the emergence of school at the end of the nineteenth century was possible, focusing specially on the advent of grading education. The article shows that promoting the distribution of students in progressive classes based on age criteria, implementing a mandatory program of studies, establishing a simultaneous teaching, and organizing times and school spaces have shaped, along with new ways of teaching, ways of controlling subjects. Nowadays, this format of grading education has been replaced by the ordering cycles, and its conjunction with the continued progression. This format, proclaimed as new and more adjusted to the social changes and demands, it is, actually, being criticized by the general population. What seems to be missing in both the speeches against and in favor of schooling in cycles or in grades is the similarities between these two proposals, once the focus at the differences between the two terms obscures their similarities.

Key words: grading, cycles, continued progression.