FROM THE MYTH OF THE HOMOGENEOUS CLASS TO THE INDIVIDUALIZED TEACHING OF ARITHMETIC: THE CONCEPTION OF CARLETON WASHBURNE

Abstract In this text, we seek to discuss from the investigations of Carleton Washburne, an important American pedagogue, how the individualization of the teaching of arithmetic in elementary school was constituted, in the midst of practices based on simultaneous teaching, a method by which everyone should learn at one and the same time. only time, the same content. In order to do so, Washburne's publications on children's difficulties in learning arithmetic, in the period from 1919 to 1943, are taken as empirical research material. From Certeau's point of view, the analysis of Washburne's production evidenced “combinational and utilitarian consumptions” resulting from the educational reorganization of the school itself, privileging the individualized teaching of arithmetic in primary school. Such teaching was not reduced to a matter of method or different techniques with which the teacher should teach, but of a new pedagogical concept that modified arithmetic itself and the teacher-student-knowledge relationship in the educational process.