Los cuadernos escolares como fuente histórica: aspectos metodológicos e historiográficos

Abstract

The exercise books constitute a historical source that has received a special attention, over the past two decades, from the history of childhood, the history of written culture ant the history of education. In this article (starting from the works primarily using this source, or simply dealing with it, in France, Argentina, Spain and Italy) a Historical typology of exercise books is first outlined. Next, the possibilities that this source offers for the analysis of the school culture are tackled. Finally, the methodological and heuristic problems raised by their use as a historical source are addressed: their origins, conservation and cataloguing, their relationships with the different school activities, their temporal dimension, the manipulations they suffered, the necessity of combining their use with other sources, and their nature as a ruled and standardized source.