ABSTRACT
The logic of educational relations posited students as school children, as incomplete social subjects in need of discipline and training. For the public educational system effectively to claim the practical habituation of the population, students had to be so defined. In the series of readers which replaced the Irish books in Canada West in 1866, direct didacticism and the rational form of address had largely disappeared. Here students were exposed instead to exciting and diverting narratives, tales of warfare, adventure, and heroism in prose and poetry. In the domain of curriculum in Canada West/Ontario, the process of normalization took a rather different course. In the series of readers which replaced the Irish books in Canada West in 1866, direct didacticism and the rational form of address had largely disappeared. The study of the formative period of state educational systems is particularly instructive for its revelation of the processes of educational normalization.
