ABSTRACT
Using the term 'closure' in the way the author has done implies that children may in some way be denied the use of their own capacities–their language, the things they already know and can do–in the learning that takes place in school. The observations made so far might give one reason to wonder whether closure is not likely to be a routine feature of pupils' encounters with subjects that are conceived objectivistically and so conduce to formalistic negotiations with the language that them. It seems as if the pupils' speech came to her through a particular filter; its temporal features are more salient than its other features. There might have been established, to use Esland's terms, a dialogic relation between pupils' consciousness' and the socially distributed 'knowledge' of 'Anglo-Saxon village' that already existed. Even if pupils can find out about Anglo-Saxon thatch, they cannot find out, except from teachers, how much time ought to be spent on it.
