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2012 21: 156Time SocietyColin Symes

diariesNo time on their hands: Children and the narrative architecture of school

  

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DOI: 10.1177/0961463X10380022

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Article

No time on theirhands: Children andthe narrativearchitecture of schooldiaries1

Colin SymesMacquarie University, Australia

Abstract

Diaries are elements of a school’s documentary reality. They possess a complex

‘narrative architecture’ and serve multiple functions. In addition to playing an

important role in inducting students into the adroit chronometry of contem-

porary work, the school diary is also a manual of self-government, given that

much of it deals with goal setting, managing health and conflict resolution.

On the grounds that it ameliorates communication between the school and

parents, the diary, unlike its adult counterparts, is subject to regular inspection.

As such, it is part of the machinery of surveillance and accountability that are

features of neo-liberalist schooling.

Keywords

Chronometry, diaries, neo-liberalism, school time, Toyotaism

Make it clear to him that the clock cannot be argued with and that when it is

time to leave for school, for Daddy to go to work, for Mummy to attend to

her duties, then these changes are as incontestable as the tides

(McEwan, 1988: 27)

Be it the duration of the school calendar, the ages at which students shouldbegin and end their schooling, the amount of time to be allotted to school

Corresponding author:

Colin Symes, Department of Education, Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, North Ryde, Sydney,

NSW 2109, Australia.

Email: Colin.Symes@mq.edu.au

subjects, many areas of education are tied ineluctably to issues of time.While other parts of the school system have been renovated, attempts to‘modernise’ the school calendar and the school timetable have been resisted.Focus on the school’s temporal calibration can draw attention awayfrom the role it performs in transmitting the horology of broader society.For instance, through their hidden curriculum schools helped induct youngpeople into the temporal discipline of industrial capitalism (Ball et al., 1984;Watkins, 1993). They augmented and eventually supplanted the rolechurches and, before them, the monasteries played in standardizing horo-logical values, invoking the same homilies to encourage responsible timeusage (Glennie and Thrift, 1996; Mumford, 1934; Thompson, 1967; Weber,1930/2001).2 One facet of this has involved the neutralization of kairologi-cal time, a temporal attitude characterized by individuals undertaking activ-ities on whim and impulse (Weinrich, 2008: 91). Arguably, the whole thrustof the ‘timescape’ (ancient and modern) has focused on weakening kairo-logical impulses in favour of chronological ones, which are determinedby calendars and clocks, deadlines and dates. This process begins early –in the home and at school. The school timetable, which requires students tofollow a preset epistemological clock, epitomizes chronological time at itsmost organized and prescribed (Adam, 1999: 110; Urry, 2009: 184;Zerubavel, 1981: 14). In deferring to its demands, students learn thatpublic time overrides private time – school-time overrides self-time.In doing so, they also come to accept that the capacity to manage devices(including such mnemo-texts as diaries) for metering time, to observe tem-poral etiquette, and to use time efficiently, are indices of personal and socialefficiency (Zerubavel, 1981), key markers of modern time-consciousness,‘contemporality’.

Arguably, recent developments in information technology such as mobilephones and laptop computers have added new dimensions to contempor-ality. In enabling individuals to be in several ‘places’ at once (at home whileat work), important divides, characteristic of industrial time such as thosebetween work and leisure, have been blurred if not obliterated (Basso, 2003;Eriksen, 2001: 127).3 Such technology has increased the levels of time–spacecompression and time–space densification, and has been instrumental incatalysing an expeditionary culture in which speed is a dominant impera-tive. Thus, rather than having the time burden lifted from their shoulders,families now report that they lead accelerated lives, and that time is a‘commodity’ in short supply, which the increased demands of millenniumschooling have exacerbated (Agger, 2004).4

One mark of these demands is the increasing interpenetration betweenthe spheres of the school and home, and which school diaries, whose use isevident across all sectors of education but especially in high schools, are

Symes 157

textual manifestations. While diaries assist students to ‘script’ their schoolcommitments and to arrange their time to maximize its scholastic value, the‘narrative architecture’ (Genette, 1997) underpinning these processes is acomplex one, and makes reference not just to time management but also tothe management of the self in general. In this article, I analyse the schooldiaries of twelve Australian government and non-government high schoolsfor the year 2009. I argue that their ‘textualizations’ of time, on paper atleast, owe much to the individualizing imperatives of the neo-liberal stateand the temporality of Toyotaism, and which the publishers of diaries havespread to schools. Since the diaries share much the same narrative archi-tecture and philosophy of time, other than when it is pertinent, I avoidreferring specifically to actual diaries by type of, or school of origin. Nordo I analyse how students actually ‘write’ themselves into diaries; rather thefocus of this article is the architecture in which their writing is located.

Chronicles of organization

‘Narrative architecture’ is a term developed by French literary critic GerardGenette (1997) to refer to those structures or ‘epitexts’ which embed a bookand which reside outside and alongside its main text, in its front, side andback regions. One element of this architecture is the book’s ‘sub-script’.This includes its pagination, lineation and indexes, which serve to calibratea book, enabling it to be navigated. Other epitexts include footnotes, dust-covers, forewords, acknowledgements, and even epigraphs and dedications.Though such epitexts are structurally peripheral, Genette argues that bylocating texts in a broader context they are extremely telling elements of abook’s narrative. To these one could add another – overlooked by Genettebut also telling – a book’s style of construction.

One of the features of the diary’s narrative architecture, as distinct fromother printed books, is that most of its pages are free from ‘narrative’ – areblank. Their very blankness signifies opportunity (Perkins, 2001: 15) – oftime needing to be filled. In this sense, a diary is only a partially worked-outtext. And herein the diary’s architectural form as a spatio-temporal con-struct5 follows its functions: its various divisions and pages are calibrated,notated, and allotted according to the measures of the Western calendar,on a month to month, week to week, day to day basis, with equal amountsof space allotted to them. Indeed, the calibration of this space in diaries is,as it is with industrial time in general, a scientific one based on the measuresof the calendar and clock, with equal amounts of space being allot-ted to equal amounts of time, as if the passage of time is uniform,sequential and absolute, undifferentiated. Time is represented cinemato-graphically as a series of separate frames (May and Thrift, 2001: 22).

158 Time & Society 21(2)

However, there is one notable difference between clock (mechanical) timeand textual time: the latter is more qualitative, and therefore a much lessaccurate form of ‘chronometry’ than that of the clock. Handwriting doesnot have the same precision as the hands of a clock.

Ever since diaries for Boy Scouts and Girl Guides were first issued duringWorld War I, there have been diaries ‘written’ for children. But it was notuntil the 1960s that diaries specifically for university and school students,which were intended to foster the habit of keeping a diary, appeared.By today’s standards, these diaries exhibited simple textual architecture,consisting of little more than the temporal ‘basics’; they were also smallenough to be pocketed. The space for writing was therefore limited, whichmeant that their users were forced to use succinct phrasing or very smallwriting (Symes, 1999). However, they did contain 64 pages – the standardfor pocket diaries – of information on letter writing, sporting records andflags of the world, reproduced in colour, on their end pages.6 The invento-ries of superlatives (longest rivers, highest mountains, largest cities, and soon) – yet another take on Hacking’s (1990) ‘avalanche of numbers’ – thatwere features of these diaries have vanished. The contents of diaries arereflections of their times. Curiously, given that inculcating apt time habitswas a preoccupation of schooling, diaries gave no guidance on them.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the printing industries’ adoption of computertechnology enabled the publication of more niche-oriented diaries, whichreflected the particular requirements of businesses. It was claimed that suchcustomizations, which included gilt edges and leather-bonded covers, addedprestige and status to an organization. Thus, through the connotationsof their design overlay, diaries (like watches (Freake, 1995)) are bearersof other meanings than just chronometric ones.7 Moreover, given thatmany of the processes involved were automated, diary production becamemuch faster, and previous time-saving and standardizing measures such asover-printing were dropped. Another development at this time was a changein diary lexicon: many diaries, especially those designed with executivesand managers in mind, were now called ‘planners’ or ‘organizers’ andreflected their future-tense orientation, as forward-looking documents –as documents of accountability rather than confession.

Booked time

According to one account, the first school in New South Wales to adopt itsown diary did so in 1975. The school’s headmaster was concerned thatmany of his students lacked the capacity to use time judiciously, and hethought keeping a diary might redress this. Other schools soon followedsuit, such that by the mid-1980s, most of the ‘high-end’ non-government

Symes 159

schools in Sydney were issuing, at no cost to their students, diaries.8

By today’s standards, they were small (B5) and minimalist in terms oftheir narrative architecture, consisting of a few introductory pages of essen-tial information (often relating, tellingly, to the school’s history) followedby the actual diary, which was organized along the ‘lines’ of a conventionaldiary and on which the highlights of the school’s calendar were overprintedin red (e.g. ‘Europe Trip Departs’; ‘Parents and Friends Spring FashionParade’). Although schools began to ‘bulk’ out their diary’s front matterwith more and more information, it was not until the mid-1990s that schooldiaries acquired their current narrative architecture. This was in largemeasure at the behest of the schools, which were responding to the newimperatives governing school systems and which, arguably, created scopefor the school diary to be used in new ways.

The ascendancy of neo-liberalist policies in the early 1990s forced schoolsof all persuasions to become conscious of their image, on a range of frontsbut particularly that on paper, in documents such as prospectuses circulat-ing in the public domain (Apple, 2001; Gottschall et al., 2010; Marginson,1997; Symes, 1998). The adoption by schools of better looking diaries wasone outcome of this development. In recognizing that they could helpschools to ‘aestheticize’ their documents, many printers entered theschool diary business (‘ . . . fantastic product to showcase your school inits local community’). They offered schools opportunities to ‘customize’their diaries in smarter, more child-centred ways that the traditional, mul-tinational publishers of diaries resisted because the production runsinvolved were small (between 100 and 1000). These same printers alsosought to take advantage of other aspects of the neo-liberal settlementsuch as the annual reports schools were required to produce, and forwhich a suitably business-like format was deemed desirable, and also thegrowth in educational merchandise (another offshoot of impression man-agement) by offering schools ‘branded’ key rings, mugs, lanyards and pens.

There are a number of features worth noting about the revamped schooldiary. The first and most obvious of these is its dimensions, which in linewith the fact that there is more to write about and more to communicate arelarger and more voluminous than their forerunners. Second is its construc-tion, which can be tailored to suit a school’s budgetary priorities (since it isthe school which pays for the diary). Most manufacturers produce inexpen-sive, no-frills diaries (‘designed to suit the budget-conscious’), which arewiro-bound, have vinyl, easy to clean covers, and are ‘built’ to withstandthe rough and tumble of schooling (‘this diary will not fall apart’). At theother extreme, and catering to the more image conscious schools, are themore upmarket diaries (‘stylish and elegant’). These utilize better qualitymaterials and construction such as cloth boards or ‘leather look material’,

160 Time & Society 21(2)

hand-sewn (even though it is not) stitching, silk or satin bookmarks (avail-able in the colours of the school), and customized covers (‘Your font covercan display the life of your school in stunning colour’); in other words, thetype of materials and construction are held to confer educational cachet.Thus, they look ‘classier’ than their vinyl analogues and stand out in thesymbolic economy because only a few schools – generally the more exclu-sive, non-government schools and their ‘pecuniary emulators’ in the gov-ernment sector – can afford them. In another reflection of the times, schoolscan now opt for ‘green’ diaries manufactured from low carbon emissionproducts.

Another major difference between diaries of new and those of old – andhence, their increased size – is the amount, and the complexity, of its calen-drical arrangement, i.e. space allocated to time. Whereas in the past schooldiaries followed the practices of diaries in general and devoted a ‘week toan opening’, with a relatively small space for each school day, and a smallerspace (because they are not) for Saturday and Sunday, the ‘representation’of the school week in the diary is more graphically complex. That shownin Figure 1 is framed by two axes, which embed several columns and rows.

The vertical axis comprises the days and dates of the week, which, withthe exceptions of Saturday and Sunday, are given ‘equal time’, with publicholidays shaded, e.g. Australia Day. Given that the page on the right isnot shaded, there is the implication that though the school is closed thatdoes not mean that students should close themselves to study. Along thehorizontal axis are five columns, enabling a student’s study commitmentsto be located appropriately (Comments, Subject, Homework andAssignments, Date Due, Check). Though not stated, the division betweenthe left and right pages is a spatial one: whereas the entries on the left areschool ones, those on the right are home ones, where the exercise of timeis more discretionary than it is at school, and for which students will needto self-assign time. In the light of this, the home-page is much more‘lineated’ than the school-page, and requires students to place theirstudy obligations on the line, day by day (only the weekend is exemptfrom this) in an orderly and logical manner, utilizing the previous cate-gories and to check off the completion of assignments, and for anyremaining assignments to be transferred to the top of the next page(next week), to the ‘Continuing Assignment Check List’, and for the stu-dent to check them off ad nauseam. This algorithmic listing and checkingof assignments and re-listing of those that remain incomplete constituteanother example of the ‘check-box mentality’ – also evident in the resur-gence of rote learning and fill-in-the-blank answers in education generally(Agger and Shelton, 2007: 97). It discourages, and even penalizes, ‘think-ing outside the box’.

Symes 161

Time signature

But the most insidious form of this mentality is that the ticking off (an aptphrase in this context) is to be undertaken by the parent/caregiver andteacher, space for their signatures being allotted for this purpose in thefooter. Moreover, a spot at the front of the diary is assigned for aparent/caregiver to supply their signature and which allows the authenticityof its weekly iteration (lest there be any doubts about its provenance) to bechecked.

In the past the diary was regarded as a private, confidential document,primarily intended as a place for ‘self-communication’ and confession.The fact that many older diaries could be locked reinforced the diary’sprivacy structurally (Symes, 1999). This continues to be the case, thoughmore by etiquette than actual structure. But this is not the case with that ofthe student diary. In the interests of enhancing the ‘partnership between the

Figure 1. These are two pages from a typical wiro-bound school diary. It is from

the first week of the school year. Interestingly, the diary commences at this week and

ends during the last week before Christmas: thus, the diary does not represent the

full calendar year, and implies that the weeks leading up to, and immediately after,

the school year are study-free.

162 Time & Society 21(2)

school, the parents and the student’ and improving communication betweenthem, the school diary is a public document that is subject to weekly inspec-tion. Moreover, it is not just the temporal performance of students thatis the subject of surveillance. By allotting space for the purpose, the diaryprovides a means for ‘checking’ whether students take ‘school notices homeor not’, their movements outside school during class time, reasons for beinglate and absent, going home early, test results and appointments. In sodoing, the diary regulates the student, serving to check any inclination totransgress.

Diaries also function as educational go-betweens. They are structuredin such a way as to encourage parents and teachers to write notes to oneanother, with the student acting as a courier between home and school, andvice versa. Notes sections (one of the reasons why the diaries had to belarger) are provided for this purpose, and at least of two of the diariesexamined provided sample pages of how such communication is to beundertaken. Arguably, such epistolary interchange reflects the neo-liberalistthrust for more client-centred education, with many middle class parentswanting a greater voice in their child’s schooling (Ball and Vincent, 2001).They can now do so, albeit at arm’s length, via these notes. Further, this hasthe double advantage for time-famished parents of not having ‘to front upto’ the school and of being frictionless. Moreover, because so much of theaction of the school is recorded in the diary it also provides more transpar-ency about a child’s schooling, which is another thrust of neo-liberalistschooling.

Thus, the school diary is not a self-authored document at all. Parents andteachers have right of access to its pages and are encouraged to add theircomments, which does not apply to other students (who are forbidden towrite in it). This has the effect of dissuading students from committing anyconfidences to its pages. Indeed, they are told that their diary is not a per-sonal or social one and they are enjoined not to ‘include personal or privatematerial’. Thus although on the surface the diary acts as an ‘anti-amnesiacdevice’ (Young, 1988), it has evolved into a document with a more ‘sinister’subscript, that of supplying a record of a student’s life, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week, both inside and outside school. In effect, it functionsas a desktop resume, providing an inventory of misdemeanours and trans-gressions, commitments and achievements. In short, the diary is a temporalincarnation of the panopticon, or properly speaking, since much of thesurveillance is conducted through signatures and notes, a ‘cheiropticon’,one that enables the student’s time at school (not to mention, home) tobe ‘envisioned’ as a series of hand-written, autographed entries. In fixingtime on paper, it has the secondary effect of certifying the power andauthority of inscription.

Symes 163

Clocking on

The fact that their manufacturers were able to offer schools the optionof including, moreover in a ‘professionally formatted’ way, institutionallyspecific information in their dairies, information which hitherto had beenconsigned to a school handbook, which in the image conscious 1990s wasbeginning to appear shoddy and outmoded, was part of their appeal. Butthere was an even more compelling reason as to why it was only ‘natural’that the diary, as the time book par excellence, should usurp its role, andthat was the fact that much of the ‘prescription’ in the old handbooks wasactually time-related. And although the school diary is no longer only atime book and contains much other content relating to school policy,a large percentage of its pages are still given over to temporal matters(‘It’s not ok to stay away’; ‘Regular and punctual attendance at school isnecessary’). The fact that the references to time are concentrated in a singlevolume only serves to underlie its educational importance. In no otherorganization are actors (and that includes the teachers) made to feel con-scious of the passage and organization of time – so handcuffed to the handsof a clock. Although time thrift might now take a corporate form, it is stillpredicated on the same Franklinesque calculus: time is money, precious,and thou shalt not waste it! And those that do so are required to make upfor lost time, in their own time (‘attend behaviour detention for three hourson Saturday’; ‘ . . . students deemed to be habitually late will be required tomake up the time in detention’). This is a reminder that schools (like pris-ons) use time punitively, in the shape of detentions, to reshape refractorybehaviour. In part, this heightening of temporal consciousness helps inductstudents into ‘contemporality’; but it is also helps to ensure that the schoolruns like clockwork, on time, with only minimal disruptions to its schedules,even though in reality this proves to be a forlorn hope (Harris, 1982).9

But in allowing their handbooks to be incorporated into a commerciallyproduced diary, schools relinquished control over some of their content,which is selected for them. Admittedly, some of this content, such as spell-ing rules, mathematical formula and grammar, is study-related. Yet,in sharing their context with the discursive realm of punctuality, the diaryreinforces the idea of a society governed by rules and order, where every-thing is clear-cut and unambiguous. It is a world of single-mindedness,where the margin for error is zero and matters are contradiction-free.Hence, it is only appropriate that diaries also include jokes, riddles, puzzlesand quizzes – as light relief, presumably, but also reinforcing the aforemen-tioned check box mentality, where questions are answered but never raised.

This same mentality also applies other matters now included in schooldiaries such as conflict resolution, healthy eating, physical fitness and stress

164 Time & Society 21(2)

control, which were omitted from school handbooks. These create theimpression that time management is a subset of corporeal management.But by including such advice the assumption is presumably made bydiary publishers that these matters are not covered in school or, if theyare, they are neither corporate nor contemporary enough, and that theschool is locked into a regime of training that the real world has abandoned.Indeed, one can observe notable differences between those parts of the diarysupplied by the school and those supplied by their publishers. Whereas theformer are grounded in rules and detail the consequences of persistentdisciplinary infraction, and construct students as powerless individualsin a bureaucracy, those of the latter are grounded in the discourse of anucleated self, whose positively powered energies should be marshalled forthe personal benefits that accrue. The impression is given – in line with neo-liberalist theories of subjectivity (Rose, 1996: 153) – that students have thecapacity to engineer and steer themselves, especially if they adopt the diary’sadvice on managing the mind and body. It is in accordance with this self-powered philosophy that the diary’s text is informal, more personalized:‘If I have been absent from school . . . ’; ‘YES! You can have more timeto do all the things you want and do your homework and study’. Thisis also reflected in the faux arithmetic used to formulate the principlesof self-engineering in action: ‘your input¼ your output’. By contrast, theschool sections are more ‘distant’ and formal – ‘If a student is found tohave plagiarized . . . ’; ‘All girls are expected . . . ’ – and adopt the cadencesof officialdom. They also pay heed to social justice discourses, whichthe most canonical forms of neo-liberalism regard as disruptive(Hayek, 1976). However, Australian school diaries, unlike some of theirequivalents in the United States, have yet to include advertising (Schor,2004: 89).10

Time sheets

The temporal philosophy underpinning school diaries is one implying thattime can be planned and organized, manipulated and manoeuvred, and thatit is not necessarily an incorrigible force in our lives, even our school lives.Time can be brought under our control. It can be put into place, and thatplace is the diary. For once time is written down, inscribed on the page,it becomes editable, calculable and amenable to intervention. The accent ofthe school diary, then, is on planning the future rather than recording thepast. Its emphasis is on the henceforth not hitherto. It provides a textfor working out what has to be done and when, not what has been done.It is kept not to keep a record of the past, but to organize the future.In regard to this, in order to ‘get the best’ from their diaries students are

Symes 165

encouraged during class to ‘record all homework, other assignments andtest dates accurately’, ‘write down (in pencil so that you make changeseasily) when essays and projects are due, and when tests and quizzesare scheduled’ and then when at home to ‘schedule’ their ‘time in 30 to40 minute blocks’ (as at high school), prioritize work ‘with the most press-ing and crucial first’, and so on. They are even presented with a ‘studyplanner’ exemplifying how an educational day (which includes the time atschool) should be spent. It commences at 6.15 am and continues through to10 pm, with every hour accounted for. It shows how the hours before andafter school and at weekends (the majority of which are to be devoted tohomework) should be allotted: 1 hour for dinner, 45 minutes on Mondaybefore school for swimming practice, 3 hours on Friday night for a part-time job, 2 hours on Sunday for leisure, and so on. In one diary the tem-poral prescription even extends to the duration of parties: those for juniorsshould be held in the afternoons, lasting for ‘3 hours maximum’; those forseniors should finish no later than 12.30 am.

Given that the majority of the time at school is prescribed and studentshave very little discretion over its exercise, it is not surprising then thatmuch of the temporal advice relates to making the time outside schoolcount. This amounts to bringing the study regimen of school home,which has spatial implications: students will need to create an appropriatelyequipped, lit and ventilated ‘study zone’ and ‘where all you will do is home-work and study . . .This means no eating, no drinking, no game playing, nodaydreaming, no music . . . ’. As with so much in the non-school sections ofthe diaries, the gravity of the proscription is mollified by a semi-jocularrhetoric. Serious matters are presented in a vernacular style, using teenagecadences (‘It’s seriously QUIET in here’) and cartoons, illustrative, quiteliterally, of the benefits of life according to the edicts of time management.The grave business of time management is not without its funny side,it seems.

But it does mean adopting ascetic habits – long on self-denial, short oninstant gratification. For example, it is noted that once the school yearcommences the student is likely to feel harried and their experience of‘time poverty’ acute – the chronic disease of our times. This can lead tobad habits such as cravings for junk food and the abandonment of fitnessroutines, which are counterproductive because they exacerbate anxiety.The proper antidote it is suggested, is managing time ‘effectively’ throughthe use of a ‘daily organizer’, which can actually save time – up to as muchas a third – thus creating more time ‘for leisure activities such as sports, andvisiting with friends’ and thereby leading to more a balanced, less anxiousand school-dominated life. Even succumbing to the craving for junk foodcan be offset by students taking a 10 minute break in every half-hour period

166 Time & Society 21(2)

of study (why not at school, too?), during which they should take anexercise snack: collect the mail, take the dog for a walk, and so on.

What is notable about this advice is that it represents a shift from thediscourses of time found in schools for much of the twentieth century,which were located in time thrift, in the idea of time as a commodity, tobe spent productively rather than wasted. But none of the diaries sampledever referred to time thrift other than in oblique ways. In line with the shiftto neo-liberalist individualism, it has been superseded by the discourse oftime management, where the onus is placed on students to organize theirtime and not have it organized for them. In the sink or swim clime of neo-liberalism, self-regarding behaviour receives priority. It is not that diarydesigners and readers are steeped in the theory of acting responsibly; it israther that such theory has seeped through to quotidian discourse and is sodeeply ingrained in its fabric that individuals unthinkingly adopt its tenets,never interrogating its justification or, worse still, believe it to be sound.And diary publishers, at the pain of not acting responsibly, cannot afford totransgress the discourse climate.

For example, schools no longer give students homework timetables; stu-dents are expected to compile their own. And if they cannot, the diaryadvises them how to do so, and if that is insufficient, they are referred towebsites, with more detailed advice on the matter. The time problem isthereby individualized not institutionalized, and rather than turning tothe school for help students are encouraged to adopt the measures pre-scribed in the diary to alleviate chronic anxiety. This is not atypicalof the imperatives of the neo-liberal state and the neo-liberal school,which inveigh against bureaucratic, welfare approaches as interventionist,as against the interests of autonomy and liberty. Instead, individualsare encouraged to be self-governed, and held responsible for their ownself-renovation and treatment. This has led to a huge proliferation of self-help titles (Rimke, 2000: 70), many incidentally dealing with time manage-ment and which the school diaries draw on for ‘inspiration’. In making lightof time management, attention is diverted away from its nefarious economicgoals. Even though students are made to believe that by careful planningthey can undertake all their school work and still have enough time to ‘havea life’, what is not communicated in the school diary is, to paraphraseMarx (1976: 375), that even that life is ‘by nature and right’ school-time,and is to be entirely devoted to ‘self-expansion’.

‘Just-in-Time’ school

The Toyotaism now ‘driving’ many workplaces has had the effect ofincreasing the productivity of Taylorism. This was achieved through a

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range of strategies, called significantly ‘Just-in-Time’ (JIT), of which theprincipal was the ‘methodical elimination of ‘‘dead time’’ from labour’.For example, the useful working time in every minute was increased from45 seconds (the maximum achieved under Taylorism) to 57 seconds (Adler,1993: 97; Basso, 2003: 33; Ikuko, 2002), the aggregate gains to actual work-ing time producing significant gains in worker productivity over a periodof year. Not surprisingly, companies and businesses facing increased com-petition from globalization embraced Toyotaism with some alacrity.Any opposition (now almost non-existent in the deregulated climate ofneo-liberalized industrial relations) to Toyotaism was offset by the promiseof significant improvements to working conditions such as more autonomyfor workers, more capacity to participate in workplace decision-making,and more opportunities for training and for working in teams. But theseso-called improvements were not without their downsides; the quickenedtempo of work, and which working in teams exacerbated, heightened stressand sick levels among workers, who could not cope with the expeditionaryclimate.

The temporal regime that Toyotaism engendered, where no part of theday, week or year is quarantined from work (and which was once onlyfound among shift workers), is now commonplace.11 Another feature ofthe new regimen is that the traditional hiatus between home and workhas been ‘de-differentiated’ and more work is conducted at home (facilitatedby mobile telephones and laptop computers) and also on the way to workand during breaks at work. In short, workers are on call 24/7. Technologythus has not only made work more time-intensive and intrusive but it hasrequired ‘time-shifting’ appliances for home routines to be undertaken.Family life would grind to a halt without the freezer, microwave and thedishwasher (Roberts, 2002; Shove, 2003); perhaps they should be seen aslabour-extending devices! It is not even a case of working to live any longer,and certainly not a case of less work, more life; it is more a case of livingto work, with any left-over time being available for additional work. Thenecessities of life such as eating and sleeping, rearing children, supportingthe family, and having the body ‘serviced’ are undertaken in whatever inter-stices exist in the rapacious work regimen. In an effort to schedule evenmore activities into overcrowded lives, families compile inventories of theirobligations, so that they can see on paper what options they have for jug-gling and dovetailing them (ferrying children to school, on the way to work)(Southerton, 2003). They also use email and mobile phones to fine-tuneengagements, and to undertake any last-minute editing when schedules goawry (Darrah et al., 2007: 82). The downside of such fine-tuning is that ititself is time-consuming, magnifying the feeling of not being able to cope,especially when the technology producing such time pressure malfunctions

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(Jarvis, 2005: 134). It is also emblematic of the way life now defers to work,that its demands override everything else, and that only adroit chronometrycan make the life–work balance work.

As the ‘organizing’ principles of school diaries exemplify, the educationalcorrelate of JIT is that childhood increasingly defers to schooling – or,at least, that is the impression given by school diaries, which spread JIT‘philosophy’ to the school. It is another matter whether they take it up ornot, and the version of JIT in schools has reduced ‘time banditry’(Donaldson, 1996: 56) and made education horologically more efficacious.But the intent is there. Students are informed that in the interests of studythat they will need at least 7 to 10 hours of sleep, to allot 20 hours homestudy per week, should set aside at least 21 study sessions within these hours(the diary allows room for up to 30), and resist time-wasting diversions suchas watching too much television and making too many mobile phone calls,especially to time-wasting friends, whom they should consider dropping.It is not that such diversions are verboten but that they should be taken onlyin moderation and then only as a means to revive the stamina for study.Other hazards include such work avoidance strategies as flitting from activ-ity to activity and never completing any of them, and procrastination,for which ‘disciplined decision-making’ is the solution, meaning that the‘MUSTS and some of the SHOULDS get done each day’. In short, it isabout ‘getting maximum value for the time you have’ and finding ways to‘make every (emphasis in the original) minute quality time’; not quiteToyotaism down to the last second, but preciously close. Nor are schoolholidays spared. It is even suggested, in another echo of contemporality,that school holidays should be quarried for their potential study time – ‘anextra 50 hours’ for the educationally driven. Even the injunction that stu-dents should take regular breaks from their study is rationalized in terms ofthe fact that they will result in more effective study. As a graph in one diary‘demonstrates’, the law of diminishing returns applies to excessive study.Overworking is counter-productive and regular intermissions (not toomany) from the desk can help with study. They are not seen as intrinsicallyworthwhile, something to be enjoyed for their own sakes. In short, full-timestudy is precisely that, ‘full’ meaning devoid of emptiness; more study andless life is the rule of the day.

There are two reasons why children, particularly middle class children,must have their time filled to the plenum with school and after school ‘unitsof action’ such as homework, music lessons, sports, study coaching and,later on, part-time work. One reason is that, in an era where the ‘survival ofthe fastest’ (Rosa and Scheuerman, 2009: 8) is the prevailing dynamicof schooling, the child who is able to cram two educational lives into theone is likely to emerge triumphant. The second reason is that there is now

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widespread fear (often times, exaggerated) among policy-makers, teachers,and parents that the disengaged child is at risk, is likely to succumb to theenticements that now stalk children from myriad quarters: the new devilsthat tempt idle hands. These are not just outdoors in the shape of traffic andpredatory strangers, and which drove children indoors, but are also, cour-tesy the internet, indoors (Buckingham, 2000). The only solution isthe ‘total administration’ of the child’s time; in short, they should haveno time on their hands. It is this end that the narrative architecture ofthe school diary potentiates. In short, whatever dividends accruing fromstudents working long hours, it has little to do with the enlargement of theirintellectual capacities, and all to do with insulating them from a potentiallymalign world. In the end this robs children of the time and opportunity tobe children. In other words, by over-scheduling the child, any opportunityfor childhood in its traditional sense is scheduled out of existence(Agger and Shelton, 2007: 91).12 They become time-servers just like theirparents. And whatever benefits accrue to students working overtime, ‘bynature and right’ they belong to the school. Its reputation is improved,prospective parents are impressed, and it secures positional advantageover its rivals. Thus, the imperatives of neo-liberalism are satisfied andthe school’s investment in its diary repaid.

* * * * * * *

In analysing the narrative architecture of the school diary and the nature oftime manifested in its pages, I have argued that the revamped school diary isnot strictly a time-book any longer, for it combines the functions of a diaryand school handbook. As a mnemo-text it is used by parents to communi-cate to teachers and vice versa, as much it is by students to chronicle,organize, and retrieve their work commitments. In this respect, the diaryhas become a document of surveillance, used to monitor a student’s day-to-day conducts and activities, and, in so doing, satisfies the neo-liberalistimperatives of automization, transparency and accountability. Moreover,it does so utilizing forms of narrative architecture that make school ‘lookgood’ in the aestheticized markets of modern education. Although schooldiaries ‘clown around’ with time management, this only to serves to disguiseand render palatable what is being advocated, which is a study regime a laToyotatism, where children’s time increasingly defers to schooling, 24/7.Though kairological time is not entirely usurped by the chronologicaltime of the school, it is plain that the school diary’s time frames discourageits expression. If this causes students anxiety, then by utilizing the diary’sself-help approaches to time management such anxiety can be mitigated.And although, as noted in the introduction, what has been analysed exists

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only on paper and might not be reflected in the horological habits of actualstudents, failure to acquiesce to the diary’s injunctions is to risk being ‘outof joint’ with our times.

Notes

1. I would like to thank my students and friends Emmanuel Achelles, Diana Tilley,and manufacturers Louisa Wood and Gina Riley, who supplied me with school

diaries.2. These loci classici are not without their detractors (Glennie and Thrift, 1996;

Weinrich, 2008), who have argued that time thrift predates the modern era.

3. In due recognition of this, one Canberra cafe advertises that it ‘. . . has freeWi-Fi and power access for those who want to work while they eat’ (p. 11).See Canberra, 12-2.2010: 11. Undoubtedly, the advent of mobile technologies

has challenged the parameters of ‘industrial time’. E-time, which is character-ized by instantaneity, circumvents time-zones, individualizes time, and seems toexist outside clock, diary time. For more, see Adam (2003: 74).

4. There is now a considerable literature on the hazards of a life fastened to speed,

though it is worth pointing out that such presentiments are not new (Hassan,2003: 1; Rosa, 2009: 78). One manifestation of this ‘counter-dromic’ discourse isthe Slowness Movement (Honore, 2004), which advocates placing the foot on

the ‘decelerator’, and returning to a more natural time, what Urry calls ‘glacialtime’ (2009: 195). It includes schooling within its orbit (see Agger, 2004;Rosenfield and Wise, 2000).

5. I would not like to argue that diary is alone in this respect; narratives per se arespatio-temporal constructs that compress and/or elongate time and space(Bakhtin, 1981).

6. These titles are drawn from catalogues for diaries produced by Collins in the1960s and 1970s.

7. This process of conferring distinction only has any currency among those whofeel that gold trimmings count. Others might find such trimmings crass and

choose diaries with other taste signifiers.8. I am grateful to Gina Riley for this information.9. Concerns about the temporal efficiency of schooling are not new. When

Taylorism was at its height, during the 1920s, there were attempts to extendits regimen to the classroom (Callahan, 1962).

10. One suspects free market philosophy is weaker in Australia, though this

has not stopped one publisher suggesting to its potential clients that its dia-ries offer ‘fantastic reach for your campaign, as the diary is used for the entireyear.’

11. Such working hours are not completely new but were followed by railway

workers in the 1930s, who were also ‘slaves to the clock’ (Cottrell, 1939).12. These problems are not new ones. Evidence from the 1940s indicates that the

New South Wales Teachers’ Federation was concerned that high schools were

overworking their students, a fact illustrated in a ‘photoon’ with the following

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caption: ‘The Factory Act of 1833 reduced the working day of children under

thirteen to forty-eight hours per week’ (Education: the organ of the New SouthWales Public School Teachers’ Federation, 15 August, 1940: 303).

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