The text begins by dealing with the anachronistic use of words and ideas. This use is characterized by rigidity in the interpretation of language which ends by being fixed in the meanings current in the epoch in which the history is being written. The reification of discourse tends not to consider the possible meanings of words in the more or less distant historical period which we study. Words can be repeated but their forms of appropriation are virtually infinite: the writing of history is the comparison of the theoretical position which we choose with the history of the sources which we inherit. The history of education ought to be observed in the very formation of its discourse and not in "contexts" which end by being the exclusive repository of time.
intellectual history; history of education