In this essay I explore the themes of accommodation and resistance as they emerge in stories autobiographers tell about their early schooling. My concern is to illustrate how educational autobiographies can add to an understanding of the process of normalization that children experience in school. Many forms of expres- sion can rightly he called autobiographical and all written autobiographies are in some sense educational.2 My discussion here, however, draws only on written texts intended for publication as autobiographies that have recounted their authors formal educational experiences.