The question of Bildung contains fundamentally the question how to develop human freedom and person (Humboldt; but also, at the same time, under the heading of “instruction” Condorcet) through different branches of human knowledge (Schneuwly & Vollmer, in press). Didactics has been founded as the systematic reflection on the relationship between scire. docere and discere by Comenius, implying organization and the teaching of knowledge in different domains (Schneuwly, 2011). Referring explicitly to this tradition, Vygotsky defines teaching as artificial development that contributes to the transformation of the persons’ relationship to one’s own psychological processes through the appropriation of semiotic means (Kozulin, 2003). Against the background of this Comenius-Humboldt/Condorcet-Vygotsky line, we will show that school disciplines are the means of this transformation process, a process that is contradictory because it leads to empowerment and distinction (in Bourdieu’s sense) at the same time. School disciplines are the result of a long process of disciplinarisation during which tools are elaborated by the teacher profession (exercises, text corpus, discourses on texts) in order to “discipline” (we refer here to the possible positive French meaning of the word; see Chervel, 1988), to enhance the students’ mode of thinking, speaking and acting, opening new possibilities for them. In teaching literature for example (Fraisse, 2012; Dufays, 2007), “disciplination” (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2014) opens ways to new forms of reading texts that are systematically constructed during the students’ school career. We will illustrate this “disciplination process” on the basis of empirical, semi-experimental data. We videotaped 60 teaching sequences: 10 teachers of primary (mean age 11 years), secondary I (14 years) and secondary II (17 years) schools were asked to teach the same classical and a contemporary literary text (10x3x2 design). The analysis of these sequences was conducted on three levels: their macrostructure; the professional instruments used by teachers (exercises, activities, questionnaires, etc.), the verbal activities of teachers and students. The results of one analysis on each level will be presented: 1. How do the teachers finish their sequence? 2. How are questionnaires used? 3. What kind of ethical, emotional and esthetic judgments are made on the characters and actions of the texts? The results will be discussed from the point of view of the “disciplination” process of reading literature which is far from being linear and begins already early in primary school. This is is but one way of contributing to Bildung in the sense defined above.

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