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Social History and Modern French Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Peter Larmour
Peter Larmour*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Abstract

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Type
Essay Review III
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , Fall 1973 , pp. 289 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Education and Society in Modern France (“International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction”; London, 1963); Reforms and Restraints in Modern French Education (“World Education Series”; London, 1971). Education and Society will henceforth be referred to as E. & S.; Reforms and Restraints as R. & R. Google Scholar

2. E. & S., p. 9.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., pp. 9–10; Fraser does not include the last two figures, which are from Alain Girard, La Réussite sociale en France (“Travaux et Documents de l'Institut national d'études demographiques”, Cahier 38; Paris, 1961), p. 92.Google Scholar

4. The class character of the primary and secondary sectors will be considered below.Google Scholar

5. Fraser considers the new creation of 1963, the Collèges d'Enseignement Secondaire (known as C.E.S.) for the purpose of creating a place of transition between the two school sectors to have been a moderate success. Prost, Antoine, L'Histoire de l'enseignement en France 1800–1967 (“Collection U; Série ‘Histoire contemporaine”’; Paris, 1968), p. 424, judges them much more severely.Google Scholar

6. E. & S., pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 18.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 15. See also how he lets the arch-technocrat, Jacques Ellul, make the refutation of the humanist position on general education which stands as the termination of his discussion of the purposes of education, ibid., pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

9. R. & R., pp. 41, 42.Google Scholar

10. To cite one example of its complexity: when Faure, Edgar was dismissed in 1969, his successor as Minister, Guichard, Olivier, had no preparation for the monstrous problems he was about to face. “During the summer,” he said in an interview, “I had to have no less than eight successive organization charts made before I could come to some clear idea of the structure of secondary education.” L'Express, (Sept. 15–21, 1969): 31.Google Scholar

11. R. & R., p. 61; but he does not attempt to analyze the class reality underlying this split; the political parties of the working classes are laic, while the bourgeoisie send their children to church schools if they can.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 73.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 83.Google Scholar

14. E. & S., pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

15. R. & R., p. 95.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., p. 105.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 90.Google Scholar

18. L'Express (Sept. 15–21, 1969): 32.Google Scholar

19. The chapter entitled “Points of Transition”.Google Scholar

20. E. & S., p. 1; my emphasis.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 2; but catering, it should be noted, although neither the report nor Fraser does so, exclusively to the class clientele of the primary system. This confusion between the class divisions (primary for the people/secondary for the bourgeoisie) with administrative divisions (departments for primary/secondary/technical) affects Fraser's whole analysis, since he often treats problems arising from class inequality as administrative failings. On this see Baudelot, Christian and Establet, Roger, L'Ecole capitaliste en France (Paris, 1972). Chapter II is entitled: “There are two networks” (réseaux), and chapter III “There is no Third Network”, whose point is to show that there is “no technical network specifically.” p. 91.Google Scholar

22. E. & S., p. 22.Google Scholar

23. This history can be most profitably studied in Prost's Histoire de l'enseignement en France, 1800–1967 .Google Scholar

24. Prost, , p. 422.Google Scholar

25. This movement has been well treated by Talbott, John, The Politics of Educational Reform in France, 1918–1940 (Princeton, 1969), which Fraser does not cite. Baudelot and Establet have demonstrated that the two systems to this day are “totally separated” by barriers between them, differences in course content, differences in the aims of education, and differences in recruitment from antagonistic social classes, pp. 41f. They call these two systems now “secondary-superior” and “primary- professional.” Google Scholar

26. “University graduates [licenciés] are not at all competitive on the labor market,” said the Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Besancon, “because their intellectual baggage is very weak compared to that of students who leave after two or three years of a preparatory class…,” Le Monde (Feb. 26–27, 1967).Google Scholar

27. Bourdieu, Pierre & Passeron, Jean-Claude, Les Héritiers (Paris, 1964), p. 11.Google Scholar

28. La Réussite sociale, pp. 190–92. This is to leave out of consideration the much greater odds playing against girls.Google Scholar

29. R. & R., p. 110. Even with the latter figures, the inequality is blatant enough; that about fifty per cent of the population should provide 9.4 per cent of the university students means that for the vast majority of working class children higher education of any sort is not a realistic possibility, and probably not even an aspiration. In 1963 76.8 per cent of conscripts for the armed forces had only a primary school education; 1.6 per cent were university graduates, Baudelot & Establet, p. 25.Google Scholar

30. See “Un Colloque de l'O.C.E.D.,” Le Monde (Nov. 25, 1971).Google Scholar

31. Ibid. Google Scholar

32. Ibid. Google Scholar

33. On this see Fraser, , E. & S., pp. 128–34.Google Scholar

34. See Prost, , pp. 20–70, particularly pp. 52–55.Google Scholar

35. Bourdieu and Passeron are extremely prolific. Apart from articles in the Revue Française de Sociologie and elsewhere, see La Réproduction. Eléments pour une Théorie du Système d'enseignement (Paris, 1970); See Talbott's, John E. critique of their work, “Why Some Are More Equal Than Others,” History of Education Quarterly 12 (Winter 1972): 551–561.Google Scholar

36. As Fraser himself on several occasions points out very well; see E. & S., pp. 128–34.Google Scholar

37. Indeed there is no indication that Fraser has read Bourdieu and Passeron, although some of their ideas seem to have filtered through since he talks of the handicaps placed by “linguistic poverty” on the children of the working classes in his second book. See R. & R., pp. 122, 137, 163.Google Scholar

38. See L'Education (Sept. 14, 1972); also for current problems, “Le Lycée malade,” L'Express (March 29–April 4, 1971); also ibid. (Sept. 11–17, 1972); Le Nouvel Observateur (Oct. 16, 1972).Google Scholar

39. See the approval by a socialist, Bernard, M. Philippe, of Faure's reforms, Le Monde (Jan. 23, 1969); Natanson, Jacques J., “La Réforme d'Edgar Faure,” Esprit, Nlle Série 11 (Nov., 1968): 541–42: Faure had “an acute awareness of what was necessary and possible. In appearance he had to go as far as possible in satisfying the wishes of the May movement, for that was the only way to insure that the schools reopen in the fall, and at the same time it cut the ground from under the feet of the revolutionaries.” Google Scholar

40. See L'Express (May 26–June 1, 1969); (June 9–16, 1969).Google Scholar

41. Glucksmann, Christine & Kaisergruber, David, “Ecole, savoir et idéologies,” La Nouvelle Critique 53 (May, 1972): 9, 14. See also the revealing description of Guichard's trip to the Soviet Union and his evident admiration for the effectiveness of their manpower policy, L'Express (Feb. 15–21, 1971). See also the attention paid to the Swedish decision to admit to the University of Upsala only the number of students required by the economy, ibid. (Oct. 16–22, 1972).Google Scholar

42. Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell (New York, 1971), pp. 40–41.Google Scholar

43. He has a section called “Democratization: a Modern Mission,” and it is treated as a fundamental goal of the Fifth Republic.Google Scholar

44. Although he generally does not see this point, Fraser acknowledges it once: “deputies who stress ‘return for money’ or ‘efficient output’ may be referring to a factor in planning that is not necessarily consistent with the French commitment to democratization.” R. & R., p. 113. Fraser understands democracy to mean equal opportunity to make it to the top of a hierarchical society.Google Scholar

45. Guedj, Aimé and Hincker, François, “Le Malaise des enseignants,” La Nouvelle Critique 49 (Jan., 1972): 10.Google Scholar